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Forward Operations in the Culture War
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Mohammedans’ religion might be sustained by scimitars, but Christians’ religion must be maintained by love.
He who religiously obeys Mahomet may yet be doing grievous moral wrong; but it is never so with the disciple of Jesus: obedience to Jesus is holiness. - C.H. Spurgeon
Posted by Walt as C.H. Spurgeon Gems, Islam at 6:18 AM EDT
By Rev. T. Myles Weiss MA MFT
Where’s the Muslim Martin?
Where is the voice of reform that will transform this religion of one billion people?
We need a voice similar to Martin Luther, who challenged the forces of corrupt Christianity. In his day, he dared to call for the end of selling indulgences, that vile practice which enslaved poor families by exchanging their hopes of eternity for their meager finances. The church of his era sold empty promises. Luther demanded change. He spoke out for a more spiritual future for those who followed Christ. He called on leaders to admit their failures and change their ways.
We need a voice like Martin Luther King Jr. who challenged the forces of segregation and spoke up for the civil rights of Black people in America. He used non-violent protest to draw attention to this shameful fact of America’s past. His voice changed our country.
We need a voice like Martin Short, whose self deprecating comedic styling may be instructional for the Muslim world, which seems to have a desperate need for a sense of humor. This ability to laugh at one’s self is seemingly absent from the mentality of mainstream Islam. If it is present, we need to hear it.
We are waiting for the “religion of peace” to demonstrate a self-correcting movement toward moderation. We are waiting for the masses of Islam to demand corrections to Jihadist theology. We are waiting for the civil rights enjoyed by Muslims in America and Israel to be granted to women, Jews, and Christians, Buddhists and Hindus in Muslim lands.
We are waiting for a humanity enhancing humor that reaches across differences and celebrates the universal human condition by “lightening up” and laughing a little.
We are waiting for Martin.
© Rev. T. Myles Weiss MA MFT 2006
_____
Myles Weiss is a Marriage and Family Therapist, Founder of Trust and Triumph, a successful substance abuse recovery group, and Pastor of Beth Shalom. He serves on the leadership teams and boards of several organizations including The Center for Changing Worldviews, Vertical Call and Beulah Prayer House. As co-host on Middle East Affairs for Changing Worldviews TALK Radio with Sharon Hughes, Myles expresses his passion to promote understanding of the pivotal nature of Middle East politics and the need for peace with security. Myles has conducted marriage and family seminars in Russia, organized outreaches in India and trained ministers in Africa, and received his Masters Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from Azusa Pacific University. Contact: mwtherapy@sbcglobal.net .
We live in a changing world…
Sharon Hughes
President, The Center for Changing Worldviews
Host, Changing Worldviews TALK Radio
PO Box 750624
Petaluma, CA 94975-0624
(707)322-3632
Websites: http://www.changingworldviews.com/
http://www.womantalk.us/
Blog: http://changingworldviews.blogspot.com/
Email: sharon@changingworldviews.com
http://www.womantalk.us/
By Alan Caruba
What Pope Benedict XVI actually said was vastly overshadowed by the Islamic reaction to one line from a lengthy, intellectually complex speech given on September 12th at the University of Regensburg, Germany.
We know by now that the Islamic response was to burn Catholic and Christian churches throughout the Middle East and, in one case, to shoot a nun in the back, killing someone who had labored more than three decades as a nurse to serve the poor in Africa.
Nothing more perfectly frames the real issue at stake. Islam cannot and will not accept anything other than the surrender and domination of all other faiths. For Islam, it is either dar al’Islam or dar al’harb. The latter translates the world of war.
For those too squeamish to address this too obvious fact, since the 1970s in particular and throughout its history, Islam been at war with the West.
Its war with the Hindus in India dates back and beyond that nation’s independence and the partitioning that led about the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh as places of separation for Muslims. That said, a sizeable Muslim population continues to live in India and, not surprisingly, whenever there is a bombing in Mumbai or something ugly occurs in Kashmir, you don’t have to look far to know who did it.
The reaction of Muslims living in Paris and other urban centers in France was to devote themselves for weeks to burning cars and other mayhem when they became incensed and, in London, native-born Muslims of Pakistani descent so no reason why they shouldn’t kill their countrymen on buses and in the subways of London.
To this day, there are Americans so frightened of the notion of a holy war—a Jihad—against the United States (and the West) that they cannot bring themselves to accept the fact that it was Muslims who hijacked four commercial jets and flew two of them into the Twin Towers and one into the Pentagon in 2001.
Instead, they embrace ludicrous conspiracy theories that the Bush administration did it. In the Middle East and elsewhere, Muslims are so convinced that Arabs could not have been smart enough to pull off 9-11 that it is widely believed that it was done by Jews. Strangely, despite Osama bin Laden’s many efforts to take credit, they don’t even want to believe him!
Posted by Walt as Islam, News Events at 7:36 PM EDT
When Mahomet would charm the world into the belief that he was the prophet of God, the heaven he pictured was not at all the heaven of holiness and spirituality. His was a heaven of unbridled sensualism, where all the passions were to be enjoyed without let or hindrance for endless years. Such the heaven that sinful men would like; therefore, such the heaven that Mahomet painted for them, and promised to them. - C.H. Spurgeon
Posted by Walt as C.H. Spurgeon Gems, Islam at 10:07 AM EDT
The Pope's recent speech which was appealing to the "Religion of Peace" to stop the violent and deadly acts against innocent victims. But the Islamic "Religion of Peace" responded with a multitude of violent demonstrations including murdering more innocent victims in a manner as their response to the cartoon caricatures of Mohamed published by the Danish newspaper last year.
One website reports of the murder of a Christian and more to follow:
According to the website Islam Memo, one Christian was killed in Baghdad after the Pope's speech two days ago. The speech created a wave of anger throughout the Islamic world, including Iraq. A poster has been placed in many Baghdad mosques for the previously unknown group, "Kataab Ashbal Al Islam Al Salafi," (Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalions). This group threatens to kill all Christians in Iraq if the Pope does not apologize in three days in front of the whole world to Mohammed. (AINA)
On the website, The Age, another call by the "Religion of Peace" for all Muslims to kill the Pope:
Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Malin urged Muslims to find the pontiff and punish him for insulting the Prophet Mohammed and Allah in a speech that he said was as offensive as author Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses.
"We urge you Muslims wherever you are to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements as you have pursued Salman Rushdie, the enemy of Allah who offended our religion," he said in Friday evening prayers.
"Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," Malin, a prominent cleric in the Somali capital, told worshippers at a mosque in southern Mogadishu.
And from the website. The Australian
CAIRO: Muslim leaders yesterday condemned Pope Benedict XVI over comments he made about Islam on a visit to Germany and demanded he apologise.
A grenade exploded near the oldest church in Gaza City, injuring no one, and hundreds of Muslims in Indian Kashmir held a day-long strike with protests in the capital, Srinagar, as a statement from the Vatican failed to quell the anger in the Muslim world.
And from AP, they reported:
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Pakistan's legislature unanimously condemned Pope Benedict XVI. Lebanon's top Shiite cleric demanded an apology. And in Turkey, the ruling party likened the pontiff to Hitler and Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades.
And the reports of the violence goes on and on.
Posted by Walt as Islam at 8:18 AM EDT
An Arab intellectual apologizes, and explains 9-11.
By ALI SALEM
As an Egyptian, I find myself compelled to apologize to the American people for what happened to them on Sept. 11. I apologize because one of those involved in that horrible disaster was Egyptian. As a man of letters, I declare myself innocent of having any part in the creation of the culture that spawned these individuals.
A long time before New York City's Twin Towers were destroyed, many towers in my country were brought down by this same brand of perpetrators. They killed President Anwar Sadat, who initiated peace with Israel and liberalism in Egypt; they killed the Egyptian writer Farag Fouda, a defender of freedom and secularism; they stabbed our Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz, when he was 82 years old, after discovering that 30 years earlier he had written a novel they considered the work of an infidel. They said they had not read the novel. Who told them it was sacrilegious? Someone living in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, or sitting in a London café or a mosque in New Jersey, told them so. In Egypt alone, these fundamentalists have killed more than 1,000 policemen and ordinary citizens, Christian and Muslim alike. In one of the most beautiful places on earth, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Luxor, they slaughtered nearly 60 tourists in 1997. In Algeria their sickles endlessly harvest the souls of the poor and helpless. They have committed all these crimes with the purpose of establishing the kingdom of God on earth and have succeeded only in turning our lives into hell.
In my country, art, education and the economy have all been leveled to a ground zero. I'm convinced, though, that the problem we face is not religious but political. And so it will never be solved with a religious summit. If you hold a meeting of Muslim sheiks, Christian pastors and Jewish rabbis, they inevitably come out with blissful smiles and report that they have found their values to be mostly identical, and they are right.
Extremism may claim God as its redeemer, but it's really the selfish product of lunacy. In America, the most free and modern nation of our time, you see it too. You saw it with Jim Jones, who told his flock in Guyana to follow him into death by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, and you saw it when David Koresh created his own small hell in Waco, Texas.
Posted by Walt as Islam, News Events at 8:41 PM EDT
By Abdullah Al Araby
www.IslamReview.com
The "Islam" that Muslim activists introduce to the West these days is completely different from the Islam we knew and experienced in the Middle East. This is a new edition - revised, modified, expanded and abridged - of the real Islam. A major facelift operation has been taking place here.
To their credit, I must acknowledge that the international Islamization movement, in recent years, has grown much in both intelligence and sophistication. They lacked power, so they decided to be smart. Since they could no longer use the sword to conquer the world, as they once did, they decided to use more cunning methods, taking advantage of democracy in the West.
The following are some of the methods Muslim activists are now adopting:
Muslim activists in the West avoid referring to teachings that may offend the Western citizen, such as the Islamic code of punishment.
They stress that they believe in Moses and Jesus. They refrain from calling Jews and Christians "infidels", nor would they call them "Zionists" or "Crusaders".
The last thing they want to do is to shock people. They once had a Muslim host on their TV. program with a Christian name, "Paul"; names like Mohammed, Mustafa and Omar were too strong to swallow they thought. They use the term "Sunday School" in place of "Friday Class", and they end their speeches with the Christian expression "may God bless you".
They boast about being Americans, and have the American flag cover the background of their program set. This is the same flag Muslims burn in their daily rituals in Islamic countries, calling America "The great Satan".
Instead of living in isolation from society, they are using now a completely new terminology. Words like love, grace… are now part of their vocabulary. Theological Christian terms such as : Salvation, Justification and Sanctification are now part of their teachings.
They change Quranic translations to hide some of Islam's harsh teachings.
An example is the new French translation of the Quran which has caused tremendous furor among Muslim fundamentalists. The translation attempted to please Jews by modifying some verses of the Quran that condemned Jews. An example is a verse that used to read "The people of Israel, after sowing corruption twice on earth for the purpose of dominating other people, will push themselves up into a position of extreme power before being punished by God."
The new translation reads just the opposite: "The people of Israel will be twice destroyed as an innocent victim, and God will reward them by elevating them to great heights."
Posted by Walt as Islam at 6:05 AM EDT
An eye-opening testimony of an American woman raised a Catholic, married a Muslim, and eventually freed herself from her Islamic bonds and became a Christian.
I was raised a Catholic of a not very religious family in the USA. I grew up in the 70's and felt that there was something very wrong with the spirituality of the West. Even though the times were relatively prosperous, following current events one felt that the value system of the West has failed. Many families were broken, the institution of marriage was being questioned, and other philosophies and religions of the world were welcomed.
Finishing High School and starting college, I found that I was searching for something that gave meaning to my life and felt closeness to God. I searched around and found Islam. During the same time I met my Muslim husband through a secretary at work. Many people assume that my husband converted me, but that was not the case. When I met him I was ready to dedicate my life to the idea of Islam as presented to me by Maudidi, in Islam in Focus. I was 22, with one semester of college, when I married him. He knew almost no English, but he gave me many books, especially on How to Raise Islamic Kids in North America. I was overjoyed and sure that I found the solution to all the worlds problems. No one told me to cover completely, including my hands and my neck all the way up to my face. In this time my husband was very modern and found me a little fanatical. But he never told me to uncover because he was pleased at my total conversion to Islam. I did it because I wanted to please God more than anything else/I said that Allah has rescued me from sure damnation. Everyday I read more and more and by 1 year I could recite the small surahs in Arabic. I use to go around and talk to the girlfriends of my husband's friends to see if they would convert.
At that time, I was very happy with my spouse. We had four kids, one after another. I was in College and worked, so I thought those bothersome things that I read about women in Islam did not apply to pure, unadulterated Islam, because my spouse was very liberal. But the word liberal meant that he let me study and work. Personally, he did not associate or talk to any American. He felt intimidated by the culture of our state and always chose friends from his own Mideast country. He would not let me talk to any American, except limited conversation about Islam…promote the complete separation of the sexes so as to keep society pure. I thought that lack of trust as a small flaw in which I could overlook.
Years passed and I graduated from college. But instead of helping my needy family (my husband was so good that he let me study instead of helping out by a much needed second income). When the Twin Towers episode occurred and other Middle-Eastern situations developed, I noticed that my husband grew a beard and started acting very seriously.
Posted by Walt as Islam, Witnessing at 11:41 PM EDT
by Tony Pearce
Khaled Mash’al, leader of the Hamas movement which won the Palestinian elections in January 2006 gave a speech in Damascus which was broadcast on al-Jazeera TV on February 3rd 2006. He told the European nations to apologise to Islam because: ‘Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good. Our nation is moving forwards, and it is in your interest to respect a victorious nation.’ His speech went on to say that the first phase of the Islamic world conquest would be the elimination of Israel and the defeat of the West in Iraq.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad agrees. He said in Iran’s holy city of Qom on 5th January, ‘We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It’s a universal ideology that leads the world to justice.’ He believes his main mission is to ‘pave the path for the glorious reappearance of Imam Mahdi, may Allah hasten his reappearance.’ According to Shiites, the 12th imam disappeared as a child in the year 941. They believe he will return and be known as the ‘Mahdi’ and reign on earth for seven years, before bringing about a final judgment and the end of the world.
Posted by Walt as Islam at 4:22 AM EDT
Mohammad Asghar
Ever since I began talking on the Internet about the Quran, I have often been told by many Muslims as well as by some non-Muslim readers that I needed to correctly interpret its contents before saying anything about them. A few Muslim scholars not only advised me not to follow its [literal meaning], they also abused me for not being able to “correctly interpret” what is written in their Holy Book.
But when I asked them to give me the non-literal meaning of a Quranic verse, all of them disappeared for good. As a result, my inquiry still remains unfulfilled.
Despite being abused and mistreated, I have steadfastly argued that it is not necessary for anyone to interpret the Quran in order to understand its messages. I have also argued that Muslims should act upon its messages on the basis of what they tell them, and not on the basis of what they think should be their interpretations.
On the allegorical messages that the Quran contains, I have maintained a distinct position and it was this: Muslims must not attempt to interpret the allegorical verses of the Quran in order to avoid discord among themselves and the punishment that they would be given by Allah in the world hereafter.
I wanted to give a recital on the word [interpretation] in this write up, but abandoned the idea after I came to the conclusion that no matter how strong a recital I give, Muslims would not accept it on account of their belligerent attitude towards those beings they consider, albeit unjustifiably, hostile to Islam. Instead, I decided to make my point by relying on what is stated in verse 3:7 of the Quran regarding the interpretation of its contents.
Posted by Walt as Islam at 7:55 AM EDT
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