Tag Archives: Islam

This Is Not A Good Sign

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about what is happening to the Jewish population in Germany. The massive immigration of people from the Middle East into Germany and Europe has had a number of unintended consequences.

The article reports:

No doubt, there are plenty of wonderful Muslims who contribute in many ways to our society. I am not suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists or bad citizens, but if you can’t see that the mass importation of people who openly despise Western Civilization, declare their commitment to Islamizing our societies, and impose Sharia law on Westerners has turned out badly, I invite you to move to Iran or Syria.

America, due to its lack of proximity to the Middle East, has suffered the least from this self-imposed disaster. Europe, on the other hand, may collapse due to the idiocy of its elites. As a general rule, America does a better job of integrating migrants, and with a more dynamic economy, opportunities to rise up the socio-economic ladder made integrating a more realistic and attractive option than in Europe.

Germany and Sweden have helped lead the way in disastrous policymaking. And now, once again, Berlin has become unsafe for Jews and Gays.

Tolerance wins.

This is what is happening in Germany:

Jews and gay people should hide their identity in parts of Berlin with large Arab populations, the German capital’s police chief has warned.

“There are areas of the city, we need to be perfectly honest here, where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly gay to be more careful,” said Barbara Slowik.

“There are certain neighbourhoods where the majority of people of Arab origin live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups,” she said, adding that they were often “openly hostile towards Jews”.

She told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that “violent crimes against Jewish people are few and far between, but every act is one too many”.

A fortnight ago, a youth football team from Makkabi Berlin, a Jewish sports club, reported being “hunted down” by youths carrying sticks and knives after a match in an Arab neighbourhood of the city. The victims, aged 13 to 15, said they were spat at and insulted throughout the match.

Taking in large groups of migrants–too big to assimilate–from a place with a totally different culture is never a good idea.

Wisdom From Someone Who Executed Successful Middle East Policy

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On Sunday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about the recent events in the Middle East.

The article reports:

Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, had some wise words yesterday about Israel.

Israel has to finish the job. Now. She cannot stop.

People have responded, “I don’t agree with you politically at all, but this is true!”

Kushner wrote:

September 27th is the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough.

I have spent countless hours studying Hezbollah and there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade them was possible.

This is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel. Iran spent the last forty years building this capability as its deterrent.

President Trump would often say, “Iran has never won a war but never lost a negotiation.” The Islamic Republic’s regime is much tougher when risking Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian and Houthi lives than when risking their own. Their foolish efforts to assassinate President Trump and hack his campaign reek of desperation and are hardening a large coalition against them.

Iranian leadership is stuck in the old Middle East, while their neighbors in the GCC are sprinting toward the future by investing in their populations and infrastructure. They are becoming dynamic magnets for talent and investment while Iran falls further behind. As the Iranian proxies and threats dissipate, regional security and prosperity will rise for Christians, Muslims and Jews alike

The article concludes with more of Jared Kushner’s statement:

The philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote on X, “I keep reading everywhere that Lebanon is ‘on the brink of collapse.’ No. It is on the brink of relief and deliverance.”
Moments like this come once in a generation, if they even come at all.

The Middle East is too often a solid where little changes. Today, it is a liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited. Do not squander this moment.

Let’s all pray for success, for peace and for the good judgement of our leaders.

Lebanon used to be the garden spot of the Middle East. I pray that someday it will again be the beautiful, free land it once was.

 

The Link Between Hamas And The United Nations

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On Thursday, PJ Media reported the following:

The United Nations frenziedly condemned a new Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike as one of Israel’s “dramatic violations of international humanitarian law.” The problem is that the UN workers killed were also Hamas terrorists.

The UN and many other organizations and governments love to emphasize that the IDF strikes schools and “aid workers.” What they are not telling you is that Hamas jihadis have long used schools and other “civilian” buildings in Gaza as terrorist bases and that the “aid workers” almost always turn out to be active terrorists. That appears to be the case once again with the IDF strike this week, where at least three UNRWA “workers” killed were Hamas jihadis.

UNRWA is absolutely infested with Hamas operatives, according to international human rights lawyer Hillel Neuer. As JihadWatch has noted, terrorists specifically place military targets in humanitarian zones so that, if IDF strikes, they can immediately condemn Israel. So whenever the UN starts wailing that the IDF causelessly killed their humanitarian workers while they were operating a school or shelter, always fact-check that claim. It will almost certainly turn out to be false.

According to the state of Israel, which is a more reliable source on these topics than is the Hamas-loving UN, so far the confirmed casualties in the precision strike are terrorists — including at least three UNRWA “workers.”

As long as Hamas is using human shields, there will be ‘civilian’ casualties. However, a lot of these ‘civilians’ support Hamas. Private homes have tunnel entrances; Hamas members work for so-called humanitarian organizations to bring ‘aid’ into Gaza. It doesn’t seem to matter to those providing the aid that the money and supplies are used to strengthen Hamas and build more tunnels.

The United Nations began with a dream of world peace. Instead of working toward that dream, they have become a hotbed of corruption and and a supporter of terrorists and terrorism. It’s time to kick the United Nations out of New York City and turn their building into luxury apartments!

The Consequences Of Unlimited Immigration

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On Thursday, Front Page Magazine posted an article about recent events in France.

The article reports:

Muslims have been threatening boulangeries and restaurants in France, even those owned by non-Muslims, to become strictly halal. That means all pork products must be banned. Some outlets have had to ban alcohol, while others have declared that only men should shop in their stores during the week, and women only on weekends. More on this phenomenon of “creeping sharia” can be found here: “Sharia is taking over France,” by Giulio Meotti, Arutz Sheva, August 26, 2024:

In France, sharia is taking over and the bienpensants don’t care.

After months of pressure and the latest altercation in his bakery in Vénissieux (Lyon), Alexandre Dallery announced on Friday that the boulangerie would stop selling pork products.

The article also notes:

In Bordeaux, the Afghan was enforcing the Muslim prohibition on alcohol by stabbing two people, killing one of them, for the crime of drinking alcohol, and still worse, doing so at the end of Ramadan, on Eid al-Fitr. Were the victims Muslims or non-Muslims? It hardly matters. The rules of Islam were being enforced through murderous violence.

Thirteen-year-old Samara is beaten outside the Arthur Rimbaud middle school in Montpellier. “Samara wears a little makeup – declared the girl’s mother, Hassiba Radjoul – And this little girl who attacked her has her veil. They called her kouffar (unbeliever.) My daughter dresses in European style. There were insults, kahba (bitch).”

There is a plan to bring sharia law to America. It is found in “An Explanatory Memorandum” from the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.

We are not immune.

Are Lawsuits The Answer?

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On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that Almog Meir Jan, 22, a hostage taken by Hamas on October 7th, is suing a US non-profit which employed his Hamas operative captor as a war correspondent. Good for him.

The article reports:

The organization runs a pro-Palestinian news website and had frequently published the work of Abdullah Aljamal, a Gaza-based journalist and former spokesman for the terrorist organization. He began writing articles for the website in May 2019, according to court filings.

“It is indisputable that defendants provided Hamas operative Aljamal, whose connections to Hamas were publicly known, with a US-based and taxpayer subsidized platform to publish Hamas propaganda and to pass the material off as independent journalism,” the lawsuit says.

Jan was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 last year while he attended the Nova Music Festival. He was held hostage for 246 days, along with Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, at Aljamal family’s home in Nuseirat, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.

Jan claimed he was “abused and mistreated” by his captors, according to legal papers.

Aljamal, who wrote articles for the website lamenting the evils of war and had also worked as a spokesman for the Hamas Ministry of Labor, continued to have his work published by the Palestine Chronicle until just before the June 8 rescue operation.

He and his family were killed during the raid, according to reports.

The article concludes:

Two board members of the non-profit are also named as defendants in the lawsuit. Ramzy Baroud, editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle, is also a non-resident scholar at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and a Senior Research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA).

CIGA hosted a conference in 2021 that was sponsored in part by Hamas and is directed by Sami Al-Arian, who has been convicted of terrorism-related crimes and deported from the US.

John Harvey, who describes himself as a Buddhist priest and is also on the board of the group, is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. He incorporated the People Media Company in 1999, according to public records.

It is time to examine the role that some nonprofit organizations are playing in supporting terrorism, illegal immigration, and other activities not conducive to law and order.

Mistreating An Ally

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On Sunday, The Gatestone Institute posted an article about the slow-walking of the weapons Congress promised to Israel. It seems that the Biden administration is working very hard to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and that withholding the weapons he needs to defeat Hamas is part of that problem.

The article reports:

    • It is with good reason that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complains that the US is withholding, or “slow-walking,” military supplies. In Ukraine, for instance, badly needed arms are always “being delivered” but somehow never manage to arrive until long after they might actually have helped.
    • Although Israel’s leaders are well aware of the immense danger presented by Iran, the US and other Western allies evidently cannot be relied upon to prevent Iran from completing its nuclear weapons program. The US appears to like talking, and talking about talking, diplomacy backed up by talking, verbal “understandings” so long as they have no teeth, then paying what looks like bribe money for adversaries not to “make waves,” presumably at least not before the America’s upcoming November election.
    • The Biden administration, it seems, would rather deal with threatening situations via… worthless promises from Iran, Russia, China, the Taliban, the Palestinians or whoever else will offer appeasements.
    • The critical point is that Israel is fighting to safeguard not just its own nation, but the West and the Free World as well. The battle at the moment seems between preserving freedom or having it extinguished by the forces of barbarism, autocracies and theocrats, but most of all by the passivity of the West…. Silky, stealth aggressors include Qatar — the consigliere of all Islamic terror groups — which uses money and its media network Al-Jazeera, not military aggression, as its means of persuasion.
    • Sadly, the Biden administration appears to view Israel not as a sovereign nation but a US satrapy. It is hardly a secret that the US has been trying to oust Israel’s elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him presumably with a subordinate. That US puppet would supposedly be delighted to have a terrorist Palestinian state next door administered by the terrorist godfather, Qatar, and be delighted to see Iran have as many nuclear weapons as it likes.
    • If Obama ostensibly conceived of this arrangement [the 2015 “nuclear deal”] to “balance the influence” of Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, the plan has failed colossally. Saudi Arabia, for all its faults, has not tried to enlarge its territory….

The battle against Hamas is America’s as well as Israel’s. However, there has been a strong infiltration into American government in recent years (on both sides of the aisle) of people who do not support Western civilization. President Obama was one of those people and is one of those people probably holding the reins in the Biden administration. We need to remember that if Hamas (actually Iran) can defeat Israel, America is their next target. The Biden administration is playing with fire.

America, Pay Attention!

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On Wednesday, The Geller Report reported the following:

Germany: Muslim party DAVA wins 41 per cent in Duisburg in the European Parliament elections

The fact that Germany no longer looks like Germany in certain areas is evident after the EU elections in voting districts in the highly Islamised city of Duisburg, where Erdogan’s hardcore Muslim party, DAVA, was able to collect 41.10 per cent of the vote.

Voting district 1001 in the city of Duisburg – like many districts in Germany – has already been lost to Islam. There, the Muslim party founded in January, which operates under the bogus name ‘Democratic Alliance for Diversity and Awakening’ (DAVA), was able to mobilise its Islamic voters and achieve a shocking election result. With 41.10 per cent of the vote, the Muslim party did best by far. In second place was the AfD with 14.16 per cent, followed by the SPD with 10.96 per cent. The CDU achieved 8.68 per cent.

So exactly what is this about? The goal of Islam is create a caliphate (the Ottoman Empire was the most recent caliphate which ended in 1922) ruled by Sharia Law that will dominate the world, eventually conquering the entire world. It this seems farfetched to you, please examine the government exhibits from the Holy Land Foundation Trial. One of those exhibits is “An Explanatory Memorandum: From the Archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” This exhibit explains the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to use the American legal system to introduce Sharia Law into America.  We already have courts in America using Sharia Law. If the Islamists can do in America what they did in the German elections, we will have more courts using Sharia Law.

Sharia Law is not compatible with the U.S. Constitution. We have already had a number of ‘honor killings’ in America, which are acceptable in Sharia Law but not acceptable under the U.S. Constitution. (for further information on honor killings in America, go here). Honor killings are justified under Sharia Law if a person converts from Islam to another religion or in the case of a daughter who refuses to marry the person her parents have chosen for her or becomes too “westernized.” We already have ‘no go’ zones in certain areas of America where the police are hesitant to go or to enforce the law. Be aware that the same people who have managed a 41% election victory in German have the same plans for America–one city at a time.

Some Protestors Might Want To Consider This Information

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One of the groups currently protesting Israel’s attack on Hamas is “Queers for Palestine.” The fact that this group exists illustrates how little some younger Americans know about Hamas, Islam, and the Middle East.

On June 3rd, The Gatestone Institute posted an article explaining what it is like to be ‘queer’ in Palestine.

The article notes:

    • Palestinian members of the LGBTQ community have never felt safe either in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank or under the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
    • In 2016, when Hamas commander Mahmoud Ishitwi was accused of having sex with men, he was “suspended from a ceiling for hours on end, for days in a row… [h]e was whipped and guards coasted loud music into his cell, banishing sleep.” After enduring days of torture, he was shot to death.
    • “In many countries, including my parent’s former homes and theocratic Iran, homosexuality is still sometimes punished by public hangings…. The international community must not be silent. But it is.” — Hen Mazzig, self-described “queer Israeli Jew,” named among the top LGBTQ influencers, Jerusalem Post, October 23, 2022.
    • “It is alleged that ‘harassment of gays’ is ‘practically official policy’ in the PA. The victims are frequently called collaborators and accused as such. It is also reported that the PA police regularly inflicts appalling torture on homosexuals.” — Ilka Schröder, Member of European Parliament, 2003.
    • “When it comes to Queers for Palestine, what’s richly ironic is that many LGBTQ Palestinians seek asylum in Israel – the same country these stateside protesters are rallying against… At the heart of this contradiction is the tendency within social justice movements to pick a clear protagonist and antagonist, the oppressed and the oppressor, and to proceed from there in one-size-fits-all fashion. Some progressives decided long ago that Palestine is the former and Israel is the latter, which is the seed from which everything must grow. Palestine, then, stands not only for anti-colonialism but also LGBT rights and reproductive rights, despite that those rights, in any meaningful sense of the word, do not actually exist there. Queers for Palestine is about as convincing as minks for fur coats.” — Billy Binion, Reason, October 27, 2023.

When you don’t teach children history, they engage in ignorant protests.

We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us!

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If you are old enough to remember the Pogo comic strip, you remember that quote.

On Tuesday, Front Page Magazine reported the following:

Islamic pro-terror groups reacted to the Hamas terror attacks of Oct 7 not only with riots and public pressure campaigns aimed at politicians, but also by privately meeting with top federal and state law enforcement officials to demand that they lock up Jewish political opponents.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s investigative arm exclusively reported last month that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist group whose leader had celebrated Oct 7, had been meeting with attorney generals around the country trying to convince them to arrest journalists and activists who had been investigating and exposing Hamas supporters.

Based on our past history with CAIR, the Freedom Center could be one of their targets.

Now, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), has been caught meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland and senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, including FBI Director Christopher Wray and Associate Attorney General Lisa Monaco, to also discuss targeting Jews.

The meeting, originally reported by Militant Islam Monitor, represents another part of what appears to be a larger effort by Islamist groups to weaponize prosecutors against their critics.

On May 22nd, top Department of Justice officials and the FBI Director met with Arab American Institute boss James Zogby and MPAC founder Salam al-Marayati. Both men had been accused of supporting terrorism , including Hamas, in accusations going back decades.

The article concludes:

CAIR’s efforts to influence state attorney generals and MPAC’s attempt to manipulate the United States Attorney General and the FBI to target political and religious opponents, especially Jews, is in line with Islamist supremacist groups who, in their own home countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, routinely lock up opponents and repress non-Muslims. But that should have no place in America. The Biden administration has opened the doors of the federal government to the worst possible extremists in the hopes of winning another term in office.

Had Al-Marayati not filmed his video, we might never have known what the Biden administration was doing. Instead, a private meeting has gone public and the investigative arm of the David Horowitz Freedom Center will continue monitoring the secret alliance between Islamists and government officials, exposing their events and holding them accountable.

Even as the Biden administration promises that it is fighting antisemitism, it’s holding covert meetings with antisemites who demand that the FBI go after the Jews.

If you are not familiar with the Holy Land Foundation Trial, I suggest that you investigate it. One of the exhibits includes the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to convert America to Sharia Law through our legal system. One of the unindicted conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Trial was CAIR. You can find some information on the trial and its outcome here and here.

Our Constitution will protect us only if we protect it.

 

When The World Is Upside Down

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The recent pro-Palestine protests on American college campuses were a disgrace. The students were not only overlooking the fact that there are still Americans held hostage by Hamas, but many of the homosexual students who were part of the protests have no idea how they would be treated in a Sharia Law compliant country. Ignorance is bliss, but it is not always safe or healthy.

On Saturday, Front Page Magazine posted an article about some of the Biden administration’s actions in response to the protests (some of which definitely overstepped the boundaries of peaceful protest). The subject of blocking Jewish students from attending class does not seem to be covered in the Biden administration’s response to the protests.

The article reports:

After weeks of bias intimidation by Hamas supporters aimed at Jewish students and faculty, including Khymani James, an encampment leader who had talked to Columbia University officials about killing Jews, the Biden administration’s Department of Education, with the inevitability of a rigged slot machine in Reno, is launching a “civil rights investigation” into the university for “extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment”.

The complaint comes from ‘Palestine Legal’, the same group providing advice to the encampment protesters.

It complains that “Columbia has reinforced the hostile anti-Palestinian environment, including by suspending Students for Justice in Palestine — a student organization that advocates for Palestinian human rights — for engaging in speech activity supporting Palestinian rights”

What sort of “speech activity” did Columbia University’s SJP chapter engage in?

After Oct 7, Students for Justice in Palestine hailed the Hamas rape of girls, murder of babies and kidnapping of children as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance”.

The national organization which has 200 chapters on campuses across North America put out a ‘toolkit’ which explained that the Jewish victims were “not civilians” and could be freely targeted.

Its poster for a ‘Day of Resistance’ featured an image of the paraglider that Hamas terrorists had used to massacre and rape young Israelis at a music festival.

Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine celebrated the “unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza” and asserted their “full solidarity with the Palestinian resistance”. It was also a signatory to the “victory or martyrdom” statement signed by the national organization.

The article concludes:

The Department of Education refuses to protect Jewish students from Hamas supporters, but rushes to protect Hamas supporters from Jewish students.

This is much more reminiscent of Germany in the 1930’s than the values of most  Americans. Remember that Germany began enacting anti-Semitic laws in 1933, followed by the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. In March 1933, Dachau, the first concentration camp opened. The anti-Semitic actions of the German government also spawned Kristallnacht in 1938. I do not want to see America go down that path.

Exactly What Are They Supporting?

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The Avalon Project is part of Yale Law School. Below is their statement of purpose.

Statement of Purpose and Document Inclusion Policy

The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text.

The Avalon Project will no doubt contain controversial documents. Their inclusion does not indicate endorsement of their contents nor sympathy with the ideology, doctrines, or means employed by their authors. They are included for the sake of completeness and balance and because in many cases they are by our definition a supporting document.

I downloaded their copy of the Hamas Covenant 1988 to see exactly what our college protestors are supporting.

Below are a few items from the Covenant:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

…Article Two:

The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterised by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam.

…The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.

…”The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

This is what the protesters are supporting. In case you still have doubts, this is the link to “An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America 5/22/1991.”

Take heart when you link to the above document–only the first part is in Arabic.

The Role Of The President

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On Wednesday, Jazz Shaw Hot Air posted an article with the following headline?

Is Biden Out of the Loop on Israel-Hamas Negotiations?

The article then goes on to explain why Jazz Shaw is asking this question:

You’ve probably seen the breathless headlines emerging this week featuring Joe Biden suggesting that a ceasefire deal in Gaza was “close” to being finalized and that at least some hostages and prisoners could be exchanged. Most of us would likely be glad to see hostages coming home, so that’s good news, right? And Biden assured us that he’d gotten that information from National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, so the claim must have been pretty solid. There’s only one problem with the story and the assumptions that followed, though. As the Free Beacon quickly pointed out, some reporters had been following up with their sources in Israel and around the Middle East where the major players are involved. None of them seemed to have any idea what Biden was talking about. 

Anyone who has paid attention for the past eighteen plus years understands why a cease fire and a two-state solution are both bad ideas. What assurance has HAMAS given that the hostages are still alive and what has HAMAS done to indicate it is willing to release them? A cease fire would only give Hamas a chance to regroup and rearm, and a two-state solution would create another terror base for Islamist extremists. It has become very obvious since October 7th and Israel’s response that almost all of the ‘humanitarian aid’ sent to Gaza since 2005 has been used to build tunnels and acquire weapons. Why would we give the residents of Gaza a chance to do that again? Many have already stated that they want to repeat the actions of October 7th. Why would we encourage or allow that? Until hate is not taught in Gaza schools and UNRWA camps (see kindergarten graduation picture here), a two-state solution will never result in peace.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

I have seen some conservative commentators previously asking why the United States isn’t assuming its traditional role as a peacemaker and shepherding these negotiations through to the finish line. But does anyone really want Joe Biden at that table at this point? The two sides are at an impasse and have been for a while now. Israel isn’t going to accept a deal that hurts their interests, fails to release all of the hostages, or prevents them from eliminating Hamas. Hamas won’t give up what they see as the last bit of insurance they have against complete obliteration. 

Negotiating this situation would have been a serious challenge for Henry Kissinger on his best day. And Joe Biden couldn’t have matched Kissinger’s skills on his best day, which has long since faded in the rearview mirror. But the fact that he keeps coming out and saying things like this, leaving the media scrambling to either verify it or explain what went wrong is a problem. The world is a powderkeg at the moment and the person potentially in control of the fuse no longer has the cognitive abilities to be trusted with a pack of matches.

Believe Them When They Tell You Who They Are

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On February 12th, PJ Media posted an article about a recent comment by Elham, described as a Member of Hamas and a Planner of a Suicide Bombing.

The article reports:

The video is of a hijabed woman, identified as “Elham, Member of Hamas, Planner of a Suicide Bombing,” explaining matter-of-factly that “we don’t only fight against occupation. Our goal is to spread Islam to all, everywhere.” This suggests that Hamas would not be satisfied with a Palestinian state, but would continue its war against the diminished Israel that would remain after the creation of a Palestinian state until the remainder were Islamized as well. What’s more, Elham’s statement amounts to a declaration of war against every state that is not governed under Islamic law.

Of course, there is no indication that Elham speaks for Hamas as a whole. However, many other Hamas spokesmen have said essentially the same thing. Last December, Fathi Hammad, a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau, also spoke of Hamas as having a universal mission beyond the destruction of Israel. He explained that “the [Palestinian] people have been soldiers throughout history. They are now preparing to liberate Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and I am saying this loud and clear: [The Palestinian people] are preparing to establish the Caliphate, with Jerusalem as its capital city, Inshallah. Jerusalem will not only be the capital city of Palestine as an independent state – it will be the capital city of the Islamic Caliphate.” 

The link above will allow you to view the video.

The thing we need to understand is that up until 1922 there was an Islamic Caliphate. It was the Ottoman Empire. When the Empire fell, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) set up the secular state of Turkey in what remained of the Ottoman Empire. Some members of the global Islamic community were not happy about the fall of the Empire or with Turkey becoming a secular nation. Hassan al Banna, who lived in Egypt, formed the al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, the Muslim Brotherhood. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood was to unify all the Islamic states under a new caliphate and put all lands under Sharia Law. In the quote above, Elham is simply restating that goal. This basic philosophy is the reason Hamas will never be at peace with Israel.

 

Even Hamas Opposes A Two-State Solution!

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On Monday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about a recent comment by Hamas Leader Abroad Khaled Mashal.

The article reports:

For Khaled Mashal, it marked the first time that Hamas successfully turned the West into cheerleaders for their genocide, which fuels their fight in Gaza to this day. “From the river to the sea” means exactly what it states, Mashal asserts in this interview caught by MEMRI — and that is a radical-Islamist Palestinian state replacing Israel entirely:

…“I believe that the dream and the hope for Palestine from the River to the Sea and from the north to the south has been renewed. This has also become a slogan chanted in the U.S. and in Western capital cities, by the American and Western public,” he said.

“Palestine is free from the River to the Sea—that’s the slogan of the American students and the [students] in European capital cities.

“The Palestinian consensus—or almost a consensus—is that we will not give up on our right to Palestinian in its entirety, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat or the Gulf of Aqaba,” he continued.

The Charter of Hamas has always said that its goal was to drive Israel into the sea. Why are we still surprised when their actions support this goal? I wonder if the Americans chanting “from the river to the sea” understand the meaning of what they are chanting.

As Americans, we need to remember that Hamas’ sponsors in Tehran routinely promise “death to America.” Only Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and their Obama-administration minders refuse to take that either seriously or literally.

 

 

What We Were Told vs. The Actual Truth

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On Sunday, Townhall posted an article about a shooting in Vermont in November. The story we were told by the mainstream media does not line up with the facts.

The article reports:

In November 2023, Jason J. Eaton, 48, shot and wounded three students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont. The crime was investigated as “hate-motivated.” Nothing was confirmed, but Joe Biden commented on it, along with other Democrats, despite zero confirmation that Eaton was fueled by anti-Muslim rage…

…Meanwhile, Biden was mum about the death of a pro-Israeli protester in California, who got bashed in the head by a pro-Palestinian demonstrator. As it turns out, Mr. Eaton supports Hamas. Daniel Greenfield had a lengthy article debunking the Islamophobia narrative (via Front Page Mag)

Front Page Mag reported the following:

On December 6, Seven Days, a local news outlet known for breaking stories about local politics, revealed that Eaton had tweeted, “the notion that Hamas is ‘evil’ for defending their state from occupation is absurd. They are owed a state. Pay up.” 

Responding to an article about a proposed ceasefire, he wrote, “What if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them?”

Local politicians were aware of this which is why in December a Burlington City Council resolution from Councilman Ali Dieng, an African Muslim immigrant currently running for mayor, trying to tie the shootings to an attack on Israel failed, and so did a resolution pushing the false claim that the students had been targeted because of their identity. 

The latest Islamophobia hoax had fallen apart in Vermont, but still lingered nationally. 

The article concludes:

Yikes. Many retractions are warranted, but you know that’ll never happen. The media has yet to fully repent for spreading lies about Russian collusion. This was a serious trip-up by the media, but the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas talking points were already baked into the cake. These rabid, antisemitic leftists were going to rally, call for Jewish genocide, and harass innocent Jews on the streets. This poured fuel on the fire, but the eruption of anti-Jewish hatred from the activist and professional Left was more grounded in Israel’s existence and the IDF’s invasion of the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ heinous terrorist attack on October 7.

We are being fed lies by the mainstream media. Those lies have worked to divide us and to impede the progress of the American dream. It’s time to ignore the lies and bring the American dream back.

Why We Need Accountability For The Money And Weapons We Are Sending To Ukraine

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On Monday, The American Thinker posted the following headline:

Foiled Muslim terrorists were set to purchase American weapons from Ukrainian military official for pennies on the dollar

The article reports:

In April of 2022, Reuters ran an article on the status of a particular American munition—thanks to Joe Biden’s willingness to empty American stores for Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the war in Ukraine, the stock of Raytheon’s “Stinger” missile was dwindling, and “re-stocking challenges” had appeared on the horizon. A month later, in May, Axios reported this:

The U.S. Army awarded Raytheon Technologies a $624 million contract to produce 1,300 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to replenish its stock after sending around 1,400 of the missile systems to Ukraine in response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion.

The jihadists who planned attacks on cathedrals in Austria and Germany this past Christmas were offered a rocket launcher by an unnamed army official in Ukraine, according to the Austrian news outlet, Exxpress.

The site reported on Wednesday that the German Federal Criminal Police Office had obtained testimony from one of the suspects affiliated with the Islamic State terror cell in the Afghan province of Khorasan (ISPK) that revealed the group had been approached by “a contact who is supposed to fight in the army in the Donetsk Basin” regarding the purchase of a U.S.-manufactured FIM-92 Stinger missile.

It was reported that the Ukrainian national within his country’s military ranks offered to sell the weapon for $5,000 and regularly visits Germany to attempt to sell military equipment on the black market.

The article concludes:

First, the cadaver-in-chief pulls out of Afghanistan in the most asinine and irresponsible of ways, causing the murders of American soldiers and Afghan civilians, and hands billions of dollars over to the terrorist group now running the government; then, he delivers weapons over to one of the most notoriously corrupt government cartels in the history of the world, and those arms somehow make it to the black market, being sold to the very jihadists who have “intensified” thanks to his efforts and foreign policies.

Seriously, what a tangled web—how is it possible that one man can play such a crucial role in crisis after crisis? Well, because that man is Joe Biden.

No more money to Ukraine.

Things Not Being Said Publicly

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On Saturday, Townhall posted an article about the continuing war in Gaza. Although the Biden administration and some other countries are putting pressure on Israel not to end Hamas, some countries in the Middle East are not in agreement with allowing Hamas to survive.

The article reports:

In the days after the brutal October 7 attacks executed by Hamas, Egypt knew what was going to happen. They deployed tanks to the border while their prime minister vowed that his country would sacrifice millions to keep their borders safe. He was not referring to Israel. So, what’s the latest? Well, Haaretz is reporting that Israel’s Arab neighbors are telling Jerusalem privately that they shouldn’t stop military operations until Hamas has been annihilated. They view them as a domestic threat:

The article includes a quote from an article in France 24:

The outcome of a joint summit of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in the Saudi capital highlighted regional divisions over how to respond to the war even as fears mount that it could draw in other countries. 

…The final declaration on Saturday rejected Israeli claims that it is acting in “self-defence” and demanded that the United Nations Security Council adopt “a decisive and binding resolution” to halt Israel’s “aggression”. 

It also called for an end to weapons sales to Israel and dismissed any future political resolution to the conflict that would keep Gaza separate from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. 

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who before the war was considering establishing formal diplomatic ties with Israel, told the summit he “holds the occupation (Israeli) authorities responsible for the crimes committed against the Palestinian people”. 

…Some countries, including Algeria and Lebanon, proposed responding to the devastation in Gaza by threatening to disrupt oil supplies to Israel and its allies as well as severing the economic and diplomatic ties that some Arab League nations have with Israel, the diplomats said. 

However, at least three countries — including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which normalised ties with Israel in 2020 — rejected the proposal, according to the diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

In a televised address Saturday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Arab leaders “have to stand up against Hamas”, which he described as “an integral part of the terror axis led by Iran”. 

Why is there so much talk about crimes committed against the Palestinian people and so little talk about crimes committed against Israelis on October 7th and before and after? Where is the concern for the rockets fired consistently on civilian populations in Israel since March 2006? How would America handle things if Mexico had been firing rockets into Texas since 2006?

Having The Courage To Tell The Truth

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On Wednesday, The Conservative Review posted an article about the screening of a film called “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre.” The screenings will be held in Los Angeles and New York City.

The article reports:

Hollywood superstar Gal Gadot will help host uncensored screenings of footage laying bare the atrocities that Hamas committed in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Screenings of the film, which has been titled “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” will be held in Los Angeles and New York City, according to the Wrap. Hollywood celebrities, journalists, and other influential figures are being invited to attend the events.

The Israel Defense Forces are providing 47-minutes of footage for the private screenings. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee are also helping organize the screenings.

The article notes:

But the backlash against her has been fierce. The Quds News Network, a Palestinian “news” organization with connections to Hamas and Islamic terrorism, posted about the screening on social media, generating more than 50 million views and a ton of reaction.

“When we say these are not harmless opinions or individuals or careers to support, we aren’t exaggerating. Gal Gadot is a former IDF soldier using her access in Hollywood to push propaganda for an ongoing genocide,” said UCLA professor Nour Joudah.

The current spin by the ‘Palestinians’ is that Israel is committing genocide by going into Gaza. Israel is attacking military targets. What was Hamas doing when it went into Israel on October 7?

The Third Term Of Barack Obama

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President Obama was not a friend of Israel. He was not a friend of peace in the Middle East. The Arab Spring, which he supported as a move to democracy in the Middle East, was simply an attempt to expand Muslim tyranny in the area. When Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House during the Obama administration, he was treated very badly–even forced to leave through the back door. The Biden administration has been slightly more polite, and they say what they think they need to say, but their bottom line is the same.

On October 25th, The Federalist reported the following:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken contends that Hamas would gain no “greater” victory “than allowing its brutality to send us down a path of terrorism and nihilism. We must not let it.”

You can hear echoes of Barack Obama’s insufferable moral equivalencies imbued in that statement.

The contention is a not-so-subtle warning to Israel, who will almost surely enter Gaza and try to dismantle the Hamas terror state — which has been indirectly and directly funded not only by Iran, the European Union, and the United Nations but also by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The insinuation, of course, is that Israel needs to temper its inclination to engage in “terrorism and nihilism.” It is a blood libel.

It is not “terrorism” to seek justice for the pregnant woman who had her baby cut from her body or the elderly couple who was burned alive. And eliminating those who committed Nazi-like atrocities against your citizens is no more nihilistic than tracking down Eichmann or demanding Emperor Hirohito unconditionally surrender.

The article concludes:

The Biden administration is teeming with Obama-era Iran and Muslim Brotherhood fans. Not only did someone like Rob Malley — rehired by Biden after leading Obama’s giveaway — surround himself with real-life Iranian assets, but he’d met at least twice with Hamas, once with Obama’s blessing.

“This administration is different from the previous administration,” Hamas’s deputy foreign minister and New York Times columnist, Ahmed Yussuf, said at the time. “We believe Hamas’s message is reaching its destination.”

…Like Obama, Biden offers just enough lip service about Israel’s right to defend itself to placate Jewish donors and voters. Every action of the president – even his supposed morale-lifting trip to the country–is meant to inhibit Israel from winning. Democrats are open to helping Israel defend itself but unopened to the prospect of destroying those who seek its end.

Let me amend that. There are plenty of Democrats who want Israel destroyed and more every day.

When Obama finally deigned to wade in on the killing of Jews and Americans, he offered his usual perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before hitting the “but.” The “but” can be summed up as so: the more Jews die, the more Jews have a responsibility to placate the Islamic world and give their enemies a state.

And apparently, in many ways, the Biden administration concurs. 

At some point the Democrats will realize that terrorism is never contained. Terrorism against Israel will eventually morph into terrorism against America (again).

No, It’s Not A Religion Of Peace

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Anyone who has studied Islam understands that it is not a religion of peace. Muslims who truly believe the Quran are taught that it is not a crime to murder a non-Muslim. Hatred of non-Muslims is part of their doctrine.

On Wednesday, One America News posted an article reporting:

According to government officials and local residents, a large mob of Muslim men vandalized eight churches and several homes following accusations of blasphemy against Islam in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab on Wednesday, escalating tensions between local majority Muslim and minority Christian communities.

In an update on Wednesday, the National Commission for Human Rights stated that the number of churches burned “has risen to eight,” calling the situation “sad and shameful.”

A police report obtained by the press said that two Christian men in the town of Jaranwala were charged by local police with allegedly “desecrating the holy Quran and abusing the Prophet Mohammed.” According to the report, the men were charged with “blasphemy” under Pakistani law.

Pakistani Christian communities are routinely persecuted under the country’s strict blasphemy laws, which activists claim have historically been used to persecute minority groups and isolate them from public life.

According to Yasir Talib, who works for the Center for Social Justice, the crowd also vandalized and set fire to the home of one Christian man accused of making blasphemous general comments about Islam.

Talib told the press that multiple churches, including the town’s Catholic Church, Salvation Army Church, Pentecostal Church, and the local Christian colony, had been vandalized and set on fire.

The article concludes:

Pakistan is one country where blasphemy is a capital offense that is punishable by death.

In 2013, angry Muslim men in Lahore’s Badami Bagh community set fire to more than 100 homes of Christians after police arrested a 20-year-old man accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Three years earlier, a mother of five from Punjab was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death for defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed.

Asia Bibi was released from death row in 2018 after successfully appealing her conviction and death sentence.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes a video of a young Muslim man explaining that he hates Christians and Jews in the name of Allah. Remember that the planes that hit the World Trade Center were crashed into those buildings in the name of Allah.

The Cost Of Telling The Truth

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On Thursday, Jihad Watch posted an article about some recent statements by Samuel Hayek, the chairman the Jewish National Fund (JNF UK).

The article reports:

British Labour MP Alex Sobel has called on Samuel Hayek, the chairman the Jewish National Fund (JNF UK), to resign or be removed from office for offensive anti-Muslim remarks.

Speaking to the Jerusalem Post in early December, Hayek said Jews should start planning to leave Britain because “Jews who are unable to protect their assets, Jews being discriminated against badly is something that could quite easily happen – that is happening.”

Hayek claimed one of the reasons for the rise of anti-Semitism in the UK is shifting demographic patterns and that Muslim immigration threatens the future of Jews in the UK and Europe as whole.

“I am not against any minority or against Muslims in the UK or Europe, but against anyone who spreads hatred that harms Jews,” Hayek said; adding, “That is how I see the near future evolving.”

Anyone who has read the Koran understands the Muslim hatred of Jews.

The Hadith quotes the Prophet Mohammad as saying” The Resurrection of the dead will not come until the Muslims will war with the Jews and the Muslims will kill them…the trees and rocks will say, ‘O Muslim, here is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'”

History reminds us that when Hitler said that he would exterminate the Jews no one believed him. That reluctance cost millions of lives. Now when a religion openly states its intention to kill Jews, it would serve us all well to pay attention.

The definition of slander in Sharia Law is saying something that the hearer does not like. It does not matter if what is said is true or not. What Samuel Hayek said is true–the increasing Muslim population in Britain will eventually pose a threat to the Jewish population–Jews in France have been under attack by Muslim immigrants for a number of years. The efforts to cancel out what Mr. Hayek is saying are an example of ‘creeping sharia’–cancelling out anyone who says anything negative about Islam.

Something I Never Would Have Believed Could Happen In America

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On Friday, PJ Media reported the following:

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the egregious miscarriages of justice. The Blaze reported Wednesday that Collin County, Texas, District Judge Andrea Thompson “effectively denied a U.S. citizen,” a Muslim woman named Mariam Ayad, “her constitutionally protected due process rights, choosing instead to order her to appear before an Islamic tribunal where her testimony is considered inferior. And when her lawyers sounded the alarm — the judge doubled down.” Islamic law, Sharia, taking precedence over U.S. law — in Texas? Celebrate diversity!

Ayad was trying to get a divorce from her husband, Ayad Hashim Latif. Sharia stipulates that while a man can divorce his wife simply by telling her three times that he is divorcing her, a woman has to seek the permission of Muslim clerics and make her case for a divorce before them. There is, of course, no such provision in U.S. law, but when Ayad told Latif that she was going to seek a divorce, he told her that she had signed an Islamic prenuptial agreement that stated the marriage, and any possible divorce, would proceed according to Sharia provisions.

Mariam Ayad contends now that she was tricked into signing this agreement, and thought that what she was signing was something else altogether. Her lawyers state that American law should supersede it in any case. Thompson, however, ruled that the prenuptial agreement was binding, and thus Ayad will have to go through the Islamic Association of North Texas to get permission to divorce. According to The Blaze, this decision was in “complete disregard of both federal and state law.”

This case isn’t over: Ayad is appealing at the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas….

The article goes on to list some of the aspects of Sharia Law that contradict the U.S. Constitution–the Qur’an declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man, the Qur’an teaches that men are superior to women and should beat those from whom they “fear disobedience”, the Qur’an also allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls, the Qur’an rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter. You get the idea. These ideas have no place in America.

The article concludes:

Non-Muslims in several states a few years ago tried to outlaw the elements of Sharia that interfere with Constitutionally protected freedoms, not Islam as an individual religious practice. These anti-Sharia measures were aimed at political Islam, an authoritarian ideology at variance with the Constitution in numerous particulars: Sharia denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. That is what people wanted to restrict, and the elements of Sharia that contradict Constitutional freedoms were all they want to restrict. But of course these efforts met furious opposition and were denounced as “Islamophobic.”

Meanwhile, Sharia really does deny equality of rights to women. But to oppose that is “racist.” So Mariam Ayad just has to suffer, you see, for diversity.

It’s interesting that the court was willing to embrace Islamic Law, which is in conflict with the U.S. Constitution while at the same time many of our courts are pushing Judeo-Christian laws and values, which are the basis of our Constitution, out of the public square.

Americans Need To Understand Exactly What This Means

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Yesterday The Daily Wire reported the following:

A Minneapolis neighborhood, which lies in controversial Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s district, will begin broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer five times a day over outdoor loudspeakers throughout the month of Ramadan, reports say.

The move is “believed to be the first publicly-broadcast call to prayer in a major US city,” al Jazeera English said in a post on Twitter.

Americans need to wake up. This is not your friendly neighborhood church playing hymns on their church bells. The goal of Islam is domination over all other religions. The goal is to remove other religions from the earth. Islam is a religion of conversion by force and taking land by force. This is not only letting the camel’s nose into the tent, it is letting half of the camel into the tent.

America was founded as a Christian nation. Our laws are based on the Judeo-Christian principles found in the Bible. We do not discriminate against other religions, but we do not submit to them either. Unfortunately, the goal of Islam is the submission of the population to their rules and their way of life. It’s time for America to wake up. If American women in particular want to maintain the freedoms and independence that they have, they need to speak out strongly against giving ground to Muslim customs.

Blasting the Muslim call to prayer in an American city is not acceptable.

Sometimes There Just Aren’t Any Words

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Yesterday PJ Media posted an article by Robert Spencer about a recent statement by Khadar Bin Muhammad, the imam of the Masjid Bilal Ibn Rabah in Syracuse, New York.

The article reports:

In a video posted on YouTube last week and reposted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the learned imam explains it all for us. Offering us a revelation that the Center for Disease Control and everyone else who is working on the coronavirus crisis have overlooked, the imam explained that “safety comes through tauhid,” that is, Islam’s concept of monotheism. So if you don’t want to contract the coronavirus, turn to Allah. Khadar Bin Muhammad says: “Every destruction and every harm comes through shirk” – that is, having other gods besides Allah – “and through worshipping other than Allah, believing in other than Allah, and thinking that [anything] other than Allah can harm you or have an effect on you. All harm comes through that. That is why you see the kuffar [infidels] are the scaredest people.”

The infidels aren’t just scared when they should be trusting in Allah. They are also the cause of all the trouble in the first place – specifically infidel women. According to Khadar Bin Muhammad, the coronavirus is a manifestation of Allah’s wrath against their outrageous immodesty. “How many women do we see,” he asked, “may Allah guide them and protect them, who walk around and show their ankles? Is this not part of her awra [private parts]?”

According to a statement in the hadith, every part of a woman’s body except her face and hands are private parts.

The article explains:

Khadar Bin Muhammad said that women’s ankles were part of her private parts. As strange as it may seem, this is not an eccentric view in Islam. A hadith depicts Muhammad saying to a woman, “‘O Asma’, when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this,’ and he pointed to her face and hands” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4092).

This is the important quote from the article:

So that’s the imam’s message for women: take off the mask, put on the niqab, and pick up the Qur’an, and the coronavirus will go away. Won’t it? And seriously, while it is easy to laugh at this, isn’t Khadar Bin Muhammad endangering his hearers by preaching this nonsense?

Somehow I don’t think that women covering their ankles is going to stop the spread of coronavirus. Not all cultures and religions are equal.

All Cultures Are Not Equal

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The political left has made a career of criticizing western culture. Somehow they have avoided noticing the scientific advancements western culture has been responsible for, the modern conveniences that help protect our rivers from pollution, and the clean energy that helps with carbon emissions. Somehow the critics have also overlooked the women that have contributed to the scientific knowledge of the west. Well, every now and then an article comes to light that illustrates that the knowledge of science and germs is so much a part of western culture that we take it for granted.

Breitbart posted an article today that illustrates what happens when science gets overruled by religious extremism.

The article reports:

Devout Iranian Muslims are releasing online videos showing the faithful licking and kissing shrines to show they have no fear of infection during the country’s escalating coronavirus outbreak.

Officials have confirmed 978 cases in Iran and 54 deaths, the highest death toll of any country outside China. But religious leaders continue to reject advice from the Health Ministry to close holy sites to help stop the spread of infection.

Instead the videos, which have reportedly emerged from Iran’s coronavirus epicentre of Qom, show Islamic devotees spreading misinformation about the virus while forcing young children to also take part.

…Touching and kissing surfaces in shrines is a common practice for pilgrims, and religious hardliners argue the holy sites of Qom are “a place for healing.”

But many Iranians are worried the clerical establishment is not taking the outbreak seriously, while Iranian health workers have reportedly admitted the number of people that have died from coronavirus could be five times more than government figures claim.

Still many hold a contrary view that Islamic faith will beat any virus.

“There are people who say that this shrine spreads coronavirus. I’m here to lick the tomb so that I can fall ill. This way, I’ve removed the virus. You can come and visit,” one man says in a video.

U.S. Department of State senior advisor for public affairs Len Khodorkovsky shared a clip, captioning it: “Don’t do this. Ever. But especially during the coronavirus outbreak.”

Another video from the city of Mashhad, where the Imam Reza shrine is located, shows a man licking the shrine and reportedly saying: “I have come to lick the Imam Reza shrine so that I contract this disease and allow others to visit the shrine with peace of mind”.

That is so sad.