What Goes Around Comes Around



OK This was also linked by The Glenn but this needs as much linkage as possible.

It turns out, a group of guys in the Iraqi Army wanted to do something for the California fire victims, because they felt that the US had done so much for Iraq. So they raised $1000 US, and gave it to the local US Army commander to pass on.

$1000 US wouldn't get a family of four through half a month. In physical terms, it's absolutely nothing. In terms of sacrifice and a heart of compassion, it's everything.

"As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. 'I tell you the truth,' he said, 'this poor widow has put in more than all the others.'" Luke 21:1-3

May God grant these people security and peace.

Blasphemy!

Interesting bit of synchronicity...

Watching PBS, the Secret Files of the Inquisition, while reading this on the recent decision by the Tufts disciplinary board at Tufts University.

Boston, the birthplace of freedom...

Well, this stinks!

"YouTube: ... the Google property has recently banned the popular atheist commentator Nick Gisburne. Gisburne had been posting videos with logical arguments against Christian beliefs; but when he turned his attention to Islam ..., YouTube pulled the plug, saying: 'After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down.' "

Glenn Reynolds notes that Mr. Gisburne is up and running again.

Like another blogger that Mr. Reynolds mentions I find this appalling. To those of you who read here, I obviously don't agree with Mr. Gisburne's views on religion. However, atheism is not an incitement to violence, nor is it pornography. What was done to Mr. Gisburne is censorship, pure and simple.

It would be bad enough if YouTube had pulled his account because he was making atheistic statements. The fact that they caved because of pressure from one partictular imperialistic religion (he was quoting from the Koran, and not adding any commentary) is totally craven.

Mr. Gisburne replys to Google If they can remove MY account (I don't think you can call me the most controversial atheist here!), which atheists are next?

Frankly, the question is not just about atheists, but is who else of us is next?

Suppression of Freedom

Puppet Show and Islamism, Heretical Librarian discusses how an ancient art form is being slowly forced out of Malaysian society.

After the Danish Cartoon Controversy a long but worthwhile read on the genesis of the brouhaha in Europe, at the Middle East Quarterly. (H/T LGF)

See-Dubya, guest blogging at Michelle's, reports on Iran's arrest and holding of a number of Christian converts, apparently to suppress their Christmas celebrations.

These are only three examples of the strangling nature of radical Islamism, not to say anything of the honor-killings, beheadings in public squares, the killing of homosexuals, the fatwas calling for the death of Muslims who convert to other religions et cetera.

Meanwhile, books are being published warning of the eminant takeover of America by Christian Fascists. That's because, as R.J.Dunn points out, the tens of millions of people who died in the 20th Century under the fists of Pentecostal dictators or in Evangelical gulags.

Bruce Thornton uses the reactions to Saddam's execution to illustrate the vacuousness of the modern Left.

Read, and be assured that there is some sanity in the world.

Eteraz is once again covering women's rights in Pakistan.

This is important progress. Coming from a military dictatorship with a heavy percentage of Islamic fundamentalists in the population and military makes it especially encouraging.

Good news from Pakistan!

As I have mentioned before, and others have argued, the reformation of Islam and the promotion of peace and democracy there may very well revolve around women's rights. Once their culture is no longer dominated by misogynists there will be a much stronger incentive to be part of the twenty-first century, instead of remaining in the eighth century.

Update on Pakistan Women’s Protection Bill

"Musharraf didn’t act enough like a dictator"

It looks as though Musharraf will push for the Women's Protection Bill to go through, but in a version gutted by the mullahs. Eteraz has more and is resigned to accepting whatever can be gotten at this point.

Let us hope it is a first step that is followed up, and soon.

As Eteraz says, "When the bill is passed and the text public I will make it available and we’ll rue what could have been and rejoice for what there is."

Women's Rights in Pakistan

Eteraz has another piece about women's rights in Pakistan, and a bill before President Musharraf, "The Women’s Protection Act" I had linked to him previously. This is a subject that's not getting a lot of traction in the West, and Eteraz is quite reasonably put-out about that. Promoting women's rights in the Islamic world is not imperialism of western ideas, it's promoting human rights period. Eteraz says it's not too late to put in your two cents worth. He provides a template text, and a link to President Mushasraff's website where you can email him. (For quicker access, scroll to the bottom of this post)

Eteraz points out that action because of, not just knowledge of an issue used to define activism. So far, all of the activism in the Middle East is by the military. Here is a chance to do something different that will have a bracing effect on the whole region.

What are you waiting for?

The Crutch

As a Bible believing Christian, whom some would call fundamentalist, others, evangelical, I have become used to two main replies in any conversation bordering on religion. "I'm all set," and "The Bible is full of contradictions."

Well, after nearly fifty years of life with a marriage and three kids and a midlife career change I can tell you that I am not 'all set.' For those who say that religion is a crutch I easily reply that yes, I am lame. If you are not lame in some part of your life then more power to you. You will need it.

I have been on this chosen road of faith for twenty years. As Jacob said to Pharaoh, "My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers." [1] I have nothing to brag about, or to complain about either. In all that time of reading and studying the Bible, I have not found it to be self-contradictory (only contradictory of many of my choices and actions). The trope, "the Bible is full of contradictions," has always struck me as received 'knowledge' handed down from cynical adult to cynical child and never investigated.

The most often cited example of a contradiction I have heard is the wars of Israelites and the loving nature of God. Considering that the Israelites are repeatedly described as the chosen children of God, and that God foretold Abraham that his descendants would return to Canaan (from Egypt) after many years of slavery "...for the sin of the Amorites has not reached its full measure." [2]
So, even though God knew that the Amorites would do evil, he still gave them many years to choose to repent and do what is right. Then he gives the Israelites the right to defend themselves against evil as they claim their homeland.

How many times have you heard, "How could a loving God have let this happen?" when some great evil has goes on in the world? Well, he didn't want to let any evil of the Amorites or surrounding peoples happen to the Israelites. It seems to me that the contradictions involved here is in the minds of people who would rather not believe (and thus be challenged in their lives and character) than in the Bible itself.

There are other 'examples' but they all play out much the same way.

Still, the devoutly secular repeat with great conviction that the Bible is full of contradictions.

So tell me, where are these devout declarations in the face of Islamic Fascism and Muslim expansionism?

We are told "Today humanity passionately craves commitment to the truth, devotion to God, quest for justice, and respect for the dignity of human beings. Rejection of domination and aggression, defense of the oppressed, and longing for peace constitute the legitimate demand of the peoples of the world..." by the President of Iran. The highest Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia (in response to Benedict XVI commenting on violence and forced conversion in Islam) tells us that "The prophet (Muhammad), peace be upon him, came as a mercy to the world." Yet nuns are shot in the back, honor killings are common and the primary victims of Islamic violence are Muslims.

Islam itself claims Jesus as one of its prophets but not the Messiah, yet Jesus called himself the Son of God [3], and based upon his teachings the apostle John described him in Revelation as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end [4]. If Jesus is not the Son of God and Messiah, then he is a liar and can not be a prophet of God and a teacher of the truth, as his claim to sonship is central to his teaching. So here is a verifiable contradiction in Islamic belief.

Where are all the proud secular voices, the speakers of reason? Where are those who, proud in their own self-sufficiency declare the contradictions of religion? Where are those who decry the fettering of the mind, the opiating of the masses?

Why do these strong willed, free-minded people not declare the obvious fallacies of the branch of Islam inhabited by nihilistic, murder-threatening, head-chopping fanatics?

Oh...

[1] Genesis 46:9 b (NIV)
[2] Genesis 15:16 b (NIV)
[3] Luke 22:69, 70
[4] Revelation 1:8, 21:6, 22:13

Women's Rights in Pakistan

Something that's not getting a lot of traction in the press here (and I won't throw stones, it's probably something a simple as "Pakistan is far away" style thinking) but that should, is an upcoming vote on a bill to change Pakistan's laws concerning rape. Eteraz has the story.

The long and the short of it is this, currently a woman who is raped has to provide four male witnesses or she can be imprisoned or put to death for adultery. Though the new law wouldn't provide the level of protection and equality-before-the-law that we have in the West, it is an important and needed step in a theocratically leaning military dictatorship like Pakistan.

It has been cogently argued that the emancipation of women is the key to reforming Islam.

This issue deserves a lot more attention.

Those who do not learn history are forced to repeat it.

"In these troubled times, when political and economic misunderstandings are erecting barriers between nations, as effectively preventing the interpenetration of ideas as if war had closed the frontiers, it is more than ever important that nations should think of each other in terms of some enduring aspect of the spirit which remains constant and free from the transitory confusion of current problems."

Thus begins the foreword of the exhibit catalog for "German Art From the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century, an Exhibition of Paintings, Water Colors and Drawings Held Under the auspices of the Oberlaender Trust (and) the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, 1936-1937." which I recently aquired. Though I haven't found definitive information, I strongly suspect that at least one of the works in that show had been aquired by one of the participating German museums through a forced "Jew auction" (where the Nazis forced Jewish citizens to sell off their art and antiques at bargain prices).

I would love to find out that this exhibit was 'lilly white and pure' but given the history of that time, I have my doubts.

Even with the growing evidence of Nazi excesses, ill treatment of the Jews, agression and violation of treaties, inflammitory rhetoric from Hitler, the exodus of Jewish people and intellectuals, and the Nazi envolvement in '36 and '37 in the Spanish Civil War, there was still a great portion of the West that wanted only to "think of each other in terms of some enduring aspect of the spirit."

The result of that wilful blindness was over fifty million dead across Europe and the Pacific.

Will my grandchildren look back at some of the things written now about the need to 'understand and cross cultural barriers' and wonder how we could ignore the religious facism of Radical Islam?

Yes, Germany in 1936 had a long and glorious art history which had contributed greatly to the culture of the world. That art did not save the millions who died as a result of Hitler's madness.

Yes, Islam and muslims have done many beautiful and meaningful things in the arts, in mathematics, and many other areas. Dwelling on such things will not defend us from a Nuclear Iran or from 'home grown' Wahhabist terrorists.

I hope that there will be grandchildren to look back and wonder at how foolish we were.

Gendercide

Ayaan Hirsi Ali who with Theo Van Gogh made the film "Submission" and is a Dutch Legislator (while hiding due to death threats related to Van Gogh's murder) has written a truely frightening article about Women's Rights and the staggering statistics of murder, deaths and disapearances of women across the world.

The editorial is at the International Herald Tribune site.

H/T Charles Johnson of littlegreenfootballs.com

Alexandra Von Maltzan at All Things Beautiful has an excellent and clearly written post on the differences between Islam's view of Allah and Western Christianity's belief in God.

Go read it

Read The American Thinker for insight and ideas. No country should be forced to censor its own people to please another country's religion.

UPDATE: Vive La France!