Archive for the 'Islam' Category

Muslim Persecution of Christians: April, 2012

Monday, May 21st, 2012

by Raymond Ibrahim*

Considering that Easter, one of the highest Christian holidays, comes in April, Christian persecution in Muslim nations—from sheer violence to oppressive laws—was rampant last month: In Nigeria, where jihadis seek to expunge all traces of Christianity, a church was bombed during Easter Sunday, killing some 50 worshippers; in Turkey, a pastor was beaten by Muslims immediately following Easter service and threatened with death unless he converts to Islam; and in Iran, Easter Sunday saw 12 Christians stand trial as “apostates.”

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Jerusalem: The Media Myths (Lies) About ‘Two Cities’

Sunday, May 20th, 2012

Despite all the archeological/historical evidence of three thousand of years of a flourishing, continuous Jewish presence in their undivided city of Jerusalem, many people are inundated with lies about Arab claims to the city. In reality, the division of Jerusalem began in 1948 when Jordan invaded and physically cut the city into two pieces. In the video shown below by HonestReporting.com, hear living testimony from an eighth generation Jerusalem Jew and from one whose family arrived in the great city in 1835. Then study up on your history and learn the truth that Jerusalem has, shall, and always will be the undivided capital of the Jewish State. Period.

Disregard the anti-Semitic bigots — the delegitimizers of Israel. Find out about the Biblical and historical convergence of, for example, the books of Nehemiah and Jeremiah. The haters ignore the mountains of evidence proving that Jews lived in the Holy Land long before Arab conquerors arrived in the 7th century A.D. … Evidence like the first Jewish temple (ca. 950 B.C.) and the second Jewish temple (ca. 535 B.C.), or the Biblical passages in John 1:49, Book of 1 Samuel, 13:19, Exodus 2:23, or 1 Chronicles 29:23. Indeed, Archaeologists have found Hebrew text in Israel dating to 3,000 years ago.

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Uncovering Early Islam

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

by Daniel Pipes*

The year 1880 saw the publication of a book that ranks as the single most important study of Islam ever. Written in German by a young Jewish Hungarian scholar, Ignaz Goldziher, and bearing the nondescript title Muslim Studies (Muhammedanische Studien), it argued that the hadith, the vast body of sayings and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, lacked historical validity. Rather than provide reliable details about Muhammad’s life, Goldziher established, the hadith emerged from debates two or three centuries later about the nature of Islam.

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Mexican Jihad

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

by Raymond Ibrahim*

As the United States considers the Islamic jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it would do well to focus on its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and jihadists, who, through a number of tactics—from engaging in da’wa, converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, simple extortion, kidnappings and enslavement—have been subverting Mexico in order to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S.

According to a 2010 report, “Close to home: Hezbollah terrorists are plotting right on the U.S. border,” which appeared in the NY Daily News:

Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana … closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years, Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S. In this, it has shadowed the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Tehran, which has been forging close ties with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who in turn supports the narcoterrorist organization FARC, which wreaks all kinds of havoc throughout the region.

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Did Muhammad Exist?

Monday, May 14th, 2012

A briefing by Robert Spencer*

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, has released a new book titled, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins. On April 24th, Mr. Spencer spoke on his book at a joint meeting of the Middle East Forum and Gatestone Institute in New York City.

Did the Prophet Muhammad really exist, or was he a sacred myth fashioned by the Koran decades after his purported death? Robert Spencer has addressed this thorny question with a dual intent:

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Jihad Comes to Egypt

Sunday, May 13th, 2012

by Raymond Ibrahim*

Considering Egypt’s presidential elections take place later this month, last weekend’s Islamist clash with the military could not have come at a worse time.

First, the story: due to overall impatience—and rage that the Salafi presidential candidate, Abu Ismail, was disqualified (several secular candidates were also disqualified)—emboldened Islamists began to gather around the Defense Ministry in Abbassia, Cairo, late last week, chanting jihadi slogans, and preparing for a “million man” protest for Friday, May 4th.

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The BBC Broadcasts Its Own Dhimmitude

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

by David J. Rusin*

Media outlets tiptoeing around Islam are a dime a dozen, but the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) stands apart for the egregiousness of its self-censorship and bias. Even more striking than the number of controversies involving suppression of Islam-critical speech on its channels are the frank acknowledgements that BBC policy is shaped by fear.

During a recent interview (full transcript) for a University of Oxford project, BBC director general Mark Thompson provided the most in-depth admission yet of the BBC’s double standards with respect to faith. Christianity, he explained, receives less sensitive treatment because it is “a broad-shouldered religion, compared to religions which in the UK have a very close identity with ethnic minorities.” Specifically, Islam in Britain is “almost entirely a religion practiced by people who may already feel in other ways isolated, prejudiced against, and where they may well regard an attack on their religion as racism by other means.” Thus, when asked whether the BBC would run a Muhammad-mocking program on a par with the Jesus-ridiculing Jerry Springer: The Opera, which it aired over Christian protests in 2005, Thompson answered that it would not. Depictions of Islam’s prophet, he maintained, could have “the emotional force” of “grotesque child pornography” for Muslims.

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Syria’s 31 Percenters: How Bashar Al-Asad Built Minority Alliances and Countered Minority Foes

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

By Phillip Smyth

As the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Asad’s rule enters its first year, Asad appears to have a good command over Syria’s large and fractious minority community. Three of the most prominent minority groups include the Christians, Druze, and Kurds. Asad’s control of these groups was not happenstance but the result of a number of hard- and soft-power moves executed by the regime. These calculations did not simply involve direct internal dealings with said minorities, but also outreach to their populations living in neighboring states and abroad. Due to the regime’s many policies, minority support may continue for some time.

Our way of government is not identical with that which is pursued with such conspicuous success in highly civilised and settled countries like your own. We leave the various communities and tribes alone to settle their internal differences. It is only where tribe wars on tribe, religion on religion, or their quarrels stop the traffic on the Sultan’s highway that we interfere. What would you have, mon ami? We are here in Asia!” – An Ottoman governor in Syria to author Marmaduke Pickthall, late nineteenth century.[1]

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Canadian Islamic schools teaching hatred

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

By Gary Gerofsky

As a member of The Never Again Group, as a former teacher and as a proud citizen of Canada I am appalled by the intolerance, hate, and incitement going on in Toronto’s East End Madrassah and in other Islamic “schools” and mosques throughout Canada.

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Egypt: Ayman Zawahiri’s Brother Leads Jihadi Protest Against Military

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

by Raymond Ibrahim*

According to Egypt’s Al Ahram, “Major Egyptian Islamist parties and groups—including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Calling and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya—have issued calls for a Tahrir Square demonstration on Friday under the banner of ‘Saving the revolution.’ … Several non-Islamist revolutionary groups, meanwhile, have expressed their refusal to participate in the event. These groups include the United Maspero Youth, the Egyptian Brothers Independent group, and the Free Front for Peaceful Change.”

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Regime Change in Iran?

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

by Brendan Daly*

There is every reason to believe that the Islamic Republic’s days are numbered. The current government, lorded over by the religious supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, and his Guardian Council of aging mullahs, who can overrule any policy change by the pseudo-elected president, seem wildly out of touch with the general populace. Not only are the youth of Iran—some 70 percent of whom are under the age of thirty—chaffing under the “guardianship of the Islamic jurists” (velayet-e-faqih)—but so is the economy, due to sanctions imposed by the West in response to the regime’s insistence on pursuing its nuclear program.[1] Inflation has long been out of control and trade and tourism a tiny fraction of what it could be, and yet the establishment has on the whole shown little interest in sacrificing militant, revolutionary principles for economic, and indeed, political expediency. Can this approach be sustained in view of the tightening economic noose around Tehran, and at what cost?

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The Jihadist Roots of the Norway Massacre

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

by Raymond Ibrahim*

Anders Breivik, who went on a shooting spree in Norway last year, killing some 70 people, recently confessed his inspiration: al-Qaeda, the jihadists par excellence of the modern world.

According to AFP, “The gunman behind the Norway massacres said he was inspired by al-Qaida as he took the stand Tuesday [4/17] at his trial…. he described himself as a ‘militant nationalist’ and, using the pronoun ‘we’ to suggest he was part of a larger group, added: ‘We have drawn from al-Qaida and militant Islamists. You can see al-Qaida as the most successful militant group in the world.’”

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Chris Christie’s Islam Problem

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

by Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson*

A Quinnipiac poll in April showed Chris Christie the most popular potential Republican vice-presidential candidate, thanks to his budget cuts and standing up to government employee unions. But the governor of New Jersey has a problem, specifically an Islam problem, in the way of his possible ascent to higher office. We regret to report that, time and again, he has sided with Islamist forces against those safeguarding American security and civilization.

Some examples:

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Will Obama Stop the Bomb?

Monday, April 30th, 2012

by Phyllis Chesler

A very gallant Dr. Charles Asher Small just delivered an important lecture at the 92nd St Y. in New York.

Yes, this is the same Dr. Small who, in 2004, founded the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), which he housed at Yale University from 2006-2011–until the Yale Corporation decided that the Center’s work on Islamic Judeophobia and specifically on Iranian genocidal Judeophobia threatened Yale’s “scholarly commitments” in the region.

Who could make this up?

This was the first time that Dr. Small spoke about this publicly.

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Muslim Persecution of Christians: March, 2012

Monday, April 30th, 2012

by Raymond Ibrahim*

The war on Christianity and its adherents rages on in the Muslim world. In March alone, Saudi Arabia’s highest Islamic law authority decreed that churches in the region must be destroyed; jihadis in Nigeria said they “are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women”; American teachers in the Middle East were murdered for talking about Christianity; churches were banned or bombed, and nuns terrorized by knife-wielding Muslim mobs. Christians continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for allegedly “blaspheming” Islam’s prophet Muhammad; former Muslims continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for converting to Christianity.

To understand why all this persecution is virtually unknown in the West, consider the mainstream media’s well-documented biases: also in March alone, the New York Times ran a virulently anti-Catholic ad, but refused to publish a near identical ad directed at Islam; the BBC admitted it will mock Jesus but never Muhammad; and U.S. sitcoms were exposed for bashing Christianity, but never Islam.

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