ISIL IS A RELIGIOUS ENTITY

This appeared as a letter to the editor in the Lansing State Journal yesterday (12/17/2015):

ISIL a religious entity

In LSJ’s Nov. 28 issue, there were statements in two different articles relating to ISIL.

One story said the terrorist organization “has nothing to do with religion” and the other said that ISIL members “have no god, no faith.”

This is a total denial of reality.   Consider the following facts:

• ISIL stands for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant;”
• the organization has a holy book called the Koran;
• this movement seeks to establish Sharia (conservative Islamic) law;
• its members are conducting jihad (holy war);
• the group fights those viewed as infidels, apostates and pagans, all terms for unbelievers;
• when striking their enemies the followers shout “Allahu Akbar” (God is great);
• ISIL members pray regularly to a supreme being;
• the organization has clerics called “imams;”
• members sprinkle their conversations with the phrase “May it please God;”
• ISIL believes that God’s laws should trump man’s laws;
• this group seeks to establish a caliphate (Islamic polity) across the world.

Given these qualities, it is clear that ISIL is a religious entity, despite what the media say.

(Name withheld)

A THOUGHT . . .

A friend emailed me this one.

 

COMMON SENSE, WITH TACT

After Donald Trump’s call for a temporary halt in allowing Muslims to move to America, there has been a great deal of “moral outrage,” as CNN called it.   Prominent members of the liberal intelligentsia have been appearing on the various news channels.   Accusations of Trump being “un-American” are constantly being yelled out, even though America had no Muslims in its infancy and few until a change in the immigration laws fifty years ago.

Donald Trump has called for a ban on immigration to the United States by Muslims.  TV talk programs seem to have discussed nothing else since his controversial call Monday, which he referred to as “common sense.”

The liberal media, plus almost all politicians of both major parties, have condemned Mr. Trump and called him a “racist” and lots of other bad names.

Methinks they protest too much!   Why are they so determined to see so many Muslims in America?

Let’s consider the facts ……

The US is the leading nation of the western world.   The country has experienced a number of terrorist attacks by Muslims, including San Bernardino, Boston, Chattanooga, Garland, Fort Hood and 9-11.

The number two economy in the western world is Japan, with 130 million people.   Japan has not had a terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims.   Japan has a very strict immigration policy, which does not encourage Muslims to move there.   Could there be a connection?
Mr. Trump lacks tact, a quality he needs and one that needs to be brought into this debate.

I remember a conversation with a member of the diplomatic service in an African country some years ago.   My wife and I were enjoying our visit to his country and I expressed the hope that they would have more tourists, which would boost their economy.   I told him that one thing they could do to help encourage tourism was to abolish the visa requirement for tourists.

He responded that the country had to require a visa, at a cost of $100, before any tourist could visit.   He explained that it was reciprocal. In other words, because the US insisted people from his country must get a visa to enter America, his country had to insist on visas for Americans.

The US requires peoples in many countries to get visas, to screen them before they visit and to weed out those who might visit and stay to look for work.

But my point is that visa requirements are reciprocal.

Can’t we do the same when it comes to immigration?

We should apply the same rules to people wanting to come to the United States, as their countries apply to Americans who go there.

As none of the 57 majority Muslim countries allows Americans to immigrate into their countries, we would effectively achieve the ban on Muslims Mr. Trump wants, but do it more tactfully.   The ball would be in their court!

Yes, there are Americans living in Muslim countries.   Some are married to locals in those countries, while some work there on contract, providing skills their economies need; but none have permanent resident status and will never be allowed to apply for citizenship.  Muslim nations know that Muslims and non-Muslims just don’t mix!

Quid pro quo.   Problem solved.   With tact, Mr. Trump!

There was also a lack of tact in the White House when Josh Earnest, White House spokesman, described Mr. Trump’s comments as “fascist,” forgetting that the most famous Democratic president of all, Franklin Roosevelt, interred Japanese, German and Italian Americans during World War II.

Meanwhile, a great deal of ignorance has been exposed in the media on this issue.   A number of news people have told us that Mr. Trump’s suggestion goes against the constitution.   It’s difficult to justify such a statement when there were no Muslims in the country at the time the constitution was written.   It wasn’t until after the Civil War that Muslims first came on the scene and the first mosque was built in Chicago as recently as 1929.

Nihad Awad, Executive Director and Founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, likened Mr. Trump’s comments to those of Nazis against the Jews, asking:  “Haven’t we learned anything from history, Mr. Trump?”   This blatant double standard went unquestioned.   It was a perfect opportunity to raise questions about attitudes toward Jews shown in some Muslim countries and during the Holocaust.

On the same day that this dominated the news, TIME magazine announced its choice of “Person of the Year.”   This year’s choice is Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, who opened Germany’s doors to allow in one million migrants this year, the equivalent of the US taking in four million.   The decision has already resulted in negative repercussions that must be borne by the German people.

The question arises – why is the media so determined to see the end of the European races?   At the same time as ridiculing Trump, most news sources are seen praising Frau Merkel for her decision.

Whatever you may think of Mr. Trump’s call to halt Muslim immigration at this time, Americans should be thankful the issue has been raised for one simple reason – any more attacks could easily result in a violent backlash against Muslims by other Americans. The population needs to be thoroughly educated on the religion and its goals toward the United States so that a responsible debate can take place.

 

 

 

 

SAN BERNARDINO – REALITY HITS HOME

The fact that the target was a Christmas party at a center for the disabled shows that an attack can come anywhere, at any time.

There have been other attacks by radical Islamists on American soil – Ft Hood, Garland, Chattanooga to name just three.   There will be more.

ISIS has staged 25 terrorist attacks in the last five weeks.   That’s five a week. The total number of dead is 250.   Paris, Sinai and San Bernardino got the most publicity and will continue to have the biggest consequences, but other attacks have taken place in the Middle East and Africa. Boko Haram, an ISIS affiliate, carries out the most attacks, with impunity.

The West can certainly destroy ISIS with the right leadership, but defeating Islamic fundamentalism is quite another matter.   Even if ISIS coalition forces wipe out the threat from Sunni Islam, there will still be Iran, the Shi’ite terror state that has been plaguing America since 1979.

On the same day as the San Bernardino attack, the British government was debating bombing ISIS in Syria, along with other coalition partners.   The vote was an overwhelming yes.   But concerns were expressed that ISIS would turn its attention to Britain if the British authorized the bombing. Emphasizing the point was a “terrorist incident” Saturday evening on the London Underground when a man with a knife attacked passengers, shouting: “this is for Syria!”   A passerby was heard screaming at the perpetrator:   “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!”   This has become a famous hashtag, supporting the official line that Islam is a religion of peace and that ISIS is trying to hijack it.   President Obama reinforced this idea in his speech to the nation last night.

Full-blown fear is now starting in the general population, a realization that terrorist attacks are going to be a regular part of daily life.   But this does not mean there is unity when it comes to dealing with them.

Political commentators agree that the threat of terrorism will move countries to the right politically, starting in France Sunday where they were holding regional elections.  If the far-right National Front sees significant gains, it could mean Marine Le Pen becoming President in the 2017 presidential election.   In the United States, increased fears of terrorism are benefitting Donald Trump in his bid for the presidency.

President Hollande of France has said that we are at war with ISIS. A number of US presidential candidates in the US have said the same. But nobody has yet stated the increasingly obvious, that we are in fact at war with Islam itself.

Hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East believe that this is the case.   From the Iranian revolution in 1979 through the Persian Gulf War, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,   Muslims have been convinced that they are in a war with the West.   When they see babies being pulled from the rubble after western planes bomb homes in Syria, they want revenge, they want to kill babies in the West.   Schools full of children, concert halls full of young adults, and disabled centers throwing Christmas parties are easy targets.   We will see more of them.

We’ve been denying history for fifty years, encouraging a mixing of races and religions, which denies historical reality.   Now we are paying the price.

It’s amusing, frustrating and unbelievable watching politicians and commentators, all overwhelmingly liberal-leftists, trying to explain everything and come up with solutions, without stating the obvious and without any reference to history.

The latest slant on TV news is to blame the wife for the terrorist attacks last week.   She had only been in the country for a year, whereas her husband was born here.   As it is inconceivable a homegrown American boy could become a terrorist, it must all be blamed on her.   Why can’t we accept that a homegrown Muslim may hate our society, a country whose values are the exact opposite of his own?

The president and his wannabe successor prefer to place the blame for San Bernardino on the lack of gun control.   Wherever you stand on the issue of gun control, making it more difficult to buy guns will not put an end to terrorism.   Paris has strict gun controls, but look what happened there less than a month ago.   California also has gun controls, none of which were able to prevent last week’s attack.   If gun control advocates ever managed to stop the manufacture of guns, terrorists would simply bring them in from outside.

We can talk about gun controls encouraging terrorist attacks; we can talk about climate change causing terrorism (yes, somebody actually said that); we can blame it all on US foreign policy or on bombing Syria, but all of these hide the simple reality that we are in a clash of civilizations every bit as real as the medieval struggles between Christianity and Islam.

Only this time the West is not Christian.   And that’s the reason we don’t see anything clearly any more.

Watching commentators after San Bernardino, I didn’t once hear anybody ask why a Muslim would go to a Christmas party in the first place.   The Christian belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is blasphemy to Muslims.  There really is no equivalent in today’s “Christian” world, where even most believers do not take religion seriously.   In a post-Christian society like America, there’s an inability to comprehend that others may take religion more seriously.

Perhaps it’s time in this multicultural paradise that liberals have created to scrap all Christmas parties, lest offence is taken!

In all the televised conversations that have followed San Bernardino, there has been no mention of the fact that no Muslim countries allow non-Muslims into their nations, except on short-term contracts.   They believe strongly that “infidels” cannot live alongside believers.  Yet, we in the West continue to believe that we can all live peaceably together.

I do not believe this to be the case.   And, for that reason alone, we will see more and more attacks like the one on San Bernardino.

It is true that God made all men from one blood, but it is not the case that different religions and ethnic groups can all live together.

“And He has made from one blood  every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings”   (Acts 17:26).