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Narrative on Killing of Muslim Girl Crumbles as New Details Emerge of Alleged Killer

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In the aftermath of the brutal beating and death of a teenage Muslim girl in Virginia, liberal activists and some civil rights organizations rushed to frame the killing as a hate crime.

Many said that Nabra Mohmod Hassanen’s killer was obviously motivated by loathing for Muslims, one of many minority groups suffering under the “climate of hate” that President Donald Trump’s administration has created.

The storyline began to collapse when The Daily Caller and other outlets reported that the alleged killer, Darwin Martinez Torres, was not a white supremacist bigot, as some alleged, but rather a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador. Despite the total absence of evidence of a hate crime — Fairfax County police called it a “road rage” incident — many commentators continued to assert that Hassanen’s murder was an illustrative example of bias against Muslims in American society . . .

Already teetering, the narrative collapsed completely Tuesday, when new details about Torres’ background emerged in media reports. As it turns out, Torres allegedly killed Hassanen not because he didn’t “accept” Muslim Americans, but because he is a suspected gang member with a history of violence toward women.

A week before Torres was arrested for the murder, he allegedly beat and sexually assaulted a Loudoun County woman, according to a Child Protective Services report shared with the Washington Post. The woman told emergency room staff that a man punched and kicked her in the presence of a child, and that the assailant, whom she declined to identify by name, was a member of the violent MS-13 street gang. (Read more from “Narrative on Killing of Muslim Girl Crumbles as New Details Emerge of Alleged Killer” HERE)

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Study: Islamic Extremists, Leftists Most Threaten European Jews

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A comprehensive study released this month, titled “Antisemitic violence in Europe,” provides insight into the the continent’s growing anti-Semitism problem and the perpetrators of anti-Jewish attacks in France, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Russia.

The University of Oslo Center for Research on Extremism finds that Islamic extremists, followed by left-wing extremists, are the most common perpetrators of anti-Semitic crimes, according to a survey conducted among the countries’ Jewish populations.

Respondents in France, Sweden, Germany, and the UK “most often perceived the perpetrator(s)” of an anti-Semitic attack to be “someone with a Muslim extremist view.”

The study quashed the theory promulgated by some “anti-Zionists” that somehow anti-Semitic violence is caused by Israel and its occasional clashes with its Arab neighbors. The university study found that there is no “direct causal link” between Arab-Israeli feuds and the rise of European violence against Jews, but it sometimes acts as an enabler of violence for individuals who already hold extremist views.

The climate of anti-Semitism in European countries has forced Jews there to flee to Israel and America. Last year, 5,000 Jews left France for Israel. When surveyed, one-third of European Jews said they were considering leaving Europe.

As the Jewish population in Europe continues to decline, Muslim populations continue to surge. This is largely due to two factors: Islamic migration into Europe, and the fact that Muslim families have over three children per couple. In 2015, some 1.3 million migrants arrived in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa.

An ADL global survey found that 74 percent of individuals in North Africa and the Middle East hold anti-Semitic attitudes. A Pew global attitudes survey found similar results. In Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, and the Palestinian territories, less than five percent of those surveyed had “favorable views” of Jewish people. (For more from the author of “Study: Islamic Extremists, Leftists Most Threaten European Jews” please click HERE)

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Michigan Cop Stabbed in Neck by Attacker Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’

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A police officer is in critical condition after he was stabbed multiple times Wednesday by an apparent jihadi at Bishop International Airport in Flint, Mich.

A Canadian-born suspect has been detained by authorities related to the stabbing of officer Jeff Neville in the neck and back. The suspect reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” an Islamic war cry, before proceeding to stab the Michigan State Police officer, Lt. Jeff Neville.

According to his Linkedin page, Neville has been an officer at the airport since 2001. Before then, he was a deputy sheriff at the Genesee County Sheriff’s Department, patrolling the area in southwest New York from 1982-1999. Overall, Neville has served the state of Michigan for 35 years.

A witness to the stabbing, Ken Brown, told M Live, “The cop was on his hands and knees bleeding from his neck. I said they need to get him a towel.” Brown added that he saw the armed assailant taken to the ground by police.

The FBI has taken over the investigation and is looking at the stabbing as a possible act of terrorism. The FBI usually takes the lead in all cases with a possible connection to terrorism.

A Michigan State Police official told CNN that it appeared the suspect deliberately targeted police.

The FBI is the lead agency in this incident. MSP is providing resources to our Federal and local partners as this scene progresses.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has urged the public to keep Officer Neville in their thoughts.

And the state police has urged the public to remain vigilant as authorities investigate the situation.

As of this writing, the suspect’s name has not been revealed. (For more from the author of “Michigan Cop Stabbed in Neck by Attacker Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar'” please click HERE)

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Would-Be Bomber in Brussels Moroccan, Shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’

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The quick shooting of an attacker who tried to detonate a nail bomb and shouted “Allahu akbar” at a Brussels train station averted fatalities, officials said Wednesday, as Belgium increased security measures around the country.

The attacker was a 36-year-old Moroccan national not known to authorities for being involved in terror activities, federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt told reporters. He declined to say if the man had a criminal record.

The man charged soldiers at Brussels Central Station on Tuesday after his suitcase, containing nails and gas canisters, failed to fully explode, Van der Sypt said. It was a lucky escape for several travelers nearby. (Read more from “Would-Be Bomber in Brussels Moroccan, Shouted ‘Allahu Akbar'” HERE)

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The ‘Imam of Peace’ Calls for a Police State. Is Tawhidi a Fraud?

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A self-declared “Imam of Peace,” Imam Mohammad Tawhidi appears to have tricked many across the political spectrum into believing he is indeed seeking critical reform from within his religion.

The outspoken Imam has become a rising media darling, noted for his sensationalist claims, his willingness to condemn radical Islam, his calls for increased scrutiny of Salafi mosques, and his declaration that these acts are sanctioned by fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran.

He’s apparently received death threats, but has nonetheless persisted in speaking out about extremist strains within his religion.

Sounds good so far, right?

But as Tawhidi continues his meteoric rise, leaders within the Muslim Reform Movement have begun to notice that Tawhidi doesn’t seem to have any credentials, nor does he have much of a public record beyond last year.

Even more disturbing allegations have surfaced, alleging that he’s actually a Shiite Islamist who is making a concerted effort to persecute Sunni Muslims through extrajudicial means.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a U.S. Navy veteran who has dedicated his life to reforming Islam, has declared Tawhidi a “radical of a different flavor.” In a piece for the Asia Times, Jasser notes that for all his tough talk on Sunni strains of Islam, Tawhidi does not say much about the radical Shiite movements inspired by Iran.

“His religious and educational programming originates in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and radical Shia strains in Iraq and Iran,” Jasser writes.

Shireen Qudosi, another Muslim reformist, also shared her suspicions about the imam’s true intentions and ideology. Like Jasser, she suspects he could be a Shiite Islamist who is conning Westerners into promoting his ideology.

Chloe Patton, an expert on Australia’s Shiite community, warns Tawhidi subscribes to the radical ideology promulgated by the regime in Iran. “In Tawhidi’s black-and-white worldview, anything other than the Shia Twelver Islam that he follows is the terrorist ideology,” she writes.

And on Sunday, the mask finally came off — Tawhidi exposed his anti-Western ideals for the world to see.

The Iranian-Australian “Imam of Peace” openly advocated for a police state in his country of residency, writing the following tweets:

In one tweetstorm, the imam called for laws that would violate almost the entirety of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

It turns out, Mohammad Tawhidi is not the imam many have been waiting for. Instead, he appears to be a “one-trick contrarian” who may actually be an Islamist himself.

His response and calls to action may sound noble in highlighting the atrocities committed by fundamentalist Islamic radicals, as so few within the Muslim community are willing to speak openly and honestly about its problems and the need for reform.

Instead of seeking true reform, however, it appears Tawhidi is attempting to delegitimize opposition Islamist movements so that only his can thrive. (For more from the author of “The ‘Imam of Peace’ Calls for a Police State. Is Tawhidi a Fraud?” please click HERE)

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Experts: To Stop Global Jihad, Wage War Against Political Islam

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The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee brought forward a few of the nation’s premier experts on extremist ideologies this week for a hearing on “Ideology and Terror: Understanding the Tools, Tactics, and Techniques of Violent Extremism.”

America continues to wage an all-out effort to battle the forces of global jihadism, but has had little success in preventing the spread of radical Islam. So, what are we missing? Why has the West failed to stop global jihad?

The panel agreed that a new path forward — of combating political Islam (or, “Islamism”) and its state-sponsors — was needed.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a world-renowned expert on Islamic extremism, shared her thoughts on how to fight back against the Islamist epidemic.

Her testimony was based on her recently published monograph: “The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement.” In it, the Somali-born Dutch-American Ali discusses the link between non-violent Islamist movements and active jihadi extremism. Ali stresses that the only way to defeat the radicalism is to wage ideological war against the countries, groups, and individuals that promote political Islam.

“Political Islam is not just a religion as most Western citizens recognize the term ‘religion’ — a faith. It is also a political ideology, a legal order, and in many ways also a military doctrine,” Ali said.

The next witness called upon to deliver his testimony was Dr. John Lenczowski, president of the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.

Lenczowksi, who served on the Reagan administration’s National Security Council specializing in Soviet affairs, discussed how to defeat the jihadist enemy through ideological warfare. Most importantly, the U.S. needs to define what victory looks like, he stressed.

“The United States has spent trillions of dollars fighting radical Islamist terrorism. We have done so by treating jihadist aggression as principally a military and intelligence problem. Yet, it is a civilizational problem,” Lenczowski said.

“To solve this problem necessitates fighting a war of ideas. The problem is that we have virtually no ideological warriors in this war.”

The Senate panel’s third witness was Asra Q. Nomani, the founder of the Muslim Reform Movement and former Wall Street Journal reporter.

Similar to Ali, the India-born Nomani explained that our enemy threat doctrine starts and ends with political Islam. The tenets of Islamism are pursued not only by groups like al-Qaida and ISIS, but also by “state sponsors of extremism” such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran, Nomani said.

“If you doubt whether Islamism is an extremist ideology, please recognize its central tenet: It seeks to overthrow our democracies to supplant them with Islamic governance and sharia … which, importantly, violates United States law on multiple fronts,” Nomani said.

“Political Islam threatens life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States, and globally. It even considers young girls attending an Ariana Grande concert ‘dangerous’ because of the freedoms they are enjoying.”

Click here for the witnesses’ full testimony. (For more from the author of “Experts: To Stop Global Jihad, Wage War Against Political Islam” please click HERE)

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Another Failed Attempt to Defend Sharia Law and Islam

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On Saturday, there were marches against sharia (i.e., Islamic law) in at least 20 cities in America. But according to the Bridge Initiative Team, these marches were both misinformed and misguided. “In reality,” we are told, “these protests are motivated by Islamophobia. They are organized by an anti-Muslim group, and are an attempt to further entrench and legitimate myths about sharia, ‘Islamic law,’ and thus Muslims everywhere.”

The marches were organized by Brigette Gabriel’s ACT for America. Previously, she claimed that “a ‘practicing Muslim,’ who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America.”

The Bridge Initiative Team categorically rejects this point of view. They also reject ACT’s “top 10 list of reasons as to why ‘Sharia Law is incompatible with American Law.’”

According to the Bridge team, the reasons “include cherry-picked and poorly translated verses from the Qur’an and traditional literature, and they cite only one book.” They say ACT for America is “completely ignoring over a thousand years of legal scholarship and richly diverse interpretations of Sharia” to “re-define what this aspect of Islamic law is.”

Examining Their Claims

Is the Bridge team correct? Let’s look at their claims one at a time.

1) The Quranic verses are cherry-picked. This is incorrect. The verses are cited fairly and are echoed in many more similar verses. In fact, violent verses outweigh “tolerant” verses in the Quran.

2) The verses are poor translated. This is incorrect. The verses are not translated at all. They are summarized or paraphrased. But they are summarized and paraphrased fairly and accurately.

3) Only one book is cited. This is misleading. The list is intended to be popular, not scholarly, so one should not expect detailed annotation. That being said, hundreds of books could be cited to back every point on the list. This includes books on the life of Muhammad, books on Islamic history and books on Islamic jurisprudence.

4) The list ignores more than a thousand years of Islamic scholarship and interpretation. This is misleading. Everything the list states is supported by more than 1,400 years of Islamic history and theology. While there are other interpretations of the relevant sources within Islam, they cannot invalidate the many sources that do support violent Islam.

Let’s take one item on the list in more depth. Reason #2 states, “When a person leaves Islam, take them and slay them where you find them” (Quran 4:89). Is this mistranslated or taken out of context?

The full verse reads, “They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.” (This is the rendition from the Quran.com website, which is obviously pro-Islamic.)

This directive is confirmed in the earliest traditions of Muhammad’s teachings. See, for example, Sahih Bukhari (52:260), “The Prophet said, ‘If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.’” This is one of many examples that could be cited.

A Closer Look at Apostasy

A pro-Islamic website, Islamqa.info, which answers questions about Islam, explains further: “If a Muslim apostatizes and meets the conditions of apostasy – i.e., he is of sound mind, an adult and does that of his own free will – then his blood may be shed with impunity. He is to be executed by the Muslim ruler or by his deputy – such as the qaadi or judge, and he is not to not be washed (after death, in preparation for burial), the funeral prayer is not to be offered for him and he is not to be buried with the Muslims.”

A Wikipedia article correctly notes, “Until the late 19th century, the vast majority of Islamic scholars in Madh’hab (Sunni) and Imamah (Shia) schools of jurisprudence held that for adult men, apostasy from Islam was a crime as well as a sin, an act of treason punishable with the death penalty.”

Today, Islamic countries like Iran and Sudan have the death penalty for “apostasy,” in harmony with the teachings of Muhammad and the Quran. So much for the ACT list misrepresenting Islam and sharia.

More broadly, Islamic legal scholar Joseph Schacht gives us a chilling overview of what sharia law dictates for non-Muslims: “The basis of the Islamic attitude towards unbelievers (i.e., non-Muslims) is the law of war; they must be either converted or subjugated or killed (excepting women, children, and slaves); the third alternative, in general, occurs only if the first two are refused. As an exception, the Arab pagans are given the choice only between conversion to Islam or death.” (Cited from his book An Introduction to Islamic Law, published by Oxford’s Clarendon Press.)

Who, then, is being faithful to the most authoritative Islamic sources? Who is representing them accurately? Judge for yourself. (For more from the author of “Another Failed Attempt to Defend Sharia Law and Islam” please click HERE)

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Why the Left Loves Islam — and an Even Stranger Contradiction

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For all the craziness in the world, there isn’t much that can match the sheer lunacy of liberals standing for both homosexuality and Islam at the same time. Islamic law calls for death for gays. How can we explain why the left loves Islam they way they do?

The best I can come up with is that gays and Muslims share one thing in common: they’re both minorities in the Western world, and the left is all for standing up for minorities.

It’s a reason. I’m not saying it’s a good one. It’s filled with contradictions. A closer look at it, though, reveals an even worse paradox within liberalism.

Liberals and Power

The reasoning begins with the left’s standard opposition to established power, and to whoever or whatever group is seen as holding that power.

As Jeffrey Hart wrote in 1972, and National Review just recently re-published, the liberal educated class

views history as a series of recurring moral melodramas in which villains or oppressors are continually defeated by their victims. One after another, kings, religious establishments, slave-owners, malefactors of great wealth and tyrants of various kinds, have been brought to earth by those whom they have wronged. It is a secularized version of “the last shall be first.”

This way of looking at the world, says Hart,

“tends habitually to structure reality in terms of what [Kenneth R.] Minogue calls “suffering situations.” As a matter of settled moral habit this sensibility instantly structures events in the political realm in terms of suffering, in terms of oppressor and victim.

The oppressor is bad, the victim is good. Thus a professor blogging at the American Mathematical Society can say that all “cis white men” should quit their jobs or take a demotion just for being members of that group.

No Human Motivation Is All Bad

This isn’t all bad. There was, after all, a day when people of color had no voice, not even a vote. There was a day (I’m old enough to recall it myself) when most people thought a young woman had just four decent career options to choose from: secretary, nurse, teacher or waitress.

There was a day, in other words, when liberals arguably stood for true freedom and justice for those who lacked power in society. But the left lost track of the fact that the problem was never power, but abuse of power. No social system can work without some structure, which means some people must have more power than others. It’s unavoidable. It’s even good: a society without order will quickly collapse.

Power Isn’t All Bad — Unless You Ask a Liberal

And power can be used for others’ good. Jesus explained it in just three sentences:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25-28)

Blind to this, though, liberals see power as one leg of a triad, linked inseparably with oppression, the second leg. The third leg is whichever group is guilty of holding that power. Wherever one leg of that triad exists, the other two are there along with it. Thus if there’s a dominant culture, it has power, and it’s bad. In fact it’s pretty much all bad. Other people don’t have power and they’re not bad. It’s just that easy.

If that sounds too simple to be true, consider the claim that all whites are racist and no non-whites can be.

And that’s how Islam, being a minority group, is granted such favor from the left. It’s a minority group, therefore it’s an oppressed group, and thus it’s not bad — even though it was founded in blood, conquest and rape, and continues to mandate death to gays.

The Greater Contradiction on the Left

But the left has committed itself to an even greater contradiction along the way. Over the past few decades, liberals have gained positions of enormous power in education, media, publishing and the arts. Seeing themselves as champions of the weak against the power of straight “cis” white males, they’ve blinded themselves to the fact that they’ve become the Western world’s dominant culture, holders of tremendous power.

And now the left has become a group united in throwing its weight around in order to stop (what they see as) a powerful group throwing its weight around. If they were truly consistent with their own values, they’d be casting themselves out of their own positions of power.

I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Consistency isn’t the left’s strong point — which is why liberals can support Islam.

I said at the beginning I might be able to suggest a reason they do that. I didn’t promise it would be a good one. (For more from the author of “Why the Left Loves Islam — and an Even Stranger Contradiction” please click HERE)

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Promoting Islam in Our Schools

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Memorizing the Islamic conversion prayer. Reciting the Five Pillars of Islam. Affirming that Christians are not as strong in their faith as Muslims. Several school districts across the nation are requiring their students to study Islam. And parents aren’t happy about it.

A 1963 Supreme Court decision allows for historical instruction about religions. But it seems that Islam is the only religion that is okay to promote. Some parents believe the Islamic teaching has gone too far. And now there’s a lawsuit.

The Court Opens the Door

The Supreme Court in Abington v. Schempp ruled that organized religious events violated the First Amendment. Schools could not require Bible reading or praying in class. But they could offer courses on the Bible or religion as a secular subject. The Court said that “education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization.”

Those who know Abington know it as the case that kicked Bible reading out of public education. But it left the door open for a historical study of the Christianity — or any other religion. Now the study of Islam is making its way into the school systems nationwide.

Islamic teaching in public schools has alarmed several parents. They believe it has crossed the line from a historical study to indoctrination. They believe that school districts are promoting Islam over other religions.

The Problem with Teaching Islam

A La Plata, California, High School parent brought a lawsuit against the school. John Kevin Wood and his wife said that his daughter’s school required her to complete assignments that endorsed Islam.

The school required her to affirm that “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian.” The school required all students to recite the Islamic conversion prayer. The prayer, called the Shahada, states that “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.” The school also required students to profess the Five Pillars of Islam.

Wood said his daughter’s school forced her to write statements that offended and denied her Christian beliefs. When she refused to complete the assignments, she received failing grades. Her teacher sent her to the school library away from her classmates. As a result, she felt ostracized because of her Christian beliefs.

Wood contacted the school and asked for alternative assignments. The school’s principal refused. Wood informed the principal that he would contact an attorney and the media. The school then reportedly responded by obtaining a restraining order against Wood. He could no longer pick up his daughter on school property or attend parent-teacher meetings.

La Plata High School did not teach Christianity the same way as Islam, according to Wood. Christianity was taught for one day—disparagingly. Islam was taught for two weeks—sympathetically. The lesson did not require students to learn any of Christianity’s tenets, faith statements or creeds. Nor were the students required to learn any of Judaism’s.

It Happens in Other Schools Too

It happens in other schools, too. Parents across the country have complained that their child’s school required them to:

Dress up as a Muslim, learn prayers and scriptures from the Quran;

Memorize the Five Pillars of Islam and listen to a Muslim prayer;

Memorize and recite the Shahada, or the conversion prayer; and

Write the Shahada in Arabic as part of a calligraphy lesson.

Parents of students at several schools complain that teachers do not teach non-Muslim religions. And that is the crux of the issue for many parents.

The Ten Commandments would never be a lesson requirement, said one New Jersey mom. “If Islam is taught, teach Christianity, too. [My son] couldn’t even put a Bible verse in his presentation that was student-initiated. So they’re not only teaching Islam, but they’re not allowing students to be free in expressing their [Christian] religious beliefs.”

Many school districts indoctrinate students in Islam, said Thomas More Law Center President Richard Thompson. “This is happening in public schools across the country. And [parents] must take action to stop it.”

The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause

The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from establishing a religion. The Supreme Court decided in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) that a three-part test would govern what constitutes “establishment of a religion.” Under the “Lemon test,” government can make laws or policy about religion if the reason for the law is secular, it neither promotes nor inhibits religion, and it doesn’t excessively entangle church and state.

Teaching about Islam in schools may not seem at first glance to be a problem. But the law is clear that the government may not adhere to, promote or inhibit a particular religion. This includes public school districts. Teaching Islam as a secular subject along with other religions equally is lawful. When the teaching of Islam promotes the religion above others, that is against the law. This is found in the Establishment Clause of our First Amendment.

The First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University stated these lessons can go too far. In particular, some “hands-on” activities border on unconstitutional endorsement of religion. They added, “Would any of these schools dream of acting out the Catholic Mass or inviting a Protestant minister to give a sermon in the gym?”

Even if school districts have good intentions, they can still cross the line, the Center noted. “However well-intentioned, including religions and cultures by violating the Constitution doesn’t help anyone. … All of us have an important stake in making sure that First Amendment principles are applied fairly and justly to each and every individual and group in the United States.” (For more from the author of “Promoting Islam in Our Schools” please click HERE)

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This 1962 Novel Predicted Western Collapse and Islam’s Takeover

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Following the news, I get more and more outraged. Not at God. Nor at Islam. Not even at my fellow man. The person I really resent is whatever satirical novelist is scripting our daily events from Hell. Or Purgatory, at best. No writer in Heaven would be cruel enough to inflict all this on us. Or would he? Perhaps to teach us a lesson. …

Love Among the Ruins

Is it you, Evelyn Waugh? You predicted our transgender madness, the euthanasia craze, and the toxic, infantilizing effects of the welfare state in Love Among the Ruins. Now are you pulling strings to make it all come true? Is this payback for that lousy movie adaptation of Brideshead Revisited? Enough, already.

That Hideous Strength

Or you, C.S. Lewis? Yes, you laid out to the letter what would become of our sexual culture in That Hideous Strength. You imagined a race that inhabited the Moon, who lost all interest in actual intercourse, and instead began to mate with technological images of each other. That’s how deep their disgust for God’s physical creation had become. Now married couples are shunning each other, while porn websites flourish. So yes, okay, you were right. But lay off already!

The Camp of the Saints

I would ask Jean Raspail, who wrote The Camp of the Saints, to accept that we’ve learned our lesson. Yes, you were dead-on right that self-loathing Europe would die not with a bang but a simper. The same glum hedonists who won’t have any children and warn that the slightest upsurge in Christian practice could lead to the Inquisition: they’re falling over themselves to show how “open” and “welcoming” they can be to Dark Ages-haunted theocrats, who have families of six and seven kids at taxpayer expense. I expect no mercy from you, Raspail. The French are an unforgiving race.

The Wanting Seed

But really I’m angriest at Anthony Burgess (most famous for A Clockwork Orange — far from his best book). If there is a single culprit, one writer who sketched out what would happen to us today, it’s you, Anthony. In The Wanting Seed you laid out a compelling theory of history: That the back and forth of ideologies and religions in the West acts like a see-saw. We always are either at or on the way to one extreme or the other. We oscillate between two theories of man.

Man Is Perfectible

One theory is that we can engineer man to be better, and make earthly life close to perfect. All we need to do is follow secular reason, impose more controls, and allow our enlightened elites to shepherd us forward to Eden. You dubbed this “Pelagianism,” after the English heretic who believed that God’s grace is optional and Jesus was just a really, really uplifting example. You linked it with socialism, Malthusianism, science-worship, and population control.

A society in its grips, you cannily predicted, will try to suppress the family, and hold up as heroes not just homosexuals, but actual eunuchs. Did you see Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner offering President Trump advice in some crystal ball you consulted?

Man Is Unfixable

The other extreme is that man’s animal instincts and inborn evil are fundamental to his being. They will always overwhelm attempts to perfect human society. War, hierarchy, cruelty, and other historic evils: baked into the cake. There is no sense in trying to wipe them out, or even limit them. Instead we should harness and use them, and try to make sure that our group holds the whip hand instead of other people’s. Unfairly, I think, you labeled this “Augustinianism.”

In the novel, you pictured the Malthusian/Eunuch state collapsing all right — as indeed it is, before our eyes. You imagined a resurgence of fundamentalism, militarism, bloodlust, and primitive tribal hatred. On all that you were dead right. But you pictured it happening among Westerners, even Anglicans! What your visions didn’t tell you, at least in this novel, is that its agents would be Islamic. That they would be newcomers welcomed in by the pallid, Malthusian optimists. To give you credit, some twenty years later you did see the Muslim takeover coming, and wrote about it in your novella 1985.

The Wanting Seed is the creepiest, most chillingly prescient piece of literature I’ve ever come across. Plug in “Islam” for “Augustinianism,” and the novel flat-out predicted the events that wouldn’t happen till 50 years later. About how many other books can we say the same?

Pope Benedict on Technology vs. Islam

For the last piece of the intellectual puzzle, see Pope Benedict XVI’s famous speech at Regensburg. He pointed out that the dark shadow cast by the West’s obsession with godless speculation and technology was Voluntarism: the grim belief that Will, not Reason, is the ultimate force in the universe. That is the theory of God that most of Islam clings to. It feeds the cult of violence which has always accompanied that religion, wherever it conquers. The individual terrorist channels the capricious wrath of God.

Burgess’ novel is grim, alarming, funny, and deeply pessimistic. It needs to be made into a miniseries for Netflix. At the very least, it should be required reading for every Western college student. It’s only fair to warn them what they’re in for.

And Anthony, we get the point. Please cut it out. (For more from the author of “This 1962 Novel Predicted Western Collapse and Islam’s Takeover” please click HERE)

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