RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21268/multiculturalism-human-rights

The moral laws of each tradition — that of the Torah and Sharia – when applied — result in different outcomes. Most of the punishments specified in the Torah are no longer practiced. According to Sharia, however, punishments such as amputations or stoning to death for adultery, “especially women” – which can include pre-marital sex or having been raped — as well as death for blasphemy or for choosing to leave the religion, are in force to this day.

“If they [Muslims] had gotten rid of the punishment [often death] for apostasy, Islam would not exist today,” the late Sunni religious leader, Yusuf al Qaradawi, speculated on Egyptian television.

Nonie Darwish responded: “The most striking thing about his statement, however, was that it was not an apology; it was a logical, proud justification for preserving the death penalty as a punishment for apostasy.”

Divinely sanctioned treatment by Muslims of non-Muslims still includes rape, slavery and death.

“So, when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command]. And if Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them [Himself], but [He ordered armed struggle] to test some of you by means of others. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah – never will He waste their deeds.” — Quran 47:4 (Sahih Translation).

As the visions of holy war and martyrdom are underpinned by Sharia, Islamic jihadists appear to believe that they are doctrinally permitted to sow terror, death and destruction among non-Muslims wherever they are.

One unsurprising reason for the “wilful blindness” of the US and other major Western powers towards religious extremists is that politicians look for votes.

[I]t is the tiny nation of Israel that has found itself largely alone in the desperate fight to preserve the West’s Judeo-Christian ideals. It would be to the West’s advantage if its other nations would join Israel in this noble task.

The laws of the Torah, which became known to the world as Moses’ Ten Commandments, founded the West’s moral and ethical precepts on which its laws and judicial concepts such as justice and mercy are based. This development is reflected in the United States’ founding documents, as well as England’s Magna Carta of 1215, among others.

The opening paragraph of America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence, for instance, refers to “the laws of nature” and “nature’s God.” From this assertion, the imperative of a sound ethical, moral and religious foundation for America’s values was established. According to America’s founding fathers, the laws of Moses – those moral codes sometimes collectively referred to as the “natural law” – underpin the value-based Western order, or civilization as distinguished from barbarism. In terms of religion, people in the West generally value the underlying importance of these Judeo-Christian values to their community.

https://quillette.com/2024/12/31/syria-and-the-changing-global-calculus-iran-russia-lebanon-israel/?ref=quillette-weekly-newsletter

Iran and Russia have suffered serious setbacks over the past year, but grave dangers remain.

It was not quite as quick as the Six Day War, nor is it likely to be as consequential as the “Ten Days that Shook the World,” when Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. But it took only twelve days from the moment an Islamist band struck out from their redoubt in Idlib until they overran the presidential palace in Damascus, chasing President Bashar al-Assad into exile. And if it proves to be less momentous than the birth of communism in 1917, it has still shaken the Middle East, with reverberations that are likely to be felt around the globe.

Initially, Russia and Iran had acted to defend the regime of President Assad. A reported 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards were stationed in Syria, boosted by a contingent of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters. As the rebels advanced, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi flew to Baghdad, seeking to add forces from the Shi’ite-dominated government there. But when he was turned down, Iran ordered the IRGC to hasten home from Syria, and Hezbollah dispatched some officers from Lebanon to bring its fighters home. Russia, whose critical military support of Assad had always consisted primarily of airpower, flew a few sorties against the rebels in the first days of their campaign. These claimed some lives, but they didn’t slow the rebel advance, and the airstrikes soon petered out.

Humiliated by the sudden fall of their client, Moscow and Tehran issued almost identical explanations. One Russian analyst said of Assad’s forces: “It’s not possible to help an army that’s running.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: “Voluntary forces from elsewhere can only fight alongside the army of that country. If the local army shows weakness, the [outsiders] cannot do anything.” But Russia and Iran had come to Syria in the first place because its army was hardly fighting.

That was during the previous decade. In 2011, the year of the “Arab Spring,” peaceful protests began in Syria as in many nearby countries. The regime sought to repress them violently, and soldiers began to defect. Some of the deserters reappeared as armed escorts defending the protest marches. As violence mounted, nonviolent protests gave way to full-scale civil war. A rebel force was formed largely from defectors, calling itself the Free Syrian Army. Sunni Arab states, Turkey, and Western countries provided the rebels with arms and training. On the other side, Russia, Iran, and Iran’s instrument, Hezbollah, rallied to support the regime. But Syrian soldiers continued to defect or perform desultorily and lost ground.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21248/iran-race-to-nuclear-bombs

In addition, now that Syria has been closed off as a supply route to rearm Hezbollah, Iran is reportedly considering weapons airlifts directly to Lebanon to resupply Hezbollah, so they both can continue their shared goal of eliminating Israel. The mullahs have got to go. So long as they remain in power, the chances for enduring peace in the region is zero.

Iran’s recent losses have left the regime clinging to the hope that nuclear weapons will enable it to secure its reign and dominate the Middle East, then the rest of the world, using Venezuela and the Caribbean to incapacitate the “Great Satan,” the United States.

Allowing Iran to succeed in these endeavors is not a great idea. Both the Iranian people and the entire region need to be freed from a future of tyranny. The future of a nuclear-armed Iran, run by mullahs on a mission, must be averted; the opportunity will not be there forever.

This year, thanks to the relentless — and often maliciously vilified — efforts of Israel standing alone, like David against Goliath, to save the West from an autocratic tyranny, the Iranian regime has at last been facing significant setbacks. Israel, unthanked, has weakened Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, diminished their influence and destabilized their plan to wipe Israel — and after that Western civilization — off the map.

Compounding this, Iran’s longstanding ally, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, collapsed, further isolating Iran’s regime. These events have collectively dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s strategic leverage and regional ambitions. Complacency, however, would be a grave mistake.

Regarding Jason Riley’s “All the News That’s Suddenly Fit to Print After the Election” (Upward Mobility, Dec. 18): It is our great hope that the news the New York Times now deems fit to print might include the continuing African jihad. Islamic terrorists in more than eight countries are doing to innocent Africans, mostly Christians, what Hamas did to Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Jihadists storm African villages, murder and torture villagers, rape and then kidnap young women and girls as sex slaves.

Reporting this would reveal that the assault on the Jewish state is only one dot in a wider jihadist pattern. Dare we hope that a concept that so centrally threatens progressive doctrine would appear in the Grey Lady?

Charles Jacobs and Simon Deng

African Jewish Alliance

https://www.jns.org/iran-weakest-since-revolution-ripe-for-regime-change/

Its “Axis of Resistance” cracking, most recently with the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran has never been as vulnerable since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, observers tell JNS.

With Iran’s leadership facing an emboldened Israeli military, the second coming of Donald Trump, internal fissures and a crisis of confidence among its people, experts say here lies a chance for regime change.

The extent of the damage to Iran’s drive for regional domination is evidenced by the remarks of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in a speech on Dec. 11 admonished supporters to “not become depressed, hopeless or heartbroken,” and on Dec. 22 denied that Iran even had proxies.

Tehran has lost Hamas and Hezbollah, its major ally, Syria, and its primary air defenses to Israeli airstrikes, making any Israeli attack potentially even more effective. Moreover, despite its wealth of energy resources, Iran is in the midst of an energy crisis.

“This is a golden opportunity,” Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst with the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told JNS on Tuesday, outlining the possibility of a one-two punch, with the U.S. imposing economic sanctions and Israel delivering military blows.

A U.S. prepared to inflict “Trump maximum pressure 2.0” and a newly confident Israel tackling Iran militarily “puts us in a good position,” he said.

Majid Rafizadeh, a Harvard-educated political scientist and expert on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, agrees. “Iran is currently at its weakest point since the 1979 Islamic Revolution,” he told JNS on Tuesday. It’s “vulnerable both internally and externally.”

Bashar Assad’s fall is “a catastrophic loss for Iran’s leadership,” Rafizadeh said, not only because Syria served as a conduit for Iran’s proxies, but because the Iranian people now perceive the regime as “increasingly vulnerable, which emboldens anti-government sentiment and protests.”

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/uncategorized/go-figure-islamophobic-doctor-kills-christians/

I have no doubt tfederal Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic is a genuinely decent bloke.   But I wonder if he secretly harbours a just a soupcon of satisfaction that the perpetrator of the Christmas market attack in Magdeburg, Germany, turned out to be, at least as trumpeted in the mainstream media, an alleged ex-Muslim ‘Islamophobe’.

After all Husic, and, more particularly the Albanese appointed Special Envoy against Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, have seemed to me desperate to find evidence of Islamophobia that would allow them to draw a moral equivalence with the undoubted anti-Semitism that has recently reached epidemic proportions in Australia. Here excerpts from a report in The Australian:

 The government’s special envoy to combat Islamophobia Aftab Malik says Islamophobia is a “hidden cancer” that has not received the “public outcry or coverage” it merits … Mr Malik said there had been a “historic rise in Islamophobic incidents that came post-October 7th”.

…The government appointed Mr Malik at the end of September, after it had also appointed its first special envoy to combat anti-Semitism. He said he had completed a five-week consultation tour of Australia.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/german-interior-minister-magdeburg-vehicular-attacker-was-obviously-islamophobic/

The man who plowed his car at top speed into the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany on Friday, killing and injuring numerous people, was a curious case. Taleb al-Abdulmohsenhad lived in Germany for years, all the while presenting himself as an ex-Muslim and cultivating connections with high-profile critics of Islam. This led numerous media outlets to present him as an “anti-Islam” terrorist, and German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who for years has ignored and denied any connection of Islam with terrorism and smeared critics of Islam and mass Muslim migration in Germany as “Nazis,” said (no doubt gleefully) that “we can only say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic.” 

There are numerous reasons why that is an absurd conclusion, as I outlined here. Another is a fact that Faeser didn’t bother either to point out, much less to explain: if Abdulmohsen carried out his attack because he was “Islamophobic,” why did he choose to target a Christmas market, which Muslims would have been unlikely to frequent in any significant numbers, instead of, say, a mosque or some other place where Muslims congregate? Wasn’t it counterproductive of this “Islamophobe” to go after the people he ostensibly wanted to defend from Islam and jihad, rather than those from whom the perpetrators of jihad violence emerge?

The question of why Faeser would take refuge in such a ridiculous conclusion, and why the media would trumpet the idea that Abdulmohsen was an embittered ex-Muslim who was possibly even “radicalized” by his “Islamophobic” friends and associates, is as interesting in itself as the question of who he really was and what he was trying to do when he committed mass murder. What is Faeser trying to do? The answer is as obvious as she thinks Abdulmohsen’s “Islamophobia” is.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21236/persecution-of-christians-november

“The [US State] department’s annual reports on human rights and human trafficking do not mention Coptic women in their sections on Egypt…. the secretary of state should raise the issue directly with Sisi at their next meeting.” — “Egypt’s Disappearing Women,” Washington Examiner, November 14, 2024.

“Under U.S. law, a portion of the $1.3 billion in military aid that Egypt receives each year is contingent on Cairo’s efforts to improve its record on human rights. When the next review of Cairo’s record begins, the safety of Coptic women should be front and center.” — “Egypt’s Disappearing Women,” Washington Examiner, November 14, 2024.

“Migrant youths” have been terrorizing a small Swiss town, Soyhières… “sowing terror” in the small village of 433 people…. the “same group of migrant youths has been seen in the night roaming with knives and carrying a small axe….” The police, apparently, are powerless: “due to their age, the youths cannot be prosecuted.” — rmix.news, November 27, 2024.

A court sentenced Tomaj Aryankia, an Iranian convert to Christianity, to 10 years’ imprisonment for “propaganda against the Islamic Republic through promoting Christianity.” Iranwire.com, November 18, 2024, Iran.

According to a November 14 report on Egypt, “Coptic Christians remain a target of persecution; hundreds of young women have been kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam, and coerced into marriage.” Pictured: Christian women pray during the Good Friday procession at the Church of St. George in the city of Mahalla in the north of Egypt, on April 14, 2017.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of November 2024.