RUTHFULLY YOURS

At a time when Muslims all around the world are terrorizing and slaughtering non-Muslims in the name of Islam, Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, continues trying to distance Islam from violence.

Last Sunday a journalist asked him about the recent and “barbarous assassination of Fr. Jacques Hamel” in France, and how the priest was clearly “killed in the name of Islam.” To this Francis

replied that he doesn’t like speaking about Islamic violence because there is plenty of Christian violence as well… [He] said that every day when he browses the newspapers, he sees violence in Italy perpetrated by Christians: “this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law… and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence. And no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there’s everything.”

Is the Pope really that dense? Is he incapable of distinguishing between violence committed in the name of a religion, and violence committed in contradiction of a religion?

Yes, Catholics—and people of all religions, sects, creeds—commit violence. That is because humans are prone to violence (or, to use Christian language that some—maybe not Francis—might understand, humans are fallen creatures). And yes, the Catholics that Francis’ cites do not commit crimes—murdering girlfriends and mother-in-law—because of any teaching contained in Christianity or Catholicism; on the contrary, Christian teachings of mercy and forgiveness are meant to counter such impulses.

On the other hand, the violence that Muslims are committing around the world—the beheadings, the sex slavery, the church burnings—are indeed contained in and a product of Islam, and they have been from day one.

Francis continued offering half-truths in the interview. After he acknowledged that there are “violent persons of this religion [Islam],” he immediately added that “in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them.”

This is another sloppy generalization. Sure, “in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists,” but that which is “fundamental” to them widely differs. One may say that Muslim and Christian fundamentalists adhere to a literalist/strict reading of their scriptures. While that statement may be true, left unsaid by those who think the issue is settled right there is: what do the Bible and Koran actually teach?

Pope Francis spoke to reporters on board the papal plane again — and that never leads to anything good. His latest comments about Islamic terrorism were doubleplusungood.

Via NBC News:

Pope Francis said he doesn’t like singling out violence carried out by Muslims because people of all religions are guilty of deadly crimes.

He told reporters the situation was like “a mixed fruit salad” and that there were “violent people in all religions.”

“I do not like to talk about Islamic violence because every day when I skim the papers … I read about violence in Italy: this one who killed the girlfriend, another killed the mother-in-law … and they are all baptized Catholics,” he said aboard a Rome-bound flight from Poland on Sunday.

“If I talk about Islamic violence, then I also have to talk of Catholic violence. Not all Muslims are violent, just like not all Catholics are violent,” the pontiff added. “It’s like a mixed fruit salad. There is a bit of everything. There are violent people in all religions.”

Yes, the pope just compared domestic violence to Islamic terror — as if a Catholic dirtbag murdering his girlfriend is the same thing as an Islamic jihadist in a truck mowing down a hundred people watching fireworks in Nice. Or Islamic State jihadists beheading 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. Or Kenyan jihadists killing 68 people at a shopping mall. Or an Islamic terrorist gunning down dozens of people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino or a gay nightclub in Orlando. I can go on and on, obviously, because Islamic terror attacks around the world happen on a daily basis. But you get the idea — murderous Catholic boyfriends may be bad, but the damage they do is limited to one or two people and their impact on society as a whole is minimal. Islamic jihad is a threat to us all.

But stop the presses — Pope Francis had another pearl of papal wisdom for us with the stunning revelation that there are violent people in all religions. Has anyone ever suggested otherwise? The problem is there is currently only one religion where a significant number of the faithful are finding justification for murder and mayhem against unbelievers in their sacred texts. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi understands this and has called for a religious reformation of the Muslim faith. “We need to revolutionize our religion,” he proclaimed on News Year’s Day of 2015 to an audience of Muslim clerics and scholars.

We shouldn’t be surprised when an intractable ideologue like Barack Obama — the worst president in American history — ignores much-needed calls for the reform of Islam. And we’ve come to expect him to make morally and intellectually vacuous comparisons. But it is beyond disturbing to hear it coming from a pope.

The media and effete powers-that-be have been twisting themselves into Halal pretzels Islamsplainin’, rationalizing how a given Muslim terrorist attack isn’t really “Islamic” or isn’t significant. These contortions can become quite ridiculous, such as suggesting that recent Allahu Akbar-shouting Munich shooter Ali Sonboly might somehow have had “right-wing” motives because, among his violent passions, was an interest in Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

A more common (un)intellectual contortion is the minimizing tactic of claiming, as is politically correct authorities’ wont, that a given jihadist attacker “has no ties to IS” (the Islamic State), as if there’s nothing to see here if a man doesn’t provide notarized evidence of allegiance to the boogeyman du jour. Yet this is much as if we’d claimed during the Cold War that a Marxist terrorist attack wasn’t really a Marxist™ terrorist attack because we couldn’t find a connection to the Soviet Union. The issue and problem wasn’t primarily the Soviet Union but communism (Marxism birthed the USSR, not the other way around), an evil ideology that wreaks havoc wherever it takes hold. Likewise, the IS didn’t birth Islam; Islam birthed the IS.

Nonetheless, moderns will often use the misdirection of focusing inordinately on national or group associations when discussing terrorism. This is a dodge, one designed to help us avoid uncomfortable truths, and which relegates us to playing an eternal game of whack-a-mole. The USSR is gone but communism is still a problem (witness North Korea and Cuba), and insofar as it’s less of a threat, it’s largely because its ideas have been discredited. Bad ideas’ standard bearers will change. But as long as the bad ideas remain tolerated and credible, they’ll always win converts.

In fact, the reality that today’s terrorists are diverse makes the point. They may be Iranian, Afghani, American, Albanian, German or from any nation whatsoever; they may be part of Hamas, IS, al Qaeda, the U.S. Army (Maj. Hassan), some other organization or no organization; they may be of any race or ethnicity, be rich or poor, and male or (occasionally) female. They only have one truly common thread: being Muslim.

The point is that, ultimately, this is a battle not of nations or organizations but of ideas, and ideas are powerful. Beliefs matter. Every action begins with a thought — or, at least, with a reflex response reflecting a worldview that has shaped one’s thoughts and emotions.

Jihadis, trained and armed by Pakistan, are purging Kashmir of its native Hindu and Sikh population, and waging a terrorist campaign to carve out a separate Islamic country in that part of India.

What New York Times did not say is that these ‘boys with guns’ are members of Hizbul Mujahideen, a group designated as terrorist organisation by both the European Union and the United States.

After being at the forefront of gun control campaign in U.S. for decades, the New York Times finally supports ‘open carry’ – but only for terrorists waging Jihad against “infidels”.

India is not ‘occupying’ Kashmir, which is already part of India. India is waging a war against Islamic terrorism which has claimed the lives of more than 4,800 Indian civilians and more than 2400 Indian security personnel.

The mainstream media, quick to blame India for the ongoing unrest, will not tell its readers how the province of Kashmir became the Islamist hellhole that it is today.

The minarets of the mosques, reserved in times of peace for prayer calls, were proclaiming armed jihad against Hindus in towns and cities across the province. Kashmiri Hindus were given three option; either to convert to Islam, leave their ancestral homes, or face certain death.

“We order you to leave Kashmir immediately, otherwise your children will be harmed — we are not scaring you but this land is only for Muslims, and is the land of Allah. Sikhs and Hindus cannot stay here. If you do not obey, we will start with your children”. – Notice to Hindu Sikhs in Kashmir

In an ultimate act of humiliation, Hindu men were told to move out of Kashmir without taking their property or women.

Arming the police with BB guns — regardless to how dangerous the BBC or the New York Times editorial staff might consider them — is not going to put an end the aspiration of turning Kashmir into another ‘Islamic State’.

Indian security forces are again waging pitched battles with violent Islamists on the streets of the Muslim-majority province of Kashmir. Mobs began congregating in towns on July 9, after the customary Friday prayers to protest the killing the previous day by Indian security forces of a prominent Islamic terrorist, Burhan Wani. The protestors waved black ISIS flags and pelted stones at riot police. The riots have so far claimed 49 people, including 2 policeman.

UPDATE AUGUST 1

Why does it matter to get things straight, even seemingly small details? Why does it matter to say, again, that Abdelmalik Petitjean was not a flagged security risk when he got hired, through an interim employment agency, as a baggage handler at the Chambery airport? It was not a full-time job. He worked weekends. He was finishing his studies. It matters because he is not an example of flagrant negligence in the hiring of airport personnel; he’s an example of a nearly undetectable risk that was to all intents and purposes smoothly integrated into French society. He’s one more element of proof against the sociological argument about discrimination breeding resentment and sharpening the slaughterer’s knife. So, if you don’t think the free world will live or die on the toss of a coin, then you might agree that we are in the early stages of a process. And it matters how we present the facts. Democracies will learn, improve, and defend themselves. There is no reason for despair.

Abdelmalik Petitjean wasn’t an ex nihilo jihadist with nothing but the Net for inspiration His cousin, identified as 30 year-old Farid K., has been charged and imprisoned; preliminary investigations have concluded that he knew a murderous attack was imminent. Jean-Philippe J. a twenty year-old who had tried to reach the caliphate with Petitjean in June has also been charged and jailed.

Charitable Christianity

We didn’t get news this weekend, we got preached at: We will not answer hatred with hatred and violence with violence. They wish to divide us, we will stick closer together than ever. We always loved, respected, admired and hung out with our fellow men of the cloth. Now we are inseparable. The media surfed on giant waves of peace & love. We drowned in it, suffocated, strangled, choked and nothing could stop it. We were like geese stuffed to make foie gras. You would think the entire French population that would normally be reeling from an unending series of attacks and atrocities (I don’t have time or space to list the “minor” incidents that have occurred over the past month) has only one wish in its collective mind: Christian-Muslim communion. Correspondents stood in front of little churches, big mosques, majestic cathedrals, swooning over fraternity in the pulpit, in the congregation, on the doorsteps, and in the churchyards. Muslim and Christian spokesmen stood shoulder to shoulder, outdoing each other in interfaith devotion, overflowing with kindness in their hearts and in their places of worship. Some Catholic clergy went as far as merciful forgiveness for the executioners.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Turtle dove reporters cooed over the presence of “many” Muslims in the cathedral but the camera didn’t find the right angle to prove the point. A bit of truth slipped into an article in the Journal du Dimanche: the Christians at Ste. Thérèse Church in St. Etienne du Vouvray didn’t quite make it into the neighboring Yahya mosque for Friday prayers as planned. They were put off by “all those women in long black robes and the men with long beards.” The service was led by Abdellatif Hmito, the imam from Oissel, known for his eloquence in French, in the absence of the mosque’s regularly officiating imam, who does not speak French at all.

Adel Kermiche was the black sheep of a respectable family. His older sister is a surgeon, all his siblings have degrees and successful careers. His mother is a teacher. There has been no mention of a father. Though the family does not worship at the mosque, the mother sought help for her radicalized son. Mosque president, Mohammed Karabila, regrets that he had to curtail his deradicalization efforts because of a lack of subsidies.

Foreshadowing what will happen here more and more often.

David Fisher’s magnificent book, A Summer Bright and Terrible, begins with the sentence, “In England the summer of 1940 was the sunniest, driest, most glorious summer in living memory.” But in that summer — the summer of the Battle of Britain — the only things that stood between the death and survival of European civilization were the few fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force and the personal courage of Winston Churchill.

Today there is no Churchill and the battle for civilization can’t be won in the skies over England. The new enemy of European civilization, Islamism and the Islamic terrorism it propels, are as great a threat as that posed 76 years ago by Nazism.

This is Europe’s summer of terror. There have been seven terrorist attacks since June. In France alone, there have been fourteen Islamic terrorist attacks in the past two years killing at least two hundred and forty people. The last one, so far, was the 26 July attack in which two ISIS terrorists killed an 85-year-old priest near Rouen, France.

In Germany, the attacks are increasing and the Germans are hell-bent on ignoring the attackers’ obvious motivations. In late July when a gunman killed nine near a shopping mall in Munich, shouting the Muslim battle cry “Allahu Akbar,” German authorities claimed not to know the motivation of the attacker, a German-Iranian.

Let’s now turn to the deliberate manipulation or obfuscation or suppression of official reporting on crimes committed by “migrants” (aka Muslims) in the U.S. and in Europe,such as the recent rape of a 5-year-old girl in Idaho by “underage” Muslim boys in Idaho.

Davis Odell, a community resident who has been in close contact with the victim’s family said the boys dragged the unnamed girl into a utility room in the Fawnbrook Apartments, a low-income, subsidized housing complex in Twin Falls, and assaulted her in an attack that ended when a neighbor happened upon the scene and called police….

Twin Falls Police Chief Craig Kingsbury told reporters the suspects are Iraqi and Sudanese. [County Prosecutor Grant] Loebs said he does not know how long they have been living in the United States.

Twin Falls activists say the case and the lack of information from authorities demonstrates the problem with state and federal programs to resettle refugees in cities and towns.

The local police hemmed and hawed about the character of the crime and dragged their feet on the exact identity of the perpetrators. Residents brow-beat the chief of police, but it was clear that the police were under higher authority pressure to not be forthcoming with the truth lest it reflect badly on “migrants” resettled at the behest of the Obama administration. Shades of the Rotherham sex slave and prostitution ring in Britain, a ring that was run for years with impunity by Muslims.IPT reported that “Between 1997 and 2013, well before the recent mass migration to Europe began, an estimated 1,400 children had been sexually abused in Rotherham, England, predominantly by gangs of British-Pakistani men.”

At a City Council meeting Monday night, residents demanded answers from law enforcement regarding the crime and the resettlement program, with some calling for the removal of all immigrants in the city.

On Sunday, the U.K.’s Daily Mirror alerted its readers to the latest edition of Dabiq, the multilingual digital magazine uploaded periodically by the Islamic State terrorist organization. The current issue, the publication’s 15th since its inception in 2014, is titled “Break the Cross,” an apt description of the group’s systematic subjugation and slaughter of Christians.

One of the articles in the latest edition — “Why we hate you and want to fight you” — lists six reasons for the destruction of the West:

1. “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah — whether you realize it or not — by making partners for him in worship; you blaspheme against him, claiming that he has a son; you fabricate lies against his prophets and messengers; and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices.”

2. “We hate you because your secular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited while banning many of the things he has permitted, a matter that doesn’t concern you because you separate between religion and state, thereby granting supreme authority to your whims and desires via the legislators you vote into power.”

3. “In the case of the atheist fringe, we hate you and wage war against you because you disbelieve in the existence of your lord and creator.”

4. “We hate you for your crimes against Islam and wage war against you to punish you for your transgressions against our religion.”

5. “We hate you for your crimes against the Muslims; your drones and fighter jets bomb, kill and maim our people around the world; and your puppets in the usurped lands of the Muslims oppress, torture and wage war against anyone who calls to the truth.”

6. “We hate you for invading our lands and fight you to repel you and drive you out. As long as there is an inch of territory left for us to reclaim, jihad will continue to be a personal obligation on every single Muslim.”

Posted on Lenin and Sharia-By Cliff Kincaid-On July 19, 2012:

These are only excerpts from this eye-opening presentation because of its overall length
Konstantin Preobrazhensky, former KGB intelligence officer and author of several books on Russia. His white paper, Communists and Muslims: The Hidden Hand of the KGB.

“Introduction by

I am pleased to present Konstantin Preobrazhensky’s insightful treatment of the radical Muslim problem, in connection with how the communists, in particular the Russians, are using or exploiting them. Much of this influence stems from the operations of the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB, which continues under a different name. A former KGB officer, Preobrazhensky fled to the U.S. in 2003 and received political asylum in March 2006. His bio tells the full story of his efforts to expose the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB, and its successor.

In this report, he discusses a peculiar phenomenon – those with Muslim names and communist hearts. Or, as Frank Gaffney has put it, Sharia is “Communism with a God.” This seemingly paradoxical problem is real and has been exported by the Soviet Union as part of the communist world revolution.

I first came into contact with Preobrazhensky when I was writing about the “Arab Spring.” As the leader of Tunisia was forced into exile, I noticed that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist–Leninist organization founded in 1967, issued a statement declaring, “These popular upsurges are shaking the ground in the Arab world and posing a new and powerful challenge to U.S. imperialism, Zionism, and the Arab regimes which have enabled them by trampling upon their own people for decades.” It said that “the Arab masses were capable of making great and revolutionary change, as we are witnessing today, and which has already achieved great results in Tunisia.”

The PFLP is part of the PLO and has a long-time association with the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. The group earned a reputation for spectacular international attacks, including airline hijackings, which killed at least 20 U.S. citizens. The statement by the PFLP about turmoil in the Middle East was a reminder that a terrorist group associated with the Soviet Union is still in existence, active, and prepared to take advantage of world unrest and troubles.

Because of our work in exposing the Al-Jazeera television network, we found it interesting that the Muslim Brotherhood, which effectively controls the network and brags about it, gave rise to terrorist organizations such as Hamas, officially designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department. However, the Muslim Brotherhood is not an officially designated FTO. This has enabled the Obama Administration to literally embrace the organization, which has taken power in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood wants Egypt to unilaterally open the border with Gaza, a move that would facilitate arms shipments to Hamas and increase military pressure on Israel. A Congressional Research Service report noted, “Egypt sealed the border out of concern for the possibly destabilizing effects of Hamas’s relations with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which the government of President Mubarak considers a threat.” President Obama encouraged the overthrow of Mubarak, a long-time American ally.

President, London Center for Policy Research

In a commonly told Israeli joke or aphorism, two taxi drivers come to an impasse on a single road. The first driver says move aside so I can pass; the second driver says the same. Emotions explode. After hurling insults, the first driver leaves his cab with fists flailing. He sees a Jew seated in the back of his rival’s taxi and proceeds to beat him up. The second driver upset by what he observed, gets out of his cab and heads for his rival’s taxi. Quite coincidentally, there is also a Jewish passenger in the back seat and he too is beaten up. What is the moral of this story?

Assume for a moment, the drivers are Sunni and Shia. In the story they are rivals, but most notably they are united in their hatred of Jews. The Middle East assumption that religious differences will lead to fragmentation and a stalemate between Sunni and Shia is a fiction since both sides have a common enemy and a common goal: Removing the U.S. and Israel from the Middle East.

Recently the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned members of al Qaeda who are based in Iran. What journalist Armin Rosen pointed out is that the Shia dominated regime doesn’t care about sectarian differences with Sunnis as long as al Qaeda bogs down the U.S. on every battle front in the Middle East.

Iran’s ties with al Qaeda have been well known and documented since 2011. According to the 9/11 Commission report, “Eight of the fourteen Saudi ‘muscle’ operatives (in the attacks) traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.” After the 9/11 attacks, several members of bin Laden’s family sought sanctuary in Iran.

For Iran, terrorism comes first. It has been known for a considerable period that Iran is the primary sponsor of Hezbollah (a Shia terrorist group) and has assisted Hamas (a Sunni terrorist organization). The common principle they share is inflicting violence on and in Israel.