RUTHFULLY YOURS

Fantasy Islam (Kafir Edition): A game in which an audience of non-Muslims wish with all their hearts that Islam was a “Religion of Peace,” and a Kafir (non-Muslim) strives to fulfill that wish by presenting a version of Islam that has little foundation in Islamic Doctrine.

In 2015 the Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota produced a 61 page booklet titled My Neighbor is Muslim, Exploring the Muslim Faith. The purpose of the booklet was to enable Lutherans to learn about Islam in order to better understand their “new neighbors” who were arriving as refugees. The booklet includes discussion questions after each chapter.

In my first article about this booklet, I looked at the interesting background of the imam who endorsed the booklet. The focus of this article is on how the booklet presents Islam.

Statements Supported by Vague Terms

There was only one footnote in this booklet; it was on p. 48 and simply pointed out other names for the jihadist group ISIS. Throughout the booklet assertions about Islam and Islamic Doctrine were made, with only the occasional use of vague terms such as “mainstream Islamic tradition,” “most Muslims,” or “many scholars” to support these assertions. The booklet does have a suggested reading list of ten books by modern authors, but there is no indication where among those ten books one could go for further reading about any particular statement made about Islam.

Islam’s Jesus – the Rest of the Story

The booklet has a chapter titled “What Does the Qur’an Say about Jesus?” This chapter pointed out similarities and differences “between the Qur’an’s presentation of Jesus and traditional Christian understandings of Jesus.” There were three differences the booklet found worth of considering: 1) Jesus Is Not the Son of God; 2) Jesus Is Not a Savior; and 3) Jesus Was Not Crucified. On p. 17 we find that these differences are not “insurmountable”:

While the differences between the Muslim and Christian Jesus are significant, they are not insurmountable hurdles for interfaith dialogue. The reverence and respect Muslims have for Jesus is considerable. If Christians can develop an appreciation for the prominent role that Jesus has in Islam, they may discover Jesus is more of an opportunity than an obstacle for developing interfaith relationships with their Muslim sisters and brothers.

But to really understand “the prominent role that Jesus has in Islam,” we must turn to the teachings of Muhammad (the hadiths). Here is what Muhammad said would happen when Jesus returned to earth:

He [Jesus] will descend…He will break the cross, kill the pig, and banish the Jizyah and will call the people to Islam. During his time, Allah will destroy all religions except Islam…[i]

Fantasy Islam (Kafir Edition): A game in which an audience of non-Muslims wish with all their hearts that Islam was a “Religion of Peace,” and a Kafir (non-Muslim) strives to fulfill that wish by presenting a version of Islam that has little foundation in Islamic Doctrine.

In 2015 the Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota produced a 61 page booklet titled My Neighbor is Muslim, Exploring the Muslim Faith. The purpose of the booklet was to enable Lutherans to learn about Islam in order to better understand their “new neighbors” who were arriving as refugees.

On p. 3 of the booklet we find an endorsement by, and a picture of, Imam Hassan Ali Mohamud, the founder, Imam, and Director of the Minnesota Da’wah Institute. A brief biography of Mohamud can be found at the Institute’s site. But there are a few additional items in Mohamud’s background that are of particular interest and make him a curious choice as the endorser of a book welcoming Muslims into non-Muslim communities.

Hassan Ali Mohamud praised Hamas

The United States government declared Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. On March 22, 2004, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (Yaasin), the founder of Hamas, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. On March 26, 2004, Mohamud wrote an article in Somalitalk – Minneapolis expressing his condolences for Yassin’s death. The article was titled Hambalyo Shahiid Sh. Ahmed Yaasin, (Congratulations to Sheikh Ahmed Yaasin, the Shahiid). Shahiid is the term used for those who achieve martyrdom by being killed in the cause of Allah.

Mohamud noted that Yassin had founded Hamas and referred to the Hamas mujahidin (mujaahidiinta), who were fighting for the liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and of Palestine (mujahidin are those fighting in the Cause of Allah). Mohamud hoped that Allah would consider Yassin a martyr, and he referred to Yassin as the Sheikh of the Mujahidin (Sheikhul

Mujaahidiin). Mohamud referred to the Israelis as terrorists.

I am a graduate of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York with a degree in Communications Arts and Sciences. I considered several possible careers when I graduated, including journalism. Journalists are supposed to be “fact finders.”

As things turned out, I was given the opportunity to become a federal agent and found that this job would satisfy many of my professional goals and also bears similarity to the job of a journalist in that special agents are investigators and fact finders.

The difference between a federal agent and a journalist is that the goal for the journalist, who gathers facts and evidence, is to write a story to inform, educate and sometimes drive change. An agent also gathers facts and evidence, but the goal is possibly an indictment and an arrest warrant that leads to the conviction of a criminal and/or dismantles a criminal organization.

National security and public safety may hang in the balance where efforts of federal agents are concerned. Where journalists are concerned, the results may be no less significant. A democracy requires a well-informed electorate. Indeed, the Founding Fathers understood the extreme importance of journalism, and, consequently, the only profession specifically protected by the Bill of Rights is that of the journalists as duly noted in the First Amendment.

John Adams eloquently and irrefutably noted, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) continues to face the challenge of trying to meet a growing number of increasingly complex demands with too little funding. For example, the department has seen record growth in veteran health care needs — in some large hospitals a 20 percent increase in patient needs — while facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall.

As an economist, I look at the most efficient way to use scarce resources. In my work on health care policy, I specifically look at health care in terms of costs, efficiencies and patient outcomes. To meet this challenge, the VA must find areas where it can increase efficiencies without lowering the quality of patient care. To put it another way, how can it better use the resources and tools that it already has? One area that stands out is how the VA is utilizing — or underutilizing, as the case may be — Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRN), such as certified nurse practitioners and nurse anesthetists.

APRNs are registered nurses educated at master’s or post-master’s levels and trained in specific practice areas. Although APRN education is standardized, their licensing standards are set state by state, and thus, their ability to practice to the full extent of their training varies by state. When a resource — human or otherwise — isn’t being used to its full value there is inefficiency in the system. We all know enough to recognize that inefficiencies increase costs, and in the case of the VA, the inefficiencies have also increased veterans’ wait times, among other things.

Over the last year, the VA has been conducting an exhaustive review of the rules and regulations that set forth the practice guidelines for all VA nurses. Included are proposed changes that would allow all APRNs to practice to the full extent of their education and training. Congress is also looking at this: Both H.R. 1247 and S. 2279 would permit APRNs to practice in VA facilities to the full extent of their education and training.

Reprinted from Jihad Watch.

In Argentina, in the time of the right-wing generals, many Argentinians were made to “disappear” – that is, they were killed for their political views, often in such grisly ways as being thrown out of airplanes. They became known, in Spanish, as “los desaparecidos” (“the disappeared ones”). But there is another set of “los desaparecidos” — people who all over the advanced Western world, that world which prides itself on its protection of free speech — have been threatened with death because of what they dared to say or write about Islam, and have been forced to go into permanent hiding, changing their identities, “disappearing themselves.” It’s a sign of the times that there is no general outrage, no marches in support of those threatened with death for speaking their mind about Islam, no political leaders in the United States reminding us in public of this campaign of Muslim intimidation, that has destroyed the lives of those who were brave enough to speak out about Islam who had to “disappear themselves.”

Do you remember Molly Norris? She was the Seattle cartoonist who suggested, as a response to the death threats against Lars Vilks and Kurt Westergaard, two cartoonists who had dared to depict Muhammad, that there be an “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” as a lighthearted sign of solidarity with the threatened cartoonists. For her pains, she received death threats from Muslims, and she was advised by the FBI to change her identity, as reported by Mark Fefer in the Seattle Weekly:

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program–except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.

So Molly Norris no longer exists. But whatever name she now goes by, she can’t work as a cartoonist, because a cartoonist’s style is as recognizable as her handwriting – and in any case, what previous work, signed “Molly Norris,” could she submit in applying for jobs? Relatives and friends must worry about meeting with her, or communicating by phone or email, for they have to assume that Muslims determined to find Molly Norris will know who her relatives and friends were before she changed her identity and could conceivably be watching them, hoping they will lead to Molly Norris. She is “in effect, being put into a witness-protection program – except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.”

Mark the passing of a lady — and another link with an era fading rapidly into memory and history’s unlearned lessons. The Gipper’s consort, she was at his side as he restored American pride, prosperity and, most of all, purpose. Once, the Free World had a leader prepared to stand on principle. Today, his former desk is occupied by a man who stands for nothing. Nancy Reagan, dead at 96.

Separating reality from ideology and political agendas is difficult, but essential, if we are to revitalize our economy and help the world’s poorest families take their rightful places among Earth’s prosperous people. Energy reality is certainly in our favor. But ideological forces are powerful and persistent.

Right now, 82% of all US energy and 87% of world energy comes from oil, natural gas and coal. Less than 3% is non-hydroelectric renewable energy – and globally half of that is traditional biomass: wood, grass and animal dung that cause millions of respiratory infections and deaths every year. Thankfully, the transition to fossil fuels and electricity continues apace, replacing biomass and lifting billions out of abject poverty, with wind and solar meeting basic needs in remote areas until electricity grids arrive.

In the USA, hydraulic fracturing has taken petroleum production to its highest level since 1972, and oil imports to their lowest level since 1995. America now exports crude oil, natural gas and refined products.

The fracking genie cannot be put back in the bottle. In fact, it is being adopted all over the world, opening new shale oil and gas fields, prolonging the life of conventional fields, leaving less energy in the ground, and giving the world another century or more of abundant, reliable, affordable petroleum. That’s plenty of time to develop new energy technologies that actually work without mandates and enormous subsidies.

So much for the “peak oil” scare. Indeed, in some ways, the world’s current problem is too much oil.

In the face of this global abundance and tepid American, European, Chinese and world economies, Saudi Arabia has increased its oil production, to maintain market share and try to drive more US oil companies out of business. Oil prices have plummeted from $136 per barrel in 2008 to less than $35 or even $30 today. Natural gas has gone from $13.50 per million Btu in 2009 to $3 or less today.

A study done by the Center for Immigration Studies has determined that there are 61 million immigrants in the U.S., with 15.7 million of them here illegally.

In 1970, there were 13.5 million immigrants in the country – 6.6% of the U.S. population. The 61 million immigrants in the U.S. today constitute an astonishing 18.9% of the population.

Washington Examiner:

“These numbers raise profound questions that are seldom even asked: What number of immigrants can be assimilated? What is the absorption capacity of our schools, health care system, infrastructure, and labor market? What is the effect on the environment and quality of life from significantly increasing the nation’s population density?” wrote Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of Research.

“With 45 million legal immigrants and their young children already here, does it make sense to continue admitting more than one million new legal permanent immigrants every year?” he added.

His report found that the normal pattern of immigration to the United States changed after 1970. At that time, there were 13.5 million immigrants, or about one in 15 U.S. residents.

But since 2000, the number of immigrants has increased 18.4 million, and now nearly one of every five U.S. residents are immigrants.

“The number of immigrants and their young children grew six times faster than the nation’s total population from 1970 to 2015 — 353 percent vs. 59 percent,” he added.

Camarota dug deep into Census Current Population Survey and other data to determine his estimate of 15.7 million illegals in the United States.

“Our best estimate is that in 2015 there were 5.1 million children with at least one illegal immigrant parent. Taken together, the best available evidence indicates that there were a total of 15.7 million illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children in the adjusted December 2015 CPS, accounting for 25.7 percent of the 61 million immigrants and their children in the country,” he said.

Republicans and Democrats introduced clashing bills last week related to the provision of taxpayer-funded legal services for Unaccompanied Alien Minors. Fortunately for Republicans we already have similar laws in place that deny such funding. Fortunately for Democrats, it’s riddled with loopholes.

Coinciding with last Tuesday’s Senate Homeland Security hearing on the continuing Unaccompanied Minors-surge, Chairman Ron Johnson and committee member Jeff Sessions introduced the Protection of Children Act (S. 2561), a bill that, among other things, promises to “ensure[] that taxpayer dollars do not pay for attorneys for these individuals, consistent with decades of precedent.” Meanwhile, House Democrats, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, introduced a bill on Friday that seeks to “protect children and other vulnerable groups in immigration proceedings by ensuring access to counsel, legal orientation programs, and case management services.” Lofgren’s bill tracks closely with a similar bill introduced by Sen. Harry Reid a fortnight ago.

Perhaps unknown to either side is that open-borders legal advocates representing Unaccompanied Alien Minors (UAMs) and illegal immigrants in general have been receiving taxpayer dollars for years although the practice is indeed a prohibited one. The Legal Services Corporation (LSC), a government entity created in 1974 that distributes federal grants to non-profit law firms, has been blocked since the eighties from providing funds for the use of representing illegal aliens. Congressional appropriations law as it relates to LSC is clear: “LSC funds cannot be used to engage in litigation and related activities with respect to a variety of matters including… representation of illegal aliens.” Due to gaping loopholes, however, taxpayer dollars continue to flow to these groups.