RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12944/islam-criticism

On the surface, for those who wanted to reform Islam, the only place to do so appeared to be the West. We all assumed that here in the West, it would be safe to question and criticize. Instead, so many institutions utilize a far more subtle method of silencing criticism.
The more you conceal or disregard constructive criticism of Islam, the harder you are making it for reforms to occur in the religion and the easier you are making it for Muslim radicals to prevail.
The reason I criticize the radical elements of my religion is not because I have hatred in my heart, but because I desire to protect those who have been abused and abandoned by their leaders.

When I received a letter from a Shiite religious preacher from the United Kingdom, it did not surprise me. I receive many similar letters from extremist Muslims all over the world, as well as Western liberals, socialists, and others. Each time, opening these letters, I prepare for criticism of my careful scrutiny of my religion. As expected, the letter began with a familiar suggestion: “Stop criticizing your own religion.”

The letter went on to support this instruction with promises of the media and Western progressives favoring me and becoming far more supportive of me, if I were to align my views with their preferred talking points:

“If you stop criticizing Islam, the West will certainly be more welcoming of you, and you will receive more offers and opportunities to further your career.”

What is it that I say that rankles the left so much? I refuse to be apologetic for radical Islam in the West. I refuse to gloss over the darkest consequences to which rampant extremism has led. I do not waffle beneath the idea of multiculturalism or tolerance; some things are not meant to be tolerated. The message of the apologists is clear: Get in line. Send out the same messages that others are: about all aspects of Islam being a loving and benevolent religion. Focus on this and sweep the crimes against humanity under the carpet.

I truly wish I could.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/islam_and_the_culling_footbridge.html

Islam operates by two powerful schemes: reward and punishment. It mesmerizes the believer by its encyclopedic descriptions of Allah’s lush paradise that awaits the worthy faithful. For the kefir and a not-so-true Muslim, the destination is Allah’s dreadful hell.

Muslim clergy tirelessly preach about these two locations with great success. Fear of hell, for some, even out-muscles the attractions of paradise and works wonders in keeping the flock servile to the parasitic clergy.

A powerful, well honed scheme involves pol-e As-Sirāt (the footbridge of the path). The kefirs, after they die, do not even get a chance to see if they can cross this footbridge; they go directly to Allah’s hell. Yet all Muslims approach the footbridge. The problem is in crossing it. The preachers describe at great length how difficult it is to cross this bridge over the gorge of hell to the other side, where paradise is located.

A great majority of blindly faithful Muslims are either illiterate or semi-literate. These people tend to take everything the charlatan preachers say as literal truth; many panic with fear and beg the preachers to tell them what they need do to cross that dreadful footbridge. They become ripe for the picking. The preachers, well trained con artists that they are, burden these simpletons with all kinds of well rehearsed fabricated demands to keep the flock in their pen. The preachers say, for instance, that they must do this and they must do that to earn the good graces of Allah. And when they die, Allah will commission two angels to hold them on both sides and safely transport them over the bridge. Wayward Muslims, on the other hand, are all on their own and most likely will fall into the dreadful hell with their very first steps.

When asked about the mercy of Allah, since he is billed as the most merciful, can they count on his mercy to send them the helpful angel if they somehow, themselves, fail to live completely up to the standards of the faith? The preachers have a pet response to that, too. Allah’s mercy has limits. You had best not to count on it too much. He has already shown you his abundance of mercy by sending you his beloved messenger Muhammad. Allah guides, and it is your duty to follow. And if you are confused or in doubt about things, just go to the preachers. They will clarify things for you and set you on the straight path. The crafty preachers claim that they have spent their lives learning the intricacies of the faith, and it is their humble task to serve the believers.

This past spring a friend and I spent almost a full day at the museum. It is a noble undertaking, meticulously respectful of all faiths with dioramas, recreations of biblical villages and thousands of displayed texts………rsk

http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/09/About-That-Museum-Washington

On a quiet street corner two blocks south of the National Mall and just above the busy highway that is Virginia Avenue is the latest addition to Washington’s cultural life, the Museum of the Bible. But unlike the Smithsonian Institution, sprawled out across the Mall, this new museum is a private venture, a labor of love by the Green family of Oklahoma City, they of Hobby Lobby fame. From the outside, the building looks like a forgotten branch of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Inside is a state of the art museum, spread over seven floors and hundreds of thousands of square feet. But the Museum of the Bible is more than that; it is a unique performance space that operates on multiple layers to present an American Protestant perspective on the Bible, God, and History.

Some readers are doubtless ready to stop right here. That would be a mistake, not only because they’d miss some witty insights, but because the museum itself is a serious place that deserves consideration and respect, if only because of the questions it poses for us about the Bible. Who has the right to interpret the Bible? The museum makes it clear that, following the Protestant tradition, all people do. But using what tools? That’s where things get complicated.

Entering the museum through its main door, flanked by tablet-like engravings, visitors are thrust into a marble clad interior space that feels like the corporate headquarters of a global pharmaceutical firm.

Giant touch screens and video displays hint at what is to come, as do the moveable pillars of the Philistine temple in the children’s room, ‘Courageous Pages,’ which junior Samsons can push apart. Another important hint is the Vatican Museum room filled with manuscripts on loan; the museum has been relentless and successful in developing partnerships with other institutions around the world. On the one hand the strategy vastly expands the scope of the displays. On the other, this is a way for an upstart museum to generate respectability and put itself on the map.

Respectability is an important issue, both for the museum and for its patrons. Any new cultural institution in Washington needs to establish itself, and in a city dedicated to the Seven Deadly Sins and then some, a Museum of the Bible is at a disadvantage. So too is the Green family, which founded its first arts and crafts store in 1972. The chain now employs 32,000 people in 800 stores, and is famous for stocking over 70,000 different crafting and home decor items. It is also famous for winning its case in the Supreme Court, in which it argued that as a closely held corporation with religious objections, it did not have to provide contraceptive coverage to employees as otherwise mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/when-vienna-stood-against-jihad-on-9-11-1683/

(This article is adapted from the author’s new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. All quotes are sourced therein.)

On September 11, 1683 — 335 years to the day before the Twin Towers of New York came crumbling down — another Western city, Vienna, stood between life and death, also against the jihad.

Two months earlier, the largest Islamic army ever to invade Europe — 200,000 combatants under Ottoman leadership — had come desiring “to fight generously for the Mahometan faith … for the extirpation of infidels, and the increase of Muslemen,” as quoted by a contemporary.

Having surrounded the walls of Vienna on July 14, Ottoman grand vizier Kara Mustafa followed protocol. In 628, his prophet Muhammad had sent an ultimatum to Emperor Heraclius: “Aslam taslam” — “submit [to Islam] and have peace.” Heraclius rejected the summons, jihad was declared against Christendom (as enshrined in Koran 9:29), and in a few decades, two-thirds of the then Christian world — including Spain, all of North Africa, Egypt, and Greater Syria — were conquered.

Over a thousand years later, the same ultimatum of submission to Islam or death had reached the heart of Europe. Although Starhemberg, the Viennese commander in charge, did not bother to respond to the summons, graffiti inside the city — including “Muhammad, you dog, go home!” — captured its mood.

On the next day, Mustafa unleashed all hell against the city’s walls. For two months, the holed-up and vastly outnumbered Viennese suffered plague, dysentery, starvation, and many casualties.

Then, sometime around September 11, as the Muslims were about to burst through, the desperate commander fired distress rockets into the night sky to give “notice to the Christian army” — that is, the relief force Vienna had beyond all hope been counting on — “of the extremity whereto the city was reduced.” Understanding exactly what these rockets signified, cries of “Allahu Akbar!” followed them, as the Ottomans implored their deity to “obliterate the infidels utterly from the face of the earth!”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/bring_back_shame.html

Now that the eulogy – I mean grotesque political self-aggrandizing McCain funeral service – is over, featuring some of the most egotistical, self-serving, and corrupt individuals, Candace Owens succinctly states that “[t]his new trend of using funerals and eulogies to deliver political messages is really quite disgusting. Everyone involved should be ashamed[.]”

Consider how America has lost an awareness of the value of shame. As defined, shame is a “painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”

James B. Twitchell in his 1997 book For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture asserts that “we are living in shameless times,” as compared to when he was growing up in the 1950s, when “public drunkenness, filing for bankruptcy … drug addiction, hitting a woman, looting stores, using vulgar language in public, being on the public dole [and] getting a divorce” were considered shameful, and “most of these reflected concerns about limiting individual behavior within a group.”

What once was considered a private matter now results in haphazard public defecations. San Francisco currently boasts a “poop map” as the city reports a 140% rise in feces. Taboos that used to entail modesty have disappeared.

Instead, according to Twitchell, shame has been “redirected to trivial concerns,” and Americans have lost their “receptiveness to shame.” Promoting unwed teenage mothers and not hectoring their “reprobate companions” barely raise eyebrows. Twitchell asks, “Why do we not excoriate the unwed teenage mother?” Instead, we are privy to a television show titled Teen Mom.

When Hollywood folk have children out of wedlock, they are praised, but “all hell would break loose” if someone were caught wearing mink or baby seal. Our priorities have been turned inside-out.

https://freedomoutpost.com/free-speech-
The sooner the rest of us stop trying to find common ground with the Left and start opposing them as if our lives depended on it, the better our chances of preserving an America worth living in. By Tom McCaffrey

Like too many of his colleagues on the right, including President Trump it appears, the usually estimable Daniel Greenfield of FrontPageMag.com has gone off the rails over the question of the censoring of rightwing voices on social media platforms like FaceBook, Google, and Twitter by their left-leaning owners.

One of Mr. Greenfield’s ideas is for the government to apply “public accommodation” law to such media, which would mean that FaceBook, et al. would be legally required to take all comers in the same way that the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires restaurants, hotels, and other so-called public accommodations to serve all comers regardless of race, religion, etc.

But the owner of a private business should no more be deprived of the right to decide whom to do business with than should a private homeowner be deprived of the right to decide whom to entertain in his home. When Americans conceded the principle that private property devoted to commercial use is thereby rendered “public,” they condemned America to a long, slow slide into socialism, which is precisely what we have experienced since 1964.

Mr. Greenfield appears to consider property rights to be dispensable. But without private property, free speech could not exist. Remember when the federal government regulated the “public” radio waves via the “Fairness Doctrine”? It was only when Reagan abolished the doctrine and restored the rights of station owners to decide for themselves whom to serve that free political discourse on the radio exploded into being in the form of Rush Limbaugh and his progeny.

More on Rosh Hashanah and other Jewish holidays: http://bit.ly/137Er6J

1. Rosh Hashanah (“the beginning of the year” in Hebrew), the Jewish New Year (5,779), is celebrated on the first day of the Jewish month of Tishrei (תשרי). Tishrei was a Babylonian term for launching the agricultural (creation) calendar, starting with the planting of seeds and the first rain.

2. Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the sixth day of Creation, when the first human-being (Adam) was created, highlighting the centrality of the soil – a metaphor for humility – in human life. Thus, the Hebrew word for a human-being is Adam (אדמ), which becomes the Hebrew spelling of “soil” (אדמה) when the Hebrew letter ה (an abbreviation of God, the Creator) is added.

In addition, the Hebrew word Adam (אדמ) contains the Hebrew word for blood (דמ), the liquid of life, and is the acronym of Biblical Abraham (אברהם), David (דוד) and Moses (משה), the three role models of humility.

3. The Hebrew word “Rosh” means “beginning,” “first,” “head,” “chief.” The Hebrew letters of Rosh (ראש) constitute the root of the Hebrew word for Genesis, pronounced “Be’re’sheet” (בראשית), which is the first/lead word in the Bible (Book of Genesis). Rosh Hashanah is celebrated at the beginning of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which means beginning/Genesis in ancient Acadian. The Hebrew letters of Tishrei (תשרי) are also included in the spelling of Genesis (בראשית). The Hebrew spelling of Genesis (בראשית) consists of the first two letters in the Hebrew alphabet (אב), the middle letter (י) and the last three letters (רשת) – representing the complete/wholesome undertaking of the Creation. Just like the Creation, so should the New Year (and human actions) launch a thoughtful, long-term – not a hasty – wholesome process.

On Sunday night, September 9th at sunset the Jewish New Year begins….5,779 years of Jewish history which is really a miracle. Great and mighty empires have disappeared and despite centuries of pogroms, oppression, dislocation, and genocide we are still here.

Including the expulsion from England in 1290, actually 109 nations have expelled the Jews since AD250. See the list at https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/expelled.htm

If the highest estimates are assumed there are 15 million Jews in the world and their outsize contributions to science, technology, medicine, the arts and charitable institutions are astonishing.

Jewish families blessed by courage and determination still live in Hebron, home of the Patriarchs whence the unbroken chain of faith that binds us to this day was forged.

I reject dwelling on woe and mourning. I prefer the stanza from “I Will Survive “written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris in 1978 and premiered by the great Gloria Gaynor and added to the Library of Congress national registry of recording in 2016. In an interesting choice, the other recording added was a performance of Mahler’s ninth symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded just two months before Germany invaded Austria in 1938, when all of the Jewish musicians were fired and subsequently many were killed.

Edited:

“Weren’t you the ones who tried, to hurt us with goodbye.
You’d think we’d crumble, you’d think we’d lay down and die

Oh no not us. We will survive! We will survive!”

And on that note, as we always abbreviated in the Bronx…….” A happy and a healthy to you all.” שנה טובה ומתוקה‎

RSK