I didn't realize that John Kerry had the authority to excommunicate people from Islam.

Maybe they are and maybe they aren't, but that isn't the call of the Secretary of State.

//At a conference of coalition members tasked with fighting ISIS in Rome yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry said members of the terrorist organization are not Muslims but apostates of Islam.

“Daesh [ISIS] is in fact nothing more than a mixture of killers, of kidnappers, of criminals, of thugs, of adventurers, of smugglers and thieves,” Kerry said. “And they are also above all apostates, people who have hijacked a great religion and lie about its real meaning and lie about its purpose and deceive people in order to fight for their purposes.”//

Because Muslims are such delicate flowers, or something.

Brendan O'Neill observes:

//The parallel moral universe inhabited by Europe’s chattering classes and celebs was starkly exposed last week. In Paris, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, an extremist stormed a kosher store, terrorised its patrons, and murdered four of them. Their crime? Jewishness.

And yet as this act of anti-Semitic barbarism was taking place, what were the opinion-forming set and the right-on glitterati worrying their well-groomed heads about? Islamophobia. The possibility of post-Charlie Hebdo violence against Muslims. They fretted over violence that hadn’t occurred, rather than violence unfolding before the world’s eyes in a store frequented by Jews.

So we had the bizarre spectacle of British newspapers thundering about a possible outburst of anti-Muslim madness at precisely the moment an outburst of anti-Semitic madness was taking place. Beware “Islamophobes seizing [the Charlie Hebdo] atrocity to advance their hatred”, hollered the Guardian as an anti-Semite was seizing a kosher shop to advance the world’s oldest hatred.

The day after the assault on the kosher store, three of the top 10 most-read articles on the Guardian’s website were dire warnings about potential Islamophobic violence post-Charlie Hebdo. Some folk seemed more concerned about possible attacks on Muslims than they were about actual attacks on Jews.//

World War III - African Theater of Operations

Boko Harem razes town of 10,000 in Nigeria.

Acquire a reputation for violence and lack of self-control...

...dictate terms to society.

//Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. People who are willing to use violence to suppress speech will learn that such behavior is effective, at least when the police don’t come down particularly hard on the thuggery. Indeed, they may find at times that even merely threatening violence might suffice to suppress speech they dislike. And of course this message will be easily learned by the potentially violent of all religious and political stripes (again, so long as they suspect that the police won’t make the thuggery too costly).

There are already plenty of rewards for this sort of violence and threatened violence. First, it can feel emotionally satisfying on its own to lash out against speakers who offend you. Second, many speakers will give in to the private violence quite apart from police orders to leave; that too can be emotionally satisfying to those who see that their power has gotten results. Third, the violent will see benefits to their political and religious cause, as the message gets out that their opponents are in danger (and maybe even those who host their opponents, say in private lecture halls or rented government buildings).

But the “heckler’s veto” gives the violent hecklers extra bonuses. They get to see the speakers suppressed by the government itself. They get to feel the extra pleasure and validation of feeling that the government has stepped in on other side. And they get to block speech even by those who don’t fear physical attack, but who understandably don’t want to be arrested and prosecuted.

The society we live in stems from the incentives we create. Incentives for violent speech suppression mean more violent speech suppression. That, I think, will be the consequence of the Sixth Circuit panel decision, if it is not reversed by the en banc Sixth Circuit or by the Supreme Court.//

This is not the First Amendment I was taught in law school.

Dhimmi Watch.

Dhimmis may not offend the Master Faith.

NORWEGIAN TV ANCHORWOMAN DISCHARGED FOR WEARING A CROSS

600 killed and scores of churces burned?  Well, they're only Christians...

...it's not like it involves something important like sexual freedom.

//EGYPT’S EMBATTLED COPTIC CHURCH LASHES OUT AT WESTERN MEDIA FOR GIVING ‘POLITICAL COVER’ TO ‘TERRORIST AND BLOODY GROUPS’

Egypt’s Orthodox Coptic Church lashed out at Western media coverage of the recent violence in its country, saying “read objectively the facts of events and [don't] give international and political cover to these terrorist and bloody groups.”

The church also announced its support for state military and police against the “black terrorism” of the Muslim Brotherhood-led forces supporting ousted former President President Mohammad Morsi, according to statement Friday and reported by Al Arabiya.//

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good

Islam gets a bad rep for its violent adherents...

...but let's remember that they aren't the only Muslims.

Muslims protecting Christians in Egypt.


The Bad

...this is how you form an anti-American alliance.

Good work, Mr. President!

The Ugly

"After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like "prisoners of war" before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob."

Shocking Idea!

We ought to see our commonalities rather than our differences!

Mark Shea writes:

So every now and then it comes up and shocked and offended people, Catholic and non-Catholic declare this to be heresy or ignorable, or evidence that the Church totally went off the rails at Vatican II with this brand new teaching.

Problem is, it’s not brand new. Pope St. Gregory VII was saying the same thing in 1076 in a letter to the Sultan of Bougie when he wrote:

For there is nothing which Almighty God, who wishes that all men should be saved and that no man should perish, more approves in our conduct than that a man should first love God and then his fellow men … Most certainly you and we ought to love each other in this way more than other races of men, because we believe and confess one God, albeit in different ways, whom each day we praise and reverence as the creator of all ages and the governor of this world.

This is, at the end of the day, an affirmation of common sense and of the Church’s habit of affirming in common with non-Catholics what can be affirmed. If Paul could do it with pagans who worshipped the Unknown God, the Church can still do it today with Muslims who worship the Partly Known God.

A deep religious faith in a pluralist community doesn't mean intolerance.

Cardinal Dolan visits a mosque

The cardinal spent more than two hours touring the mosque and the Miraj Islamic School and having lunch with about 40 clergy and laity.

"I thank God that this day has arrived," the cardinal said. "I thank you for your welcome, I thank you for making me feel like a friend and a member of a family."

The cardinal asked questions about the Muslim faith and emphasized throughout his visit how much the two religions and their members have in common.

"You love God, we love God and he is the same God," the cardinal said of the Muslim and Roman Catholic faiths.

Cardinal Dolan stressed that Catholics and Muslims have a mutual love of the United States and of the religious freedom that this country affords, especially the ability to meet with people of different beliefs that would not be possible in some other nations.

"Your love of marriage and family, your love of children and babies, your love of freedom -- religious freedom particularly-- your defense of life, your desire for harmony and unity and your care for others, your care for God's creation and your care for those who are in need," the cardinal said, were Islamic values also shared by Catholics and areas where there could be mutual cooperation.

He likened Muslims to earlier waves of Roman Catholic immigrants who some 150 years ago faced the same challenge of "how to become loyal, responsible, patriotic Americans without losing their faith."

35% of German Muslims have multiple wives, all funded by welfare

New documentary from Germany showing a troubling problemaffecting German society.

The average German family struggles financially with large tax burdens and as a result have only 1.3 children per family due to high financial costs. One of the lowest rates in Europe Meanwhile Muslim immigrants have as many as 3-4 wives, perhaps 6-7 children from each wife, and all of this is funded by welfare as none of these wives work. 35 % of Muslims living in Germany have multiple wives, nearly all of them live comfortably on welfare funded by German taxpayers. This is not only in Germany too, nearly all of Europe has the same situation, including the U.K, where Muslim men take overseas trips to pick up multiple wives, marry them and bring them back to the U.K as legal citizens who then go on permanent tax payer funded welfare for themselves and their future children.

Does this indicate a different nuance in Catholic-Islamic relations...

...i.e., reminding Muslims that they haven't been the historical victims of Christianity?

Pope to canonize 800 lay victims of Islam:

Pope Francis is preparing to canonise an estimated 800 Italian laymen killed by Ottoman soldiers in the 15th century. The canonisation service will be on May 12 in St Peter’s Square and it will be the first carried out by the Pontiff since he was elected in early March.

The killing of the martyrs by Ottoman troops, who launched a weeks-long siege of Otranto, a small port town at the most eastern tip of southern Italy, took place in 1480.

When Otranto residents refused to surrender to the Ottoman army, the soldiers were ordered to massacre all males over the age of 15. Many were ordered to convert to Islam or die, but Blessed Antonio Primaldo, a tailor, spoke on the prisoners’ behalf. “We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, and for Jesus Christ we are ready to die,” he said, according to Blessed John Paul II, who visited Otranto in 1980 for the 500th anniversary of the martyrs’ deaths.

Primaldo inspired all the other townspeople to take courage, the late Pope said, and to say: “We will all die for Jesus Christ; we willingly die so as to not renounce his holy faith.” There were not “deluded” or “outdated,” Blessed John Paul continued, but “authentic, strong, decisive, consistent men” who loved their city, their families and their faith.

The skulls and other relics of the martyrs currently adorn the walls around the altar of Otranto Cathedral as a memorial to their sacrifice. According to the archdiocese’s website, popular tradition holds that when the soldiers beheaded Primaldo, his body remained standing even as the combatants tried to push him over. Legend has it that the decapitated man stood until the very last prisoner was killed, at which point Primaldo’s body collapsed next to his dead comrades.//

Some Reflections on a Stoning.

The video in this atheist diatribe is unsettling, barbaric and revolting - and yet anthropologically fascinating - "Christians watch this and tell me if your God underwrites morality."

What follows is my response to an atheist diatribe on the Facebook Unbelievable site.

I looked at the video. What it depicted was both barbaric and revolting, and yet absolutely fascinating on the level of sociology and history.  I had recently read something on stoning, so it was interesting to see how that worked in practice.

Do we know why this couple was stoned?  Were they serial pedophiles?  Perhaps they had kidnapped girls and mutilated their genitals? Maybe they were serial killers? Do we know? Do we care?

What is the point of the diatribe in which the video is found? Is it that execution by stoning is barbaric to modern sensibilities?  That seems pretty obvious.

But what if we exercise our, what's the word, "free thinking" capacity and think outside of our limited parochial mental universe conditioned by our urban, anti-septic 21st Century lifestyle?  What if we try to look at it from the point of view of those people?

The one thing that struck me was, "why the hell would this guy do whatever the hell he did?"  I looked at his face when he was confronted with the crowd and wondered what I would have been thinking.  What I probably would have been thinking is that "adultery ain't worth this."

The other thing I wondered about was what effect would it have on me if I was forced to participate in an execution instead of leaving it up to the antiseptic and merciful ministrations of the State?  Would I be as willing to condemn people to death? I probably wouldn't and I suspect there would be a lot of others who wouldn't. (I'd also suspect, unfortunately, that there might be those who would be more inclined.)

Also according to Sharia law, the judge or witness throws the first stone.  I would think - I would hope - that this would have a tendency to reduce an all too easy condemnation of people to death if the judge had to be the executioner.

Also, assuming this couple were adulterers, I would wonder what kind of social effect adultery has in small towns and nomadic tribes - as opposed to large urban populations where people can disappear in the crowd.

Obviously, I don't endorse stoning or the death penalty for adulterers, but I found the narrow, self-righteous, smug, unimaginative, pedestrian, unthinking essay that went with the video to be a complete waste of time.

Fascinating...grisly but fascinating

How to stone someone in compliance with Islamic law.

You can never know when you might have to know something like that.

Rules of Engagement.

The policy of not giving marines bullets at foreign embassies seems to be an evergreen issue. Apparently, Hillary Clinton signed off on the policy that applied to the guards in Benghazi.

The policy undoubtedly makes sense in Paris or even Moscow, but why would any person think it made sense in the Middle East? Clearly the decision-makers aren't complete idiots, so what was their reason for the policy?

"Islam has a proud history of tolerance. We see it in Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition."

Alright, history scholars, spot the idiocies - there are more than one - in this fragment of a speech given by Obama as he was attempting flatter the religion of peace:

"Islam has a proud history of tolerance. We see it in Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition."

Muslim world facing a fertility shortage.

From the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute:

Fertility rates of Muslim populations around the world have almost literally fallen off a cliff, so steep has been their decline. Policy makers at the UN and elsewhere have barely noticed this.

“There remains a widely perceived notion --- still commonly held within intellectual, academic, and policy circles in the West and elsewhere --- that ‘Muslim’ societies are especially resistant to embarking upon the path of demographic and familial change that has transformed population profiles in Europe, North America, and other ‘more developed’ areas,” write Nicholas Eberstadt and Apoorva Shah in the June 1 issue of Policy Review.

It is generally thought that Muslim fertility rates are growing by leaps and bounds. This has fed into the panic about growing Muslim influence, especially in Europe. While Eberstadt and Shah do not deal specifically with Muslims in Europe, they do point out that fertility rates have declined all over the Muslim world and that predominantly Muslim countries have taken a steeper dive than any countries in history.

Using data from the UN Population Division, which projects fertility rates for 190 countries, Eberstadt and Shah “appraise the magnitude of fertility declines in 48 of the world’s 49 identified Muslim-majority countries and territories.” The data show that “forty-eight Muslim-majority countries and territories witnessed fertility decline over the past three decades.”

When absolute fertility decline is examined, Eberstadt and Shah show “a drop of an estimated 2.6 births per woman between 1975 and 1980 and 2005 and 2010 --- a markedly larger absolute decline than estimated for either the world as a whole (-1.3) or the less developed regions as a whole (-2.2) during those same years.” They point out that “Fully eighteen of these Muslim-majority places saw (total fertility rates) fall by three or more over those 30 years--with nine of them by four births per woman or more.”

Eberstadt and Shah point out that in terms of relative fertility decline, “the estimated population-weighted average for Muslim-majority areas as a whole was -41 percent over these three decades.” They show that “22 Muslim-majority countries and territories were estimated to have undergone fertility declines of 50 percent or more during those three decades--ten of them by 60 percent or more. For both Iran and the Maldives, the declines in total fertility rates over those 30 years were estimated to exceed 70 percent.”

Out of the ten biggest declines in total fertility rates in the post-war era “six have occurred in Muslim-majority countries” say Eberstadt and Shah.

Eberstadt and Shah point out several implications to this reality of rapid fertility reduction in the Muslim world. The UN population projections will have to follow suit. In 2000, the UN projected 102 million Yemenis by the year 2050. This estimate was reduced to 62 million ten years later.

Eberstadt and Shah say there is a “coming decline in working-age (15-64) population.” They say the Muslim world will face increasing and crippling manpower shortages. They also project rapidly aging populations such as is experienced in the far-richer European countries.

The authors are perplexed that other experts at the UN or even in the Muslim countries themselves do not discuss this galloping problem.

No Holiday from History.

The coming Egyptian Civil War.

Whatever happens, the 10 million Christians in Eqypt are going to get it in the neck.

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus - Muslim Version.

The "religion" is Christianity.

This is a very serious presentation of the Muslim view of Christianity and Christ.

It's worth watching, not the least reason for which is that it reminds us why theology and philosophy still matter.

The Tipping Point...

...or welcome to Post-Christian Europe.

Because human nature abhors a metaphysical vacuum.

Practicing Muslims now outnumber practicing Catholics in France:

New research suggests there are now more practising Muslims in France than practising Catholics.

While 64 percent of French people describe themselves as Roman Catholic, only 2.9 percent of the population actually practice the Catholic faith. That compares to 3.8 percent of the population who practice the Muslim faith. The research was carried out by the French Institute of Public Opinion on behalf of the Catholic newspaper La Croix.

More worrying for Islamic authorities in France is the finding that only 41 percent of the country’s 6 million Muslims actually describe themselves as “practising,” although 75 percent are happy to label themselves “believers.” Seventy-percent also claim to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Most French Muslims hail from the country’s former colonies in North and sub-Saharan Africa.

There is also further evidence that mosques are being erected at a much faster rate than Catholic churches. Mohammed Moussaoui, President of the Muslim Council of France, last month estimated that 150 new mosques are currently under construction across the country.

By contrast, the Catholic Church in France has built only 20 new churches during the past decade, and has formally closed more than 60 churches. Many of these are now destined to become mosques, according to La Croix.

Research in 2009 by the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research suggested that nearly 500 new mosques were built between 2001 and 2006, taking the present total to over 2,000. Many of these new buildings, however, were erected to re-accommodate local Islamic communities who had previously been using temporary accommodation – the so-called “Islam of the basements.”

One of France’s most prominent Muslim leaders, Dalil Boubakeur, who is the head of the Grand Mosque of Paris, recently called for the number of mosques in the country to be doubled again – to 4,000 – to meet growing demand.

The lack of building space for France’s Islamic population had led to many mosques not being able to accommodate the believers who arrive for Friday prayers, leaving many Muslims to pray outside in the streets.

But Muslims praying outside of mosques has created political tension.

In December 2010 the leader of the far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, described such scenes as an “occupation without tanks or soldiers.” She is likely to run for the French presidency next year, and her message is resonating with 40 percent of voters, according to a recent poll for the “France Soir” newspaper.

French President Nikolas Sarkozy has also recently described street prayers as “unacceptable,” adding that the street cannot become “an extension of the mosque.” Last month his Interior Minister, Claude Guéant, suggested Muslims should instead use empty barracks. Prayer in the street “has to stop,” Guéant declared.

In a bid to solve the space crisis in the southern city of Marseille, a mosque to accommodate 7,000 worshippers is currently being built. Twenty-five percent of Marseille's population is Muslim.

Last month a mosque for 2,000 worshippers opened in the eastern town of Strasbourg, where 15 percent of the population is Muslim.
France is often referred to as the “eldest daughter of the Catholic Church,” because the local Church has maintained unbroken communion with the Bishop of Rome
since the 2nd century.

But some senior European bishops have long predicted the eclipse of Catholicism by Islam across the continent.
 
In 1999, Archbishop Giuseppe Bernardini, an Italian Franciscan who heads the Izmir Archdiocese in Turkey, recalled a conversation he had with a Muslim leader for the Synod of European Bishops, which was gathered in Rome. That leader told him, “thanks to your democratic laws, we will invade you. Thanks to our religious laws, we will dominate you.”

Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science...

...explained by Hillel Orfek at The New Atlantis.