Father George W. Rutler: The Cross and Not the Crescent

The current mania for tearing down statues and stifling free speech by cultural ingénues ignorant of history and logic, has reached a stellar absurdity in demands to censure “The Star Spangled Banner” on lame claims that it is racist. If ignorance is bliss, then those who indulge their revisionism, must be in Nirvana.
 
Francis Scott Key penned the words in 1814, later set to an English song “To
Anacreon in Heaven,” a tune that is a challenge to singers, as even
Renéee Fleming confessed after performing it at the 2014 Super Bowl. It is often
mutilated by rock stars calling attention to themselves by “interpreting” it. Key
wrote the words after watching 19 British ships fire more than 1,500 cannon
balls, mortar shells and rockets on Baltimore. Key was a slave-owner, which
was, sadly, not in contradiction to common practice. But he ordered the
manumission of his slaves, and in 1820 he embarked on a seven-year effort
pleading before the Supreme Court for the liberation of 300 African slaves captured
off the ship “Antelope” along the Florida coast. He also worked with John Quincy
Adams in the “Amistad” case to free 53 slaves.

Key’s poem “The Defence of Fort McHenry” which, re-named “The
Star-Spangled Banner,” became the national anthem in 1931, was based on verses he
composed in 1805 to celebrate the victory over the Muslim slave -trading pirates on
the Barbary coast, (“the shores of Tripoli,”). “And pale beam’d the Crescent, its
splendor obscured / By the Light of the star-spangled flag of our nation….And the
turban’d heads bow’d to the terrible glare…” -John Langdon, was a Founding Father
who, as first President pro tempore of the Senate, administered the vice-presidential
oath of office to John Adams. In 1805 as governor of New
Hampshire, he set aside a day in thanksgiving “for the termination of our
contest with one of the African powers; the liberation of our fellow-citizens from
bondage…”

Islam, which means “submission,” has never had abolitionists like the Christians
Bartolomé de las Casas and William Wilberforce. Muhammed was a slave
trader, and the Qur’an devotes five times as much space to regulating labor
slavery and sex slavery as it does to prayer. Nearly 200 million slaves, white and
black, were sold by Muslim traders over fourteen centuries, and
almost all the Africans sold to European traders for export to America were
enslaved by Muslims. Muslim slavers even raided Ireland in 1631. So many
Eastern Europeans were enslaved that the word “slave” itself comes from “Slav.”
While lip service is given to abolition in Islamic lands, slavery today is blatant in
Sudan, Niger and Mauritania and was not abolished in Saudi Arabia and Yemen until
1962 (under Western pressure). Where is the indignation of protestors here?
If revisionists would burlesque the past and mute the voice of reason, they should
first recognize that the value of life is secured best by the standard of the Cross and
not the Crescent.

Urge Catholic School NOT to Fire Catholic Teacher for Quoting Saint John Bosco on Islam

The Catholic schools superintendent for the Diocese of Orlando has reprimanded and threatened to fire a popular sixth-grade teacher for quoting Saint John Bosco on the deadly cult of Islam.

I have sent the schools superintendent the following message.  

I have signed the petition that has nearly 15,000 signatures on it protesting your censure of a truthful exposition of the cult of Islam, but as a Catholic, I want to personally tell you how disgusted I am. Are you so beholden to the politically correct that the truth and words of Catholic saints must be censured? You won't be forming Catholics zealous to live their faith, much less become saints, with a Catholic-lite curriculum. Your attitude is why so many orthodox Catholic parents choose to homeschool rather than corrupt their children with a faux Catholic education. Is it any wonder so many young Catholics have fallen away from the faith? You have no business running a Catholic school system. Please step aside and let someone who believes what the saints, Church doctors, martyrs and Popes have taught take on the responsibility of forming young Catholics. 

 Please join me and send your own message and by all means, sign a petition in defense of this teacher who was speaking the truth in the words of a Catholic saint.

You can call or E-mail the superintendent:

Mr. Henry Fortier
Superintendent of Catholic Schools
Diocese of Orlando
Phone: 407-246-4905
Email: HFortier@orlandodiocese.org

Pat Buchanan: Islam and the West: An Irreconcilable Conflict?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here … and … around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.'”

So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate.

Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard’s famed Samuel Huntington. His “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” has been described by Zbigniew Brzezinski as providing “quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.”

Pat Buchanan: The Persians Are Coming!

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“The Iranians are on the march,” warned John McCain Sunday.

“Iran is building a new Persian Empire,” echoed Col. Ralph Peters.

So alarmed is Speaker Boehner, he invited Bibi Netanyahu to come and challenge U.S. policy toward Iran from the same podium where the president delivered his State of the Union address.

Egyptian Court Sentences Christian Family to 15 Years for Converting from Islam

"The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt.  We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary — and asked for — to pursue a credible transition to a democracy.  I’m also confident that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that the young people of Egypt have shown in recent days can be harnessed to create new opportunity — jobs and businesses that allow the extraordinary potential of this generation to take flight.  And I know that a democratic Egypt can advance its role of responsible leadership not only in the region but around the world."

 Barack Hussein Obama

Today's headline about an Egyptian woman and her seven children being sentenced to 15 years for converting from Islam falls on the Feast Day of Saint Anthony of Egypt, the father of monks, whose life of oblation, fasting and prayer in the desert fortified him with a profound sense of Christian realism.  His life is a reminder that this world is not our home; instead we are on a journey, confronting great evil along the way.  It is an evil which can no longer be viewed as foreign or in the past.  It touches us every day.  It resides in the highest places, it appeals to our vanity, and it seeks our destruction.  But it is fleeting and can be withstood and overcome, as it was by Saint Anthony of Egypt,  only with Christ in whom "we live and move and have our being."

In the past Americans would look to our government to express our collective outrage at injustice and the persecution of Christians around the world.  Perhaps it is better, through silence and prayer, that we recognize, as did the third century saint, our only sure path and true hope:

"Let it be your supreme and common purpose not to grow weary in the work you have begun, and in time of trial and affliction not to lose courage and say: Oh, how long already have we been mortifying ourselves! Rather, we should daily begin anew and constantly increase our fervor. For man's whole life is short when measured against the time to come, so short, in fact, that it is as nothing in comparison with eternity. . . . Therefore, my children, let us persevere in our acts of asceticism. And that we may not become weary and disheartened, it is good to meditate on the words of the apostle: 'I die daily.' If we live with the picture of death always before our eyes, we will not sin. The apostle's words tell us that we should so awaken in the morning as though we would not live to evening, and so fall asleep as if there were to be no awakening. For our life is by nature uncertain and is daily meted out to us by Providence. If we are convinced of this and live each day as the apostle suggests, then we will not fall into sin; no desire will enslave us, no anger move us, no treasure bind us to earth; we will await death with unfettered hearts."

Saint Anthony of Egypt

John Fortier - "Is the Electoral College Outdated?"

Why Islam is Not a Religion

From New English Review

By Rebecca Bynum

Speech delivered October 18th to ACT! for America Chapter in Memphis Tennessee

Good Evening. I’m here to talk about a subject no one wants to discuss – religion. Many people in our post-Christian society (especially journalists) are afraid of it, misinformed about it and ignorant of the most basic theological concepts. And our theologians are often too specialized in their work to be able to discuss religion in its broadest outlines or our Churchmen are often soo concerned with finding common ground that they gloss over and ignore the theology of Islam.

Our greatest Islam critics confine their attack to the non-religious aspects of Islam, either its political side or its judicial side. But when we discuss political Islam or Sharia law alone, we imply that there is a religious Islam that is perfectly fine, that we don’t have to worry about. And we leave the major problems of Islamization – Muslim immigration, mosque building, the proselytizing in our prisons and military and the infiltration of our governmental institutions completely untouched and indeed untouchable.

Read the rest of this entry at New English Review >>

Pakistan: Hundreds of Christian Girls Forced to Convert to Islam

From Catholic World News

Citing several examples, the Fides news agency reports that hundreds of Christian girls in Pakistan have been abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and raped or forced into marriages.

“The Christian girls are the weakest and most vulnerable, because their communities are poor, defenseless and marginalized, therefore easily exposed to harassment and threats,” said a nun who hides girls who have escaped their captors. Often they do not even have the courage to denounce the violence.”

“The trend is worrying,” she added. “There are hundreds of cases a year registered, and those that come to light are only a fraction.” 

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Christian girls, victims of forced conversions to Islam, rapes and forced marriages (Fides)

Book Review: Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is Not a Religion

From Global Politician

By A. Millar

Books on Islam is a saturated market, an editor friend of mine told me a few months ago. At the time I though she might be right. I had only recently read a couple of works that, for want of a better description, read like second rate Bruce Bawers. Maudlin and self-absorbed, these books (which shall remain nameless) tell us more about the authors than they do about radical Islam. Former boyfriends, Holland in the Springtime, and hints that the Pulitzer Prize went to the wrong author, are punctuated with references to female genital mutilation, terrorist acts, and hook-handed radical preachers.

It is as if one were wandering around an Impressionist exhibition only to discover someone has scribbled images of Palestinian terrorists in thick black marker pen all over the Monets. Yes, the juxtapositions is jarring, but the average person living in the West is assaulted by contradictory messages every day, whether on the stream of billboard adverts he passes on the way to work or in an evening’s television-watching. Consequently, such books fail to shock, and, indeed, to force us to see the crisis of the West as an existential threat.

Our jaded culture, and cultural relativism, allows us to believe that the graffiti might be the real art. And one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter anyway. So what’s the problem?

It’s this kind of cultural relativism, and cultural suicidal tendencies, that Rebecca Bynum confronts in Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion (New English Review Press). At 152 pages, this work is slimmer than those like the aforementioned, but it is denser and far more challenging. Few, if any, will agree with everything that is said. But this book was not written to be agreed with. It was written to shake things up, and push the reader outside of his comfort zone. An engaged mind is more important to Bynum than a nodding head.

"Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West"

"Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" is a documentary film that will challenge the way you look at the world.

Almost 70 years ago, Europe found itself at war with one of the most sinister figures in modern history: Adolf Hitler. When the last bullet of World War II was fired, over 50 million people were dead, and countless countries were both physically and economically devastated. Hitlers bloody struggle sought to forge the world anew, in the crucible of Nazi values. How could such a disaster occur? How could the West have overlooked the evil staring it in the face, for so long, before standing forcefully against it?

Today, we find ourselves confronted by a new enemy, also engaged in a violent struggle to transform our world. As we sleep in the comfort of our homes, a new evil rises against us. A new menace is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western Civilization under the yoke of its values. That enemy is Radical Islam.

Using images from Arab TV, rarely seen in the West, Obsession reveals an insider's view' of the hatred the Radicals are teaching, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination. With the help of experts, including first-hand accounts from a former PLO terrorist, a Nazi youth commander, and the daughter of a martyred guerilla leader, the film shows, clearly, that the threat of Radical Islam is real.

Grandma: 'I Prayed for Obama to Convert to Islam'

Kenyan family member says 'only Allah knows' if president will win second term

President Obama's Muslim grandmother has said she prayed in Mecca for the U.S. leader to convert to Islam.

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Obama Praises Islam During Trip to India

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a town hall meeting with students at St. Xavier's college in Mumbai November 7, 2010 REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

From New American

By James Heiser

Only days after the first anniversary of alleged Jihadist Nidal Hasan’s murderous rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, President Obama lauded Islam when asked his opinion of Jihad. Obama was speaking at a St. Xavier's College, a 147-year-old Jesuit institution in Mumbai, India, when a student asked him a direct question: “What is your opinion of Jihad?” Obama’s rambling, two-and-a-half minute reply began with the declaration, “The phrase Jihad has a lot of meanings in Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations. But I will say that, first, Islam is one of the world’s great religions.” The subtlety of the broadest interpretation of the term "Jihad" is hardly newsworthy; the "struggle" of Jihad can be both a matter of personal conformity to the tenets of Islam, and the imposition of those beliefs and practices on others. Even JihadWatch—an organization well-known for its opposition to Islamic extremism—notes the nuances which may be contained within the concept of Jihad:

Jihad (Arabic for "struggle") is a central duty of every Muslim. Modern Muslim theologians have spoken of many things as jihads: the struggle within the soul, defending the faith from critics, supporting its growth and defense financially, even migrating to non-Muslim lands for the purpose of spreading Islam. But violent jihad is a constant of Islamic history. Many passages of the Qur'an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad are used by jihad warriors today to justify their actions and gain new recruits. No major Muslim group has ever repudiated the doctrines of armed jihad. The theology of jihad, which denies unbelievers equality of human rights and dignity, is available today for anyone with the will and means to bring it to life.

But the obvious intention of the question presented to President Obama was regarding a use of the term Jihad which goes back to Mohammed: the imposition of Islam by force. On this score, Mr. Obama fell back to the shopworn argument that Islam has somehow been co-opted by "extremists"; in the President’s words: “I think that all of us recognize that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence toward innocent people that is never justified.”

The primary difficulty for those who would dismiss violent Jihadism as the actions of “few extremists” is that Mohammed, the “prophet” of Islam, is the first such “extremist.” IslamReview.com offers the following example of the founder of Islam’s understanding of Jihad from Ibn Hisham’s (d. 833 A.D.) biography of Mohammed:

After the war of the trench, in which Mohammed was besieged by the Qurayshites, led by Abu Sofyan, it was alleged that the Jewish tribe Bani Qurayza agreed to provide help from within to Abu Sofyan's forces. Although the alleged help did not materialize and the siege eventually ended, neverthless, Mohammed never forgave them for their willingness to help his enemies.
Muslims turned against Bani Qurayza and blocked their streets for twenty-five days. The Jewish tribe expressed readiness to accept surrender, to give up their belongings, and to depart from their homes.
Mohammed, however, would not consent to this, and instead appointed as an arbiter, Saad iben Moaz, a man who was known to be on bad terms with Bani Qurayza. Saad ruled that all Bani Quaryza's men should be beheaded, that the women and children should be sold as slaves, and that all their property should be divided among the Muslims.
Trenches were dug in the bazaar of Medina for disposal of the eight or nine hundred Jewish bodies whom Mohammed had spent the previous night slaughtering.

Where the President’s remarks were on-target was in recognizing that religious violence is not to be tolerated, and his trip to India could have provided a venue for a more considered speech on the topic.

In recent years, India has been wracked by anti-Christian violence which has primarily been perpetrated by Hindu extremists. According to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, in August 2008, “at least 120 people were murdered, 250 churches were destroyed, and over 50,000 people displaced.” Raphael Cheenath, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of the state of Orissa, had hoped that President Obama would speak out during his trip about the plight of Christians in India.

“Christians in India hope that President Obama will address religious intolerance and attacks led by Hindu fundamentalists against Christians in Orissa and other states, as well as against other religious minorities,” said Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar. “If fanaticism continues, thousands of faithful Christians will continue to suffer. Every Indian citizen should have the freedom to choose and practice their own faith. The radical Hindu groups should not be free to impose their ideology and cause social unrest.”
On November 7, President Obama visited a Catholic high school in Mumbai, where he celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Only 5% of the students at the school are Catholic; 60% are Hindu, while 35% are Muslim.

The occasion of President Obama’s visit to a Christian institution committed to providing an education for all its students, regardless of religion, was a perfect opportunity to make the observation that the problem is not a safely-generic “extremism” (a term his administration has applied to conservative, pro-life Americans); the problem of Jihadism goes back to Mohammed himself. Mr. Obama could have even taken a stand for his fellow Christians, who have suffered tremendously in India the past few years. That opportunity was wasted. For Americans marking the anniversary of Nidal Hassan's allegedly Jihadist rampage in central Texas, Mr. Obama's ill-considered remarks could not have come at a worse time.

Islam: What the West Needs to Know

Is Barack Obama Really A Saudi / Muslim "Plant" in the White House?

Obama's Ramadan Blessing

From WorldNetDaily
By Joseph Farah

There's a whole lot of pretending going on in our world today.

We have a federal judge ruling that the 5,000-year-old institution of marriage was "biased" and immoral from the start because of the way it discriminated unfairly against homosexuals.

We have a Justice Department that dismissed an open-and-shut case of vigilante-style voter intimidation because the perpetrators were black and the victims white.

And we have a man in the White House who extols Islam for "advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."

That's what I call pretending.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Fanfare Band of the Royal Netherlands Army Mounted Regiments - "Farewell of Slavianka"

In the following video the Fanfare Band of the Royal Netherlands Army Mounted Regiments performs "Farewell of Slavianka," which was composed in 1912 by V. Agapkin, a cavalry-man and student of trumpet and composition at the Tambov Music College.

The march commemorates events in the Balkan wars of liberation from the five-hundred-year-long power of the Ottoman Empire, and was dedicated to all Slav women who sent their men to fight for freedom. (Slavianka means "Slavic woman").

Reports say Obama Admitted He's a Muslim

Two media reports are serving to fuel speculation about Barack Obama's religious beliefs.

From OneNewsNow

By Russ Jones

Since before he was elected, controversy has stirred over the extent of President Obama's ties to Islam. During the campaign, he spoke openly of both his Muslim upbringing and his adult conversion to Christianity. But now two major Middle East media outlets -- Nile TV International and Israel Today Magazine -- are reporting that the president has admitted in recent months that he is a Muslim.

Those outlets say that Obama, in a one-on-one meeting earlier this year with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, told Gheit that he was still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, and the step-son of a Muslim step-father; that his half brothers in Kenya are Muslims; and that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.

Pamela Geller, publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and author of the new book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America, says this most recent comment by Obama has been ignored by the mainstream media and should be of great concern to U.S. citizens.

"[In] this latest report...Foreign Prime Minister Gheit on Nile Television...said that, in confidence, Obama told him that he was a Muslim," says Geller, "and that after he straightened out domestic issues would show the Muslim world how to handle Israel."

Geller also says that while this topic is nothing new, it is further evidence of Obama's sympathetic tendencies towards those who mean harm to the U.S. and his intent to reshape America's religious foundation.

"If you look at the man's record, it's shocking," she laments. "[Especially] when you review how he declared an end to the -- quote, unquote -- 'war on terror'...how he floated the idea that he would talk to the violent, genocidal Hamas, that he insisted and recruited for Muslims in his administration and created an actual new department that reported to Hillary Clinton for the Muslim 'ummah' [the whole Arab world]."

Geller goes on to say that Obama's embrace of Islam shows his hatred toward Israel and effectively abandons the Holy Land, surrounded by its enemies, to fight its own battles.

Prince Charles Lauds Islamic Approach to Ecology

When we read the following about this insufferable pain,
we thought of his dutiful mother; "LONG MAY SHE REIGN!"

From Catholic World News

England's Prince Charles, speaking to an audience at Oxford, has recommended a return to the "spiritual principles" of the world's great religions, as a means of curbing environmental damage. Prince Charles-- who is heir to the throne, and thus to the title of head of the Church of England-- cited the Qu'ran as a model of environmental consciousness, saying that the Islamic faith sees "no separation between man and nature."

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• 'Follow the Islamic way to save the world,' Prince Charles urges environmentalists (Daily Mail)

Libyan Leader Calls for Jihad Against Switzerland

Libya's leader has called for a jihad, or holy war, against Switzerland because of its ban on mosque minarets. Moammar Gadhafi also urged Muslims everywhere to boycott Swiss products and to bar Swiss planes and ships from the airports or seaports of Muslim nations.

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Prime Minister Say Australia Faces Major Terror Threat

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has warned that his country is now under a permanent and increased threat of militant attack.

He also announced plans to fingerprint and face-scan visitors from 10 high-risk countries.

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