Tag: religion

Massachusetts Couple Accused of ‘Kidnapping’ Their Own Five Children from State Custody

A Massachusetts couple is facing serious charges after allegedly kidnapping their five children, who had been placed in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF).

Isael Rivera, 31, and Ruth Encarnacion, 30, were located by Fitchburg Police in early March, after a multi-state manhunt.

The couple is accused of taking the children across state lines in an attempt to evade DCF intervention.

Authorities believe the family fled Massachusetts shortly before the state attempted to enforce child protective measures, according to WCVB 5.
Rivera, the biological father of four of the five children, was arraigned last week in Fitchburg District Court. A not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf, and he is currently being held without bail, WHDH reported.

Encarnacion, the mother of all five children, is scheduled to be arraigned this week and faces five counts of kidnapping a minor by a relative. A not-guilty plea has also been entered on her behalf.

According to law enforcement, the family went missing just as DCF prepared to remove the children from Encarnacion’s care on February 27.

Encarnacion’s sister reported her missing days later on March 3, citing a lack of contact since February 26. DCF officially reported the five children missing on March 5, triggering a state and federal search.

Court documents indicate that DCF had opened a case against the couple in February after a pediatrician flagged signs of neglect involving the youngest child, a 9-month-old.

DCF intervened shortly thereafter, but by then, the family had reportedly left Massachusetts.

According to unconfirmed reports, they told their pediatrician they were skipping vaccines for their baby.

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On Palm Sunday, Israel Bombs The Only Christian Hospital In Gaza

Claiming it held a “command and control center used by Hamas,” Israel chose Palm Sunday to bomb the only Christian hospital in war-shattered Gaza. It was also the last fully-functioning hospital in Gaza City. No casualties from the bombing per se were reported by Gaza’s civil emergency service. However, a child who’d been hospitalized for a head wound died from “the rushed evacuation process,” said the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which runs the al Ahli Arab Hospital. The diocese is part of the Anglican Church. 

Citing Gaza Civil Defense, Middle East Eye reports that the bombs resulted in “the destruction of the surgery building and the oxygen generation station for the intensive care units.” St. Philip’s Church was one of multiple nearby buildings that also suffered damage. The IDF attributed the low casualty count to its effort to “mitigate harm to civilians or to the hospital compound, including issuing advanced warnings in the area of the terror infrastructure, the use of precise munitions, and aerial surveillance.”

A local journalist told BBC that the IDF called an emergency room doctor and urged the hospital’s immediate evacuation, saying “You have only 20 minutes to leave.” A previously-injured Khalil Bakr said he and his three wounded daughters — two amputees and a third “full of platinum plates” — managed to get out of the hospital just a couple minutes before destruction rained down.  

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Controversial mosque planning to build Islamic city already has sprawling neighborhood in Texas

A Texas mosque that has sparked controversy over its plans to build a city for Muslims outside of Dallas already has an existing neighborhood, The Daily Mail can reveal.

The Islamic community in Plano is already home to hundreds of Allah’s followers, and features expensive, two story homes, a shopping center and a clinic. 

The East Plano Islamic Center or EPIC, intends to break ground on a town for its followers near the City of Josephine- about 40 minutes away from the existing mosque. 

EPIC City, as the project is known, would be anchored by a brand new mosque and include 1,000 homes, green spaces and schools for the people of that faith.

However, the future of the EPIC City is in jeopardy, after hundreds of locals have fiercely spoken out against the mosque’s efforts- storming a public meeting where officials were considering whether to grant EPIC building permits. 

Additionally, Gov. Greg Abbott has promised the development will ‘never see the light of day‘ while accusing EPIC of breaking the law and practicing Sharia law. 

Even though not a single person has been arrested or charged in connection to Abbott’s many accusations about what he claims is happening at EPIC, hysteria is at a fever pitch, with mosque-goers getting death threats.

But even before a single brick of the planned city is laid, EPIC already has a sprawling neighborhood around it in Plano. 

The green domed house of worship is massive, large enough to accommodate 3,200 worshippers, making it one of the largest mosques in the Lone Star State.

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Taliban morality enforcers arrest men for having the wrong hairstyle or skipping mosque, UN says

The Taliban morality police in Afghanistan have detained men and their barbers over hairstyles and others for missing prayers at mosques during the holy month of Ramadan, a U.N. report said Thursday, six months after laws regulating people’s conduct came into effect.

The Vice and Virtue Ministry published laws last August covering many aspects everyday life in Afghanistan, including public transport, music, shaving and celebrations. Most notably, the ministry issued a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public.

That same month, a top U.N. official warned the laws provided a “distressing vision” for the country’s future by adding to existing employment, education, and dress code restrictions on women and girls. Taliban officials have rejected U.N. concerns about the morality laws.

Thursday’s report, from the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, said in the first 6 months of the laws’ implementation, over half of detentions made under it concerned “either men not having the compliant beard length or hairstyle, or barbers providing non-compliant beard trimming or haircuts.”

The report said that the morality police regularly detained people arbitrarily “without due process and legal protections.”

During the holy fasting month of Ramadan, men’s attendance at mandated congregational prayers was closely monitored, leading at times to arbitrary detention of those who didn’t show up, the report added.

The U.N. mission said that both sexes were negatively affected, particularly people with small businesses such as private education centers, barbers and hairdressers, tailors, wedding caterers and restaurants, leading to a reduction or total loss of income and employment opportunities.

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‘Not a cult’: Holy war erupts as judge bans mom from taking daughter to Christian church

A mother whose constitutional rights were violated by a Maine judge hearing a custody dispute has taken the fight to the state Supreme Court.

The case involves a radical ruling from Jennifer Nofsinger, a judge who heard a custody case, who ordered that the mother was not allowed to take her 11-year-old daughter to an evangelical Christian church.

That was based on “objections” from the child’s father, who like the mother and daughter was not identified in the report from Liberty Counsel, which is working on the case.

Chairman Mat Staver said, “Calvary Chapel is not a cult. This custody order banning a mother from taking her child to a Christian church because of its biblical teachings regarding marriage and human sexuality violates the First Amendment. The custody order cannot prohibit the mother from taking her daughter to church. The implications of this order pose a serious threat to religious freedom.”

The judge granted the father, who objects to the Christian teachings of the church, “the sole right to govern the girl’s religious activities.”

The high court is being asked to reverse the “unlawful custody order” and to restore the mother’s First Amendment right to pass on her religious beliefs

The judge adopted the ideology of a leftist teacher from California who was hired by the father. That teacher, Janja Lalich, told the judge “that cults usually have a charismatic, authoritarian leader who teach about a ‘transcendent belief system’ that offers answers, and ‘promises some sort of salvation.’ She further testified that she had ‘studied’ Calvary Chapel Church and found that the church’s pastor was a ‘charismatic’ speaker, spoke ‘authoritatively’ in his messages, and that he asserted his messages were objective truth.,” Liberty Counsel reported.

That meant, Lalich claimed, the church was “cultic.”

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Supreme Court Rejects Fire Chief’s Religious Freedom Case

Ronald Hittle was fired as Stockton, California’s fire chief after facing misconduct allegations, including an anonymous letter that labeled him a “corrupt, racist, lying, religious fanatic.”

One factor behind his dismissal was his attendance, along with other managers, at a church-sponsored summit for Christian leaders during work hours.

Hittle attempted to sue, arguing that he was terminated because of his Christian faith, but lower courts ruled that his case wasn’t strong enough to proceed to trial. Hittle maintains that the Supreme Court’s standard for evaluating workplace discrimination claims—a test established over 50 years ago—warrants reexamination.

But on Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear his case, sidestepping a potential showdown over workplace religious discrimination at a time when the Court is also scrutinizing issues related to religion in schools and religion-based tax exemptions.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch indicated they would have accepted the appeal. Thomas noted that Hittle presented ample evidence of discriminatory intent, and that his case could have provided clear guidance on when workplace discrimination claims should proceed, the outlet reported.

Hittle was terminated in 2011 after a city investigation found that he lacked effectiveness and judgment, failed to report time off, engaged in favoritism, and attended a religious event with other managers while on the job, among other issues.

The event—a church-sponsored summit for Christian leaders—was something Hittle attended at the city’s direction for leadership training, USA Today noted.

Hittle contends that his attendance at the Global Leadership Summit was the main reason for his dismissal, alleging that the deputy city manager accused him of being part of a “Christian Coalition.”

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Islamist Found Guilty of Hate Crime in Bomb Scare Plot Targeting Christian Churches Across the U.S.

A federal jury has found 45-year-old Zimnako Salah of Phoenix, Arizona, guilty on multiple counts after he targeted Christian churches across three states with hoax bomb threats, motivated purely by anti-Christian hatred.

Following an 11-day trial, the jury returned its verdict Thursday, concluding Salah planted a backpack at a Christian church in Roseville, California, in an attempt to simulate a bomb threat.

The device, strapped to a church toilet, was intended to terrorize innocent congregants and obstruct their right to worship.

The jury found that Salah specifically targeted the church because of the Christian faith of its members—legally designating this act as a hate crime.

From September to November 2023, Salah visited four churches across Arizona, California, and Colorado. At two of those houses of worship, he successfully planted suspicious backpacks that caused widespread panic among congregants.

At the other two locations, security thankfully intervened before he could finish his sinister plans.

More disturbingly, this wasn’t just a hoax — it was preparation for something far worse. According to testimony at trial, Salah was also assembling the real thing: a bomb capable of fitting inside one of those backpacks.

An FBI bomb technician seized components for an improvised explosive device (IED) in Salah’s rented storage unit. It wasn’t just intimidation — it was groundwork for domestic terrorism.

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Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You Should, Too

Though porn addiction is not diagnosable, and never has been, there is a large self-help industry surrounding the concept. Mostly online (though in religious areas, such as Utah, there are numerous in-person treatment sites), this industry promotes the idea that modern access to the Internet, and the porn that thrives there, has led to an epidemic of dysregulated, out-of-control porn use, and significant life problems as a result.

Over recent years, numerous studies have begun to suggest that there is more to the story than just porn. Instead, we’ve had growing hints that the conflicts and struggles over porn use have more to do with morality and religion, rather than pornography itself. I’ve covered this surge of research in numerous posts and articles.

Now, researchers have put a nail in the coffin of porn addiction. Josh Grubbs, Samuel Perry and Joshua Wilt are some of the leading researchers on America’s struggles with porn, having published numerous studies examining the impact of porn use, belief in porn addiction, and the effect of porn on marriages. And Rory Reid is a UCLA researcher who was a leading proponent gathering information about the concept of hypersexual disorder for the DSM-5. These four researchers, all of whom have history of neutrality, if not outright support of the concepts of porn addiction, have conducted a meta-analysis of research on pornography and concluded that porn use does not predict problems with porn, but that religiosity does.

The researchers lay out their argument and theory extremely thoroughly, suggesting that Pornography Problems due to Moral Incongruence (PPMI) appear to be the driving force in many of the people who report dysregulated, uncontrollable, or problematic pornography use. Even though many people who grew up in religious, sexually conservative households have strong negative feelings about pornography, many of those same people continue to use pornography. And then they feel guilty and ashamed of their behavior, and angry at themselves and their desire to watch more.

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Retired Police Lieutenant Drops Major Bombshells About Planned ‘Islamic Mega-City’ Near Dallas, Texas 

As the Gateway Pundit recently reported, an Islamic mega-city that is Sharia Law compliant is being planned near Dallas, Texas.

There are a lot of red flags around the project, so much so that Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been speaking out about it.

Now there is a video of a retired police lieutenant, who is a recognized expert in SWAT activity, speaking out about some of his findings on this. It’s very serious stuff.

Via Twitchy:

In explosive public testimony, Deaton warned Texas officials that this wasn’t some future plan—it’s already happening. And worse, it’s being replicated on a massive scale just outside Dallas.Here’s what he exposed:

74 homes—sold only to Muslims affiliated with EPIC

A massive mega-mosque anchoring the enclave

Sharia-adherent Islamic schools enforcing religious doctrine

UIF Corporation offering only Sharia-compliant financial services

A fortress-like home built beside the Plano Police Academy—overlooking SWAT vehicles, bomb trucks, and tactical zones (see maps and photos in article below)

The owner? A senior EPIC leader and co-founder of the controversial Yaqeen Institute—a group that openly advocates Sharia in the West

“I urge everyone to visit their website and see for yourself what they say about instituting Sharia.” — Lt. (Ret.) Douglas Deaton

“This is not about radicals hiding in plain sight. They’re not hiding. They’ve been open about their beliefs and their intent.” Plano was Phase One. EPIC City is Phase Two.

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