Tag: religion

Canada Plans to Lift Some Sanctions on Syria Jihadis Following Massacres

The Canadian Foreign ministry said on Thursday that it plans to ease some financial sanctions on Syria and send a non-resident ambassador to Damascus, despite the horrific massacres of Alawites and Christians perpetrated by the new Syrian government and its allies last weekend.

“Canada can play a meaningful role in enabling Syrians to build an inclusive country that respects all of its citizens. We also can help prevent Syria from falling into chaos and instability,” said Canada’s special envoy for Syria, Omar Alghabra.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said sanctions would be relaxed for six months to “support democratization, stabilization, and the delivery of aid” during a “period of transition” for Syria.

“These sanctions had been used as a tool against the Assad regime and easing them will help to enable the stable and sustainable delivery of aid, support local redevelopment efforts, and contribute to a swift recovery for Syria,” said a statement from Joly and Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen.

The sanctions-easing plan involves issuing six-month permits for Canadians to conduct business transactions in Syria that were banned under sanctions, and transmit funds through the Syrian Central Bank and a few other financial institutions.

“This funding will support experienced humanitarian partners to deliver life-saving assistance, including food, protection services, water, sanitation and hygiene services, and health services. This brings Canada’s total humanitarian assistance to the Syria crisis this year to more than $100 million,” said Joly and Hussen.

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Sen. Graham Admits The Syrian Jihadists He Once Supported Are Now Massacring Civilians

After a decade-long American effort to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power in Damascus, Senator Lindsey Graham says the US-backed jihadists that now control the country are causing more concern than ever.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Graham explained that he had “never been more worried about the deterioration of Syria than I am now.” The senator was discussing an outbreak of violence in the country, where forces aligned with the new government are conducting mass executions targeting the Alawites and other religious minorities.

Under President Barack Obama, Washington provided training and arms for Assad’s opposition, hoping to remove him from power and undermine Iran’s regional influence. However, the most powerful rebel factions were violent jihadists, a fact acknowledged in a 2012 internal memo circulated by Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

During Trump’s first administration, he ended US support for the Sunni opposition, but enforced sweeping sanctions on Damascus that prevented the government from crushing Syrian al-Qaeda, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and then concentrated in the country’s Idlib province.

At least some support for the rebels resumed during the Joe Biden presidency. In 2024, equipped with Ukrainian drones, Jolani’s forces went on the offensive, capturing Damascus and forcing Assad to flee the country.

Jolani and his organization – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist umbrella group – then seized control of the country. After dubbing himself the new Syrian leader, Jolani was embraced by Washington and its allies. Last week, when violence broke out in Syria’s coastal region, HTS responded by killing hundreds of Alawite civilians.

The events of the past weekend left Senator Graham questioning whether the US could still work with Jolani and HTS. “Is this al-Qaeda or ISIS-light or is this some new form of Islam that we can all live with?” he asked, adding that before any sanctions were removed, Jolani must comply with unspecified conditions.

Graham has supported the regime change operations against Assad for well over a decade. In 2012, he argued, “We need to form a coalition to help arm the rebels, as well as create no-fly and no-drive zones to stop the slaughter by the Assad regime. I cannot say with certainty what will follow Assad but I can say with certainty that Assad must go, sooner rather than later.”

“If America is seen as being helpful in ending the slaughter of the Syrian people, it will allow us to have a stronger, future relationship with Assad’s eventual successor,” he continued. “Replacing Assad in Syria is critical to regional stability, a major blow to the Iranian regime and will bolster our national security interests.”

The next year, the senator acknowledged that “radical Islamists are hijacking [the Syrian] revolution.” However, that did not sway Graham’s support for regime change.

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Veiled Threat: Possessing Pics of Muslim Women Without Hijabs Should Be Made a Crime, UK Lawmakers Say

Leftist lawmakers in Britain have argued that being in possession of pictures of Muslim women without their hijab headscarves should be a crime akin to child pornography.

Impending legislation originally intended to crack down on revenge porn should include the prohibition against having images of Muslim women’s faces without their hijab if the photos were taken without their express permission.

The Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons argued that such pictures should be considered “non-consensual intimate images” and, therefore, come with similar penalties as possessing child pornography, including lengthy prison sentences, the Daily Mail reported.

If government ministers sign off the committee’s proposal, it could become a crime in Britain as early as this year.

At present, the law defines “intimate” images as those in which a person is seen fully or partially nude, is engaging in a sexual act, or is seen using the bathroom.

Responding to the call to criminalise some pictures of Muslim women without hijabs, David Spencer of the Policy Exchange think tank said: “Tackling the problem of ‘revenge porn’ is clearly important – but expanding this to so-called ‘culturally intimate’ images risks extending the criminal law too far.

“The police cannot be expected to wade into so-called ‘cultural’ issues when officers are already struggling to deal with the volume of stabbings, sexual assaults and thefts that occur every day. The Government should be cautious about creating yet more criminal offences.”

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Why Is the Left Conflating Religious Liberty and ‘Christian Nationalism’?

With the recent inauguration of President Donald Trump, many within the religious liberty movement are now breathing a sigh of relief that robust religious liberty protections for all believers seems to be a priority of the new administration.

In recent decades, many of the fights for one of the most fundamental American freedoms have involved litigation to ensure robust religious exercise protections under the First Amendment or legislative fights to enact religious liberty protections via statute (such as Religious Freedom Restoration Acts). While it is true that many of the religious liberty advocates are Christians (which makes sense—about two-thirds of Americans identify as Christians), the fight for religious liberty is clearly a fight for religious exercise of all religions against the coercive power of the state. From George Washington’s 1790 Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport to the Mahmoud v. Taylor case currently pending before the Supreme Court, the religious liberty movement in America has consistently involved and defended the rights of diverse religions. 

In recent years, critics of the Trump administration in particular and the religious liberty movement in general have curiously claimed that the whole religious liberty movement has been misused as a vehicle to install “Christian Nationalism” in America. The claim is strange because, as we will explain, all the major religious liberty initiatives in America—including our work at the Napa Legal Institute—are even-handedly advocating for religious exercise rights that apply equally to all non-Christian religions as well as to Christians.

Napa Legal’s Faith and Freedom Index strives to be an objective, even-handed analysis of religious liberty at the state level, analyzing whether state laws allow faith-based nonprofit organizations of every creed to be given the freedom to operate without unnecessary government interference.

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Tulsi Gabbard Identifies Biggest National Security Threat, and It’s Not What We’ve Been Told

In a sane political environment, this would have passed as a decidedly unremarkable, albeit not quite one-hundred-percent accurate, observation. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, recently warned that “radical Islamist terrorism” is the biggest national security threat the nation faces today.

Well, of course. The top terror groups worldwide are all Islamic. On Sept. 11, 2001, Islamic jihadis carried out the largest-ever terror attack on American soil. Numerous other Islamic jihad attacks have taken place in the U.S., at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, New Orleans, and numerous other places. The Biden regime caught numerous people on the terror watch list crossing into the U.S. from Mexico and released at least 99 of them into the country. Gabbard was therefore making an entirely reasonable assessment. 

Gabbard said: “We look at the past four years of open borders, where we had tens of millions of people coming across our borders, many of whom we don’t know who they are or what their intentions are, very specifically the threat of radical Islamist terrorism here within our country is higher than it’s ever been before, not only because of Biden’s open borders, but because of his and his administration’s fear of being called Islamophobes.”

For Gabbard to speak of “radical Islamist terrorism” was not quite accurate, as there is nothing “radical” about Islamic jihad violence. It is mainstream and deeply rooted in the Qur’an and Sunnah. And “Islamist” is a phony word that corresponds to nothing in Islamic theology. It is just an attempt to distance Islam from the crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings.

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‘Thank You Jesus’ signs creator arrested on felony child porn charge

Authorities in Randolph County arrested Lucas Timothy Hunt, 25, of Asheboro, known as the founder of the “Thank You Jesus” signs movement, on a felony child exploitation charge after a month-long investigation.

The Invictus Task Force took Hunt into custody on Tuesday and charged him with felony Second-Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor. A representative with the organization confirmed to WFMY News 2 that Hunt started the initiative, which has placed thousands of signs across the country promoting the message.

The investigation started in January when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provided a CyberTip to law enforcement, leading authorities to track down the suspect. Court documents state that Hunt received a video depicting two pubescent females engaged in sexual acts. 

After his arrest, officers transported Hunt to the Randolph County Detention Center, where a magistrate set his bond at $75,000. He will appear in Randolph County District Court on Wednesday.

Court records show that Hunt waived his right to an assigned legal counsel and hired his own attorney, Charles Browne. Hunt posted bond and was released. 

President of the Thank You Jesus mission, Connie Frazier, released a statement on the matter, saying, “We will not be commenting on the charges, but we can say that Lucas Hunt, through the Thank You Jesus signs, has helped thousands of people and has been a blessing.”

The parents of Lucas Hunt told WFMY News 2 he did not do what he is accused of but were unable to speak further on the situation. 

The investigation continues. Authorities have not determined whether they will file additional charges. The Invictus Task Force urges anyone with relevant information to report potential exploitation cases to law enforcement.

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Veterans Affairs Whistleblower Exposes Religious Persecution: FOIA Data Unveils a Calculated Assault on Faith-Based Rights

During the era of tyrannical enforcement of the COVID-19 shot mandate by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), a few hundred medical exemptions were processed, but strangely, nearly 2,000 religious exemptions were not.

Sonny Fleeman, a combat veteran and federal whistleblower, once considered his role at the Department of Veterans Affairs to be “a sacred extension of his service” that helped secure benefits for fellow veterans.

But after discovering that he and other employees were targeted for their faith-based rights, the claims rater is now beginning to question his calling.

Armed with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data reviewed by The Gateway Pundit and shared publicly (i.e. request 23-02813-F, 23-03774, and 23-03950-F), Fleeman revealed that “during the COVID-19 shot mandate, the VA processed medical exemptions while stalling religious ones.”

According to him, “this tactic was orchestrated by VA leadership and the Office of General Counsel (OGC) to sidestep Title VII and coerce compliance.”

“I’m fighting an agency that’s betraying the freedoms I defended,” Fleeman told The Gateway Pundit.

His own religious exemption request became a year-long ordeal, met with silence, forcing him to file a medical accommodation request just to have his religious exemption request processed.

“I knew it wasn’t right, so I fought it from day one,” he admitted. “It took a whistleblower complaint to the chief of reasonable accommodations, who battled OGC to prove me right.”

The personal toll was “searing,” Fleeman expressed. “Not knowing if my exemption would be granted left me uneasy but watching my leadership knowingly do wrong because it came from above—that moral injury cut deeper than anything.” He witnessed “managers betraying principles in real time, refusing to resist unjust orders.”

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British Offer Up Own Citizen to Radical Islamists for Execution After He Burned Quran

At the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14, the German defense chancellor chided Vice President J.D. Vance for expressing concern regarding the respect for free speech in Europe.

“If I understand him correctly he compares the condition of Europe with what prevails in some authoritarian regimes,” Boris Pistorius said during his remarks after Vance’s address.

“This is not acceptable. This is not the Europe where I live,” he added.

Never mind the fact that Germany not only banned two of its top political parties from the Munich Security Conference and is trying to ban one of them, period. That can always be pinned on Germany’s, ahem, history in regard to certain sociopolitical matters during the last century.

However, if this truly isn’t “the Europe where I live,” Pistorius need only look to one of the countries Vance criticized — the United Kingdom — which recently offered up one of its citizens to the whims of radical Islamists for the grave crime of desecrating a Quran.

Now, before we begin, let’s just get this out front. The man, who we will not name, is not engaging in activity we’d condone. He doesn’t appear to be in compos mentis in the video that was taken of him committing the act, and his record seems to bear that out.

However, consider what happened and the steps Britain took, and ask yourself if this is the kind of society that values freedom of speech or expression — or, rather, whether it is willing to suicidally give its dissenters over to its most violent, extremist element.

So, the facts, such as they are: The Manchester man, 47 years old, has pleaded guilty in court to a charge of “racially or religiously aggravated intentional harassment or alarm,” which is punishable under the Public Order Act of 1986.

The man was recorded holding an Israeli flag before ripping out pages from the Quran and lighting them on fire at a memorial for the victims of the 2017 Manchester terrorist attack, according to the Manchester Evening News. He had previously advertised that he would be committing the demonstration on social media and live-streamed the affair.

“The ‘trigger’ for his actions was the death of his daughter in the Israeli conflict, which had affected his mental health, the court heard on [Feb. 3],” the Evening News reported.

A victim impact statement from Fahad Iqbal, who tried to intervene, read before the court, said this: “I was quite shocked, disgusted and offended. I’m a Muslim. I still can’t believe someone would do this. When he began to burn the Quran my heart was about to break out. This is the most emotion I have ever felt.”

Meanwhile, the defender of the man who pleaded guilty pointed out the obvious: “He’s extremely distressed at the distress he’s caused others as a result of this. He needs some further help and support.”

The defender said his daughter was killed during the conflict in Israel, which contributed to his declining mental health in recent months.

The judge wasn’t terribly sympathetic, saying she was sorry the man lost his daughter, but that “the Quran is a sacred book to Muslims and treating it as you did is going to cause extreme distress.”

“This is a tolerant country, but we just do not tolerate this behavior,” she said.

He’ll be sentenced on April 29 and is out on bail with the condition he doesn’t post on social media.

The Greater Manchester Police published the man’s name and street address — as claimed by groups that have come to his defense, like the Free Speech Union. However, the man also has 20 convictions on 47 prior offenses (that don’t include religious incitement), and police often publish that information, so it was likely readily available.

The Manchester Evening News, as if giving a helping hand to anyone who might want to take extrajudicial punishment out upon him, helpfully provided that information themselves.

And, as you might expect, the Greater Manchester Police were more concerned about the effect on Muslims than on someone who might get targeted by extremist Muslims for desecrating the Quran: “We understand the deep concern this will cause within some of our diverse communities and are aware of a live video circulating,” Assistant Chief Constable Stephanie Parker said, according to Free Speech Union.

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USAID accused of funding Boko Haram’s REIGN OF TERROR against Nigerian Christians

In a shocking revelation that has sent ripples across international borders, Nigerian politician Adamu Garba has accused the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) of funding Islamic terrorist groups, including Boko Haram and ISIS, in Nigeria. Garba, a prominent member of Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress, claims that USAID funds have been used to purchase weapons for these groups, which have waged a brutal campaign of violence against Christians in the region.

Boko Haram, often operating under the guise of Fulani herdsmen, has terrorized northeastern Nigeria for years. Their tactics include burning homes, killing men, and kidnapping and raping women and girls. A 2018 report by Voice of the Martyrs documented the displacement of over 300,000 people and the deaths of more than 500 individuals in that year alone. Garba’s allegations suggest that these atrocities were bankrolled, at least in part, by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Garba’s claims align with recent statements by U.S. Congressman Scott Perry, who during a February 12 hearing titled “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud,” accused USAID of misdirecting 697 million to terrorist organizations. Perry highlighted a specific example in which 136 million intended for the construction of 120 schools in Pakistan vanished without a trace.

“I mentioned this before that Boko Haram, ISWAP, and most of these terrorists, the weapons they get are actually funded by some clandestine foreign operators,” Garba stated in a video posted on his X page. “The exposé about USAID has confirmed that Boko Haram and all these terrorists are getting their weapons through the funding from USAID.”

Garba questioned the whereabouts of $824 million in USAID funding allocated to Nigeria last year, which was ostensibly intended for child mortality and education programs. “When did the money come in, where did it go to?” he asked. “These monies go to the funding of Boko Haram and kidnappers that are used to kill and destroy our land.”

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In Syria, the Barbarians Aren’t at the Gate, They’re in Power With Western Support

Atrocities are being committed every day in Syria by the new rulers, according to Irish writer and peace activist Declan Hayes.

However, the Western corporate-run media are ignoring or censoring the horrific reality because the Western governments backed the regime-change operation.

He says that Syria – a cradle of civilization – is now being ruled by barbarians with the tacit support of Western governments and media.

The population is living under a reign of terror because the new rulers are terrorists affiliated with Islamic State who espouse an extremist version of Islam that does not tolerate other religions or versions of Islam.

Declan Hayes visited Syria as a peace activist and humanitarian many times during the decade-long war in that country. He witnessed the aftermath of atrocities carried out by insurgent groups in Latakia, Kassab, and Maaloula, among other places.

These mercenary groups were proxy forces financed and armed by the United States and its Western allies in a covert war for regime change against the former Syrian government.

The reasons for the regime-change operation were geopolitical due to the West’s support for Israel and antagonism towards Russia and Iran, as well as control of oil and gas resources.

Hayes maintains close contact with religious leaders and other community figures in Syria, especially among the Alawite, Christian and Shia Muslim communities. He says that the appalling violence and killings that were carried out by the Western-backed terror proxies during the decade-long war are continuing to be inflicted today.

Homes and villages are raided daily by armed supporters of Syria’s new ruling regime led by the de facto president, Ahmed al Sharaa, also known as Mohammad al Jolani, who is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia.

HTS was formerly an affiliate of Islamic State and other Al Qaeda-linked terror networks. HTS seized power two months ago in Damascus after former President Bashar al-Assad fled the country with his family. Assad is living in exile in Russia.

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