Tag: religion

Al-Qaeda Leader Makes Chilling Demand of Muslims in America

What is happening in Los Angeles these days is insurrection enough, but Sa’ad al-Awlaki, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), wants much more. If he gets his way, America will be awash in blood, with the principal leaders of the Trump administration, above all the president himself, all assassinated. Al-Awlaki sees such assassinations as an Islamic religious duty, and made his case to Muslims in America, some of whom are already out on the streets in Los Angeles, on the basis of their Islamic responsibilities. Whether any will take heed remains to be seen.

In a video published on Sunday, al-Awlaki asserted that assassinating non-Muslim leaders was a form of Islamic jihad: “Anyone who can revive the tradition of assassinations and is near the leaders of apostasy – those who support the war in Gaza with money, aid, and logistics, the Jewish Arabs, like the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and all the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula – should not hesitate even for a moment. By Allah, [assassinations] are the greatest form of jihad today.” The “Jewish Arabs” are the Muslim leaders whose countries have accords with Israel, or who have, like Saudi Arabia, been working toward a rapprochement with the Jewish state largely behind the scenes.

As for assassinating leaders, that is indeed an Islamic tradition. As “The History of Jihad” explains in detail, in the twelfth century, a Shi’ite Muslim sect, the Nizari Ismailis, came to be known as the Assassins. With their planned murders of many of their individual opponents, the Assassins gave the English language its word for one who commits planned, premeditated murder, and foreshadowed the individual jihad terror attacks of the twenty-first century. 

The word “assassin” is derived from “hashashin,” or hashish smokers, a name given to the group by its foes and based on stories about their novel method of recruiting new members. Recruits would be given hashish and taken into a garden where beautiful women awaited them. Later, when they came to their senses, they were told that they had been in paradise and that they could return there by killing Allah’s enemies and being slain in the process, thereby taking hold of Allah’s promise of paradise to those who “kill and are killed” (Qur’an 9:111). 

Today, al-Awlaki has some very specific targets in mind. He called upon observant Muslims in countries that aren’t attacking Israel, and who “fear Allah’s punishment for abandoning their brothers in Palestine,” to take matters into their own hands and “strike the Jews, the American military bases in the region, and the American aircraft carriers that are looming in the sea here.”

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Nearly 800 infant remains found in septic tank at nun-run Irish unwed mother and baby home

Crews in Ireland began work this week to excavate the site of a former church-run home for unmarried women and their babies to identify the remains of around 800 infants and young children who died there.

Many of the remains were found in a septic tank, according to authorities. 

The backstory:

The long-awaited excavation at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway in western Ireland, is part of a reckoning in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country with a history of abuses in church-run institutions.

The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.

In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.

Finding a mass grave

Dig deeper:

Investigators later found a mass grave containing the remains of babies and young children in an underground sewage structure on the grounds of the home. DNA analysis found that the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years.

A major inquiry into the mother-and-baby homes found that in total, about 9,000 children died in 18 different mother-and-baby homes, with major causes including respiratory infections and gastroenteritis, otherwise known as the stomach flu.

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Trump Shares Private Text From Mike Huckabee That Compared Iran Situation To Truman in 1945

President Trump on Tuesday shared a private text message from US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee that compared the president’s decision related to Iran with President Truman’s situation in 1945, the year he dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.

Huckabee, a Christian Zionist who believes God gave historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel — a view that’s rejected by the majority of Christian denominations — told the president that he believes God “spared” him for this moment.

“God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential President in a century—maybe ever. The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone else. You have many voices speaking to you Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice,” Huckabee wrote.

“I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts. No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945. I don’t reach out to persuade you. Only to encourage you,” the US ambassador added.

Huckabee continued, “I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s. You sent me to Israel to be your eyes, ears and voice and to make sure our flag flies above our embassy. My job is to be the last one to leave. I will not abandon this post. Our flag will NOT come down! You did not seek this moment. This moment sought YOU!”

Since being appointed ambassador, Huckabee has approached the issue of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory through the lens of his radical religious views. He has said he believes the US is no longer pursuing a two-state solution and suggested a Palestinian state could be carved out of a “Muslim” country.

“Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” Huckabee said in an interview with Bloomberg last week, using the Biblical name for the West Bank.

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Over a Hundred More Christians Massacred by Islamists in Nigeria in Ongoing Genocide Campaign — Where is the Media Coverage?

Fulani Islamic militants have unleashed another round of unspeakable violence on the village of Yelewata in Nigeria’s Benue State.

Over the weekend, attackers stormed homes, locked families inside, and set them ablaze — killing over 100 civilians, including women and children.

The attack, which began late Friday and stretched into the early hours of Saturday, left dozens missing and hundreds injured. With no access to medical aid, survivors watched their communities reduced to ash.

Benue is located in Nigeria’s “Middle Belt,” an important where the Muslim North meets the Christian South.

Foreign-funded jihadist groups and radicalized Fulani herdsmen are pushing southward in deadly waves, slaughtering Christian farming communities under the banner of conquest.

The Yelewata massacre is not an isolated event, but rather a systematic campaign of genocide and extermination.

Just days prior, in coordinated assaults across Benue and Plateau States, Fulani jihadists murdered over 130 Christians in cold blood.

Between May 24th and June 2nd, villages like Gwer West, Apa, and Munga Dasso were turned into charnel houses.

Victims were butchered, burned, or executed as militants moved with total impunity.

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From Torah to trauma: A Satanic child abuse scandal blows up in Israel

There are crimes so profound that words fail to capture them. Last week, several survivors testified to the Israeli Knesset about just such a horror.

The story broke with an investigative report published by Israel Hayom, which unearthed a long-standing pattern of ritual sexual abuse, psychological manipulation, and spiritual desecration occurring not on the margins of society but from within its most sacred institutions. Survivors speak of torment that begins in early childhood and lasts decades, often committed under the guise of religious observance. It is not just a crime of the flesh. It is a theft of the soul.

Israeli children, some as young as infants, were subjected to methodical abuse masked in religious ritual. Survivors describe ceremonies invoking biblically-vilified deities, conducted by members of observant Jewish communities. As a survivor named Noga (all of the victims’ names are changed in the report) recalled: “The gods I remember are Baal Peor and Ashtoreth… our lord Peor and our lady Ashtoreth.” (Note: All these deities are categorically condemned in the Bible).

The culprits are not fringe radicals. These are individuals who keep kosher, celebrate the Sabbath, and adhere to the minutiae of Jewish law even as they engage in acts so depraved that they defy comprehension. Here is snippet from a survivor’s testimonies:

“I remember a pentagram on the floor, usually in red. When the ceremony was in the forest, the pentagram was marked with a hoe and surrounded by lit candles in a circle. The rabbi would bless…they would repetitively read Psalms, like ‘A Psalm of David, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ They told me ‘you are special, you are chosen’ and they would insert… I remember a palm branch, Hanukkah candles, a shofar.”

Some of these perpetrators are qualified to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah — a high privilege among observant Jews. Family members, most of whom may have once been victims themselves, are often the ones who hand over their little ones to these monsters.

Several rabbis’ names appeared repeatedly in survivor testimonies. Multiple complaints filed at different police stations across Israel were quickly nipped in the bud. Prosecutions leading to imprisonments are rare. Much like anywhere else on this planet. Have any elite members of the Jeffrey Epstein pedophile network – itself rumored to be a Mossad operation – been charged in any court of law?  Have the victims been asked to identify the perpetrators of these wicked deeds during the trial of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell?

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A Rabbi, a Minister, a Monk, and a Priest Took Magic Mushrooms. Here’s What Happened

After scientists asked “psychedelic-naïve” professional religious leaders to take psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, most found the experience “religiously significant, meaningful, and generally beneficial.”

Historically, several world religions incorporate psychedelic compounds in their practices. However, this is the first study to examine what impact these experiences would have on the professional work of leaders from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, four of the world’s major religions.

Magic Mushrooms and Mystical Experiences

In their published study, the late Roland Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins University, and Stephen Ross and Anthony Bossis, from New York University Grossman School of Medicine, discuss the role of psychedelic compounds like LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and peyote in religious ceremonies. While uses of these substances vary among cultures and religions, the researchers note that they can induce experiences that share similarities to “non-pharmacologically triggered” experiences often described as “religious, spiritual, or mystical.”

“Mystical experiences are characterized by a range of subjective features including a sense of unity, “noetic” quality (e.g., an authoritative sense of truth), transcendence of time and space, a sense of awe or sacredness, intense positive mood, transiency that nevertheless feels timeless, presence in awareness of mutually exclusive states or concepts, and ineffability,” they explain.

The researchers note that such experiences are also sometimes observed in states of consciousness “associated with near-death experiences, meditation, prayer, fasting, breathwork, and music.” Although psychedelics continue to be used in some Indigenous religious contexts, the researchers note “they are generally not used within major world religions (e.g., Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam).”

Curious if these religious leaders would have similar experiences and how these experiences might affect their job performance, the team recruited volunteers from all four major religions. According to the results, the study participants experienced several impacts on their personal and professional lives, including “enduring increases in well-being and spirituality,” that lasted up to 16 months after taking magic mushrooms.

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Gender ideology mandate in foster care opposed by religious liberty, gay rights, pro-drag groups

Vermont’s refusal to place foster children in families with religious objections to gender ideology compels parents to parrot the government’s preferred messages, establishes the Green Mountain State’s own religion and treats “comparable secular activity” more favorably, while the judge who upheld the gender-affirming mandate relied on dubious research.

Those are a handful of arguments in friend-of-the-court briefs as the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals evaluates whether Vermont violated the First Amendment by stripping foster-care licenses from Christian couples Brian and Katy Wuoti and Michael and Rebecca Gantt.

Social workers gave the couples glowing reviews, but Vermont deemed them “unqualified” to parent “any child (even a relative) of any age (even an infant) and for any length of time (even a few hours)” due to their religious beliefs, harming children who need “loving homes,” the couples’ lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom said.

No federal appeals court has yet determined “whether a state may categorically exclude families from foster care because of their protected speech and religious beliefs,” though the 9th Circuit will “likely” rule on the issue “soon,” ADF’s opening brief says.

The San Francisco-based appeals court heard oral argument nearly a year ago, but has yet to rule, in another ADF case by Oregon widow and mother-of-five Jessica Bates, who is suing the Beaver State to let her adopt foster siblings without requiring her to use their preferred pronouns and even give them “hormone shots” if they desire.

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Leading rabbi accused of sexually assaulting young girls

Several young women accuse a leading rabbi of repeatedly sexually assaulting them and others in interviews with Channel 12.

The women describe how Rabbi Haim Yosef Abergel, A prominent Sephardic rabbi from the southern city of Netivot, repeatedly molested them in recent years, with some of them as young as 12 when the assaults started.

The young women describe how aides to the rabbi tried to silence them and their families with threats and bribes.

One of the women, who spoke on camera but was not identified, filed a complaint with police this morning. Channel 12 says police are likely to launch a formal investigation.

A lawyer for Abergel denied the accusations, calling them completely false and a blood libel.

Abergel made headlines recently with reports he was planning on establishing a new Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party to compete with Shas.

Abergel is the son of the late Rabbi Yoram Abergel, a popular rabbi who himself split with Shas in 2015. In 2013, the senior Abergel was arrested on suspicion of extortion in connection with threats against a mayoral candidate in Netivot, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

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Mike Huckabee: US No Longer Pursuing Goal of Palestinian State

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Tuesday that he believes the US is no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state.

“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” the former Arkansas governor told the outlet, adding that he didn’t think those “changes” would happen “in our lifetime.”

When asked if the US was still pursuing the goal of a Palestinian state, he said, “I don’t think so.”

While the US has been working against a Palestinian state for decades by continuing to back Israel as it expands illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Huckabee’s comments mark one of the most explicit denials of the goal of a Palestinian state from a top US official.

Huckabee also suggested that a Palestinian state could be carved out of a Muslim country. “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” he said, using the Biblical name for the West Bank.

For Huckabee, his opposition to a Palestinian state is ideological and rooted in his religious beliefs. As a Christian Zionist, Huckabee believes that God gave historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel.

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Southern Baptists target porn, sports betting, same-sex marriage and ‘willful childlessness’

Southern Baptists meeting this week in Dallas will be asked to approve resolutions calling for a legal ban on pornography and a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage.

The proposed resolutions call for laws on gender, marriage and family based on what they say is the biblically stated order of divine creation. They also call for legislators to curtail sports betting and to support policies that promote childbearing.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, is also expected to debate controversies within its own house during its annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday — such as a proposed ban on churches with women pastors. There are also calls to defund the organization’s public policy arm, whose anti-abortion stance hasn’t extended to supporting criminal charges for women having abortions.

In a denomination where support for President Donald Trump is strong, there is little on the advance agenda referencing specific actions by Trump since taking office in January in areas such as tariffs, immigration or the pending budget bill containing cuts in taxes, food aid and Medicaid.

Remnants of the epic showdown in Dallas 40 years ago

Southern Baptists will be meeting on the 40th anniversary of another Dallas annual meeting. An epic showdown took place when a record-shattering 45,000 church representatives clashed in what became a decisive blow in the takeover of the convention — and its seminaries and other agencies — by a more conservative faction that was also aligned with the growing Christian conservative movement in presidential politics.

The 1985 showdown was “the hinge convention in terms of the old and the new in the SBC,” said Albert Mohler, who became a key agent in the denomination’s rightward shift as longtime president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Attendance this week will likely be a fraction of 1985’s, but that meeting’s influence will be evident. Any debates will be among solidly conservative members.

Many of the proposed resolutions — on gambling, pornography, sex, gender and marriage — reflect long-standing positions of the convention, though they are especially pointed in their demands on the wider political world. They are proposed by the official Committee on Resolutions, whose recommendations typically get strong support.

A proposed resolution says legislators have a duty to “pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law — about marriage, sex, human life, and family” and to oppose laws contradicting “what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.”

To some outside observers, such language is theocratic.

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