Tag: religion

15 State Officials Warn Bank of America About ‘De-Banking’ of Christians

A group of 15 financial officials from 13 states sent a notice to Bank of America, raising concerns about the institution’s “de-banking” of Christians.

“We write to express our concerns over Bank of America’s troubling track record of politicized de-banking. Bank of America’s de-banking policies and practices threaten the company’s financial health, its reputation with customers, our nation’s economy, and the civil liberties of everyday Americans,” the officials wrote in an April 18 letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.

“We are especially troubled by Bank of America’s track record of discriminating against religious ministries. Notable examples include Memphis-based charity Indigenous Advance Ministries, the Timothy Two Project, and Christian author and speaker Lance Wallnau.”

The letter was written by officials from Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

In April 2023, Bank of America shut down the account of Indigenous Advance Ministries, which partners with groups in the African nation of Uganda to provide care and education for orphaned and at-risk children. The bank closed accounts of a Memphis church that donated to the organization.

Bank of America provided “vague reasons” for the closure of these accounts, claiming that the organization’s activities exceeded the institution’s “risk tolerance” and that it no longer wanted to serve its “business type.”

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Thought Police: Home Visit For UK Man Who Expressed Anger Online About Sydney Bishop Being Stabbed by Islamist

A video out of the UK shows a man being visited at home by two police officers and an NHS psychologist after he expressed anger online about the stabbing of a Bishop in Sydney by an Islamist.

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed by a 16-year-old boy at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church on Monday night, an attack that was caught on camera.

The teenager walked right up to the bishop as he was giving a sermon and furiously jabbed at him with a knife while shouting “Allahu Akbar” as onlookers desperately tried to wrestle him to the ground.

After the teen was pinned down, he could be seen smirking.

Now a new video has emerged showing how an Orthodox Christian man in the UK received a home visit from police and a psychologist for reportedly posting online, “Christians must stand up.”

The clip shows a female officer explaining how authorities had “a few concerns” about what the man had posted on social media.

“So why are you here today?” asks the man.

The woman says the police have been told the man “might have a few concerns, a few things that are bothering you at the moment.”

“This is religious discrimination,” responds the man, asserting that the police wouldn’t be knocking on the door of a Muslim if they had made similar statements.

“People raised concerns about your views…about what’s going on in Australia,” the police officer continues.

“Yeah, so I’m an Orthodox Christian, now you’ve turned up at my house because I went and seen my priest,” the man responds.

The NHS psychologist reiterated that there was a report about “some beliefs being expressed” and that he was there to ‘help’ the man.

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Q Plus Holding Drag Show Targeted To Children As Young As 9 Years Old At West Hartford Universalist Church

Q Plus started running events in May 2019 with a queer youth open mic, and eventually grew into a 501(c)3 organization focused on “uplifting and empowering queer youth.”

The organization specifically offers activities for queer youth, including “pre-teens” with regular meetings and social group activities.

Now Q Plus plans on “uplifting and empowering queer youth” by targeting children as young as 9 years old for a drag show at the Universalist Church of West Hartford on April 19th.

The drag show features performances by drag queens Felicity V. Lay and Perry Winkle.

The Centinal has previously written about Felicity V. Lay, who coincidentally is also targeting children with a drag queen story hour in Enfield on April 20th. The Centinal article highlighted a number of controversial posts made by Lay who subsequently turned his X account private after being exposed.

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NYC agrees to pay $17.5 million after cops force Muslim women to take off their hijabs for mugshots

On Friday, New York City agreed to a settlement of $17.5 million for a class action lawsuit after the city forced Muslim women to remove their hijabs to take mugshot photos when they were arrested.

According to Fox News, the lawsuit was filed by Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz in 2018, who claimed their religious rights were violated when had to remove the head coverings after being arrested for violating orders of protection.

Clark said in a statement that she suffered trauma when forced to remove her hijab, which is worn by Muslim women in accordance with Islamic tradition. “When they forced me to take off my hijab, I felt as if I were naked,” she said.

“I’m not sure if words can capture how exposed and violated I felt,” Clark added. “I’m so proud today to have played a part in getting justice for thousands of New Yorkers.”

Lawyer for the ladies, Albert Fox Cahn praised the ruling as a win for privacy and religious rights. He told the New York Times, “The NYPD should never have stripped these religious New Yorkers of their head coverings and dignity.”

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Rutgers Professor Claims it is ‘Homophobic’ to Point Out How Hamas Brutalizes LGBTQ People

Maya Mikdashi, an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and a lecturer in the Program for Middle East Studies at Rutgers University, participated in a recent discussion where she claims accurately describing Hamas’ brutalization of LGBTQ Palestinians should be labeled “homophobic violence.”

Mikdashi participated in a discussion titled “Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle,” where she pushed back on the complaint that Palestinians and Hamas mistreat LGBTQ citizens.

She was joined by University of Illinois professor Nadine Naber.

Mikdashi’s claim? The mere assertion of Hamas’ brutality against LGBTQ people is itself a form of bigotry.

Fox News reports:

“So I’ve been at protests where I’m then told, ‘Don’t you know what Hamas would do to you, if you were in Palestine.’ And we have to start naming this, actually, as homophobic,” Mikdashi said, as Naber vocally agreed. “You cannot rehearse violence to queer people and be like, ‘don’t you know … A, B, you would be…’ in really excruciating detail. I think we have to actually shift it.”

“It’s violence,” an audience member said.

“It’s homophobic. It’s violent,” Mikdashi agreed.

“Homophobic violence,” Naber affirmed.

“And we have to move it from thinking only in terms of pinkwashing to actually understanding pinkwashing as a form of homophobia,” Mikdashi said.

Naber further suggested that the concept was based on a “racist assumption” that Arab culture is “hyper-misogynist.”

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Inmates will view solar eclipse outside as religious right in settlement victory

A group of inmates in upstate New York who sued for the right to view the solar eclipse on April 8 as part of their sincere religious beliefs are claiming victory after a settlement agreement was reached on Thursday.

As Law&Crime previously reported, the half dozen inmates, Jeremy Zielinski, Travis Hudson, Bruce Moses, Oscar Nunez, Jean Marc Desmarat, and David Haigh at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County sued the New York Department of Corrections arguing that the natural phenomenon was part and parcel of their respective ways to honor their gods, or, in the case of the lead plaintiff, Jeremy Zelinski, an atheist, to observe the eclipse in the company of all who “gather to celebrate science and reason.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Chris McArdle, issued a statement after the agreement was reached late Thursday.

“We are pleased that, in response to our lawsuit alleging religious discrimination, New York State has entered into a binding settlement agreement that will allow our six clients to view the solar eclipse in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs,” the statement says.

The inmates had alleged that multiple requests submitted to officials at the facility in Sullivan County, including one starting as early as Jan. 28, were processed slowly and, at times, confusingly.

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OUCH: White House Cancels Annual Ramadan Dinner After Muslims Refuse to Attend

The White House was forced to cancel its annual Ramadan celebration after Muslims refused to attend an event with Joe Biden.

CBS News reports that while the White House held a successful Iftar dinner last year with hundreds of Muslims, this year’s celebrations involved just a handful administration officials:

Last year, President Biden hadn’t even spoken a word at the White House celebration of Ramadan before someone shouted out “we love you.” Hundreds of Muslims were there to mark the end of the holy month that requires fasting from sunrise to sunset.

There are no such joyous scenes during this Ramadan. With many Muslim Americans outraged over Mr. Biden’s support for Israel’s siege of Gaza, the White House chose to hold a smaller iftar dinner on Tuesday evening. The only dinner attendees were people who work for his administration.

…

Alzayat attended last year’s event, but he declined an invitation to break his fast with Mr. Biden this year, saying, “It’s inappropriate to do such a celebration while there’s a famine going on in Gaza.”

After rejections from Alzayat and others, he said the White House adjusted its plans Monday, telling community leaders it wanted to host a meeting focused on administration policy. Alzayat still said no, believing that one day wasn’t enough time to prepare for an opportunity to sway Mr. Biden’s mind on the conflict.

The boycott reflects the growing anger among America’s Muslims communities about Biden’s lukewarm for Israel’s war against Hamas.

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‘Operation Anti-Migrant’: Russia Starts Mass Deporting Muslims After Moscow Concert Massacre

Russian authorities have begun deporting large numbers of Muslims in the wake of last week’s deadly Islamist state attack at a Moscow concert hall, in an effort that has been reportedly dubbed “Operation Anti-Migrant.”

According to The Moscow Times, anti-Islamic sentiment has soared in the aftermath of the attack, in which at least 144 people were killed and hundreds of more were wounded or in critical condition. Islamic State has since claimed responsibility for the massacre.

The Times notes:

Authorities in St. Petersburg have been deporting migrants en masse in the week since the deadly attack on a Moscow region concert hall, the legal rights group Perviy Otdel said Friday. More than 64 foreigners were deported from the city’s Vyborgsky district on Thursday alone, the NGO said, citing one of its unidentified lawyers.

…

A number of buses carrying migrants were also headed to St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo International Airport on Friday afternoon, they added. The countries where the migrants were being sent to were not specified, though it is known that labor migrants in Russia mostly hail from poor Central Asian countries.

The four men accused of carrying out the attack were from Tajikistan, a majority Muslim country that does not share a border with Russia.

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Why L. Ron Hubbard Patented His E-Meter

To call L. Ron Hubbard a prolific writer is an extreme understatement. From 1934 to 1940, he regularly penned 70,000 to 100,000 words per month of pulp fiction under 15 different pseudonyms published in various magazines. Not to be constrained by genre, he wrote zombie mysteries, historical fiction, pirate adventure tales, and westerns.

But by the spring of 1938, Hubbard started honing his craft in science fiction. The publishers of Astounding Science Fiction approached Hubbard to write stories that focused on people, rather than robots and machines. His first story, “The Dangerous Dimension,” was a light-hearted tale about a professor who could teleport anywhere in the universe simply by thinking “Equation C.”

How Scientologists use the E-meter

Twelve years and more than a hundred stories later, Hubbard published a very different essay in the May 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction: “Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science.” In the essay, Hubbard recounts his own journey to discover what he called the reactive mind and the “technology” to conquer it. The essay was the companion piece to his simultaneously released book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which in turn became the foundation for a new religion: the Church of Scientology.

Marrying technology with spirituality, Hubbard introduced the electropsychometer, or E-meter, in the 1950s as a device to help his ministers measure the minds, bodies, and spirits of church members. According to church dogma, the minds of new initiates are impaired by “engrams”—lingering traces of traumas, including those from past lives. An auditor purportedly uses the E-meter to identify and eliminate the engrams, which leads eventually to the person’s reaching a state of being “clear.” Before reaching this desirable state, a church member is known as a “preclear.”

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White House Responds to Christian and GOP Backlash Over ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’ Proclamation — Does Not Apologize

The White House has responded to the backlash from Christians over the “Transgender Day of Visibility” proclamation issued by Joe Biden.

Biden declared March 31 to be a holiday honoring transgender people — but this March 31, of course, is Easter.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility,” the White House proclamation declared. “I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.”

Biden, who says he is a “devout” Catholic, has also banned religious artwork from the White House Easter egg competition.

Naturally, the absurd gesture sparked massive outrage from Republicans, including former President Donald Trump.

The Trump campaign issued a statement saying, “It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House prohibited children from submitting religious egg designs for their Easter Art Event, and formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ Sadly, these are just two more examples of the Biden Administration’s years-long assault on the Christian faith. We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

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