Tag Archives: The Koran

Alex Newman: Schools Busted Promoting Islam 0 (0)

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by Alex Newman

Government schools in Michigan are under fire after an investigation by the Thomas More Law Center, a non-profit legal group, exposed a massive tax-payer funded propaganda program glorifying Islam and denigrating Christianity. Teachers were targeted in the controversial scheme, with the expectation that they would pass the lies on to their students.

The investigation began after TMLC discovered that teachers were being forced to take a two-day “training seminar” on Islam. The program, run by a Muslim “consultant” and self-proclaimed “social justice” advocate, bombarded hundreds of public-school teachers with anti-American and anti-Christian extremism masquerading as “culturally responsive teaching.”

Among other concerns, the training program was “riddled with falsehoods and errors of omission that were clearly meant to deceive,” the Law Center explained. For instance, there was no truthful information provided to teachers on either jihad (holy war) or Sharia (Islamic) law, which are two of the cornerstones of Islam.

Teachers were told that while the Bible had been changed, the Koran had come straight from Allah to Muhammad. “Her message was clear: The Koran is superior to the Bible,” the Thomas More Law Center explained in a statement about its findings, adding that the Muslim “consultant” was paid $2,500 per day to indoctrinate teachers.

The “consultant,” Huda Essa, also dismissed concerns about terrorism, saying it had nothing to do with Islam. Perhaps not surprisingly, the program also taught Michigan teachers that white Christian males were more dangerous to the public than Islamic extremists whose holy book commands them to wage never-ending war against infidels. Essa accused America of “genocide,” too, while ignoring Islam’s 1400 year history of exterminating non-Muslims across the Middle East and North Africa, TMLC said.

“We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed,” said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center, after the investigation was completed. “This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public-school systems. No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools.”

As part of the investigation, the Law Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the workshop. Within the materials received, the conservative-leaning non-profit legal group obtained audio recordings of the “diversity” presentation forced upon Michigan teachers.

What Thompson found most disappointing about the ordeal was the fact that not a single one of the over 400 teachers subjected to this particular “training” session publicly challenged the bizarre teachings. It was not immediately clear whether this was due to fear of reprisals, agreement with the consultant’s extremism, or other causes.

Similar tax-funded “training” seminars for educators by the same Islamist have taken place in California, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and more. In fact, the consultant’s website openly brags about all the educators across America who have been subjected to the same propaganda, which has been filtering down into school classrooms for years.

It seems that, with one key exception, any and all religions are now being welcomed and promoted to gullible children in government schools in America today — Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Humanism, Atheism, and so on, are all celebrated. By contrast, only Christianity and the Bible, the foundations that America and the West were founded upon, is blacklisted, ridiculed, denigrated, and openly attacked.

The Takeaway

Especially in a Christian nation like America, this tax-funded anti-Christian indoctrination should be considered totally unacceptable. It represents an existential threat to liberty, peace, and prosperity. Parents and taxpayers need to stop these abuses now, before the ongoing “fundamental transformation” America becomes impossible to reverse. Protecting one’s own children is a great place to start.

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

Bill Lockwood: Reparations and the Failure of Affirmative Action 5 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

All recent talk coming from the Democrats is about current “reparations” to black Americans for yesteryear’s slavery. White America must begin paying financial compensation for sins of history. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced a bill this week to form a commission to recommend “reparations for slavery.” Booker says this could solve the “persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country. It will bring together the vest minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed.”

Beto O’Rourke was against “reparations” when he was in Congress but has switcherooed to favor Booker’s commission. Whatever is vogue is what the Democrats support. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, another Texas Democrat, has supported reparations as well. Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Elizabeth Warren both cannot get on the bandwagon quickly enough.

Reparation talk is growing elsewhere. Black Princeton Seminary students in New Jersey are asking their school for reparations for slavery due to the fact that the early founders and faculty of the University had ties to slavery. A group of black seminarians have collected more than 400 signatures in an online petition calling on the Princeton to “make amends” by setting aside $5.3 million annually—15% of what the seminary uses from the school’s endowment for its operating expenses—to fund tuition grants for black students and establish a Black Church Studies program (Selwyn Duke, in The New American, 3.27.19).

What Shall We Say to These Things?

This is all a tacit admission that Reparations Do Not Work to the End for Which They are Intended. Why?  Booker says reparations will “right the economic scales of past harms.” This is exactly, almost word for word, the reason Affirmative Action was instituted in America in the first place.

Consider Pres. Lyndon Johnson, in a commencement address at Howard University in 1965 on affirmative action, who opined this way about Affirmative Action:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying, ‘now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.’ You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe you have been completely fair …This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

We were going to have equality “as a fact and as a result” provided by Big Brother Government in its meddlesome Affirmative Action programs. Compensate for past discrimination and persecution is the “reason.” The original purpose for Affirmative Action in the United States was to “pressure institutions into compliance” with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to the clintonwhitehouse2.archives.gov website,

The current scope of affirmative action programs is best understood as an outgrowth and continuation of our national effort to remedy subjugation of racial and ethnic minorities and of women — subjugation in place at our nation’s founding and still the law of the land within the lifetime of “baby-boomers.

Apparently, the government remedy did not take. Instead of a “remedy” affirmative action has exacerbated the racial problem, so much that Democrats are seeking again to “right the economic scales” in America—exactly what Affirmative Action was supposed to do—by government fiat.

Questions

There are a few hundred questions we need answered by the Booker’s, Harris’, Warren’s and O’Rourke’s of the world before “reparations” are underway. Just a sampling of those questions are these:

Since slavery is solely of the Democrat Party in America, why not make the DNC pay the reparations?

Since American Indians practiced slavery regularly, and photos exist of Indian tribes holding white captives as slaves, will whites receive payments as well? Will the government “shake down” the Indian tribes for their historical practice of slavery?

Since “slavery” is, by definition, for all practical purposes, the process by which one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another, how is it that modern-day forcible financial re-distribution (slavery) supposed to “right” slavery of the past? Will modern-day slavery via the tax code be repaired? What is the difference in principle between slavery to the government and slavery to a plantation owner?

Is Booker man-enough to note that the Koran teaches slavery and Muslims have practiced slavery throughout the centuries? Shall Muslims in America pay reparations for subjugating populations of Europeans in history? Will those that support Mohammed and the fact that he owned a black slave be forced to disown Mohammed? After all, those theological students at Princeton say that “Restitution is evidence of repentance.”

While thinking of Islam, since each and every black slave that was captured in Africa and sold to English slave-traders originated with Muslim slave-traders in Africa, will those who practice Islam be forced to pay reparation? After all, why target just a few Englishmen involved in slavery? Why not cast a wider net for reparations?

Since “righting past wrongs” is Booker’s game, what about abortion? Since abortion is the taking of innocent life, will the Democrat legislation force those who have aborted children to pay into a general fund for usage by others? Or, is our grievance against sin selective? Only some sins need apply.

And since abortion rates are higher in black communities than in white communities does this mean that more blacks will be paying than whites? Or, is abortion off-the-table as far as discussion is concerned?

Since the black Princeton Theology students tell us that “reparation is evidence of repentance” do they also teach that it is the government’s job to force repentance among the population? Is asking for free-will contributions the same as a government shakedown?

Ezekiel 18

While on theology students, perhaps a biblical passage will help us. Ezekiel 18.

Israelites in Babylonian captivity were self-righteous. They were disposed to shift blame off of themselves and lay it partly upon their fathers and partly upon God. Shifting blame to some other quarter that we might be just and God unjust is still prevalent among men!

Their Illusion is that they were suffering, not for their own sins, but the transgressions of their fathers. Their proverbial statement to that effect was, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and set the children’s teeth on edge.” An old proverb repeated by the modern-day Democrat-Socialist. The prophet dispels this idea in the balance of the chapter.

Ezekiel lays out four cases to illustrate Divine Justice. Number one: the righteous man (v. 5-9) is just (dealings with others) and will live. Number two: a wicked son of a righteous man (v. 10-13). The father will not be held accountable for the sin of the son. Number three: a righteous son of a wicked father (v. 14-18). Here is where liberal idea of reparation rests. Must wickedness of past generations be paid today? The inspired prophet’s answer: NO. The principle is: The soul that sins, IT is the one that shall die! (v. 2).

Number four: Ezekiel has one more scenario (v 21-24). The wicked AND the righteous. If the wicked repents, then he is forgiven. If the righteous apostatizes, he is lost. This involves a change, not in the character of one generation to the next, but in the character of the individual. Such is repentance. Princeton Theology students and the Cory Booker’s of the world notwithstanding.

Bill Lockwood-The Value of History 0 (0)

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by Bill Lockwood

George Santayana famously remarked, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” History is an insightful teacher which helps guide us in the future. But if it is to be helpful and not harmful, we must have a realistic view of the past. For this reason, in order to turn societies on their heads, Karl Marx observed that “the first battlefield is to re-write history.” William Z. Foster, long-time head of the Communist Party in America, said “Our teachers must re-write history from the Marxian viewpoint.”

The reason that communists, progressives, and socialists wish to re-write history is perhaps best described by George Orwell. “Those who control the present, control the past; and those who control the past control the future.”

Distorting history has long been the stock-in-trade of all leftists in Western culture, from socialists, progressives, humanists, atheists, feminists, to Marxists and communists. Environmentalists paint grim pictures of Industrial America. Nativists wish to perpetuate the “indigenous” Indian culture on this continent in opposition to the Christian ideals of freedom and respect of human life enshrined in our Constitution.

Practically the only fact of history recited by schoolchildren from kindergarten to college is that America once had black slaves. The message inherent here is that the current generations should pay some kind of reparation.

This hatred of Americana is evident everywhere.  History classes regularly excoriate the founding generation for allowing slavery while completely ignoring the fact that not one slave was brought to America that did not originate with Muslim pirates who enslaved over 180 million Africans and over a million Europeans. Every single slave that came to America had been purchased from Muslim slave-traders. Not only is this a fact of history, but the Koran actually depicts Allah as teaching and demanding slavery. Yet, Islam is taught in a positive light in the same public schools. How can this be?

The point is: this lop-sided instruction demonstrates that our culture is seeking to make some value-judgments of these things. Cultural leaders are almost completely leftists who are controlling the past and thereby controlling the future. Scholars call this “historical negation”—an illegitimate distortion of the historical record.

Columnist Bill Federer (World Net Daily, 9.12.17) reminds us of the methodology of communism. (1) Say negative things about a country’s founders so people emotionally detach from them. (2) Then the people are moved into a neutral position where they don’t remember where they came from. (3) Then they can be easily brainwashed into the communist future planned for them.

This sums up well what is occurring in America. Consider the ways this distortion of history influences society.

First, a political influence. The beginning point of shaping the future is to shape the politics of the day. Once historical myths such as Indian Genocide by Americans is perpetuated, politics are influenced. The Welfare State as a means of “reparation” continues—regardless of the plain facts that joblessness, alcoholism, fatherless families, depression, suicide and other societal problems are sky-high on Indian reservations. But these are directly related to the fact that those who live on reservations have been on the government dole for over 100 years. Individuals have little or no dignity remaining.

Exactly the same issue regards admissions into colleges, universities and graduate schools. Minorities, whose ancestors, it is held, have been oppressed in one fashion or another, have preference over other potential students regardless of academic qualification. We do not have an even playing-field nor are we likely to see one as long as history continues to be misrepresented and abused.

Second, an ideological influence. Michael d’Ancona, a columnist for The Guardian and one of the UK’s liberal political journalists, stated that historical “negationists” “seem to have been given the task in [a] nation’s cultural development, the full significance of which is emerging only now: To redefine [national] status in a changing world.”

He was speaking of Great Britain and the desire by many Brits to exit the European Union. In other words, history is being used as a “social resource” that helps shape “national identity” as well as the culture and its “public memory.” “Through the study of history, people are imbued with a particular cultural identity; therefore, by negatively revising history, the negationist can craft a specific, ideological identity,” correctly notes an article on Wikipedia.

There is that ideological identity which speaks to who we are as a nation. History is being manipulated to re-shape our identity as an American nation under God.

Third, a religious influence. The Bible in the Old Testament continually admonished the Hebrews to “teach their children” not only the ways of the Lord (Dt. 6:4-6); but to constantly remind them of their own past.  When Joshua led the Israelites through the Jordan River safely to the western bank, he erected a monument with the specific instruction: “When your children ask in time to come, What means these stones?” they were to remind them of the event it commemorated. The entire 78th Psalm can be entitled: “Remember to Remember.” Don’t forget your history.

The psalm tells the Hebrews “do not forget.” Teach your children (v. 4); Do not forget the works of God (v. 7); the generations before us “forgot God’s doings” (v. 11); the generation of Jews that came out of Egypt ended up “not believing God” (v. 22); they “did not remember his hand when He redeemed them from the adversary” (v. 42). Because of their forgetfulness God delivered them to enemies (v. 61). The nation finally went to captivity and slavery in foreign nations.

Americans have the same forgetfulness. Our nation was established to be “A Christian Nation” precisely because of biblical and Christian principles that were engrafted into its legal fabric. For this reason and this reason alone we have enjoyed the greatest liberties that history has ever known in any society. But who reads history any more? Our forgetfulness of these fundamentals is turning us into a secular society that more closely resembles a socialistic state of Europe than the free nation of our forefathers.

Tribunal in Dallas & First Corinthians 0 (0)

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Tribunal in Dallas & First Corinthians

by Bill Lockwood

The distinction that Texas is the first state in the Union to have an Islamic Tribunal is not something for which we should be proud. Actually, a Sharia Court pre-dated the current one in Richardson, but the onus is still on Texas. One of the “judges,” Dr. Taher El-badawi, says that participation is only voluntary. Nevertheless, the new Sharia Tribunal is operating in Irving, which ought to be of no little concern to all Americans because there is no school of Islamic jurisprudence among either Sunnis or Shi’ites that does not mandate stoning for adultery or the subjugation of women.

Even more disconcerting is the reaction of liberals to this court as well as the complete misuse of Bible passages to support it. When measures were introduced into the Texas House several years ago to forbid Sharia Courts in Texas, liberal bloggers went wild accusing conservatives of seeing ghosts that weren’t there. Now that the Sharia Court is operating, liberals chirp, ‘Well, at least they are not cutting off hands,” blah blah blah. But it is Rodger Jones of the Dallas Morning News (2-3-15) who writes in defense of the Islamic Court, “Don’t mainstream Jewish and Christian congregations offer those kinds of services? Consider, too, that the New Testament includes an injunction against taking a Christian brother to court. The church is a better place to solve disputes, according to some interpretations. From 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 (pretty snappy for a Catholic guy, eh?).”

The snappy Catholic guy demonstrates a woeful lack of knowledge of not only the Bible, but also of Islamic law.
Context of 1 Corinthians 6: Paul addresses the church at Corinth regarding a number of problematic areas, including sin in the church (chap. 5) which the community of faith was to judge (5:13). This judgment was to expel the wicked man—not physically, but that he was to be considered outside of the realm of the faithful. Withdrawal of fellowship—yet “count him not as an enemy but admonish him as a brother” (2 Thess. 3:15) is the disposition of Christians toward an offending member.

The entire paragraph of 6:1-11 turns to a kind of “judgment” that was to occur within the church, namely matters of everyday life where one member has a grievance against another. But instead of settling disputes within the church Christian was litigating Christian before tribunals of the unbelieving at Corinth (v. 2) and soiling the church’s name. Paul is filled with indignation and alternates between statements of horror (v. 1, 6), rhetorical questions (v. 2-4, 5b) and sarcasm (v. 5). He warns that their misconduct would forfeit their inheritance of the kingdom of God (v. 9-11). What can we conclude?

Confusion with Sharia Law

First, Sharia is a Codified System of Jurisprudence Taken from the Koran and Sunna. The Sunna includes the biography of Muhammad plus the Hadiths (what Muhammad said). Sharia is nothing more than a condensation and extrapolation of these two Islamic texts. Sharia covers everything, from how Muhammad cleaned his teeth, which shoe he first put on, or what were his toilet habits. These are patterns for Muslims to follow including specified punishments for failure in any particular. It includes such wide topics as political control of non-Muslims, prayer, jihad, punishments, land use, etc.

What has this to do with 1 Corinthians 6? The inspired apostle certainly never did set forward an Alternate System of Jurisprudence or Specified Legal Code determining how cases were to be judged and what penalties were to be enacted.  Instead, he admonished, have a brother assist in settling the dispute before it goes to public trial. To suggest a comparison between the inspired text of the Bible and Islamic law is a case of gross and willful ignorance.

Second, Paul encourages a completely different attitude than being “litigious.”  “Why not rather take wrong?” “Why not rather be defrauded?” To “defraud” specifically has reference to property loss (cf. James 5:4). The primary point: Guard the reputation of the church! Quit airing dirty laundry before the community! What comparison is there here with a Sharia Court? Paul nowhere advocates an official “tribunal” with an alternate system of laws that come into conflict with legal jurisprudence of the nation. He is advocating settling disputes by brotherly agreements within the church. For the “snappy Catholic guy” to use this text to somehow equate to an official Islamic legal system that supplants the American legal system, complete with civic and criminal courts called Sharia is not snappy at all. It is an abuse.

Third, the only penalty enacted by the Corinthian texts, and any NT  text, is simple expulsion from the community of faith. Withdrawing fellowship (2 Thess. 3) is how it is worded elsewhere, including “to have no company with” (3:14). This is a recognition that the offender is not living as the New Testament teaches. Yet, even those “put away” from the church are to be loved and admonished as brethren (v.15). What in the world has this to do with “legal physical punishments” enacted by Sharia Courts around the world which includes beating a rebellious wife because “men are superior to women” (Koran 4:34); female genitalia mutilation (Bukhari 7,72,779); stoning and honor killing?

Even the Dallas Court already uses Islamic denigration of women, for according to El-badawi, “The husband can request a divorce directly from the tribunal” BUT the “wife must go to an Imam who will request a divorce for her.” She herself cannot even apply in the Court! What has this to do with the New Testament? Nothing at all.  Hatred of the Bible apparently drives the liberal media. How else can one explain a Rodger Jones’ efforts to equate the brutality of Islam with the message of Jesus Christ?

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Missing in Orlando 0 (0)

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Missing in Orlando

by Bill Lockwood

Liberalism is a brain disease which rewires one’s cognitive functions and reasoning capabilities. Under its umbrella philosophies such as Marxism, Communism, Nazism, and Progressivism flourish. This is startlingly apparent in the aftermath of Orlando which emboldens Presidents and other leftists to leave out the most crucial pieces of the puzzle in analyzing and explaining the terror. Sadly, many on the right are afflicted with the same brain disease as well. What are the most critical puzzle pieces missing which we as a culture have declared off-limits for consideration?

First, refusing to look at the SOURCE material of Islam. It is beyond belief that Americans would continue to be patient with President Obama as he scurries to console—not American citizens who have been targeted for jihad—but members of Omar Mateen’s religious group, Muslims. Obama reassures them that no one is ready to judge them for Mateen’s murders. He must comfort Islam that all is well. By so doing he is warning Americans not to entertain any views that may reflect poorly on Islam.

Quick to take the cue, even conservative pundits rush to judge skeptical Americans who are dubious about Islam itself. “Moderate Muslims” must be our partners, say they. Our first duty seems to be to protect Muslims and their feelings of inclusion into America. The gigantic assumption here is that if the Orlando carnage is Islam, it is only some “radicalized” version of it and not representative of real peaceful Islam. Brain dead liberals expect Americans who can read to be brain dead as well. The real questions are: What did Muhammed himself DO? What did Muhammed himself TEACH in the Koran? In the Hadith? This leads us to the Fountainhead of Islamic teaching: The Koran and The Sura (life of Muhammed).

The prophet of Islam, Muhammed, butchered many more than Omar Mateen shot. He personally oversaw the beheading of thousands. Islam conquered the entire peninsula of Arabia in his lifetime, not because of defensive wars but because of offensive bloody strategems including butchering, raping, pillaging, and instilling fear into surrounding countries. His followers hacked their way across most of Asia and into Europe during the ages succeeding, following Muhammed’s example.

Not only did Muhammed practice what Mateen carried out, but he ordered his followers to do it as well. The last Surah that came from his uninspired lips included this: “Fight and slay pagans wherever you may find them” (Surah 9:5). Another commands Muslims to “behead” their enemies (47:4). Muhammed himself taught and practiced what is styled “radical Islam.” Why do modern-day know-it-all’s in the press continue to discuss Islam with little or no reference to the source of it all—Muhammed?

Another second puzzle piece conspicuously missing from analyzation is this: Leaving unexplained how a Muslim can be “radicalized.” This is all we hear. Mateen became “radicalized;” let’s continue to allow Muslims to come into our country but hope they do not become “radicalized;” we need to watch for “radicalization;” and on and on. Not a single one of these pundits or politicians tell us: Just how is a Muslim radicalized? How specifically doe that occur? Is it by laying aside the Koran and doing something different than what is read? Or, is it by digging deeper and deeper into the Koran and the Sura to imitate the prophet of Islam himself? What exactly is radicalization?

Only one answer is available. By becoming more and more aligned with the heart of the Koran one is radicalized.  If not, let President Obama or Hillary Clinton lay out in detail the process of “radicalization” and explain to America just how this happens. But that is something the left will never do. Instead, they will parade before us such horrendous explanations as that Orlando is the result of “too ready access to guns;” or that it is the result of “one person believing he is right and all else are wrong;” or, “Orlando’s occur” when people are “mentally disturbed.”

Missing in the Orlando analyzation: common sense. And common sense is the refusal to begin with the premise that Omar Mateen could not possibly represent what Islam actually teaches.

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