And the stronger the idea, the easier & more completely it will defeat Islam. There are a lot of strong ideas around. Yet out of all those what is the best hope we have of stopping it? The answer to that is one that won't please a lot of Westerners, but it's still true.

Dr. Mateen Elass was raised in Saudi Arabia. He studied Christian theology and after several years of pastoral work he returned to school earning a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from Durham University in England, studying under the world-renowned NT scholar James D. G. Dunn.

He sounds like someone who might have some insight and he has indeed got some excellent ideas. I excerpt a portion of his blog post below. Do read the whole thing HERE.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Can Islam be defeated?
... Islam is the perfect religion of the flesh, even if it does promote the death of its followers. Death is only the gateway to infinite enjoyment of carnal pleasures.

Can such a religion be defeated? The answer, of course, is yes. But can Islam be defeated by Western civilization as it now stands? I’m afraid the answer to that is no. The post-Christian West has lost the compelling reason for its existence. We still enjoy many of the fruits of the biblical worldview that inspired the fundamentals of Western thought: the notion that all human beings are created in the image of God and therefore of equal value and dignity, and imbued with certain inalienable rights, things we today call “human rights.”

Yet as Western civilization has become increasingly secular in the last two hundred years, we have consciously undermined the metaphysical framework on which our freedoms and successes were built, and assumed that the structure would remain standing. We want to enjoy the good values and practices we have, but can no longer find the deep justifications for why they must exist.

We are like the inhabitants of a great tree that is dying, still enjoying the dwindling fruit that remain on its branches, wondering why the tree is so sickly as all the while we are chopping away at the base of the trunk in the desire to gather wood for our huts in the branches. We have mindlessly cut ourselves off from the life-giving roots of our majestic tree, but continue to pick the diminishing fruit and hope vainly that the tree will somehow regain her strength.
…
So, can Western civilization defeat Islam? Hardly. It is having a hard enough time standing on its own two feet to resist a secular worldview intent on knocking it over. Certainly, the Western world has enough military power and political resources to restrain the world of Muslim nations and radical jihadi groups, but mere force cannot destroy Islam as an ideology or worldview. Secular humanism is a lightweight against the juggernaut of Islam, which is not just a set of religious beliefs but an all-encompassing worldview, informing the whole of life for its adherents.

What is needed to defeat Islam is exactly what the West has jettisoned — an embrace of the worldview of Christianity.

To defeat a strong worldview necessitates an even stronger one.

What is stronger than a god of hate if not a God of love?

What is better than a god who uses and commands brutal force than a God who exhibits and commands self-sacrifice?

What is stronger, a god who harnesses the power of temptation to advance his cause, or a God who defeats the power of sin so as to rescue human beings for a higher calling?

What is stronger, a god who promises to reward those who kill and are killed in his name, or a God who conquers death by His own death, in order to offer eternal life as a gift to those who come in gratitude?

What is a greater worldview: one that commands love for Muslims and hatred for infidels, or one that commands love for all neighbors, including enemies?
...
Only the Church has the message that sounds the death knell of Islam — but it won’t happen primarily by a frontal attack on its tenets and practices. It will come about by the conversions of massive numbers of Muslims who discover that the message of the gospel shines with a light and love and truth which Islam has never been able to match, for all its efforts.

Already, over the last forty years Muslims have been leaving Islam in droves. Many turn first to atheism, thinking that if the “final religion given to man” has proven untenable, then no religion can be true. But thousands upon thousands are being exposed to the gospel for the first time in their lives, and discovering to their irrepressible joy that the Arabian prophet cannot hold a candle to the Son of God.

Can Islam be defeated? Yes, and it will be, but only when the Church wakes up once again to her true Love, and lives out her mission with a passion to love and reach the lost, including 1.6 billion Muslims! If the last forty years are indicative of what God holds for the future, the tide is already turning.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<< 

It is not only among Muslims that this stronger idea is taking hold.

I was delighted to watch this video of an Irish atheist (with nearly 400,000 You Tube subscribers) who was raised a Roman Catholic but very early in life jettisoned his faith for atheism. It was fascinating to see that the route that brought him back to Christ was the realisation that our civilisation needs a sound basis for its existence. The value of each individual, mercy, justice, forgiveness - all those things necessary for a worthwhile life and a healthy culture are to be found, he discovered, in exactly the place Dr Elass cites: the amazing life & teachings of Jesus.

Below is a very encouraging video from David Wood in which he just scratches the surface on the influence and the ability of what C.S. Lewis referred to as "mere Christianity" (that link is to a very useful little video too) to change the lives of Muslims. 

As always - the way to defeat a bad idea is with a better idea.
I know, I know - I am of course, biased... but, as the prominent atheist thinker Sam Harris noted, Islam is the "mother lode of bad ideas". 
I simply haven't encountered any stronger idea to defeat it.

​
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
​Ex-Muslims are everywhere, and the population is rapidly growing. To illustrate this fact, I go through the comments section of one recent video and show how many ex-Muslims are sharing their decision to leave Islam. If we're hearing from this many former Muslims in the comments section of a single video, how many are out there?

Things are getting pretty weird when an older white Christian male like me is more concerned about the miserable state of women under Islam that our modern, hip and trendy feminist lady Prime Minister. Things get even weirder when an older white Christian male is actually called out for hate speech for pointing out the misery Islam imposes on women. But welcome to the new reality.

I understand that wearing the hijab in the wake of the Christchurch shootings was a simple act of solidarity and sympathy. I remember that this is the country where many of us wore red socks some years ago in support of our yachties bid to win the Americas Cup. We're simple, decent people who do sweet things in an unpretentious way. That's who we are. So wearing the hijab was seen as nothing more than the majority of the kids in the playground sticking together with the Muslim kids when the bullies picked on them. I get that and I can certainly see the necessity to pull together against the evil. I can see the attraction of women wearing the hijab for this reason.

However..... there is more to this picture.
Are we willing to learn better?

What about, for instance, the women in Iran at the moment who have been struggling for years to be free of wearing the hijab and similar head coverings? Some are quick to point out that New Zealand women wearing the hijab as a cultural feature in "solidarity" ignores the fact that the hijab was not a part of Iranian culture until the 1979 revolution, at which point the head covering became compulsory. Being outside without it could lead to a beating or imprisonment. In fact today there are women being beaten and imprisoned to be free of the barbarism represented by the hijab.

Yet we are unaware of this and so when our women wear an Islamic head covering they are actually harming Muslim women in the long run - much more than they are showing support to them in the short term. Do watch this 54 second video from Ex-Muslims of North America to get some idea.

>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nasrin Sotoudeh could be the most critical woman’s rights activist of the 21st century and she is not getting anywhere near the level of attention she deserves. Her defense of other female activists emboldened women to fight for their freedoms. She is not only an activist - she is an activist maker.

Thirty-eight years in prison and 148 lashes for providing legal representation for women refusing to wear the head covering. None of these women seem to be aware that this hijab is a symbol of freedom which shows how they are valued by Allah and Islam. Instead they think like Western women - and that is a problem in Islam.

Our ex-Muslim friend the Apostate Prophet has prepared this 12 minute clip to give us some idea of Islam's teachings concerning women and shows just how "esteemed" the prophet Muhammad made women in the history of Islam. 

>>>>>>>>>
Muhammad said a lot of things about women. The things he said were usually not very nice...

The Apostate Prophet was recently banned from a major social media platform for pointing out things like this about Islam. He explains it HERE. He came from a Muslim upbringing (as he said, his mother was the first person to teach him that women are deficient in intelligence and virtue) where he swallowed all the teachings hook, line and sinker until he was provoked to evaluate things clearly, for himself, as an adult. The freeing experience of moving to America where he could believe and speak as he pleased had however given way to despair when he discovered he was banned from Twitter. The shock and loss was so acute that it led him to contemplate suicide.

So OK, we got on board the hijab train with the best of intentions. We're excused for not knowing any better. But now what? Now that we know better what are we going to say next time the topic comes up? Are we going to do more than remain at the level of the superficial? My response to that question is hopeful. ​Yes people will speak up. Yes people will not be afraid to apply very old and common feminist arguments to the benefit of Muslim women.

How would we like to be women trapped in a cult that internalises misogyny and does so with the weight of "god" and the threat of hell behind it? Are we going to thoughtfully speak up for them?

This is another very useful clip from Dr. Wood. I thought you'd find it handy to see what led someone from a strong Christian background to convert to Islam. It's also good to see how he made his way back again - through being exposed to sacred Islamic scripture which most Muslims never study (that is left to "scholars").

The video gives us a clear idea of what it can cost someone to leave Islam. He mentions how he was attacked, stabbed, shot, run down by a van and generally not well received by some Muslims for his decision. His key observation is: Muslims refuse to discuss the problematic parts of their own scriptures that reveal disturbing aspects about Muhammad and habitually resort to violence.

This chap's Muslim friends actually said not to read those things or think about them but just keep following the form of the religion.

Sounds like a cult yes?

On the hate speech vs. free speech argument it is interesting to note that one social media platform has actually banned this very video of Dr Wood's for its supposedly hateful statements regarding race, religion and/or gender. You'll be able to judge for yourself if this is the case. I think it will highlight that our Prime Minister's response to the question of how to define hate speech - "you'll know it when you see it" - really sounds pathetically inadequate in real life.

The full 17 minute video of this chap's is here and is well worth a look (there is a little foul language and some images which may disturb some people). 


>>>>>>>>>>>
Joseph Colden converted to Islam shortly after leaving college. After marrying a Muslim wife, he began studying Islam's most trusted sources. Joseph and his wife eventually left Islam and are now Christians.

​Watch the testimony of these ex-Muslims here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VD-C...

Yes it finally came, the little sit-down talk I'd been waiting for after hearing someone had complained to the Police about a public talk I gave back in 2015. After the mosque shootings a lady decided that the talk was hateful and likely to inflame negative emotions against Muslims, so she made a complaint to the Police. Fascinating.

The talk in question was to about 100 people of very mixed backgrounds in a church hall. There were some Christians but most were your regular agnostic Kiwis... and there were even a couple of Muslims. One of the Muslims was a Somali lady who chatted to me beforehand and said that she hoped I wasn't going to say anything uncomplimentary about Muhammad because he was perfect - above reproach. I said I was only going to refer to Islamic sacred texts so how could there be a problem? Later in the Q&A she made a stand and spoke at length about her wonderful prophet and failed to engage with any of my points or any of the sacred scriptures to which I had referred that indicated he was a very troubling figure. Of course no question ever came. Someone said to me afterwards that they didn't know how I remained so patient with her when she obviously intended to capture the event for her own agenda. But I wasn't there to argue, I was there to provoke growth and there's more than one way to teach.

Nevertheless I apparently came across as hateful to one Anglican lady (I think it's the same lady who once accused me of being "an Anglican Ian Paisley"). So at 6 o'clock one night last week I heard a knock at the back door and opened it to find a Policeman standing there (are we still saying Police-man, or should it be Police Officer? Is it like fireman and firefighter? I can't keep up). For the sake of anonymity I'll call him "Bobby".

I invited Bobby in and offered him a cup of tea which he declined. I was a bit nervous, as you can imagine, but he seemed even more nervous than I was. After explaining the reason for his visit he said that he's been making quite a few of these calls on people who may have indicated to someone somewhere that they had an issue with Muslims. He had a fixed set of questions he was supposed to go through with each person. There's a video here of a couple of cops making a visit to another bloke for similar reasons. That visit didn't go so well. It was nice that Bobby didn't have a pistol on him, that made the whole thing a bit less awkward - we're not used to that sort of thing over here are we?

Another good thing is that I know a couple of Policemen or ex-Policemen and found that Bobby used to go sailing with an ex-cop married to my wife's cousin in Auckland (New Zealand's a small country). It was a nice healthy point of connection and helped to humanise the whole proceedings.

Bobby apologised for having to come round to talk but I assured him it would be irresponsible of the Police not to after receiving a complaint in the wake of the Christchurch attack. It wasn't long before he said "I think I'm a pretty good judge of people and I don't think you present any sort of threat" but that he was obliged to go through his list of questions. So below is my best recollection of our exchange in no particular order.

1. Have you seen the video of the shootings or read Tarrant's manifesto?
Yes to both.
2. Do you have copies of them?
No. I had a copy of the manifesto until I learnt it was illegal to hold and subsequently deleted it. One viewing of the shootings themselves was enough. I asked how I could get permission to have a copy for academic purposes but he couldn't point me in the right direction for that.
3. Do you hold any extremist views?
Well that's a vague question. Define extremist. But thinking I knew what was being driven at I could simply answer "no".
4. Do you have any extremist literature?
I said yes, I have a Qur'an. He said that I had a good sense of humour.
But I was only half joking.
5. Do you own any guns?
Now he should already know the answer to that because I've had the arms officer come around and assess my gun safe when I moved in and therefore the Police already know I have two firearms. In fact I already volunteered their serial numbers in case they were stolen, something I wasn't legally obliged to do. So having reiterated that I had two guns I was asked for their details (yes one is a now illegal semi-auto).
6. Have you had any combat training?
Supposing that raising teenagers didn't count I said no.
7. Do you hate Muslims?
No. Because hating Islam does not entail hating Muslims.

I said to him that surely no-one would answer 'yes' to questions like 'do you hate Muslims' and 'do you have any extremist literature?' but he responded that a surprising number of people admitted to both. Some said that they really did hate Muslims and that the only problem with the Mosque shootings was that more weren't killed. Unbelievable. We both shook our heads.

I mentioned my attendance at a Free Speech Rally last year where there were a couple of blokes who held similar views (I wrote about the experience here). I told him about these men who hated Muslims but were helpfully talked to by others afterwards in order to point them in the right direction: "we don't hate people, we hate bad ideas". I said I thought that this is the way to initially deal with the problem rather than prosecuting them or driving people with the wrong opinions underground to fester.

We talked about the problems of hate speech laws - who decides what is hate? Bobby was very conciliatory, it felt like he'd had this chat before and it wasn't on his to-do list so he avoided controversy. However as I listened to Bobby there was one area that did concern me, but shouldn't have, given what I know of our society: his sadly typical religious illiteracy. Not merely in regard to Islam (which I expected) but in regard to Christianity, the base religion of his own Western culture!

He seemed to think that the Bible was equally likely to be called hateful as the Qur'an. How anybody could hold such a position indicates that they simply have the most vague idea of its contents. But if any New Zealanders know anything of the Bible I suspect it would be the 23rd Psalm ("the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want" - which discusses our reliance on God's genuine and personal love for us) and the Lord's Prayer ("Blessed are the Peacemakers...Blessed are the meek...Blessed are those who merciful..." which discusses the kind of things God wants to see in us in response to his love).

That's pretty much the thrust of the whole Bible's moral teachings in a nutshell. Hate?

And that was about it for our chat. I showed him my library on the way out (Islam over there, other totalitarian belief systems over here) and invited him to read my website because really, "everything you need to know about me is there". However I think that, the box concerning carrying out a face-to-face being ticked he won't look in here. That is a real pity, because this issue is not going to go away. The issues surrounding the teachings of Islam and its prophet, the exemplary child rapist, torturer, brigand, Antisemite and warlord Muhammad, will only become more stark.

As will issues of free speech. Almost all our politicians seem totally confused on what is permissible criticism and what is not (there are two extremely useful short videos here and here on the current state of idiocy regarding free speech in NZ that I highly recommend). At the moment it seems to me that if someone's - anyone's - feelings are hurt then speech has crossed the line from "free"into "hate" no matter how factual the information or how kindly it's delivered. That's it.

What could possibly go wrong eh?
​Good grief.

Forgive me this indulgence - I am still unwell, so do grant me a boon.

​I haven't had a piece of music here for quite a while and I found this one today. It provoked all kinds of thoughts & feelings within me. Included in these there materialised a new and profound respect for my dear atheist friends.

I can't get past it. Lovely people that most of them are, atheists are nevertheless people who are content - as far as I can see - with there being no meaning to life. Oh, they declare they have a meaning that is useful to them, but the trouble is that I have yet to hear one of any use to me that does not include God (ah yes, it's all about me). Yet in all the pain and meaninglessness of this life, these Titans find they do not require anything beyond the material to provide all the answers they need.

Therefore the atheist is a hero to me, a colossus. 

Atheists just don't seem to feel the need for a personal connection with the Truth - He who is eternal life. The need that I find within myself does not seem to burden them in the slightest.

Given the equation: what is the source of everything you see, feel and know - nothing, or God? They say "nothing". Similarly the question: "Where does everything return to at its end - nothing, or God?" They ask why it should be expected to "return" anywhere. Again they choose nothing.

What strength.

To cope with everything that life has to throw at them with the bedrock belief that they came from nothing and will return to nothing indicates a colossal strength of character that I find I am totally unable to match. Hence my undying admiration for them.

Me...little weak me... I just can't cope with the answers our culture offers me for all the pain & futility that life serves up. My wife and I have lost two children; we struggle and work; we've been betrayed and denied by people we dearly love. Too many times. I see myself age, I lose powers I once thought I'd always possess. All around me I see others making mistakes that I think I could help them with, but I seem unable to do so. The world itself seems to be quickly falling into decay and that certainly is too large for me to forestall. My strength fails.

As the psalmist wrote:  

​As for man, his days are like grass—he blooms like a flower of the field;
when the wind passes over, it vanishes, and its place remembers it no more.

And yet from everlasting to everlasting the loving devotion of the LORD extends to those who fear Him,
and His righteousness to their children’s children

Within me I observe a craving, as St Augustine noted, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Ah, beautiful. Nothing is more true for me (and it's all about me).

But then I am a very weak man - weak in mind and in strength. I must be to even register this terrible ache within me that I cannot fill with all the baubles and trinkets of this world or with the wisdom of those who feel no need for God. So please don't listen to me. What a fool I am. I have nothing to offer anyone in this maze I have to navigate other than Christ. Only He could fill the vacuum within me.

I don't know about you... I can't say about you...but I just can't understand how anyone endures this ache, this chasm without God. It is simply incomprehensible to me.

Please go and ask one of those clever atheists. They have a hundred marvelous reasons to remove from us the burden of seeking this God who "doesn't exist". A hundred reasons that I seem to be too dull to understand. For regrettably, this life makes no sense to me whatever apart from finding my life in God - and God revealed himself to me in Jesus when I hit rock bottom all those years ago.

Back then I broke the rules in desperation when I cried out to the God that very clever people had always taught me didn't exist.

As another of my heroes, Blaise Pascal, wrote, "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart". Imagine that brilliant intellectual, still so weak he could not make sense of life without God. Even he was a weakling.

So, honour the atheists! They are happy and content without any of this. Better men than me, the lot of them. And I will always admire that kind of strength.

​But sadly, for me, I can again only reflect Augustine:

           My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul, I am your salvation.
           Let me run towards this voice and seize hold of you.
           Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed.

OK, while I have the energy, here's an excellent piece from Raymond Ibrahim, whose work I always recommend.


>>>>>>>>>>>
​“Deep Spiritual Crisis”: Scandinavian Women Expose the West’s Root Problems
The following brief but highly informative interview appeared earlier this year on Herland Report TV.  Titled, “Europe: Deep Spiritual Crisis,” the host, Hanne Nabintu Herland, a Norwegian historian of religions and journalist, interviews Iben Thranholm, a Danish theologian and journalist. 

Both women are to be commended for raising many important points—indeed, for getting to the heart of the West’s problems, including vis-à-vis Islam—that are seldom acknowledged in American media, certainly not “mainstream” media.   Moreover, as both come from Scandinavia — arguably the most “progressive” region in the world — they know what they speak of and offer a prognostication the U.S. can learn from.

The general theme of the episode is that, Western values have become almost entirely materialistic in essence; because pure materialism is ultimately dissatisfying—“man shall not live on bread alone”—more and more Western people are turning to any number of metaphysical ideologies, from Islam to paganism—anything as long as it’s not Christianity; because many of these ideologies are intrinsically hostile to Christianity, Western culture, which was founded on Christian principles, has become suicidal—hence the current situation, especially in Europe.

As Thranholm explains:
         You cannot understand the world only from a political view point. We are in a spiritual warfare and not just a political struggle….  It has become a taboo to speak about religion due to this anti-religious ideology that claims that religion has no value. As long as we remain in this spiritual crisis, I don’t think Europe will be able to defeat Islam. The reason why Islam is so successful here is because we have a spiritual vacuum.  

Disturbing statistics validate this latter point: “Thousands of Norwegians are rushing to Islam” every year, says Herland: “A flood of ethnic Scandinavians are becoming Muslim,” precisely because Christianity has “evaporated.”

It’s especially refreshing to see that both women understand that, whatever issues the West is having with Islam, these are almost entirely brought on by the West itself—a point I often make (for example, here and here).  As Thranholm—who refers to the current “anti-Christian ideology” in the West as “the second coming of Marxism”—says in the video, “A weak Christianity means a strong Islam.”

The brief video follows and is well worth watching:

Been quiet lately. Still not feeling well. Yeah, it's getting pretty boring.

Anyway, I have some energy today so here is a very worthwhile contribution to the general topic of why we are so troubled by Islam around here. This is from the website of the well-known bigot, hater and racist Stephen Lennon - at least that's how the mainstream press describes him. Obviously with that sort of intro we should expect the most jaundiced, cheery-picked steaming pile of parrot droppings imaginable.

Well here's a chance for us to test whether our media know what they're rabbiting on about isn't it?

As an sideline I see that the FBI have released their latest list of "Most Wanted Terrorists". Of the 28 people listed at least 26 of them seem to be from one particular religious community. I'll let you decide which one because if I were to give my opinion I might be seen as a racist provocateur. That's how things are going these days in our strange world.

Yet the news media keeps presenting us with the "fact" that those dreaded Right-Wing extremists - as they keep calling Christchurch mass murderer Brenton Tarrant, even though he didn't describe himself as such but as an "Eco-fascist" - are the real problem. He was a racist but his position was rather more nuanced than simply being "Right Wing", especially when he admitted to being "Left Wing" depending on "what you mean by that term". But you'd have to read his manifesto to know this and as our government won't permit ordinary New Zealanders to do so and as our news media (and many "academic experts") obviously have not bothered to read it we are left with the proverbial willfully blind leading the blinded.

I also saw the other day that there are more Trans-gendered people in the USA than there are members of the KKK. Still the media and politicians tell us that "Right Wing" extremism is the real boogieman. BTW - that term "Boogieman", do you know its etymology? It originally referred to the Sharia pirates of an area of Indonesia around Aceh many years ago. Don't let the Boogieman get you indeed.

Well back in the real world where reasonable people take notice of good research, the special teachings intrinsic to each separate religion and the evidence of our own eyes we have a slew of good reasons for our concern over Islam and those Muslims who closely follow its dictates.

Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) is running for the office of Member of the European Parliament for North-East England, hence some of the references here.

Let's begin.

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Why CRITICISE Islam And Muslims?
​Before reading, please take time to watch all the videos and click on all the links we have provided in this article, when someone asks you, “why do you criticise Islam and Muslims?” you will have an answer.

Throughout Tommy’s campaign to become the North West MEP, we have heard people say things like “why attack Muslims?”, why don’t you attack Christianity?

If truth be told, Tommy has not attacked all Muslims, he has attacked certain types of Muslims, and he has well-founded criticisms of the Islamic faith, like any ideology it should be scrutinised.

People on the left conflate the Islamic ideology with individual Muslims, we don’t, Muslims are not a monolith, they can and do have different views on Islam, however as we have said before, apart from the fluctuating opinions of Muslims about their religion, the one constant of their religion is the Quran itself.

As soon as anyone brings up the subject of Islam and the problems and attitudes associated with its adherents, left-wingers go crazy, literally shaking with anger. Please do check out this video of Ben Affleck, Sam Harris and Bill Maher as they discuss the global number of “Muslim radicals.”

So why do Muslims and Islam seem to be singled out for more criticism than perhaps any other group or faith?

Well for a start, global terrorism is monopolised by Islamic groups, the data and the numbers speak for themselves, that’s not hateful, its the truth. According to the Global Terrorism Index 2018, compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) just four organisations were responsible for 10,632 deaths in 2017. Those groups were Islamic State, the Taliban, Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram.

Guess what they have in common?

​They are Muslims who follow the Islamic faith.

From the start of this year alone, there have been 851 terrorist attacks causing 3741 fatalities. That figure grows every day!

Clearly, Islamic fighters pursue a cult of death and terror more than anyone else on the face of planet Earth.

Why?

Because Islamic texts allow for the death of the non-believer and apostates. Islam does not mean peace as we are all led to believe, it means “submission.” That “submission” is to the will of Allah, where can we find the will of Allah? In the Quran and other Islamic texts of course.

We certainly won’t be finding it in the New Testament, that’s for sure.

There are other reasons for criticising certain types of Muslim and the Islamic faith, especially when Western nations have imported a massive influx of Muslims from troubled Islamic states. Muslims (not all of course) bring with them their culture and their ideological perspectives as well, not all are exactly “compatible” with Western laws and culture.

Let’s look at some facts from the Pew Research Centre, they are the “gold standard” for empirical research, they provide facts that can and should guide global policies when dealing with the issues of individual Muslims, their affiliation to certain groups and the Islamic faith.

There is an overwhelming percentage of Muslims in many countries who want Islamic law (sharia) to be the official law of the land, according to Pew’s worldwide survey. The survey was conducted in 39 countries; they were divided into six regions – Southern and Eastern Europe (Russia and the Balkans), Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.

You can see the results here.
What is the sharia? What constitutes sharia?

​Sharia law in the first instance relies upon the text contained in the Quran; it also draws from the hadith, which include the accepted sayings and deeds of Muhammad. Take these two sahih hadith as an example…

It is worth noting that the European Court Of Human Rights ruled in 2003 that “sharia law is incompatible with democracy and human rights.”

We agree wholeheartedly, it persecutes gay people, it reduces women to the status of cattle, it executes people who leave the Islamic faith, it allows old men to marry and molest young children, it normalises sex slavery, it allows for the beating of wives and the punishment of disbelievers, there is more, but we don’t have enough room here to list everything.

​There will be many cultural clashes between the West and Islamic countries; for example, a majority of Muslims believe that Western music, movies and TV hurt “morality”, which is a little hard to take in given the fact that sharia is advocated by most Muslims worldwide.

We suppose its “how” your morality is defined, for example, it’s immoral to watch scantily clad women on TV but it is fine to marry and molest a child according to the sharia? Remember, sharia is a system based on Islamic morality and law as defined by the accepted deeds and sayings of Muhammad and more importantly, Quranic text. Children taken as “brides” is a huge problem, its not hateful or unreasonable to state this fact, why else would there be at least 16 different charities who are fighting against this disgusting religious/cultural practice?

To be clear, we are not saying that all Muslims think marrying a child is an acceptable thing to do, we are saying that Islamic texts do!

​If Muhammad is the perfect example for all of mankind (as per the Quran) then its perfectly ok to marry and molest a child. That to us Westerners is abhorrent, its certainly not a culture we want or need in our society, nor do we need or appreciate apologists defending such practices.

​Tommy has always always drawn attention to the issues that lie within the Islamic faith, he has also drawn attention to the Muslim birth rate, if we think we have issues now, those issues will become harder to deal with as the Muslim population grows faster than any other demographic. It is reasonable to believe that radical thought and beliefs will increase with the growth of the Muslim population.

We advise that to get a more wholesome picture of Muslim attitudes worldwide you should also take a look at Clarion Project “By The Numbers” where Raheel Raza (a Muslim woman) looks at Muslim demographics and opinions, its well worth watching, she does some fantastic work.

As we have a “global perspective” of Muslim opinion, lets now look at Muslim opinion here in Great Britain. Trevor Phillips the former chair of the Equality And Human Rights Commission produced a documentary in 2016, it was titled – What British Muslims Really Think.

​In that documentary he found some extremely concerning results, such as :
Only 34% would inform the police if they thought somebody they knew was getting involved with people who support terrorism in Syria.
4% sympathise with people who take part in suicide bombings.
4% sympathise with people who commit terrorist actions as a form of political protest.
52% do not believe that homosexuality should be legal in Britain.
47% do not believe that it is acceptable for a school teacher to be homosexual.
23% support the introduction of Sharia Law.
32% refuse to condemn those who take part in violence against those who mock the Prophet.
39% agree that “wives should always obey their husbands”.
31% think it’s acceptable for a man to have more than one wife

You can find the Channel 4 survey results HERE and the documentary HERE.

According to Pew research the Muslim population in Britain is set to triple in 30 years.

​Perhaps we need to get our criticisms in now, if left too late then what will become of our beloved country?
Our politicians are on notice.

Isn't it nice to hear an Arabic speaking, Middle Eastern lady give an accurate and easily digestible history of Islam? This is one of the handiest videos I think I could pass on to you. In 15 minutes you'll get all the basics you need to know.

All that we see to do with Islam in the world around us stems from its history & its sacred theology.
This is a very different plant to the one that gave us all the West holds dear.
​A very different tree producing very different fruit.


>>>>>>>>>>>
Brigitte Gabriel gives a short history lesson about Islam at the Values Voter Summit in 2015. As usual she gives an impassioned speech about the dangers that Islam poses to the United States and the world. 

I heard a former jihad recruiter who later became a Christian speak about how difficult it was to recruit cultural Muslims into becoming devout Muslims willing to do anything Allah asked of them. "You Westerners think it's so very difficult to do this", he said, "it took me about 10 minutes."

Of course this involves referring to Qur'an and hadith and the authoritative scholarly interpretations of those scriptures. Who can argue when it is being plainly demonstrated from the base texts of the Faith? And why would the young person listen to someone - even a concerned close family member - who has no more than a passing interest in Islam and the prophet? In Islam such people are just hypocrites to be spurned. 

As much as they will resist saying this to non-Muslims or more devout Muslims this is every westernised Muslim parent's nightmare.

Our young man or young woman is moved from being a cultural Muslim to becoming a serious follower of Muhammad and some things will inevitably ensue. In the case of Sri Lanka hundreds of dead and maimed people ensued.

Yet we in the West are often frowned upon and discouraged - if not outright silenced - if we dare to publicly raise the problematic aspects of Islam.

I can see a problem here, can't you?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sri Lanka Suicide Bomber Was Radicalized in Great Britain and Australia​
At least one of the suicide bombers in the recent Easter Sunday church attacks in Sri Lanka was radicalized in Great Britain and Australia. David Wood discusses the issue.

I have featured the wonderful Guy Milliere here before regarding problems in France (here on Islamic Antisemitism; here on general "Islamist" influences in France; and here on the decline of France over the last 10 years due to the rise of Islam - astonishingly, the video is still available on Youtube - an obvious oversight which should be rectified shortly I imagine).

Here Dr Milliere discusses in greater depth many facts around the fire and the emblematic aspects of the whole event. For one thing, you will see why I have such serious doubts that the French regime will actually be honest if it should discover that the fire was the result of an attack by one or more Muslims.

Well worth the few minutes required to grasp the larger picture of what is occurring.
Via the Gatestone Institute.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Burning of Notre Dame and the Destruction of Christian Europe
​The fire that destroyed much of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris is a tragedy that is irreparable. Even if the cathedral is rebuilt, it will never be what it was before. Stained glass windows and major architectural elements have been severely damaged and the oak frame totally destroyed. The spire that rose from the cathedral was a unique piece of art. It was drawn by the architect who restored the edifice in the nineteenth century, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who had based his work on 12th century documents.

In addition to the fire, the water needed to extinguish the flames penetrated the limestone of the walls and façade, and weakened them, making them brittle. The roof is non-existent: the nave, the transept and the choir now lie in open air, vulnerable to bad weather. They cannot even be protected until the structure has been examined thoroughly, a task that will take weeks. Three major elements of the structure (the north transept pinion, the pinion located between the two towers and the vault) are also on the verge of collapse.

Notre Dame is more than 800 years old. It survived the turbulence of the Middle Ages, the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, two World Wars and the Nazi occupation of Paris. It did not survive what France is becoming in the 21st century.

The cause of the fire has so far been attributed to "an accident," "a short circuit," and most recently "a computer glitch."

If the fire really was an accident, it is almost impossible to explain how it started. Benjamin Mouton, Notre Dame's former chief architect, explained that the rules were exceptionally strict and that no electric cable or appliance, and no source of heat, could be placed in the attic. He added that an extremely sophisticated alarm system was in place. The company that installed the scaffolding did not use any welding and specialized in this type of work. The fire broke out more than an hour after the workers' departure and none of them was present. It spread so quickly that the firefighters who rushed to the spot as soon as they could get there were shocked. Remi Fromont, the chief architect of the French Historical Monuments said: "The fire could not start from any element present where it started. A real calorific load is necessary to launch such a disaster".

A long, difficult and complex investigation will be conducted.

The possibility that the fire was the result of arson cannot be dismissed. Barely an hour after the flames began to rise above Notre Dame -- at a time when no explanation could be provided by anyone -- the French authorities rushed to say that the fire was an "accident" and that "arson has been ruled out." The remarks sounded like all the official statements made by the French government after attacks in France during the last decade.

In November 2015, on the night of the massacre at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, in which jihadists murdered 90 people, the French Department of the Interior said that the government did not know anything, except that a gunfight had occurred. The truth came out only after ISIS claimed responsibility for the slaughter.

In Nice, after the truck-attack in July 2016, the French government insisted for several days that the terrorist who crushed 86 people to death was a "man with a nervous breakdown".

In 2018, Sarah Halimi's murderer, who recited verses from the Quran while torturing his victim, was declared "mentally disturbed" and held in a psychiatric institution immediately after his arrest. He will most likely never face a court. On April 8, Alain Finkielkraut and 38 other intellectuals published a text saying that her murderer must not escape justice. The text had no effect.

The fire at Notre Dame took place less than three years after a "commando unit" of jihadi women, later arrested, tried to destroy the cathedral by detonating cylinders of natural gas. Three days before last week's fire, on April 12, the leader of the jihadis, Ines Madani, a young French convert to Islam, was sentenced to eight years in prison for creating a terrorist group affiliated with the Islamic State.

The Notre Dame fire also occurred at a time when attacks against churches in France and Europe have been multiplying. More than 800 churches were attacked in France during the year 2018 alone. Many suffered serious damage: broken, beheaded statues, smashed tabernacles, feces thrown on the walls. In several churches, fires were lit. On March 5, the Basilica of St. Denis, where all but three of the Kings of France are buried, was vandalized by a Pakistani refugee. Several stained-glass windows were broken, and the basilica's organ, a national treasure built between 1834 and 1841, was nearly wrecked. Twelve days later, on March 17, a fire broke out at Saint Sulpice, the largest church in Paris, causing serious damage. After days of silence, the police finally admitted that the cause had been arson.

For months, jihadist organizations have been issuing statements calling for the destruction of churches and Christian monuments in Europe. Notre Dame was repeatedly named as a primary target. Despite all that, the Cathedral was not adequately protected. A couple of young men, who entered the Cathedral at night, climbed on the roof last November and shot a video that they then put on YouTube.

Many messages were posted by people with Muslim names on social media -- Twitter, Facebook, the website of Al Jazeera -- expressing a joy to see an important Christian symbol destroyed. Hafsa Askar, a migrant from Morocco and the vice president of the National Union of Students of France (UNEF), the main student organization in France, published a tweet saying, "People are crying on little pieces of wood... it's a delusion of white trash".

French President Emmanuel Macron, who had never even mentioned the attacks on Saint Denis or Saint Sulpice, quickly went to Notre Dame and declared, "Notre Dame is our history, our literature, our imagination". He totally left out cathedral's religious dimension.
...
Macron's attitude is not surprising. From the moment he became president, he has kept himself away from any Christian ceremony. Most of the presidents who preceded him did the same. France is a country where a dogmatic secularism reigns supreme. A political leader who dares to call himself a Christian is immediately criticized in the media and can only harm a budding political career. Nathalie Loiseau -- the former director of France's National School of Administration and the leading candidate on the electoral list of Macron's party, "Republic on the Move," for the May 2019 European Parliament elections -- was recently photographed exiting a church after mass, which led to a media debate on whether her church attendance is a "problem."

The results of French secularism are visible. Christianity has been almost completely wiped out from public life. Churches are empty. The number of priests is decreasing and the priests that are active in France are either very old or come from Africa or Latin America. The dominant religion in France is now Islam. Every year, churches are demolished to make way for parking lots or shopping centers. Mosques are being built all over, and they are full. Radical imams proselytize. The murder, three years ago, of Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old priest who was slaughtered by two Islamists while he was saying mass in a church where only five people (three of them old nuns) were present, is telling.

In 1905, the French parliament passed a law decreeing that all the properties of the Catholic Church in France were confiscated. Churches and cathedrals became property of the State. Since then, successive governments have spent little money to maintain them. Those churches that have not been vandalized are in poor condition, and most cathedrals are in poor condition, too. Even before the devastating fire, the Archdiocese of Paris stated that "it can't afford all the repairs" that Notre Dame needed, "estimated at $185 million."
...
For the foreseeable future, the heart of Paris will bear the terrible scars of a fire that devastated far more than a cathedral. The fire destroyed an essential part of what is left of the almost-lost soul of France and what France could accomplish when the French believed in something higher than their own day-to-day existence.

Some hope that the sight of the destroyed cathedral will inspire many French people to follow the example of those who prayed on the night of the disaster. Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris, said on April 17, two days after the fire, that he was sure France would know a "spiritual awakening".

Others, not as optimistic, see in the ashes of the cathedral a symbol of the destruction of Christianity in France. The art historian Jean Clair said that he sees in the destruction of Notre Dame an additional sign of an "irreversible decadence" of France, and of the final collapse of the Judeo-Christian roots of Europe.

An American columnist, Dennis Prager, wrote:
"The symbolism of the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, the most renowned building in Western civilization, the iconic symbol of Western Christendom, is hard to miss. It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning -- and with it, Western civilization."

Another American author, Rod Dreher, noted:
"This catastrophe in Paris today is a sign to all of us Christians, and a sign to all people in the West, especially those who despise the civilization that built this great temple to its God on an island in the Seine where religious rites have been celebrated since the days of pagan Rome. It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don't change course now."

For the moment, nothing indicates that France and Western Europe will change course.

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

Our PM said the above in response to the Easter attacks on Sri Lankan Christians and symbols of Western influence. I hope she does mean it, but I tend to think that she will be too afraid of what she might find. 

We read in Stuff that there has been a recent history of violence between the Muslims of Sri Lanka and its Buddhist majority, "After the civil war ended, a religious divide quickly took hold, with hardline Buddhist monks rallying Sri Lankans against what they argue is a pernicious threat: Muslims, who make up roughly 10 per cent of the country's population. Buddhist nationalist leaders accuse Muslims of recruiting children, trying to grow their ranks by marrying Buddhist women and attacking Buddhist shrines." 

What!? Muslims are suffering from unaccountable Islamophobia in Sri Lanka too? You mean as well as all throughout the West and in Myanmar and the Philippines and China and Thailand and Jammu & Kashmir and Chechnya and Israel and Tanzania and Nigeria and so many other spots?

Now stop for a second and consider this: either it is true that, for some totally inexplicable reason, Muslims in each of the above contexts have been forced to resort to violence because they're being terribly persecuted by the majority peoples - be they atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu or Jewish - or they have an understanding of their Faith and of themselves that inexorably leads to conflict.

To check this have a look at those parts of the world where Muslims are the majority and evaluate how well other religious minorities are treated there. 

Starting to get the picture?

One of the suicide mass murderers was even a well known Muslim preacher who said that "Allah created [Sri Lanka] for Muslims". How could a preacher so misconstrue the peaceful teachings of Islam? And why do so many Muslim scholars and religious leaders do the same? Do have a look through my archives, I have so many examples...

I asked a while ago what we would do if there was a retaliatory attack on one of our churches in New Zealand following the Christchurch attack. It seems I forgot that we live in a much smaller world today. Many Muslims think collectively and regard all westerners as Christians - a little like many of our politicians, academics and media in the West view Christians as always being in power, because, as The Apostate Prophet pointed out: Christian=Western=White=Powerful - and therefore any Christian/Western target is viable for retaliation.

So as it seems as the Islamic State may have been behind the attack they have helpfully clarified for us that these Sri Lankan attacks were part of that response,

           The Islamic State supporters have indicated that the Colombo bombings were in retaliation for strikes on Mosques. SITE Intel group said that the ISIS supporters portrayed the attack as revenge for strikes on mosques and Muslims in general. It may be recalled that in 2016 there were reports that 32 elite Muslims had joined the Islamic State.

The ISIS had warned that it would target the Buddhists in Sri Lanka. Further looking at the pattern of the blast and also the fact that the attack was targeted only at the Catholics and foreigners, it suggests that the outfit has a hand behind this attack.

Unfortunately, news coverage here (or elsewhere in the West) hasn't always been helpful. For example, an item showed "Pakistanis hold[ing] a vigil for the victims of the terror attacks across Sri Lanka." What the article declined to point out was that these weren't just "Pakistanis" these were members of the CPA, the Christian Peoples Alliance of Pakistan which has an enormously hard time standing up for its own Christian minority under state and private persecution in Muslim majority Pakistan . Yet the impression given is of a general solidarity among all Pakistanis for the attacks, which may not at all be the case.

Since Sri Lanka's National Thowheeth Jama'ath (National Tauwhid Organisation, Tauhid is Islam’s absolute monotheism that sees virtually every other religion as idolatrous) has now also attacked Christians there, the CPA really understands the issues.

On the the other hand I have yet to see any Pakistani or Sri Lankan Muslims - despite some words from their leaders, ah yes, words, don't we all love words - holding a vigil as New Zealanders of all beliefs did following the Christchurch attack. Neither have I read a statement of sympathy from the New Zealand Islamic association FIANZ, which might be something of a surprise given the recent attacks here and their renewed sensitivity to such things.

​Might this be indicative of a particularly exclusivist mindset that arises out of Islamic scripture where Muslims are told they are superior, “the best of people” (Qur’an 3:110), and that non-Muslims are inferior, “the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6)?

But as I opened with, despite our PM's supposed determination to "find the will and the answers to end such violence" I'm afraid that is very unlikely to happen. Those jihad mass murderers did what they did for the same reason that Brunei and 10 other Muslim countries and states put homosexuals to death: it is the Sharia of Allah. It is the revealed Divine Law. Suicide attacks are encouraged in holy scripture as this Pakistani declares. Scriptures such as: “Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah , so they kill and are killed.” ( Qur'an 9:111) 

With these sacred scriptures of Islam no man - and certainly no woman - can argue. It's going to take more than temporary shock and fleeting compassion, it's going to take some real determination on the part of our leaders to honestly confront the real threat.

But have they got it in them?

Years ago I had a job lined up in Sri Lanka. I was to supervise construction of part of a telephone cable network around the city of Kandy, in the interior. In the end I happened to turn down the job as I would have to leave my wife and young family back in Colombo and only see them once a month. That wasn't what I had kids for and as the firm wouldn't allow them to move to Kandy with me, that was the end of that. However I managed to do some research on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka - previously known as Ceylon and before that Serendip, from which came our name for the idea of Serendipity - and would loved to have moved there to experience something of the place. It sticks in my mind that if today I had taken up the job it may have been my family involved in these attacks.

Much of the Western news media seems to be reluctant to point out that the attackers were Muslims (see the Washington Post's coverage here or the Guardian's here - scarcely one mention of Islam between them). Indeed there are some "experts" who persist in highlighting the danger to Muslims after this attack (​UK: “Crisis analyst” says Sri Lanka jihad massacres could lead to violence against Muslims). This is in keeping with the very notable blind spot and double standard of our own "experts". Why are we afraid to speak as adults about the realities.  Why can't we identify the cause of such jihad attacks - the basis of much subsequent "Islamophobia"?

These people say they are following the commands of their god. Why don't we believe what they say? Why don't we confirm for ourselves that their religious texts indeed give them all the encouragement they need to perform such acts? And why don't we then discuss the implications of having large numbers of people who believe such things living in our midst? The answers will not be hatred and violence in return - that's not how we do things here. But we have to have some response - don't we?

Over 300 dead and over 400 injured and maimed. All in the name of Islam.
​But still, nothing to see here.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Robert Spencer in FrontPage: The Sri Lanka Jihad Massacre and the Decline of the West
How many times is the charade of denial going to play out? (Note that this article was written before the BBC carried a report saying that Sri Lankan authorities were identifying the attackers as part of a “radical Islamist extremist group.”)
My latest in FrontPage:

Well over two hundred people are dead, and hundreds more injured, in jihad massacres in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday morning, and now the usual denial and obfuscation are in full swing. I’m often asked, when I speak around the country, what it will take to wake people up to the nature and gravity of the jihad threat. For all too many people, the answer, as the Sri Lanka attacks abundantly show, is nothing.

The facts were clear enough, at least if one checked the Indian media. India’s News18.com reported that “two of the six attacks that rocked Sri Lanka this morning are reportedly to be have been carried out by suicide bombers,” that telltale sign that this was a jihad attack, with the bombers hoping to claim the Qur’an’s promise of Paradise for those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111). “The attack at Shangri La hotel,” News18 continued, “was carried out by suicide bomber Zahran Hashim, while Abu Mohammad has been identified as the attacker at the Batticalao church.”

The Hindu, meanwhile, reported on another jihad suicide bomber, Mohamed Azzam Mohamed, who “waited patiently in a queue for the Easter Sunday breakfast buffet at Sri Lanka’s Cinnamon Grand hotel before setting off explosives strapped to his back.” Mohamed was “just about to be served when he set off his devastating strike in the packed restaurant, a manager at the Sri Lankan hotel said.”

What’s more, there was advance warning: AFP reported that “Sri Lanka’s police chief Pujuth Jayasundara issued an intelligence alert to top officers 10 days ago, warning that suicide bombers planned to hit ‘prominent churches’. ‘A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo,’ the alert said. The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that was linked last year to the vandalisation of Buddhist statues.”

Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, said: “It’s a very difficult and a very sad situation for all of us because we never expected such a thing to happen and especially on Easter Sunday.”

Did Jayasundara alert the “prominent churches,” or just the intelligence officers? If he did alert the churches, did Ranjith disregard the warning? We may never know the answers to those questions, but in a larger sense it is easy to see, despite escalating Muslim persecution of Christians worldwide, why Ranjith “never expected such a thing to happen,” and so had no guards at the churches for Easter Sunday: all those who have been for years calling attention to this threat have been branded as “racist,” “bigoted” and “Islamophobic,” and dismissed as “fearmongering.” Everyone in the Catholic Church knows that Islam is a religion of peace; dissenters are shunned and ostracized. Would it have been “Islamophobic” to have Sri Lankan churches guarded for Easter?

The establishment media in the West seemed determined to keep people as much in the dark as Ranjith was. The New York Times mentioned the jihad group that Jayasundara had warned about, but didn’t mention any of the names of the jihadis who had been identified in the Indian media. CNN didn’t mention either, and even claimed that “it’s not clear who’s behind the eight explosions that forced the country of 21 million people to go on lockdown.” Buzzfeed was completely mum about who might be behind the attacks. CBS noted a Sri Lankan official’s acknowledgment that “religious extremists,” of unidentified affiliation, were responsible. The BBC insisted that “it remains unclear who carried out the attacks.”

That coverage was representative of how the attacks were reported all over the West, and indicative of how all jihad attacks are covered. The identity and motive of the perpetrator are glossed over, downplayed, or ignored altogether. If that cannot be done, then the focus shifts to Muslims as victims, bracing for an “Islamophobic backlash” that seldom, actually materializes. In this case, the worst take came from Britain’s egregious Prime Minister Theresa May, whose initial response to the massacre was to tweet: “The acts of violence against churches and hotels in Sri Lanka are truly appalling.”

Yes, Ms. May, this was the work of anti-hotel and anti-church building zealots.

Britain’s Prime Minister can’t name the victims — Christians — for fear of offending the Muslim communities in the UK whose votes she desperately needs. For the same reason, she most certainly cannot mention the fact that many of the victims were celebrating Easter, or name the attackers, or explain the basis upon which they chose their targets.

Theresa May epitomizes the cowardice and pusillanimity of modern Western leaders. And that is why her country, and other nations of the West, are in such a precarious state. But it isn’t her fault. The overall response to the Sri Lanka jihad massacre shows why the West’s response to the global jihad is so wholly and comprehensively inadequate.

Ah yes. The game has changed. The goalposts have been moved. We have to abide by the New Rules.

Let's apply them to the Easter jihad mass murders in Sri Lanka shall we?
​After all, we have to be consistent.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>
On Easter Sunday of 2019, Christians in Sri Lanka gathered to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Muslim suicide bombers from the terrorist group National Thowheeth Jama'ath saw this as an opportunity to kill as many Christians as possible, so they bombed St. Anthony's Shrine in Colombo, St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, and Zion Church in Batticaloa. In an effort to disrupt the island nation's tourist industry, jihadis also targeted three hotels.
​In the past, we've been told not to associate terrorist attacks with the ideology of the terrorists. However, following the New Zealand mosque shootings, we saw leftists and Muslims using the attacks to smear anyone who has ever criticized Islam. Given the rule changes after the Christchurch Mosque Massacre, how should we respond to the church bombings in Sri Lanka? David Wood discusses the issue.

That fire had some interesting aspects to it and there's a lot of speculation about it, unfortunately the authorities stating before the fire seemed even to have been extinguished that is was most definitely an accident has got a lot of people scratching their heads. How could they be so categorical - one way or the other - in such a short time? 

French Catholic churches have suffered a great deal of vandalism and arson over the last couple of years. There's a great deal of talk about "Islamophobia" these days but anti-Christian acts in France outnumbered anti-Muslim acts ten to one in 2018 during which there was an average of 2 churches being profaned per day. Yet we haven't heard a lot about this have we?

I recommend this extremely useful article If churches keep getting vandalized in France, should American news outlets cover the story? by a seasoned journalist that is well worth a read. Interestingly the author notes that those responsible for many of these attacks seem to be anarchists and feminists.

Of course it should also be noted that the increase in the Islamic population is making its contribution. I've noted before that up until a couple of years ago Assyrian churches in Paris did not need armed guards outside their services (as Synagogues in Paris - and many throughout Europe - also require) but due to the influx of Muslim migrants after the Syrian crisis these are now permanent additions to any services. 

A spokesman for the Parisian Assyrian Christian community noted in 2015
       Assyrians are reminded on a daily basis of such feelings of insecurity by the increasingly visible presence of the military in the streets. “We have a very large Assyrian church here that meets for worship three times per day,” explained Mr Yabas. “There are soldiers placed in front of it for protection, as also occurs with the synagogues. For several years now we have not felt secure, because of the rising power of extremists here in France. ... The entire Assyrian community is hugely disappointed and angry with the French Government ... Government inaction has resulted in the problems in Syria and Iraq coming to France. The French authorities have been entirely reactive, not proactive. They have not anticipated, but waited until the problems were on their doorstep.

We haven't heard a terrific amount about that in our media either.

There's also this from the British Express which notes that there have been at least 10 attacks on French churches just in the month of February. A month ago there was an arson attack on St. Sulpice, the second-largest church in Paris. And few of us heard about that. 

The ever reliable (cough) Stuff reports that the head of the firm responsible for the renovations, Julien Le Bras, said, "All I can tell you is that at the moment the fire began none of my employees were on the site. We respected all procedures." And  Bernard Fonquernie, an architect who has worked on the building in the past stated, "In the years I worked here, we never had an accident because we followed the rules so tightly. There are extinguishers everywhere, you may not use flammable liquids."

I have read that the fire started after all staff  had left for the evening. I've also read that 50% of the staff used in the renovation work were of migrant background, but I've not been able to corroborate this. If true it may not be irrelevant.

To top it all off Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch notes the following three bits of interesting information:~

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Notre Dame fire: No workers were in the cathedral, no heat sources were near the timber frame​ Was it arson?

Maybe. Would French authorities admit the fact if it were? Possibly not. Is there any group in France responsible for the spate of fires and vandalism at churches? At least one has been the work of a Muslim migrant, and Islam does have a 1,400-year history of destroying churches in Europe and elsewhere.

Does that mean that it is Muslims who are attacking churches in France, and who destroyed Notre Dame? Of course not. It’s a possibility that should be investigated, as should other possibilities. To dismiss this possibility out of hand as “Islamophobic” is to be terminally naive and/or ideologically blinkered.

Notre-Dame: ‘The work had not started yet, only the scaffolding was being assembled,'” translated from “Notre-Dame: ‘Les travaux n’avaient pas encore débuté, seuls les échafaudages étaient en cours de montage,'” Fdesouche.com, April 16, 2019 (thanks to Maxime Lépante):

The frame, the roof and the spire of the cathedral are destroyed. It will now be necessary to evaluate the state of the structure. The fire came on Monday as major renovations were underway.

(…) “The hotspots are the main obsession in a restoration work of this magnitude,” says the chief architect of historical monuments, François Chatillon, about Notre Dame. A simple weld on lead can heat the wood below. The chief architect of historical monuments responsible for the restoration of the spire of Notre Dame, Philippe Villeneuve, states: “the work had not started yet, only the scaffolding was being assembled.” From his point of view, “the hot spot hypothesis is therefore not the right one”.


Notre-Dame de Paris: ‘Nothing points in the direction of an intentional act’ at the beginning of the investigation, translated from “Notre-Dame de Paris: ‘Rien ne va dans le sens d’un acte volontaire’, selon les débuts de l’enquête,” Le Journal du Dimanche, April 16, 2019 (thanks to Maxime Lépante):

The safety procedures on the Notre-Dame de Paris construction site “have been respected,” said one of the leaders of the scaffolding of the cathedral on BFMTV Tuesday, the day after the fire that ravaged the building. “All I can tell you right now is that at the start of the fire, absolutely none of the employees of my company was present on site,” said Julien Le Bras, adding that all employees of his company, Europe Echafaudage, participated in the inquiry “without any reservation”.


An observer on the scene in France, Maxime Lépante, who sent these two links, also writes: 

One of my friends sent me an email concerning the security on the roof of Notre-Dame. She has a diploma in Art History and studied in the “Ecole du Louvre” (“Louvre School”, where students learn art history and restoration processes): “I visited the framing of Notre Dame with architects of the “Bâtiments de France” (“Buildings of France”, the highest rank for an architect in France), some years ago. This 13th century timber frame was extremely protected. Each intervention is always accompanied by historians, architects, experts; no work is envisaged without extreme caution; no source of heat, no torch, no electrical apparatus is allowed; a high-performance alarm system is in place; and very strict supervision of all people allowed there.

I think we will eventually learn that this was arson.
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As much as there are many who seem determined not to entertain the notion, it seems at least prudent not to immediately consign to the "conspiracy theory" bin the idea that this was not an accident but a religiously motivated act by a member of what seems to be a protected group (protected in the sense of being largely invisible to media and authorities): either Anarchist, Feminist or Muslim.

I'm happy to nail my colours to the mast and say that I find the immediate & indeed precipitous dismissal of arson to be all too familiar an occurrence. In my line over the last few years I have observed that there have been many attacks of various sorts perpetrated by Muslims that media and authorities throughout the West have been all too eager to bury for the sake of some sort of weird and transient "community cohesion". 

But if this is what community cohesion looks like then I think we need to move to another option please. Option B would involve somebody having the courage to nip all this in the bud by dealing squarely and openly with the real problems, no matter who comes out looking good or bad At the moment those who are responsible seem terrified of looking into matters lest things are shown to be unraveling.

And this is what bothers me most: my underlying belief that there is good reason to expect the French government not to be candid with its populace if the facts should show up a protected group in a poor light. That is really the most tragic thing about all this. We are already finding this out in many Western nations and we are definitely seeing the same thing in our own country. An increasingly tight straight-jacket of right-think that constrains enquiry and discussion for the sake of an ephemeral "community cohesion" that is never going to stand the inevitable strain. 

But who will be brave enough to take Option B?

A nifty 10 minute clip from David Wood (who I must admit is looking much younger, more intelligent & more handsome these days - whatever you're doing keep it up mate) on the central person in Islam and his amazing logical consistency.

He discusses several disturbing points raised by Muhammad such as the deficiency of intellect & morals of women; the wisdom of accepting food from a people you have just attacked, killed and enslaved; the efficacy of his sucking on the tongue of a boy (bleech!); how some Jews were changed into rats - really; and the prophecy of his that the rocks and trees will cry out(!) for Muslims to come and kill the Jews hiding behind them.

Now as these are referred to in Hasan and even Sahih ahadith they are not things that may merely be brushed off by Muslims.

What an excellent video for our Muslim friends to watch and mull over.


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In Islam's most trusted sources, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) offered many arguments, using his own version of logic. What happens if we use Muhammad's "logic" and "reasoning" against him? Will our Muslim friends accept our arguments, derived from the Quran and Sunnah? Or will they recognize the fallacy and spot the fallacies in their own prophet's claims? Find out as Islam Critiqued goes through the Hadith and exposes Muhammad over and over again.

I spoke at church on this topic the other day. I wasn't feeling my best so it's worse than it would otherwise have been. It may help you with your insomnia though! Even if it is only 14 minutes long...

A few thoughts:~

#1 Our government is busy trying to remove legal guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens even though over the last 20 years in New Zealand there were only 15 murders committed with guns by people with a firearms licence.

#2 Hands are being wrung about the name of a NZ football team because of some battles fought a thousand years ago on the other side of the planet. Never mind that, contrary to popular opinion, this was a long deferred counter-attack which involved only 16 major battles. Never mind that they came in direct response to hundreds of years of Islamic aggression. And never mind that those counter-attacks by European forces may have been the only thing that staved off what would have been by now the complete subjugation of Europe by Islam. Dr Warner has produced a very helpful explanatory 5 minute video HERE which compares the dreaded Crusades with the totally overlooked violent advance of the Muslim armies.

But please don't look at it if you've already made up your mind on the rights and wrongs of the whole thing. I'll leave you in peace. Go back to listening to Radio New Zealand.

#3 Academics are advising us to take it very gently with Muslims who may be drawn to "radicalism" (whatever that is, they don't say) while at the same time telling us that we need to crack down as hard as possible on White Supremacists in order to nip the problem in the bud. Our chief censor has made it illegal for anyone to have in their possession a copy of Brenton Tarrant's manifesto because, well it must be contagious or something.

I've had a number of German students stay in my house over the years and they have told me that, while the Germans won't allow Hitler's book to be sold, they must undergo instruction in school at least once a year on the ideology and history of the Hitler Movement in order to ensure everyone understands what brought on so much horror and to prevent it from happening again.

In Enzed we can still buy Mein Kampf from Whitcoulls (I have a copy) but we can't buy Jordan Peterson's book from them. We're not told exactly why but the inescapable conclusion must be that Dr Peterson is worse than Hitler. This NZ Herald writer somehow got the following past her editor concerning Tarrant:
        A senior researcher at Independent Research Solutions, Elley says strength is at the centre of this belief system, and typically that's masculine strength.
        In seeking to achieve that ideal, it also pushes a strong self-improvement component - the type of values system right-wing celebrity pop psychologist Jordan Peterson advocates - eating well, exercising, keeping tidy. The accused gunman, for example, was noted for his cleanliness by his landlords. He was fastidious about the gym.

It's no wonder I have a headache. People are actually paid to produce this kind of mindless pap. 

#4 Auckland ANZAC Day parades are being shut down because of the increased threat of terror. Terror? From whom? I don't think it's going to be from White Supremacists like Tarrant who were so moved by the sight of all the crosses of dead white men in French WWII cemeteries do you? But of course you would have to read his manifesto to know that and our government has decided we can't be trusted with the information. But keep referring to Mein Kampf won't you? 

No, I would think that our authorities are concerned about retaliatory attacks from followers of a certain religion which must henceforth forever remain un-named lest naming it leads to more attacks.

So ... what? - we're just going to keep speaking in code or with a wink every time there is any link between Islam and violence in the name of Islam? You do know, New Zealand government, that Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, the Islamic State, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Abu Sayyaf, the Muslim Brotherhood and every other single Islamic terrorist group claims to be completely Islamic don't you?

Well that would seem to depend on who the government is using for advisors on matters of "radicalisation" (whatever that is) doesn't it?

At the moment I wouldn't trust our government to find its way across the road.

So many intelligent and educated people.
So few clues.

​As has been said: Can we just start with the consistency? 


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​Rondell Henry, a "Maryland Man," was recently captured while attempting to drive a U-Haul truck into a crowd of infidels at the National Harbor waterfront. According to the New York Times, however, Henry's religion remains a mystery, and certainly played no role in his desire to wage jihad in the name of Allah.

Ok, so I fell for it hook, line & sinker. Even though it was April the 2nd down here mate, April Fool's Day was long gone... that's my story & I'm sticking to it.

I'm just glad it's not true :) 

David Wood stays on You Tube. In this video he explains why he does what he does, criticising Islam. He also discusses the ongoing & increasing threats for those who do so.


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​Following the New Zealand mosque shootings, Muslim apologists are telling their fans and subscribers to flag videos critical of Islam as "hate speech." Since criticizing Muhammad and the Quran doesn't qualify as hate speech, these apologists are really calling for false flags. With sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon banning, censoring, or restricting popular creators such as Sargon of Akkad, the Apostate Prophet, Tommy Robinson, Al Fadi, and many others, social media censorship is becoming a dangerous game. David Wood discusses the issue of censoring and deplatforming critics of Islam.

This is emblematic of the struggle we are facing.

David Wood has a Youtube channel which has been such a source of excellent information and pertinent social commentary on all things Islamic for several years, but now he's decided to stop producing his brilliant videos. The reason is he has been receiving more and more opposition, not only from some Muslims but from the major social media platforms. Although he doesn't mention this, he could well conceivably face Patreon pronouncing him personae non gratae, cutting a major funding source. Several other people who politely share unpopular ideas have already suffered in this way.

This is his brief video explaining why he won't be making any more videos. He notes his family situation & says he really doesn't need the stress (I hear you brother!) and I'm sure he's doing the right thing.

Despite David's optimism I still think this is a real loss to us all. We can only hope others will step up to try to fill his shoes. I will look forward to his new book releases!

Ah, the African American intellectual Thomas Sowell has much of contemporary society pegged doesn't he?

A few years ago I watched the children's cartoon film Inside out. It supposedly dealt with the conflicting thoughts going through the mind of a young girl and her struggle to find meaning and connection. The film even showed the arena of the conflict as being her brain - inside her head. However, it struck me after a while that what was going in in there had nothing to do with thought or rationality. In fact everything depicted as a thought was actually an emotion: Joy, anger, sadness, fear or disgust.

I mentioned this to some friends and was surprised to find that they hadn't picked up on the distinction. But how much does this reflect our society's inability to separate feelings from thought? Can we discriminate between the two? Can we dislike distasteful intellectual positions - such as those currently afflicting our culture as Dr Durie pointed out in my last post - while still holding sacrosanct the value of people who may hold those positions?

It seems to me that quite a lot of us have lost this ability to discriminate. Some of my recent posts may be criticised as being to poignant, too direct in the wake of the recent suffering of our Muslim friends. However, when will be a good time to discuss these things? Additionally I have noticed over time the "power of first story". If all we are given to contemplate after the tragedy are comforting bromides regarding Islam we might start believing them. Feelings begin to take hold. In short order we may find ourselves unable - unwilling - to reason about the difficulties of Islam.

So I offer the following video from our friend The Apostate Prophet for consideration. As a Turkish Muslim raised in Germany and as someone who became quite a zealot before rejecting Islam for atheism he has a lot to offer us. He has an unusually sound grasp of Christianity compared to many atheists I've heard.

This is a useful clip for those who want to find out how many of our Muslim friends think and what Islam teaches about Jesus Christ. No, we don't worship the same God. No, we don't both love Jesus the same. 

It will clear up some confusion.
​And we really need that.
​At least I think so.

The Rev Dr Mark Durie gives offers the best analysis of Tarrant's beliefs & actions I have yet read. I hope you take the time to read it and better understand our problem. This is a long piece, but the subject certainly demands that we give it such attention.

See what you think.


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The Christchurch Killer’s Anti-Humanist Ideology
In the wake of the horrific Christchurch shootings, we need to thoughtfully engage with the ideology which influenced it. Just before the massacre, the self-confessed killer, Brenton Tarrant, distributed what is being called a manifesto, in which he unashamedly describes what he was about to do as a “terrorist attack”, and gives and account of his ideology. We need to understand this ideology, not to give it a platform, but to learn and to equip ourselves to stand against such hatred.

Ideology and Evil
I have recently been re-reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. The Christchurch massacre of people at prayer took place while I was making my way through Solzhenitsyn’s history of the Soviet annihilation of millions of their own. Countless lives were flushed down the vast sewer of the Gulag.  Solzhenitsyn traced the Soviets’ descent into darkness as communist ideology took over people’s souls and minds, making many even half-decent people into monsters.  He wrote:

        To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he is doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity to natural law. Fortunately it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evil-doers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology — that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses, but will receive praise and honors.

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.

In The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn delves into and documents the outworking of a political ideology, Communism, which killed on an industrial scale.  As unpleasant as his task was, it was a necessary and honourable one. The Christchurch slaughter is a textbook example of what evil ideology can achieve in a person’s heart. Just as for the Soviet Gulag, it needs to be understood.  All terrorism needs to be treated this way: its controlling ideology should be carefully examined, considered, and where necessary, rejected.  This is something we owe to the victims, and to ourselves.

Will Silence Help?
Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, who has been widely praised for her handling of her country’s response to the massacre, has vowed to deny Brenton Tarrant, the accused killer, any platform for his views, not even speaking his name: “He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand we will give him nothing.”  Taking his cue from the Prime Minister, the New Zealand Censor has banned the downloading or possession of the manifesto. Censorship of a document is permitted in New Zealand if its publication ‘is likely to be injurious to the public good’ and Tarrant’s manifesto could be injurious if someone read it and was radicalised by it, as was the author’s intent. On the other hand, rejecting the ideology of the manifesto is also in the public good, but to do that comprehensively, one must first understand it, and to understand it, one must read it.

In any case, Tarrant had already posted his manifesto to the web before the atrocity, ensuring its wide availability.  As galling as it is that a killer could gain a platform through a hate crime, it is necessary to pay attention to the ideology of Brenton Tarrant. Why should we do this? Because there are others like him, connected to each other on the internet, and because Tarrant’s ideology has the capacity to replicate itself. It is important to understand this ideology, not least so that it can be resisted and opposed with all the strength and skill we can muster. Silence won’t achieve this. This strategy would be like trying to combat Nazi ideology by refusing to ever speak the name Adolf Hitler: I do not begrudge Hitler his long Wikipedia article.

The Great Replacement
Tarrant’s ideology is laid out in his manifesto, The Great Replacement, the title for which he took from French, le grand remplacement, a phrase which has come to embody fear about the demographic future of France and a looming “white genocide”. His primary concern is the demographic decline of the “White race”, by which he means people of European stock.  The immediate cause of decline is the lack of will to reproduce, and the resulting low birthrates.  This needs to change, he says, but a more immediate threat to “Europeans”, among whom Tarrant counts himself , is immigration from non-white countries.  Tarrant calls immigrants “invaders”, and sees his violence as legitimate “partisan” resistance to this “invasion”.  His stated purpose in massacring innocent people in New Zealand was to set off a war between whites and other races.  There is more to it than just that – he lays out a model of how he expects this will play out – but this is the essence of his purpose.

Is Tarrant an Islamophobe?
Tarrant chose Muslims as a target, but his hatred is directed at all non-white immigrants. It is their “race” he objects to. He has nothing to say about Islam as a religion, making no mention of Muhammad, the Qur’an, or the Sharia. Although Tarrant nurtures a number of grudges against Muslims, for example for the history of jihad against Europe, he makes clear that his primary reason for targeting mosques is to incite white people to rise up against immigrants in general, not just Muslims. He would drive them all out if he could.

Is Tarrant Right-Wing?
Is Tarrant a right-wing extremist, as many have claimed? He mocks those who would try to pin him somewhere on the left-wing-right-wing spectrum. He does own that he is a fascist – to be precise, an eco-fascist green nationalist – and the list of what he despises is long, including conservatives, Marxists, the “cult of individualism”, urbanisation, industrialisation, drug addiction, capitalism, globalisation, democracy, exploitation of workers, free markets, multiculturalism, diversity and free trade. Several of his pet hates are characteristic of the Left. The nation whose philosophy is closest to his own is, he says, Communist China, presumably because of its unashamed will to use all available power to dominate.

Is Tarrant a Christian? 
Tarrant’s manifesto makes no mention of Jesus or the Bible, and his text includes no discernible Biblical allusions. In this respect it is very different from the propaganda of Islamic jihadists, which is chock-full of Qurʾanic references. Although Tarrant refers to Christianity a number of times, he equates it with white culture.  Churches he has little time for, describing them as “empty”.  He also considers Western religious leaders to be “corrupt”.

At one point Tarrant asks himself the question “Am I a Christian?”  His laconic answer is, “That is complicated. When I know, I will tell you.”  However, it is crystal clear from the manifesto that, although Tarrant identifies with Christianity as an aspect of cultural whiteness, apart from this he has no interest in the Christian faith, and his ideology has nothing recognisably Christian in it. The manifesto’s closing words are “I will see you in Valhalla”.

Worshipping Strength
In Tarrant’s fascist vision, the primary good, overriding all else, is the success and dominance of the race-nation. This is a law-of-the-jungle, survival-of-the-fittest view of morality, which considers it entirely legitimate for one tribe to dominate and destroy another to its own advantage. Those who think like him, in Nietzschian fashion, “worship strength”. For such as Tarrant, the will to dominate, exercised by any means, is necessary and noble. Tarrant’s solution to his crisis of white demographic decline is to incite conflict so that whites will be compelled to awaken, radicalise and grow strong. This is what his attack in Christchurch was all about.

The idea that one group could or should seek to replace another is not an innovation, but an ancient attitude to human life and reflected in patterns of warfare attested in many societies. In The Descent of Man, Darwin suggested that sympathy for the species developed out of concern for the welfare of the tribe, according to which “actions … are good or bad, solely as they obviously affect the welfare of the tribe – not that of the species, nor that of an individual member of the tribe.”

One hardly needs to look to ancient history to find examples. Five hundred miles east of New Zealand lie the Chatham Islands.  They used to be inhabited by the Moriori, a gentle and vulnerable tribe, who had abandoned the Maoris’ fiercely warlike ways. In 1835 the Moriori were brutally slaughtered and replaced by Maoris from the North Island. The conquerors banned the speaking of Moriori among the few survivors, and prevented them from marrying each other. One of the invading chiefs stated afterwards “We took possession … in accordance with our custom, and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed; and others also we killed — but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom.”

This is not just an old idea. Doctrines justifying replacement of whole groups have also been developed in modern times. Communist and Nazi regimes forged their own versions, directing their destructive impulses against “enemies of the people”, whom the organs of the state flushed away in their millions.

An Implacable Rejection of Christianity
Despite his claim to be a warrior for Europeans, Tarrant’s morality is implacably and utterly opposed to the humanitarian Biblical roots of Christianity, and, ironically, at odds with the spiritual and ethical foundations of European cultures he claims to appreciate.  In Tarrant’s moral universe there is nothing of “love your neighbour as yourself” (Luke 10:27), nor of care for the stranger and the alien in your midst (Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 19: 34 “you shall love the alien as yourself”). There is nothing of the insight that human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and thus of inherent worth, irrespective of their race.

Tarrant owes nothing to Paul’s warning not to take revenge but to live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:17-19). He would have nothing but contempt for such thinking. Tarrant has turned his back on the very core of Christian ethics and knows nothing of the historical influence of Christian ideas on ‘white’ Europe.  In reality, Christianity led Europe away from the violent, vengeful path Tarrant has chosen. For example, the Vikings had plundered and slaved their way across Europe serving Norse gods of war, until conversion to Christianity turned them into peaceful nations, eventually becoming the Icelanders, Danes, Swedes and Norwegians of today.

Anti-Humanitarian
The deeply anti-humanitarian features of Tarrant’s ideology are particularly troubling, not least because Western societies’ movement away from humanitarianism is a discernible long-term trend, and not just among violent extremists.  Reverence for human life is no longer as dominant a characteristic of Western people’s thinking as it used to be.  Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, recently reported in an interview that he left the organisation because it was turning its back on its humanitarian roots by repositioning humans as “enemies of the Earth”. Tarrant himself aligns with this trend in environmentalism, which regards people as a blight on the earth: one of the reasons he says he hates migrants is that they come, he says, from groups that are “overpopulating” the world, so, he rants, “kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment”.

A Chaotic View of Past and Present
Tarrant’s ideology is as chaotically self-contradictory as it is revolting. His theory of history and of nations is all over the place: a complete mess.  He has no awareness, for example, that Christianity is an Eastern religion as much as a Western one. He imagines that China “lacks diversity”. In response to his anxiety about our rapidly changing world – changing in a direction he hates – he has latched on to a worldview driven by hatred and worship of strength, which leads down a road to despair and death.

The Collective Rules
As chaotic and counter-factual as it is, Tarrant’s ideology nevertheless has structure. His hatred of individualism drives the whole show, and goes hand in hand with his tribal morality, which subjugates the worth of an individual human being to the dominion of race and nation. His identity politics flowers into bloody genocide.  He feels entitled, for example, to kill Muslim children praying in a New Zealand mosque as “revenge” for acts of Muslims done centuries ago, ten thousand miles away.  He also wants families of immigrants who commit sexual assault to be hanged.  This is the darkest, pointiest end of collectivism, a conviction that guilt and punishment are not individual, but cling to groups, even down the generations. It is a profoundly anti-Biblical view of guilt (cf Ezekiel 18 and Jeremiah 31).

Mad or Bad?
Is Tarrant a psychopath?  He may be. The vast majority of ordinary people could not kill in cold blood as he has done.  After the Battle of Gettysburg a cleanup operation found that the majority of rifles were still loaded, and some had been reloaded multiple times. One theory is that it is psychologically so difficult to kill another person, that the inexperienced soldiers just kept reloading their rifles, only giving the impression of killing.  Today professional armies help recruits to overcome their innate reluctance to kill through training, including shoot-em-up computer games, to make killing an automatic, repetitive action. We know that Tarrant had a long history of playing violent computer games – he refers to them in his manifesto and styles his video of the massacre to look like one – so this could have conditioned him to kill.

One reason secular Western people look to psychopathy to explain terrorist massacres is that many have come under the grip of utopian thinking.  This is grounded in the belief that people are not inherently bad, and can be perfected through social progress. By this view, the true location of evil is to be found in social structures, and sin, in so far as it exists at all, is collective, not individual. The abolition of evil structures ought then to usher in a better world: this is called ‘progress’.

From within this worldview, it would generate cognitive dissonance to admit that sane individuals could commit mass murder.  Yet there is overwhelming evidence that they can, and do.  Solzhenitsyn’s writings make it abundantly clear that ordinary, even pure people, can become agents of mass torture and murder.  He writes in the Gulag Archipelago of one young man, a “selfless, dedicated boy, as fresh as spring water”, who, at great risk to himself, even spoke up for Solzhenitsyn when he was arrested.  Years later Solzhenitsyn discovered that this same man had become an interrogator (i.e., a torturer) for the security services, and Solzhenitsyn reflected that he himself might well have ended up doing the same, if circumstances had directed his life differently. The “line separating good and evil”, he concluded, “passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.”

Tarrant’s manifesto and actions are bad, not mad. Driven, cold and calculating, and fully responsible for his actions, he had been captured by an evil ideology, which made him a hero in his own eyes.

Capitalising on Terror
It is lamentable, but only to be expected, that some have recruited Tarrant’s terror to serve their own political ends:

# Erdogan, president of Turkey, while electioneering, incited religious hatred against ‘Christian’ New Zealanders and Australians for the Dardanelles campaign in the First World War.

# Australia’s left-wing opposition leader, Bill Shorten, declared, “Not all right wing extremist hate speech ends in right wing extremist violence. But all right wing extremist violence begins with right wing extremist hate speech.” If he has made the same statement about left winger or Islamic extremists, his political career would have been over.  The right, Shorten makes out, is uniquely evil.

# David Koch, an Australian television presenter, waxed lyrical on the dangers of right-wing extremism: “…most of the (Australian) terrorist attacks are right-wing white supremacist. We had Hilton bombings. We had IRAs.” In fact, the Australian Hilton bombings were the work of a left-wing extremist, and Australia has never had an IRA terror incident, and even if it had, the IRA were most influenced by Marxism, so also left-wing (see discussion here). 

# In a bizarre series of events, Chelsea Clinton was accused by students at a New York vigil for the victims of causing the massacre. “Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there,” Clinton was told by Muslim student Leen Dweik. This was because Clinton had criticised an antisemitic tweet from Muslim House of Representatives member Ilhan Omar.

# At the other extreme, Australian politician Fraser Anning heaped guilt on the innocent Muslim victims: “… just because the followers of this savage belief were not the killers in this instance, does not make them blameless.” (Anning’s hateful comments have been heartily condemned by all sides of Australian politics.)

# Other distortions are more subtle. John Azumah, professor of World Christianity and Islam at Columbia Seminary voiced his fears that “radical Islam is now defining Christian witness and filling Christians with fear, hatred, and even violence”. It is true, as Azumah points out, that Christians are persecuted in Islamic contexts, so much so that Christians are many, many times more likely to be killed by radical Muslims in Islamic nations than Muslims are to be killed by Christians in the West. The recent decimation of Christian communities in Iraq and Syria is but one example among many. Yet Tarrant was no Christian, and his views do not reflect those of any Christian group. For Muslims who live as large and growing minorities in the West today, the rise of anti-Christian racist ideologies, like Tarrant’s, pose a danger far greater than resentment or fear about Islam among suffering Christians.

A shared theme of all these confused and distorting responses is that they perpetuate collectivism, by blame-shifting Tarrant’s pathology onto whole political or religious identities. Such ideological exploitations of Tarrant’s violence can rightly be seen as a victory for him.

How Tarrant was Radicalised
It is necessary to explore Tarrant’s passion over the “great replacement”.  He describes visiting France, and feeling grief-struck by the ebbing away of the French: “The french people were often in a minority themselves, and the french that were in the streets were often alone, childless or of advanced age. While the immigrants were young, energised and with large families and many children.”  In disgust and despair Tarrant pulled over by a military cemetery, overwhelmed, and wept at the sight of crosses from soldiers who were killed fighting in the two World Wars, stretching out to the horizon. He was weeping over their seemingly vain sacrifice.

By his own account, this was how Tarrant was radicalised. That was it. In front of those crosses he demanded of himself “Why don’t I do something?” Then and there he committed himself to violence in the belief that the radicalisation of other Western young men will be inevitable.

What is disturbing about this testimony is that there will indeed be many who lament what Douglas Murray has called the Strange Death of Europe. The demographic transition is real enough, and well advanced.  Many will find it traumatic, and as it progresses, there is potential for accelerating anxiety and distress. No group relishes the loss of its identity and sense of place in the world, and denial will not help. Attempts to forge a new multicultural identity for Europe, to replace the old national identities, have not been entirely successful. In the wake of violent terrorist attacks of 2016 in France, distinguished French social scientist, Pierre Manent, expressed the feelings of many when he wrote:

          The French are exhausted, but they are first of all perplexed, lost. Things were not supposed to happen this way … We had supposedly entered into the final stage of democracy where human rights would reign, ever more rights ever more rigorously observed. We had left behind the age of nations as well as that of religions, and we would henceforth be free individuals moving frictionlessly over the surface of the planet …  And now we see that religious affiliations and other collective attachments not only survive but return with a particular intensity.

If radicalisation is to be prevented, the crucial thing is to short-circuit the progression from lament and trauma to violence. A sense of loss is and will be unavoidable, but a descent into violence need not be. To prevent this outcome moral leadership is required.

The Threat of Tarrant’s Ideology
The core challenge Tarrant represents is not that some might be incited to copycat or revenge attacks by his example or his testimony – although that risk is not to be underestimated. The greatest threat is that the option of violence might become increasingly attractive to people who have turned their backs on love-thy-neighbour morality, despising it as weakness, and who also feel deeply challenged and uprooted, both emotionally and morally, by our rapidly changing world, not only by rapid demographic shifts, but also by cultural loss, environmental degradation and all of the other ills Tarrant rails against. The greater the sense of loss, the more attractive the worship of strength could appear.  What ethical alternatives will be made available to those who are tempted by this path?

The Real Battle We Must Face
Calls to suppress Tarrant’s views from being known and discussed are mistaken. As Solzhenitsyn stated, it is “ideology — that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”  The real struggle we face in the West is over moral worldviews which despise the value of human life. Put simply, it is the erosion of the ethic that we should treat others as we would ourselves want to be treated (Luke 6:31).

It was Tarrant’s rejection of the inherent value of each and every human life that opened the door to his raging collectivist hatred.  The challenge for us all is to discern and uproot the seedlings of his deadly ideological trend, and to plant something better in its place.  To do this we must understand and acknowledge such thinking, understand how such a worldview might germinate and grow, and be able to trace the paths of its influence, so that we can intervene and oppose it, lest it spread.  But to achieve all this we must take our heads out of the sand, not put them in it.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago Brunei has completed its 5 year plan to introduce Sharia Law. This includes the fact that homosexual or adulterous activities are now offences punishable by stoning to death. Stealing is now punishable by cutting off the hand. Our government has come out and condemned the new laws, even though they seem to have been most troubled by the homosexuality aspect.

Is this merely a cultural phenomenon in Brunei? Not a bit.

As may be seen in the map, Brunei is in the Shafi'i Madhab, or school of Islamic jurisprudence, in the majority Sunni stream of Islam (the other Sunni schools being Maliki, Hanbali and Hanafi). Below I have scanned for you the page from the Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. This is the book of Sharia law for all Shafi'is and it has been approved as an accurate translation into English by al-Azhar University (coincidentally the same seat of learning that the Imam of the al-Noor Mosque in Christchurch attended). 

In the introduction it states:
"the authors of the present volume and their positions DO represent the orthodox Muslim intellectual and spiritual heritage that has been the strength of the Community for over a thousand years".
So this is an authoritative document for our nearest Muslim neighbours.

Please read what I've scanned below. Please note that such punishments are obligatory and that they apply to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Please also note my important previous post on the struggle in Malaysia's Parliament over the matter of rapists marrying their victims. In that matter it was the learned Qadi who was pushing for harsh laws and the more Westernised Muslims who stood against it. Nevertheless the harsher laws were introduced. And that was Malaysia, which has a reputation of being a very "moderate" Muslim country.

In the wake of the Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando Stuff published an article 3 years ago entitled ​Here are the 10 countries where homosexuality may be punished by death. Would you like to guess the dominant religion of those countries? Apart from Nigeria which has a 50/50 split between Muslims on the one hand and Christians/followers of Primal religions and other religions on the other hand, where the Muslims are particularly vocal and where there has been a Muslim President since 2015, it is a list entirely composed of Islamic countries.

I hope now you will see why.

This is not a matter of culture, this is a matter of following the Divine Law. And as an opening quote at the front of Reliance from Seyyed Hossein Nasr states, "In accordance with the real nature of things it is the human that must conform to the Divine and not the Divine to the human". Any Muslim who tries to argue with "the Divine " law may put themselves into the position of being declared an apostate and face the punishment for that, which is also death.

​The photo below is also from Reliance​.

So you see, while there is certainly merit in trying to deal with racism or an unthinking rejection of Muslims just because they are Muslims (which seems to be the meaning implied in the term "Islamophobia" so frequently used) there is also some merit to the argument that while Islam holds such teachings as authoritative, there will always be people who adopt "Islamophobic" attitudes to the religion and, unfortunately, to its followers.

I hope our Muslim friends can see that the problem many of us have with Islam is not in the skin colour of most of its adherents, or the way they dress or eat or the way some of their ladies cover their heads. It is with the "Divine" law of Allah.

Until such teachings are openly renounced and taught against we will have no end of what appears to be "Islamophobia" among New Zealanders.

Our government has publicly stated grave misgivings about Brunei's new laws yet has avoided mentioning the source of those laws - Sharia. Let's hope they mature in their understanding and in their willingness to name the problem. Let's also hope that they take a strong & principled a stand whenever such "orthodox" and "Divine" teachings are propagated here in New Zealand.

In the wake of the recent terror attack here I bet a lot of people are finding themselves examining the religion of Islam. They will be drawn to it by the many lovely Muslims they meet (true, there are many lovely Muslims) and by the lovely things they have been told about Islam (utterly false, as Brunei shows us, Islam is Shariah).

So it behooves us to take a minute and look at all this.

Is Islam really beautiful and peaceful? Is there more than one Islam? Is there a true or "Western Islam" and an oppressive or "Distorted Islam"? Is true Islam nothing like the supposedly disfigured monstrosity presented by the jihadists and suicide bombers?

Are you serious?
If you really are serious and really want to find out then I suggest you listen to ex-Muslims, like the one in the following video and that you study the central sacred texts of the Faith. The man in the video speaks both from personal experience and from the most authoritative texts in the religion - Qur'an, Hadith, Sira, Tafseer and Shariah.

And surely, unless you were determined to live in the land of wishful thinking, you would want to investigate the facts of any given religion by studying its central texts and its central figures. 

​Wouldn't you?


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Deceptive Dawah Strategies
​In the name of Dawah (inviting people to Islam), people and groups that seek to expand Islam tend to stick to certain approaches and strategies, and those strategies don't always present questionable Islamic matters the right way.

I hope this simple example will be worth all the screeds I could write when I try to warn about Sharia.

It reminds me of a recent discussion we had in our National Church about the contentious issue of blessing same-sex relationships. At that time those of us who had problems with this were advised to relax, as we weren't being asked to approve these actions, just to allow them. 

Brunei is using the same argument now.
But I don't know guys, I just keep finding this really judgmental place within me that is really uncomfortable that we as New Zealanders would just sit back & say nothing when a neighbouring government starts killing practising homosexuals.

I think I need help.
Obviously it must be my fault.
I can only be a bigoted, hate-filled white-supremacist to think like this eh?
Because it couldn't be anything to do with the historic & unchanging laws of Sharia could it?


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​The tiny Islamic nation of Brunei is implementing full sharia punishments for adultery (death by stoning), homosexual sex (death by stoning), and theft (amputation of hands).
Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei, is unapologetic for his countries adherence to Islamic law, and he demands that other nations respect his country's decision. Will American proponents of sharia law (such as Linda Sarsour) be pleased with Brunei's move towards Allah's punishments, or will they finally see a problem with the teachings of Muhammad? David Wood discusses the issue.

Unfortunately I find I am getting ill again. That means the long post I was going to write today is going to be put off until I can think clearly. In the meantime please view Dr Wood's latest video - he sure puts out a lot lately doesn't he? That's because the Christchurch murders, aside from being in themselves utter tragedies, will lead to some things even worse in the long run. Things like losing our freedom to discuss touchy subjects which, as I and others have said, will only lead to more violence. We could be on the brink.

Don't believe me? Then watch the clip.

What is left if people aren't allowed to talk to resolve difficulties? And who decides what subjects are off-limits?
People like Twitter employs?


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I woke up this morning, opened my laptop, and found out that I had been suspended by Twitter! Though the ban is only supposed to last twelve hours, the twelve-hour countdown only starts once I've taken down the offending tweet. Since there's no chance of me taking down my tweet, the ban is permanent! The social media purge continues! As if we hadn't learned enough about Twitter's bias in the discussion between Tim Pool, Vijaya Gadde, and Jack Dorsey (on the Joe Rogan Experience), we see censorship actually increasing!