Below is the latest 8 minute video update from our dear friend Nabeel Qureshi. He's been pretty crook with the Cancer yet still has such high spirits. His latest news is not good, there has been an extended period of intense pain. It would be good if those of us who believe in a living God who cares for us could join in prayer for him.

His story here is very interesting to me as there are a couple of points that match the experience of my wife and me. Sue has also had a time when she experienced so much physical pain that she somehow left her body and looked back on a herself. Like Nabeel, she doesn't know how that works - but it happened. Also, when we lost our son it was extremely hard. We were both Christians but at that point we could conjure up no strength from our belief to make us defeat the pain. However it was at that point of extreme anguish, when we had nothing left, that we experienced God's comfort - this is what Nabeel also talks about.

I remember us both kneeling beside our son's little casket at the Undertakers and just committing him & the whole awful experience to God. We both felt his presence envelop us as we knelt there - we mentioned it to each other afterwards. It was palpable. We hadn't expected to feel anything. But he came and kind of enveloped us in his arms - we felt it.

We were both devastated at his death. I didn't know it was possible to feel so much pain. I remembered photos of Hiroshima after the bomb had been dropped and I realised that was how I felt inside - not a thing was left intact, nothing was left standing, everything was destroyed. I couldn't have done any make believe about God if I wanted to - I had no strength left. But he came to us and encouraged us both. We both had vivid dreams and one or two other experiences that were from God.

​I will tell you about one of mine.

I had a dream one night. I was carrying my dead baby boy along a path through a forest with Pines & Rhododendrons. Jesus came walking down the path towards me. He motioned that I should hand him my son. So I did and as soon as he was in Jesus' arms he was alive! Happy, smiling, full of life. I was so happy I reached out to take him back. But as soon as I did so he was a cold, blue, dead baby again (I think holding your own dead child is perhaps the saddest thing in the world). Then I realised that if I gave him to Jesus he would be back alive as long as I left him with Jesus. If I held onto him he would only ever be dead. There was nothing I could do for him. So I slowly and deliberately handed him back to Jesus and he was alive and happy again!

I knew I had to leave him with Jesus so he could be alive. So Jesus turned around holding the baby and walked off, back up the trail to heaven. Where our son is safe and happy. I don't need to hold onto my failures as a father to protect him. I don't need to hold onto a dead child. He is kept in heaven for me - for that day when we are reunited. 

I put all this here because although I may not understand all the reasons for suffering & death I do know that Jesus holds all this in his hands and that one day my tears will be turned into joy. I know that. So I know that - while it is very easy to be stoic about another's pain - Nabeel's suffering and the suffering of those who love him, will one day be turned into joy. I know that.

Won't you please join with me in praying for Nabeel to be healed and his family to be comforted.

Prof. Peter Riddell is visiting Henderson in a few weeks and will be giving a public lecture on Islam. Prof. Riddell is one of the pre-eminent sources on Islam in the world and any chance to hear him should not be missed. I received the invitation below as an old boy of the College but anyone at all can go to this - even if you happen to think Christianity is rubbish (the topic is Islam :) - and I sincerely encourage you to attend if you possibly can.

He really is well worth the effort to hear.

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You are warmly invited to a public lecture by Professor Peter Riddell on the topic Issues in Christian-Muslim Relations: The questions Christians ask on Wednesday 23 August.

With New Zealand becoming an increasingly multi-ethnic society, Christians are interacting more with those from a Muslim faith in their workplaces and neighbourhoods. The activities of self-proclaimed Islamic terrorist groups have caused increasing Islamophobia in Western countries. Is such a fear valid or misplaced? Are there false assumptions about Islam that we need to dismantle? How should Christians befriend our Muslim neighbours?

Professor Peter Riddell has published widely on the study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. He currently serves as Vice-Principal (Academic) at the Melbourne School of Theology and as Professorial Research Associate in the Department of History at SOAS, University of London. He is currently writing a book entitled Political and Social Issues in Christian-Muslim Relations: The questions Christians ask, based on questions posed by Christian audiences over many years of public lectures he has given. While he is at Laidlaw teaching a postgraduate course on Engaging Islam, we have invited him to share to a wider audience at this public lecture.

Date: Wednesday 23 August
Time: 7.30-9.00 pm
Place: Laidlaw Henderson Campus, 80 Central Park Drive, Henderson, Auckland
RSVP: by Monday 21 August to events@laidlaw.ac.nz

From Gates of Vienna, this is a quite moving talk by the lady. I will place the transcript of the 3 minute talk below the fold.

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After yesterday’s knife jihad attack in Hamburg, an Iranian expat who has lived in Germany for more than thirty years recorded a video message to Chancellor Angela Merkel. In it the Persian woman expresses her bitter anger over Frau Merkel’s “welcome refugees” policy, which is flooding Germany with exactly the same Islamic violence and persecution that she fled from all those decades ago.

Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Are we moving to the position where there are two distinct & entrenched camps in the West?

​Two camps that rely on their own separate sources for information and for opinion. They do not cross-pollinate, they do not interact, they do not even listen to each other. They are convinced that they are so right & that those who oppose them are so obviously wrong that they need not try to engage with them in any way that is not purely confrontational.

​Both camps can argue that they are acting perfectly rationally - and they are. It's just that they have been given two quite different sets of information upon which to base their rational decisions. The information presented as factual to both is so different in perspective that the two sides can't possibly come to agreement. Each ends up thinking that those who oppose them must be either evil or just plain stoopid.

What can be done to encourage understanding when things are now at a stage where I can say I'm concerned over the importation of Muslims into the West when many of them hold starkly different attitudes regarding women, homosexuals, Jews and other subjects while all some people can hear me say is "I don't like brown people"?

This 15 minute video addresses this divergence and then attempts to build bridges between the two groups. It is discussed from the point of view of three chaps on the political right of American culture - largely Christian Conservative and/or Libertarian.

You may not share all their perspectives or opinions, however they make some useful points and because they are trying to build bridges and aid mutual understanding I view it as part of my job to bring it to your attention. 

In this 9 minute clip two of my favourite atheists, Gad Saad and Sam Harris, discuss the problems around bringing in a large population of Muslims with a dramatically different worldview.

Of course many will already have a Western worldview and fit in pretty well. I have met such Muslims. There is though the undeniable issue of the majority of Muslims who bring with them a worldview that is not merely incompatible, but antagonistic to us. What about them? 

In this discussion between Harris & Saad the main issue isn't the likelihood of bringing in jihadis. To them the question is: "What does it take before you irrevocably change the character of your secular, liberal, modern society?"

Good question.

Six minutes of eco-packaged fun from David Wood on the most glaring scientific errors in Islamic sacred scripture. 

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Here's Episode 8 of "Answering Islam," where I answer the question: "Are There Scientific Mistakes in the Quran?"

For previous episodes, click on a video:

"Answering Islam 1: Why Should We Learn about Islam?": https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&vide...

"Answering Islam 2: Who Was Muhammad?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Fw9...

"Answering Islam 3: Was Muhammad a Prophet?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igM85...

"Answering Islam 4: Did Muhammad Use Religion for His Own Interests?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryvai...

"Answering Islam 5: What Are the Basics of the Islamic Worldview": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk0iY...

"Answering Islam 6: What Are the Main Differences Between Islam and Christianity?": https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&vide...

"Answering Islam 7: Are There Historical Mistakes in the Quran?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6tvX...

A 16 minute video featuring an Arab ex-Muslim and one of the finest people in dealing with Muslim apologists. This is the first part of a series that I hope you will follow with me. This introductory talk deals with the reasons why we should bother to engage with Muslims about what they have been told about their faith - for critics of Islam, we are entering what the Marines call a "target rich environment".

Topics introduced are the claims that the Qur'an is perfect or has scientifically proved miracles in it; that Muhammad is prophecised in the Bible; 

The series will be good!


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Muslims offer a variety of arguments as they attempt to show that Islam is true. In this video, former Muslim Al Fadi and Christian apologist David Wood discuss why Christians should respond to Muslim arguments.

Subscribe to Al Fadi's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5zG...

Visit Al Fadi's website here: http://www.cirainternational.com

The Baranabas Fund posted this article today. The response of the OIC reminds me of the stark contrast I noticed acouple of years ago in Afghanistan. Some old Qur'ans at a prison camp were burned by American troops and Muslims were beside themselves with indignation and outrage. To this we Westerners might respond "well, they're only books after all you know. You can get more books". But of course Islam views the Qur'an much as Christianity views Jesus Christ - the eternal word of the Creator & locus of salvation, so they most definitely did not view this as we did.

A few months after this an American serviceman with psychological problems left his camp one night and slaughtered several Afghan families in their nearby homes. I remember thinking that there would be an even worse reaction - these were real people now, Muslims. Much more important than books right? But not a word of complaint was made. Astonishing! The response of those usually outraged at any slight on Islam did not materialise when old people, women and kids were shot and the bodies piled up & set ablaze. It seemed to be accepted as just "one of those things".The attitude seemed to be "well, they're only people after all you know. You can get more people".

Such is the difference in worldview between Westerners and Muslims that the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation displays here. Far more important than real violence and death is an attack on the perfection of Islam.

But in the West: Attacking people is a bad thing. Attacking religions, ideologies and beliefs can be a very, very good thing. 

But are things going to stay that way?


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OIC London conference recommends Islamic blasphemy law for media

The Saudi-based Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) and the Morocco-based Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (IESCO) recently held a two-day London conference on countering islamophobia. The organisers of the symposium spoke of the need for a new media strategy as, “there is usually a spike in hate crimes against Muslims following terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslims.”

However, by Islamophobia the conference did not mean simply “anti-Muslim hatred.” One of the three central themes of the conference was the legal status of “defamation of religion.” This is a term that the OIC previously used to mean seeking to make criticism of Islam a criminal offence around the world. In fact, the section on islamophobia in the OIC’s 10 year strategy published in December 2005 only uses it in this sense and makes no reference at all to countering hatred of Muslims as people.

So, when the conference organisers spoke of looking at the role of the media in countering Islamophobia from a “legal perspective,” this appears to be what they meant. In fact, only last December the OIC launched a new media strategy, part of which aimed “to tackle Islamophobic discourse in the US, UK, and European media.”

There is also a broader picture here. As Barnabas Fund has previously reported, there are currently attempts being made by Pakistan, and 27 other governments who are OIC members, to introduce a global Islamic blasphemy law. In fact, as we report this week, the Palestinian Authority has recently enacted just such a law. These actions represent a serious threat not only to Christians in the 28 countries and other Muslim-majority countries, but also to Christians in the West, particularly those who have fled persecution in Islamic countries and found sanctuary in Western countries. It is particularly disturbing that the proposals from the Pakistan government seek to criminalise social media posts critical of Islam that are uploaded in Western countries.

So, although Dr. Mahjoub Bensaid, Head of Public Relations at ISESCO, spoke of “the real and true image of Islam as a religion of peace which advocates tolerance,” what he appears to have meant is that non-Muslims should “tolerate” the introduction of an Islamic blasphemy law that would prohibit any criticism of Islam by the media.

Barnabas Fund strongly condemns all forms of anti-Muslim hatred. However, we also condemn the attempt to use the suffering that has resulted from recent terrorist attacks to advocate the introduction of what is in effect, a backdoor Islamic blasphemy law.

This expression means: First the Jews then the Christians.

This piece was written by a Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell University, William A. Jacobson and appeared on the website Legal Insurrection 18 months ago. I was prompted to read it because Robert Spencer referred to it on Jihad Watch when he was discussing the dismaying sight of Christians joining with Muslims to demonstrate for the removal of metal detectors on the entrance to the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Israelis had introduced the metal detectors in an effort to stop the kind of recent murders where cowardly attackers shot Police in the back by coming out from inside the Islamic sacred area. 

I put it here because in it he cites the foremost Occidental Islamic historian Bernard Lewis; the HAMAS Charter; the prevalent & fundamental misunderstanding western observers have of the real problem between Israel & its Islamic neighbours; and how this is a problem for Westerners - particularly Western Christians - whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. 

​Given a proper understanding of the religious imperatives some things are easy to predict.


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"First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people"
A phrase I read for the first time today, but which explains how the fates of Jews and Christians are intertwined.

I’m surprised I had not heard the phrase in the title of this post before today.

Though I’m certainly familiar with the concept, it’s one we’ve explored here many times when discussing (i) that the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the inability of Muslims to accept any non-Muslim entity in the Middle East, but particularly not a Jewish national entity; (b) the plight of Christians in the Middle East who are on the receiving end of what would happen to the Jews in Israel if Israel ever lost a war; and (c) the Islamist-Leftist anti-Israel coalition, in which useful Western leftists are oblivious (at best, giving them the benefit of the doubt) to the threat they would be under if forced to live under the rule of their coalition partners as they demand of Israeli Jews.

I got to the phrase in a round-about way. First, I saw Martin Kramer’s Tweet linking to his Facebook post:

        Exactly 40 years ago, Commentary published Bernard Lewis’s landmark article, “The Return of Islam.” Remember, in January 1976, the Shah was still firmly on his throne, the Muslim Brothers were nowhere to be seen, and there was no Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda. So how did Lewis discern the “return”? He saw that regimes, including secular ones, were beginning to invoke Islam. This, he surmised, must be a reaction to a more profound trend. Perhaps the most prescient article ever written about the Middle East.

Then I read through (skimmed parts) of Lewis’ Commentary article, The Return of Islam (Jan. 1, 1976), which is quite long.

The central thesis of the article is that the West completely misunderstands the nature of the conflict, seeking to put it in the types of “left” and “right” disputes that dominate Western politics:

          “…. one finds special correspondents of the New York Times and of other lesser newspapers describing the current conflicts in Lebanon in terms of right-wing and left-wing factions. As medieval Christian man could only conceive of religion in terms of a trinity, so his modern descendant can only conceive of politics in terms of a theology or, as we now say, ideology, of left-wing and right-wing forces and factions.

This recurring unwillingness to recognize the nature of Islam or even the fact of Islam as an independent, different, and autonomous religious phenomenon persists and recurs from medieval to modern times….Modern Western man, being unable for the most part to assign a dominant and central place to religion in his own affairs, found himself unable to conceive that any other peoples in any other place could have done so, and was therefore impelled to devise other explanations of what seemed to him only superficially religious phenomena….

To the modern Western mind, it is not conceivable that men would fight and die in such numbers over mere differences of religion; there have to be some other “genuine” reasons underneath the religious veil….This is reflected in the present inability, political, journalistic, and scholarly alike, to recognize the importance of the factor of religion in the current affairs of the Muslim world and in the consequent recourse to the language of left-wing and right-wing, progressive and conservative, and the rest of the Western terminology…."

I’m not going to try to summarize the rest of the article. Read it.

The article seems relevant to the ideological war on Israel by Western leftists who view “the occupation” as the sole and overarching reason for the conflict; they can’t admit what historian Benny Morris finally acknowledged about the Arab refusal to accept Israel’s independence -- it was primarily a religious war against the Jews, not a territorial war (emphasis added):

         “What I discovered in the documentation relating to the war, at least from the Arab side, was that the war had a religious character, that the central element in the war was an imperative to launch jihad. There were other imperatives of course, political and others—but the most important from the enemy’s perspective was the element of the infidels who had the nerve to take control over sacred Muslim lands and the need to uproot them from there. The decisive majority in the Arab world saw the war first and foremost as a holy war, but until today historians have not examined the documentation that proves this. In my view, they have also ignored Arab rhetoric of the day, which universally included religious hatred against the Jews, because they thought the Arabs adopted this as normal speech that did not emanate from deep mental resources. They thought this was something superficial, that everyone talked like this. But I am positive the Arab spokesmen in 1948 did go beyond this and clearly and explicitly talked about jihad.”

And it remains so today. David Collier has a brilliant take-down of the leftist Jewish “theoretical Zionist.” Read the whole thing, here is an excerpt:

   It cannot be said often enough or strongly enough that Israel is at war. Not a theoretical ‘cold war’ but a real battle, a battle that they cannot afford to lose. ...

But it was the opening sentence of the final paragraph of Lewis’ article that caught my eye and gave rise to this post (emphasis added):

             In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, an ominous phrase was sometimes heard, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.” The Saturday people have proved unexpectedly recalcitrant, and recent events in Lebanon indicate that the priorities may have been reversed. Fundamentally, the same issue arises in both Palestine and Lebanon, though the circumstances that complicate the two situations are very different. The basic question is this: Is a resurgent Islam prepared to tolerate a non-Islamic enclave, whether Jewish in Israel or Christian in Lebanon, in the heart of the Islamic world? ... Islam from its inception is a religion of power, and in the Muslim world view it is right and proper that power should be wielded by Muslims and Muslims alone. Others may receive the tolerance, even the benevolence, of the Muslim state, provided that they clearly recognize Muslim supremacy. That Muslims should rule over non-Muslims is right and normal. That non-Muslims should rule over Muslims is an offense against the laws of God and nature, and this is true whether in Kashmir, Palestine, Lebanon, or Cyprus. Here again, it must be recalled that Islam is not conceived as a religion in the limited Western sense but as a community, a loyalty, and a way of life—and that the Islamic community is still recovering from the traumatic era when Muslim governments and empires were overthrown and Muslim peoples forcibly subjected to alien, infidel rule. Both the Saturday people and the Sunday people are now suffering the consequences.

I’ve never expressed an opinion or view of Islam as a religion, for the same reason I’ve never expressed an opinion or view on Christianity or Hinduism or other religions as religions — I don’t claim any expertise and casual conceptions of any religion can be wrong.

But you don’t need to be an expert on Islam to understand how Islam is practiced as a political matter in many parts of the world, and particularly in the Middle East. You only need to be able to read the news and to listen to what the Islamists tell us they want and intend on doing.

I believe Hamas when it says, in its charter, that it wants to slaughter all the Jews, quoting a passage from the Hadith:

               The Islamic Resistance Movement is one link in the chain of jihad in confronting the Zionist invasion. It is connected and linked to the [courageous] uprising of the martyr ‘Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam and his brethren the jihad fighters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the year 1936. It is further related and connected to another link, [namely] the jihad of the Palestinians, the efforts and jihad of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1948 war, and the jihad operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1968 and afterwards. Although these links are far apart, and although the continuity of jihad was interrupted by obstacles placed in the path of the jihad fighters by those who circle in the orbit of Zionism, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim).

Getting back to how I could have missed the phrase, I must be nearly alone. ... But I’m glad I found the phrase. It explains a lot. 

About how the fates of Jews and Christians are intertwined, and not just in the Middle East.

A 73 minute historical discussion between an atheist (remember that) philosopher & speaker Stefan Molyneux and the Catholic English scholar Dr Duke Pesta of the Crusades & Colonialism as they really were. They discuss the context of the times and the imperialism of Islam. This discussion is set in the context of contemporary American experience & is undertaken between Conservative/Libertarian individuals. But please don't let that put you off as it has much very real truth coming through.

Issues covered include:~

• How did the Crusades actually unfold?
• No, we are not racists simply for trying to understand history as it really was;
• That the Renaissance owed a huge amount to Eastern Christians who had fled to Europe before the advancing Islamic armies and Sharia oppression;
• The Islamic slave trade - including the 1 million white European slaves taken over the centuries, 112 million Africans & also the 1.75 million Ukrainians, Poles & Russians enslaved & sold by Muslim over a 250 year period. The Muslims used to boast that "the kafirs can't float a plank on the Mediterranean without being afraid we would take it". 
• How we can learn the lessons from history and apply them to today's issues with Islam?

Dr Pesta notes that in comparison to Islam, Christianity had room for diversity and tolerance in its understanding of God as Trinity.

If I may enlarge on this interesting idea: This core belief of the Trinity has never been adequately understood or explained, yet it is the truth of God's nature. Christians around the world are quite OK with this doctrine as we expect the God who is greater than us to have a state of being that is higher than we experience in our lives. He is Ontologically different. This inculcates at the core of the Faith a certain humility and tends to militate against dogmatic certainties & pronouncing anathemas left right and centre. As Pope John XXIII stated, referring to a quote often attributed to St Augustine: "But the common saying, expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors, must be recalled with approval: in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity." Differences are worked out on the basis of love. 

Islam on the other hand has the doctrine of Tawhid - the unity, the Oneness of Allah. In line with this ontological certainty, its holy book does not remain the true Qur'an if it is translated into any other language. Indeed its meaning cannot be translated (in fact Islam historically devolves into mutually exclusive groups that pronounce anathema over each other). Whereas Christianity is infinitely translatable - it can be lived under any political system, language, culture or time, though it will challenge every context it enters - as it is based on the idea that in Jesus "God became flesh". This means God became someone or something that people could understand and relate to.

Furthermore Christianity was open to reason (despite, once again, the popular propaganda that Christianity was incipiently anti-intellectual, pre-scientific and anti-rationalist) as evidenced by the early Church Fathers such as Augustine. Science found a home in the Christian West because Christianity believed that God was rational and so his works could be interrogated and a pattern found. But I digress.

The true impulses  behind Colonialism are discussed - Kipling's "White Man's Burden" - which is particularly interesting to me. The whole British colonisation of New Zealand was not as we are often led to believe. During my missiology studies one PhD who's field was the growth of Christian Mission work in the South Pacific, pointed out that the British government really didn’t want to make NZ a colony. By the time they finally reached New Zealand it was late in the game & they had had a long and expensive history of making colonies around the world. They’d found the populations often resentful and that contrary to the dominant narrative they weren’t making huge money out of them. The Colonies were proving extremely expensive & troublesome to administer. They really didn’t want far off NZ to be added to the list. It took a delegation of high ranking Church leaders from the various NZ Churches to go all the way to England to convince the Crown that they had to make NZ a Colony for the sake of the Maori. If NZ had been left as a lawless country then the Maori may, in their opinion, have been virtually eradicated through STDs, alcohol, violence and their exploitation of each other as well as the exploitation by unscrupulous Europeans.

So this was why those church leaders persuaded the Crown against its initial decision to take NZ under its wing. Not in order to exploit or dominate the indigenous population, but in order to protect them from the many new attacks on their existence.

Do listen to this excellent discussion (while doing housework is good - that's what I do), it deals both with the current distortions in understanding religions, competing worldviews, the reality of the Crusades, slavery - and Dracula.

Mark Steyn provides this follow-up Q&A on his previous video, which I posted here.

He continues discussing the demographic issue with some more illuminating statistics. He looks at Turkey's waning secular Kemalism rapidly giving way to the revivified and proudly Islamic political forces being led by Mr Erdogan.

What chance is there for Turkey to regain its secular Kemalist roots? And does Europe actually need Muslim migrants when there are many Eastern Europeans willing to migrate who would surely integrate more easily?  If we fail to address the reasons why our existing citizens are not having children what use will it be to bring in new migrants anyway? Mightn't the new migrants become as affluent and religiously disinterested as most other Westerners? That's a good question, but it's not likely to pan out like that. The terrible example of Sweden is discussed as a case in point (but hey, their economy's doin' great!).

A 26 minute video. Because it's Mark Steyn we will be both entertained and informed (it gets a little too, ah... speculative for me at the very end, but still a good talk).

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   Here's another video edition of Mark's Mailbox in which Mark answers questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the planet. This episode is a follow-up to Mark's recent SteynPost on birth rates and their consequences, in which he addresses your thoughts on the developed world's demographic death-spiral.

Task:
Compare & contrast these two converts.
The Bikie who became a fundamentalist Christian and the Bikie who became a fundamentalist Muslim.

​I will not lead your thinking but you will not want to miss this.

This article & the 18 minute video pinched unashamedly from Gates of Vienna. It should be seen by everyone, especially those considering converting to Islam.
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You may begin.

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First a Biker, Then a Muslim, and Then an Undercover Agent for the Danish Intelligence Service
In his youth Morton Storm was a member of a Danish motorcycle gang. Then he converted to Islam. He was a Muslim for ten years before he realized his ghastly mistake and became an apostate. However, for six more years after that he concealed his apostasy so that he could work undercover for the Danish Intelligence Service, helping them eliminate some of the terrorists among his Muslim associates.

Below is a talk given by Morten Storm describing his odyssey into and out of Islam. Many thanks to Norse Ghost for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.

Richard Dawkins was disinvited from an event in Berkeley, California because it was discovered he had criticised "Islamism" and had hurt some people's feelings.Why this should be a problem to anyone is an indicator of how weak we're becoming. By the way: from the point of view of Islamic scripture Dr Dawkins' somewhat confused explanation of Islam vis-a-vis Islamism is wanting here (what he calls Islamism is merely scriptural, authoritative, historical Islam), but he has every right to air unpopular ideas. That is part of what makes us strong.

Then again maybe not...
John Sexton from Hot Air explains.

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​​BERKELEY RADIO STATION CANCELS RICHARD DAWKINS EVENT OVER HIS CRITICISM OF ISLAM

Berkeley’s KPFA Radio was scheduled to host an event with author and biologist Richard Dawkins next month. The event was suddenly canceled a few days ago over Dawkins’ past comments about Islam. People who had purchased tickets to the event received an email explaining that KPFA did not support “abusive speech.” Dawkins published the text of the email on his site:

      We regret to inform you that KPFA has canceled our event with Richard Dawkins. We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people.

KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier.

There are several problems here, starting with the fact that KPFA claims to support free speech and then, in the same sentence, says it does not support “abusive speech.” There is no separate category of speech which is universally deemed abusive, which is why it’s best to leave these decisions to individuals. There’s no reason to think Dawkins was going to address Islam at this event, but even if he did so, all one would have to do to avoid feeling abused is not buy a ticket.

Another problem with this explanation: It doesn’t offer any specifics. KPFA has decided you should not hear from Dawkins because…well, just take our word for it. Dawkins himself points out that KPFA doesn’t seem to have fact checked this claim:

             If you had consulted me, or if you had done even rudimentary fact-checking, you would have concluded that I have never used abusive speech against Islam. I have called IslamISM “vile” but surely you, of all people, understand that Islamism is not the same as Islam. I have criticised the ridiculous pseudoscientific claims made by Islamic apologists (“the sun sets in a marsh” etc), and the opposition of Islamic “ scholars” to evolution and other scientific truths. I have criticised the appalling misogyny and homophobia of Islam, I have criticised the murdering of apostates for no crime other than their disbelief. Far from attacking Muslims, I understand – as perhaps you do not – that Muslims themselves are the prime victims of the oppressive cruelties of Islamism, especially Muslim women…

You say I use “abusive speech” about Islam. I would seriously – I mean it – like to hear what examples of my “abusive speech” you had in mind. When you fail to discover any, I presume you will issue a public apology…

To put an even finer point on this, Dawkins has been attacking Christians and Christianity for years and no one seemed inclined to deem that speech abusive enough to justify canceling his speaking gigs. It was only when he began criticizing Islam that the left took offense. Dawkins raises this point himself:

        I am known as a frequent critic of Christianity and have never been de-platformed for that. Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticise Christianity but not Islam?

​Let his comment about never being de-platformed for criticizing Christianity sink in. How many hundreds or thousands of speeches has Dawkins given attacking Christianity over the past decade? It’s the difference in how the two faiths are being treated that is the real story here.

As for Dawkins’ question about why Islam gets a free pass, one reason is the constant use of the bogus term “Islamophobia” which invites people to engage in a category error, equating criticism of Islam to racism. Indeed, not surprisingly, that’s at least part of what happened here. From the NY Times:

Henry Norr, a former KPFA board member, criticized Mr. Dawkins in a July 17 email to the station. “Yes, he’s a rationalist, an atheist and an advocate of the science of evolution — great, so am I,” Mr. Norr wrote. “But he’s also an outspoken Islamophobe — have you done your homework about that?”

Islam is a religion, not a race. And unlike race, religion is a mutable aspect of an individual’s existence. Those who feel as Dawkins does about religion should be free to encourage people to abandon it, just as those who believe in a given faith should be free to encourage others to join them. What no one should do is demand the other side not be given space to speak on the grounds that hurt feelings could be the result. And that’s especially true when only one faith is receiving this sort of protection from criticism.

A couple of weeks ago the current affairs programme “Sunday” featured the debate over building the wall along America’s southern border. It offered an introduction to outsiders as to why the wall is such a big deal to so many Americans and how Mr Trump managed to garner such strong support because of it. What the documentary did not mention was at least as important though.
 
Let's get this into the open at the outset: I can’t for the life of me see why America isn’t doing what I would expect to be done by every country in the world, i.e. secure its borders.

It just seems obvious to me that one of the first duties of a government is to ensure the safety of its people. This includes protecting them by ensuring as far as possible that only those of benefit are permitted to enter a country. Anyone is welcome to apply to come legally and they may be accepted or rejected, but they have to make a legal application. Certainly we may take in refugees but we also need to ensure they are in genuine need and that there isn't a better solution for them somewhere else, perhaps closer to the home (see here for examples) most would like to return to one day.

True story: I think it was back in the 1980’s when a story emerged of how New Zealand  refused an American millionaire the right to emigrate here because he offered no skills in the areas where our government decided we needed workers. As such he might become a burden on the economy. Bureaucracy strikes again. But if we could make that decision then, I find it bizarre that anyone should claim a country has no right to secure its own borders. In fact I find it incomprehensible that a counter argument could ever be taken seriously.
 
Ten years ago I spent some time studying America’s southern border – you’ll see why shortly – and there are a few points that I think people should become aware of to gain a better picture of the controversy.
 
Firstly the porous border offers relatively easy access for drugs into America. Illegal entrants are sometimes forced to ferry these drugs as part of their fee for being led into the country. Farmers are at risk from armed gangs as they go about their work as are their wives & families at home. Farm houses are regularly broken into and innocents are exposed to danger. It should also be acknowledged that some among the illegal entrants are violent criminals themselves. Not a lot, but they are there.

Secondly, Mexicans being ferried across are sometimes killed in the desert by those who lead them. Very often the wives, sisters & daughters of Mexican families being trafficked are raped on the journey (the same thing happens with many of the female migrants currently being illegally trafficked into Europe). In the desert there are “rape trees” on the regular routes. Here the underwear of the victims are hung on the tree after they are raped. Some trees are covered with underwear. All the while the male relatives have to stand by helplessly at gunpoint. For a family to lose their father in such a situation would be a disaster. So they do not act. Just imagine what everyone goes through when this happens.

By the way: Mexico itself is far tougher on people coming up from its own southern border with Guatemala than America is with Mexicans. But this is seldom commented on.

Thirdly, and this is where my interest was piqued, the drug cartels ferry mujahideen across the border into America. This is similar to Britain where local Muslim criminal gangs have learnt to combine with jihad forces to help meet their mutually goals, viz. making money and undermining & destroying British society as a whole. The Mexican drug gangs also combine with jihadis against their common enemy.

In 2007 there were about 100 people with known ties to terrorist groups caught crossing the border into America. These are only the ones with known ties, there are likely many more that are unknown to authorities. At that time 3 in 4 people crossing the border successfully got into America. That means that 300 or so people with known terror ties got into America that year. Plus an untold number of muj unknown to authorities.

South of the border in Mexico there are so many Muslims seeking to be trafficked that they have portable Mosques to accommodate their prayer requirements. In recent years the drug cartels have taken to stoning informers or Police to death or cutting off their heads – sometimes using chainsaws to add extra drama. Where did they learn these new tricks? Why, from their nice new jihadi friends of course.

So in the last 10 years, if things have remained unchanged, we may reasonably expect that 3,000 people with known terror ties have entered the United States via its southern border.

But as bad as that is things have not remain unchanged. Expertise at entering America would have increased, especially at the demand of high value individuals such as well funded muj who expect a higher success rate than that given to the poorer Mexicans. At the same time that ISIS has gained in strength and recruits around the world al-Qaeda & other Sunni jihad groups with existing ties to traffickers have not simply ceased to exist and Shi’a terrorists should certainly be expected to enter America given the posture, sponsorship & violent anti-Americanism of Iran. In fact I have read informers say that there are terrorist Sleeper Cells – often several - in almost every American State.

Additionally, President Obama relaxed control of the southern border to a very large extent during his 8 years. He has lowered the number of people patrolling the border and very often failed to provision & back up those who are left to try to control the border. I would say it would be entirely fair to raise the expected number of muj entering America by 50% per year.

It is a fact that today thousands of jihadis waiting for the opportunity to attack a Mall, a school, a church, a hospital or a restaurant have entered the USA via the Mexican border. I'm sure you'll agree that knowing this, if you or I were in America we would also like that border sealed as tightly as possible. There is nothing particularly Nativist or xenophobic about this. It is just common sense.

Dr Wood continues his introductory series on Islam.

In this 5 minute video he deals with outright fantasies & stolen stories contained in the Islamic holy book which have been claimed as the very words of Allah. Even Muhammad's pagan contemporaries knew these stories were popular myths and fairy tales. Yet they are presented as original and perfectly true, verified by Allah.

Yup.

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Here's Episode 7 of "Answering Islam," where I answer the question: "Are There Historical Mistakes in the Quran?"

For previous episodes, click on a video:

"Answering Islam 1: Why Should We Learn about Islam?": https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&vide...

"Answering Islam 2: Who Was Muhammad?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Fw9...

"Answering Islam 3: Was Muhammad a Prophet?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igM85...

"Answering Islam 4: Did Muhammad Use Religion for His Own Interests?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryvai...

"Answering Islam 5: What Are the Basics of the Islamic Worldview": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk0iY...

"Answering Islam 6: What Are the Main Differences Between Islam and Christianity?": https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&vide...

I don't pay much attention to the counter on this website - I used to, but I decided to write what God seemed to be giving me, to write it with him and not worry about how many look at it. I have noticed though that page views drop whenever I put anything like this on. I understand perfectly that this is because people come here to hopefully learn about Muslims & Islam, not to hear about Jesus. I get that.

However, this is, in the final analysis, the best I have to offer as an answer. I offer what I myself have experienced as a spiritual answer to a spiritual problem. I offer a better "religious" idea than Islam to Muslims and hope they take it up. Contrary to many opinions all "monotheistic faiths" are not to blame and they are not the same. This wee 8 minute video clip represents the kind of story shared by a lot of guys I know (and have ridden with).

A family member sent me this story of a bloke who was a druggie, a crim and a Satanist who then became a follower of Jesus. Before his conversion he was a very scarey man, but now, he is even worse. He is one of the scariest people on earth. His is so because he has had a life changing encounter with the living God who completely turned his life around. This frightens people like nothing else does.

Up until we encounter people like this we can continue kidding ourselves that there is no God, that there is no ultimate accountability, even, if we are logically consistent atheists, that there is no real meaning to life. We are free agents. We can do the best as we see fit (although - ssshhh! - if we think about death we all still want to go to a nice place forever & reunite with loved ones). Then a guy like this comes along and all he can talk about is how kind Jesus is and how he saved his life. Terrifying. 

His simple story challenges and frightens us like no other. Because we can see that to come into contact with God does not demand education or brilliance. It just requires honesty and the realisation that our hands are empty.

​Go on, watch the video. It's not so bad.

This is a revealing column from the Investigative Project on Terrorism. 

Why, in the West, are new converts several times more likely to become jihadis than existing Muslims? What organisations and prominent individuals are leading them to Islam and then instructing them in the faith?

Mightn't it be an idea to find out?

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​The Real Jihadist Threat No One Is Watching
by Abigail R. Esman, July 17, 2017

​Most people can tell you who the potential jihadists are, especially the ones in Europe and the USA. You can point them out in a group: they are immigrants, or more often, the children of immigrants, who came from the Middle East or North Africa. They often converse among one another in Arabic. Many want to join the Islamic State and other terror groups in Syria, or have gone and since returned. They are mostly men, usually around age 20 or less, and have grown up feeling alienated from the societies in which they live.

Most of this is wrong.

In fact, the UK-based Henry Jackson Society has found that "those who convert to Islam are four times more likely to become terrorists than those who are born Muslims." And in 2015, the Washington Post warned that converts have emerged "as some of the most dangerous and fanatical adherents to radical Islam."

Now a recent study in the Netherlands shows that "the share of converts to Islamist extremism tends to be significantly higher" than those born into the faith. As many as 17 percent of Dutch converts have joined the caliphate, the study's authors claim – seven times more than the percentage of converts to the entire Dutch Muslim community. And most of those are women.

That study is supported by previous reports that show that as many as 25 percent of the French Muslims who have made hijrah to Syria are converts from other faiths. Figures are slightly lower – one in six, or about 17 percent– in Germany. In the UK, according to the Economist, though converts comprise fewer than 4 percent of all Muslims, they account for 12 percent of "home-grown jihadists." And in America, while one-fifth of Muslims are converts, two-fifths, or 40 percent, of those arrested on suspicion of ISIS ties in 2015 had converted.

A review of recent attacks confirms this. Converts were involved in the attempted 2015 Garland, Texas attack on a contest to draw the prophet Mohammed; the killing of four people outside London's Houses of Parliament; and the London July 7, 2005 bombings. Samantha Lewthwaite, the "white widow" said to be responsible for the deaths of more than 400 people – including those killed in the 7/7 attack, is a convert, as was the Belgian Muriel Deguaque, who blew herself up in Iraq in 2005. And in America, Colleen La Rose, aka Jihad Jane, collaborated with another convert, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, in a failed plot to murder Lars Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist who had drawn cartoons of Islam's prophet Mohammed.

The number of women among them is notable: according to the BBC, unlike the men, the "vast majority" of women who join ISIS from the West are converts. Similarly, according to the Dutch report, of the Dutch converts who have joined the Islamic state, 61 percent were women – a figure that seems consistent with other countries, as well. Among the more well-known: Jaelyn Delshaun Young, a University of Mississippi chemistry student, apprehended en route to the Islamic State in 2015; Fatima Az Zahra, neé Maria Giulia Sergio, an Italian Roman Catholic convert whom the Italian media now calls "Lady Jihad"; and British ex-punk-rocker Sally Jones, whom counter-terrorists consider an active, effective, and therefore dangerous recruiter.

Also of note in the Dutch study is the age of the individuals who have gone to Syria: they are on average 23 (though according to other analyses, the average German and American who makes the trip is 26). The average ISIS-jihadist, in other words, is older than many believe these young radicals to be.

None of this is accidental, according to Mubin Shaikh, a former Muslim radical turned counterterrorism professional and the author of Undercover Jihadi: Inside the Toronto 18. In the early days of the Islamic State, he said in a recent phone interview, ISIS recruiters "would get a bonus if they brought women over. There were units dedicated to recruiting Western women to use as propaganda, specifically targeting converts."

All of which suggests that our current "profile" of your average radicalized Muslim may need updating. And perhaps, too, we should be tweaking elements of counter-terrorism approaches worldwide. Shaikh believes the primary focus needs to be on "human intelligence" and better monitoring within the (Muslim) community. "That's where the best tips come from," he said. "But it's a sensitive topic. Do we need to send more spies into the community? Then the community feels they can't trust anyone anymore. But that's the price you pay. If a threat is coming from a particular community, you need to convince them to come forward."

That community includes converts' families, who often are too uninformed about Islam, and rarely pay attention to what or who has influenced the new convert's decision. And the problem, he said, is that many of these younger converts "don't actually convert to Islam. They convert to extremism." Hence families, especially parents, "need to be vigilant. Identify what they are converting to. People need to know who these groups are. Who are Salafis? Who are Sunnis? Sufis? You need to find out what their ideology is."

But this alone is not enough. "I'm a big believer in sting operations," Shaikh said, "because you often can't talk them out of it. They continue to go down the route of extremism to the road of terrorism." And even if the community goes to the authorities, he pointed out, "how often do we hear 'he was known to the police'? Two of the three London attackers were 'reported to the police.' But what does that mean? So you need more human intelligence. You need spies." 

At the same time, Bart Schuurman, an assistant professor at Leiden University's Institute of Security and Global Affairs and co-author of "Converts and Islamist Terrorism," a policy brief produced by the International Center for Counter Terrorism in The Hague, cautioned in a recent interview, "We don't want all converts to be seen as a terror threat. The vast majority do not get involved in terrorism whatsoever." Hence, despite the "overrepresentation of converts" among terrorists and extremists, he said, "conversion itself should not be seen as a risk factor for violence."

Yet the number of violent, radicalized converts to Islam also shows that many current counterterrorism initiatives may be misplaced. Both Schuurman and Shaikh point to popular proposals for Muslim bans in the United States and several European countries. Those bans are especially ineffective, noted Shaikh, if they only involve specific Muslim regions of the Middle East and North Africa. "It's too quickly expanding," he said, referring to radical Islam. "And ultimately it doesn't work anyway, because the majority threat is coming from the inside." Similarly, Schuurman observed, "If you want to prevent people from doing harm to your society, it helps to understand what makes them do harm in the first place; and if you have a 'Muslim travel ban,' if you feed into the narrative that the West is at war with Islam, it doesn't help security in Amsterdam or Chicago."

What does help, said Shaikh, who practices Sufism – a mystic, spiritual movement within Islam – and whose wife converted to Islam from Catholicism, is to create a different narrative, both for those born Muslim and for converts. "I don't think we can stop the conversion. But there is a pro-Western argument to be made that the Muslims who are flourishing in the world are doing so in non-Muslim countries, expressly because of their interfaith, secular cultures. Where in the world has radical Islam brought wealth, or success, or dignity? Name me one place, and I'll sell up and go live there. Because it doesn't exist."

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates

I mentioned the new monograph on halting historic jihad written by Dr Harold Rhode the other day. Melanie Phillips provides this excerpt from that free online resource which gives insight into how Saudi Arabia became the premier source of funds for both international Islamic terrorism (jihad) and teaching (da'wah) through terrorist groups, mosques and Islamic & Western educational institutions. We've known this for a long time,but it is useful to pinpoint exactly when and why this started in earnest.

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The Saudi Islamist Conundrum
Modern Islamic Warfare, a monograph by Middle East analyst and former Pentagon staffer Dr Harold Rhode, is essential reading. You can download it  here. Concisely and clearly it explains the Islamic world, the confusions it causes amongst those who don’t understand it and why, as a result, the west is being defeated by it.

There is one passage in particular which sheds valuable light on the Islamist threat now terrorising the world, and explains in turn the otherwise baffling role played by Saudi Arabia in both helping create that threat and fighting its terrorist perpetrators. The passage follows here.

The vast majority of Islamic terrorism is Sunni. How do the governments in Sunni Muslim societies tackle Islamic jihadism that threatens to overthrow existing Sunni governments which the jihadis label “apostates?” A fascinating example is what happened in Saudi Arabia when what the Saudis would call “Islamic extremist jihadis” took control of the holy mosque in Mecca in 1979.

The Saudis follow a strict version of Sunni Islam—Wahhabism—which was itself an 18th century Islamic Reform Movement based on the already most strictly applied school of Sunni Islam—the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence, “the strictest of the strict.” But was it “strict enough?”

To ISIS and al-Qa’ida, the Saudi government, supported by the Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment, are apostates. They allow Western influences into the kingdom, allow non-Muslims to live and work on Islam’s most holy place on earth, and thus are serving the interests of the non-Muslims. They are therefore guilty of apostasy; the punishment for which in Islam is death. From ISIS, al-Qa’ida, and other extreme Muslim jihadi groups, the Saudis must be eliminated because they are Muslims.

How did these groups come into existence? In short, the Saudis themselves gave birth to them.

In 1979, a group of jihadis took over the ka’ba, the holiest site in Islam, by force and refused to leave. These terrorists accused the Saudi government of not being committed enough to jihad, which is an essential part of Islam. This act deeply humiliated the Saudis in the eyes of the entire Muslim world. That is because the Saudis control Mecca and Medina and are responsible for protecting these sites. (The Saudi king is known as the “Guardian of the two most holy Muslim cities—Mecca and Medina.”) These jihadis shamed the king and his government. As no weapons are allowed to be used in the holy mosque in Mecca, the government was in a quandary. The only way the Saudis could expel those who took over the mosque was by force, which is strictly forbidden in Islam. How could it end this siege without a fatwa from the Wahhabi religious establishment that using force was permissible?

The Wahhabi establishment itself was in a quandary because Islam requires jihad. How could the Wahhabi religious figures oppose jihad? After some effort, a legal fiction was devised. According to this agreement, the religious establishment issued a fatwa allowing the government to re-take the mosque by force. Moreover, the religious leadership agreed to the government decision to ban radical jihadi groups that might threaten the monarchy and which operate inside Saudi Arabia. But in return, the Saudis agreed that they would fund the export of jihad extensively everywhere outside the kingdom, and support the spread of Islam everywhere else in the world [my emphasis].

Then, the Saudis began funding Wahhabi religious propaganda everywhere, which brought about the creation of most of the radical Islamic groups which terrorize the entire world today.

… Places like Indonesia which historically had a much milder form of Islam became targets for the Wahhabis. The Indonesian Muslim leadership, for example, could not compete against the seemingly unlimited deep pockets of the Gulf Wahhabis. Young Indonesian Muslim men began to grow beards; their women began to cover their heads with the hijab (head scarf) or even niqab (face covering) in ways never seen before in Indonesia. 

Wahhabis became active not only throughout the Muslim world, but began to proselytize among the Muslims in Europe and North America. Wahhabis have since 1979 funded the building of the overwhelming majority of mosques in Canada and the U.S., and supplied Islamic teachers and religious leaders who spread their anti-Western, anti-non- Muslim, and anti-any other type of Islam but theirs throughout the Western hemisphere.

Muslims have learned to use Western culture against itself. Some Muslims, when speaking to Western audiences, have gone out of their way to label Islam as a religion. While it definitely concerns itself with the relationship between God and mankind, it is actually more of a civilization which also involves politics and military activities. Historically, the raison d’être of a Muslim state has been to expand Islam, to conquer other lands for Islam, and to eventually take over the whole planet.

But since our authorities and intellectual leaders have labeled Islam a religion, we in the West have been reticent to interfere in Islamic activities. That has enabled the Muslim jihadi operatives to work quietly and patiently to create cadres of disgruntled young Muslims, right under our noses, who are extremely susceptible to the lure of jihad.

​In other words, the export of Islamic extremism, terrorism and Islamist cultural conquest throughout the world, which is now threatening to destroy Europe and menaces the rest of the west, was the result of a devil’s bargain entered into by the House of Saud to save itself.

This clip covers the ascent to power of Ibn Saud. The progenitor of the modern terror funding & Sharia promoting regime of Saudi Arabia.

Mark Steyn provides this stinging & illuminating 9 minute video. Interestingly Steyn also mentions his personal encounters with a brace of Saudi Princes. Mr Steyn's assessment is at once accurate, informative, entertaining and appalling.

Well worth the time.


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Mark Steyn on the Man who Put the Saud in Saudi Arabia
Prince Abdul-Rahman bin Abdulaziz al Saud died the other day. He was one of 45 sons of Ibn Saud, the founder of the Saudi state, which reminded us that earlier this year on The Mark Steyn Show Mark offered a few thoughts on Ibn Saud and his eponymous kingdom.

The issue of how, or even if, Islam can be changed to fit with the modern world is a vexed one. There are many voices of course that argue Islam does not need to change - if correctly understood and implemented it is perfectly peaceful. To those people we say: rather than trying to convince us would you please focus your efforts on your co-religionists who see Islam as supremacist and even violent? They seem to represent be the vast majority of Muslims, even Muslim scholars, worldwide and they are the ones making your life difficult, not those of us who notice what they say & do.

Other more candid voices recognise that Islam is in dire need of complete reform. How do such people see the issues? Are they themselves dealing perfectly honestly with the problems, the central texts & the figure of Muhammad? If they come up with solutions are the solutions they propose even workable?

The fabulous Jihad Watch writer Christine Douglass-Williams has written a new book, The Challenge of Modernizing Islam: Reformers Speak Out and the Obstacles They Face. Order your copy here. Robert Spencer contributed a Foreword to the book below. Via Frontpage.com.

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"This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed my favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion.”

So says Allah in the Qur’an (5:3), in words that have vexed Islamic reformers and would-be reformers throughout the history of the religion. Traditional and mainstream Islamic theology holds that Islam is perfect, bestowed from above by the supreme being, and hence not only is reform unnecessary, it is heresy that makes the reformer worthy of death if he departs from anything Islamic authorities believe to be divinely revealed.

On the other hand, the cognitive dissonance created by having to believe that the one and only God mandates death for apostasy (Bukhari 6922), stoning for adultery (Bukhari 6829), and amputation of the hand for theft (Qur’an 5:38), and sanctions the sexual enslavement of infidel women (Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30), the devaluation of a woman’s testimony (Qur’an 2:282) and inheritance rights (Qur’an 4:11), and above all, warfare against and the subjugation of non-Muslims (Qur’an 9:29), has led, particularly in modern times, to attempts by believing Muslims to reconcile Islamic morality with contemporary perspectives and mores.

These attempts are fraught with peril. As Christine Douglass-Williams notes in this book, “Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, a Sudanese Muslim theologian who argued that the Meccan passages,” which are generally more peaceful, “should take precedence over the Medinan,” which call for warfare against non-Muslims, “instead of the reverse, was executed in 1985 by the Sudanese government for heresy and apostasy.” Some of those profiled in this book know these perils firsthand: “Sheik Subhy Mansour recounted: ‘If these Muslim Brotherhood people had the chance, they would have killed me according to their punishment for apostasy plus they claim I’ll go to hell.’ Tawfik Hamid noted: ‘The reformists were killed throughout history, including those who rejected the Sunnah.’”

Death threats aren’t the only dangers either. Europe and North America are full of Muslim spokesmen who present themselves as moderate, Westernized reformers, but are actually just the opposite. Foremost among these is Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, who has been widely hailed as the “Muslim Martin Luther” but has likewise been accused by French journalist Caroline Fourest, who has published a book-length study of Ramadan’s sly duplicity, Brother Tariq, of “remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage” toward the imposition of Islamic law in the West.

Douglass-Williams notes this duplicity: “In a an example of the distinction to be made between moderates and crypto-moderates, after the brutal riots following the release of the Danish cartoons insulting to Muhammad in 2006, Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born theologian and grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ramadan explained that the reaction of his co-religionists was a ‘a principle of faith…that God and the prophets never be represented.’” One of her interview subjects, Salim Mansur, observes drily that “non-Muslims went to the wrong Muslim for an understanding of the faith.”

The dominant presence of duplicitous pseudo-reformers such as Ramadan considerably muddies the waters. This confusion couldn’t possibly come at a worse time, when the governments of the West are doing nothing less than staking the very futures of their nations not only upon the existence of Muslim moderates and reformers, but upon their eventual victory within the Islamic community. This gamble has been made despite the fact that there is no general agreement, either inside the Muslim community or outside it, of what “Islamic moderation” actually means, and what “Islamic reform” would really look like.

Against this backdrop, The Challenge of Modernizing Islam is extraordinary, refreshing, and much needed in numerous ways. The interviews that Christine Douglass-Williams conducts with some of the leading moderate Muslim spokesmen in the United States and Canada are unique in their probing honesty. While most interviewers from all points of the political spectrum generally are so happy and honored to be in the presence of a Muslim who repudiates jihad terror that they serve up only softball questions and are content with vague generalities in response, in this book Douglass-Williams asks the questions that need to be asked, and yet are asked only infrequently: How do you explain the various Qur’an verses that call for violence, or are misogynistic or problematic in other ways? How do you propose to convince the vast majority of your coreligionists of the correctness of your position? How is reform possible when the mainstream schools of Islamic jurisprudence mandate death for heresy and apostasy?

The answers vary from thought provoking and searchingly honest to cagey and deflective. And that in itself is illuminating. Not every person interviewed in this book is in agreement with every other, and not every attentive and informed reader will come away from these pages convinced that every person here interviewed is being in every instance entirely forthright. Many believe that the resistance to the global jihad in all its forms has no legitimacy, or cannot be successful, if Muslim reformers are not on board with it. I do not share that view, but the need for Islamic reform is undeniable, and the people here interviewed are among its foremost exponents in the West. We owe them a fair hearing as much as they owe us honest answers to the questions here posed.

In the second half of the book, Douglass-Williams offers a probing analysis of what her interview subjects told her, and provides illuminating ways for readers to navigate through the thickets and avoid hazards that have captured and misled numerous analysts of Islam and its prospects for reform. One of the cardinal services she provides here is the drawing of distinctions in numerous areas where crucial differences and delineations have long been obscured, often deliberately. Her discussions of Islam versus Islamism and Islamic moderation versus Islamic reform are a welcome antidote to the sloppy thinking and cant that dominate the public discourse today. Her examination of problematic Islamic texts is all the more welcome for being even rarer. Her discussions of the controversial and manipulative concept of “Islamophobia” and its relationship to the problems of genuine Islamic reform, and to the role of Israel and how it can help distinguish genuine Islamic reformers from pretenders, are the crown and centerpiece of the book, and examples of the kind of searching analysis that is all too often absent from the public square today, and for that all the more needed.

The Challenge of Modernizing Islam is, therefore, an extremely illuminating book, and not always in the ways that its interview subjects may have intended. That is, as is said these days, not a bug, but a feature. It’s crucial today that genuine reformers be distinguished from insincere deceivers, and naïve idealists from those with genuine plans. Here is a solid beginning in that effort. This book should be read while bearing in mind how the governments of the West are assuming that their newly-accepted Muslim refugees will sooner or later accept the values and mores of the secular West and settle down to become loyal and productive citizens, and how the recent experience of European countries, particularly Sweden, Germany, and France, as well as the United Kingdom, offers abundant reason for concern that this may not be the case.

That same tension between high hopes and harsh realities runs through these interviews, and doubtless through the souls of many of the interviewees. For better or worse, however, any chance for Western countries, as well as non-Muslim countries in the Far East and elsewhere, to enjoy a peaceful future now depends, courtesy of a series of decisions our political leaders have made, upon the victory of Islamic reform. The Challenge of Modernizing Islam uniquely equips readers to make an informed and intelligent evaluation of how peaceful the future of non-Muslim countries is likely to be.

Mark Steyn's latest 24 minute video looks into the state of Europe, its vitality and its direction. Taking off from where Mr Trump's comments on European "faith & family" ended. He further drills down into the demographics (I have provided a post on the statistics and the implications of this huge problem here). The increase in Islamic immigration in the face of a depleted indigenous population is discussed.

There are some really valuable insights & some interesting pointers in this clip. The most popular boy's name in Britain is Muhammad. In Belgium, 25% of Brussels is Islamic and the majority of Antwerp's elementary school children are Muslim. Such dramatic changes have consequences. At least they do if you're a local living in these areas and not a comfortably detached high-income earner saying "all the right things". In Austria the Vienna Institute of Demography expects that the majority of people under 15 of will be Muslim by 2050. 

This has to signify some other major shifts surely? What might they be? We have already seen when populations of Muslims increase in current European cities marked changes in the treatment of people of other faiths. Jews in particular but remember that Assyrian churches in Paris now require Police protection for the congregations just as Synagogues do (such realities frankly still quite amaze me - this is Paris, nor Beirut). The treatment of women, homosexuals, the attitude toward alcohol consumption, along with other equal rights issues and along with attitudes to democracy itself are also most definitely becoming worse. Will this trajectory somehow suddenly change? What would cause it to change?

Are Westerners going to do anything about it?

Steyn notes that, "Functioning societies are an alliance between the present and the past and the future." This is breaking down. Note that the problem is NOT race. It is about how people see the world. Fundamentally it is about the religious & philosophical milieu - the assumptions - of people groups. Based on nothing more inscrutable than what everyone can see right now in Europe, a radical discontinuity will force unwelcome and tectonic change.

Demography IS destiny.

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Longtime Steyn readers will be familiar with the demographic thesis of his 2006 international bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. Almost the entire developed world is mired in deathbed demography from which no functioning society has ever recovered.

Mark's book was a big success a decade ago. But it is a melancholy fact that most people in the western world remain entirely unaware of this remorseless arithmetic or its likely consequences. So this brand new SteynPost is a kind of primer on demographic trends, and where they lead.

I predict that you will get only 10 minutes into this discussion before you decide that you must hear it all. It is so interesting & pertinent. The continuity of Islam in belief and praxis during the last 1400 years of history is laid out for all to see. The weakness of our understanding of these points is proving to be catastrophic. Ibrahim argues that through the deliberate distortions of pusillanimous contemporary academics we have imbibed a historically and theologically perverted form of Islam. No wonder so few see a threat in the religion.

It is fascinating to hear a native Arabic speaking, Egyptian Coptic Christian scholar of Islam pull down many fallacies around Islam.  

While listening, it occurred to me that it was only 50 years before the First Crusade that the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches (Roman Catholic & Orthodox) took place. So there was a huge theological struggle within the Church which both weakened it and diverted its attention before the First Crusade and as the First Crusade was launched. Similarly during the period of the Reformation (1517-1648) Europe was under attack by Muslim armies: the Christian lands of Hungary, Cyprus & very shortly after Crete, were conquered. Additionally several more European states were involved in combating such attacks, including: Poland-Lithuania; Malta; Austria; Venice & Wallachia.  

Perhaps then this combination of internal and external assaults the Church - in all its various denominations - is facing, is by no means a new thing. Interesting isn't it that the external threat has predominantly been posed by Islam? For those of us who believe in the orthodox Christian doctrine of the existence of Satan, the Adversary, we should not let ourselves be taken by surprise by this historically proven two-pronged attack. Just a thought.


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I was recently interviewed on the Hank Unplugged podcast, with Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute.

We discussed a number of important topics facing the world today, including:

• how the West is actively undermining itself concerning the reality of Islam;
• whether the Judeo-Christian God is the same as the Muslim Allah;
• the fact that without the support of Saudi Arabia, ISIS would not exist;
• setting the historical record between Islam and the West (jihad and crusade) straight;
• the myth of peaceful co-existence in Islamic Spain (Andalusia had only 30 years of such "peace" out of 800);
• the problem of lumping all Muslims together within the ideology of Islam;
• the genocide and persecution of Christians done today in the name of Islam;

and much, much more in the nearly 100-minute long interview below:

This is a very useful 23 minute take on how to speak to Muslims about the corruption of the Bible, which is a common Muslim objection. David Wood & Nabeel Qureshi provide a good introductory look at this and also of the proven corruptions & multiple variant copies of the Qur'an. 


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In this video, David and I give our respective answers to the very common Muslim objection that the Bible has been corrupted.

For more videos like these, become a Patreon Patron: https://www.patreon.com/NabeelQureshi
Official SAFJ Video Study: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031...

A 3 minute video in Danish with English subtitles dissecting last year's terror stats from Europe. This video is provided by Vald Tepes, who does so much tireless and useful work in this area

Statistics show that of the four groups: Islamist, Right Wing, Left Wing and Separatist that Separatist attacks vastly outnumber the rest. But which claimed the most lives &injuries? Which involved the most arrests? The picture drastically changes. Furthermore, each of the last 5 years have seen a significant increase in jihad terror activity. Remember Tommy Robinson cites a Year Over Year increase of terror attacks in the UK of 60%.

​It's getting away on us.

As the speaker concludes: If anyone tells you jihad attacks are not the greatest of these four group's threats to the inhabitants of Europe they are either ignorant or lying.

I present for your edification this 13 minute video clip looking into the issues of Gender studies, the diminishing value of higher education, the real world expectations of women seeking a life partner, and a brief criticism of feminism. Featured intellectuals include Niall Ferguson, Jordan Peterson & the notable critic of contemporary feminism Christina Hoff Sommers.

I include it because the video highlights the shift in thinking among many of those now emerging from our Universities. These are the people who are going into influential positions that we are going to have to try and reason with when it comes to combating both the invasive danger of creeping Sharia law and the lesser danger of what Mr Trump calls "violent Islamic extremism".

If we are to communicate effectively we need to know what the products of higher education are generally disposed to believe and how they might view the world. This video - as well as being very entertaining in parts - reveals some real world concerns on the trajectory and the products of higher learning institutions and I think it is a worthwhile investment of time.