I've a tendency to cringe a little when people use the term mainstream media to describe the newspapers and broadcasters who seem to speak in one, predictable and liberal voice.
Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was being faithful to his creed when he declared, “Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.”
One of the difficulties in discussing Islam's more troubling doctrines is that they have an anachronistic, even otherworldly, feel to them; that is, unless actively and openly upheld by Muslims, non-Muslims, particularly of the Western variety, tend to see them as abstract theory, not standard practice for today. In fact, some Westerners have difficulties acknowledging even those problematic doctrines that are openly upheld by Muslims — such as jihad. How much more when the doctrines in question are subtle, or stealthy, in nature?
The 1700th Anniversary for Saint Menas the Thaumaturge
by Ed Rizkalla
“<ere nak `w pimarturoc pi`agioc `apa Myna”
“Hail to you O martyr the saint Abba Mena”
“السلام لك أيها الشهيد القديس أبا مينا”
The writer tends to believe that a joyful celebration is held in heaven on November 24th, 2009 – Hathor 15th, 1726 A.M. on the Coptic calendar- for the beloved of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Saint Menas (285-309 A.D.). Copts all over the world join this joyful celebration for the 1700th anniversary for the martyrdom of Saint Menas the Thaumaturge (Piagioc `Apa Myna pi;aumatourgoc), also known as, Saint Mena the Miracle Worker or (القديس ماري مينا العجايبي).
A 15-year-old Egyptian girl, Dina el-Gohary, has written an emotional appeal to President Obama asking him to use his influence to save her father, Maher el-Gohary, who is being persecuted for his beliefs. "Mr. President Obama, we are a minority in Egypt," Dina writes, according to a report from the Assyrian International News Agency. "We are treated very badly. ... We are imprisoned in our own home because Muslim clerics called for the murder of my father, and now the Government has set for us a new prison, we are imprisoned in our own country."
A few days ago, during the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) meetings in Rome, Libyan president, Gaddafi shows us once again the Arab mentality and methods. The Libyan president, instead of spending time with other leaders discussing world hunger, gathered 200 young Italian women together to preach Islam to them. Gaddafi preached Islam to Christian women in the heart of Christianity.
Islamist Perfidy and Western Naivety: Which Is More Lethal?
Raymond Ibrahim
When the president favorably quotes a Koranic passage popular among jihadists, the answer should be clear.
In a blog entry for Islamist Watch, David J. Rusin shows how the word “jihad” continues to be euphemized in the West. Despite Islamic law’s unequivocal portrayal of it as a military endeavor to empower Islam, jihad is still being peddled as “nothing more than a student laboring to pass algebra, a mom driving her kids to soccer practice, or, in the words of the Cambridge study, a civic-minded person engaged in ‘lobbying, activism, and writing’ — a community organizer of sorts.” Rusin concludes by observing: “Why Islamists peddle such specious definitions should be clear. More baffling and disturbing is why they gain traction among so many Westerners.”
ROME, May. 10, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom continues to show that religious freedom is a human right under fire, but changes have come about and they are not all negative.
Today is the fifth of November, 2009, and the hot news that is circulating the American and international media comes from Texas. An American officer of Palestinian Islamic heritage opened fire on his American officers’ colleagues in Ft. Hood, killing at least thirteen and injuring thirty while he was crying “Allaho Akbar” (God is great). A guard at the camp shot him four times to stop him; otherwise the causalities could have been greater.
Are America's prisons incubating radical Islamists?
Recent domestic terror suspects had converted to Islam while in prison. Experts are divided on the extent of the threat.
San Francisco - Radical Islam spreads many ways. Through jihadist
chat rooms and via fiery sermons, Islam's violent fringes seek newcomers to fight in the name of Allah. Now, evidence is mounting that American prisons, where about 35,000 inmates convert to Islam annually, are cause for concern, too.
Egyptian students wearing the face-covering veil known as the niqab walk with another student in Cairo. Last week, Egypt's top Islamic cleric barred students from wearing face veils in the classrooms and dormitories of Sunni Islam's premier institute of learning, Al-Azhar.
In a speech in Egypt this June, President Obama proclaimed, "I have come here to seek a new beginning between the U.S. and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect." Obama's "new beginning" is a euphemism for the first steps in the Islamification of America, a process that has already infected Europe to the extent that Western Civilization is itself at risk.
Ever since 9/11, when Osama bin Laden was thrust into the spotlight, he has made it a point to occasionally submit questions to Americans — questions which he apparently thinks are unanswerable.
The top 15 terrorist groups in Afghanistan & Pakistan
As we think about what to do in Afghanistan and whether to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, we need to understand who the enemy is and whether we can win some of them over. In Iraq, we co-opted former insurgents and turned them against Al Qaeda. The question is whether we can do the same in Afghanistan.
Arms markets are common as vegetable stores in Afghanistan
The Art of "Debating" : an art that Arabs have lost !
by : Tarek Heggy
Foreign students of contemporary Egyptian affairs believe there has been a marked decline in the civility of public discourse in recent years, particularly when two opposing points of view contend over an issue of public concern. I have given a great deal of thought to this phenomenon, which I tried to place in a historical perspective by comparing the language of debate in use today with that used earlier this century. My research centered on the now-defunct review, *Al-Kashkool*, specifically, on the issues which appeared in the period between 1923 and 1927.
I write in order to instill in the minds and souls of all the Arabic speaking people :
- The fact that although the outside world will harbor animosities towards us at times, and will work to further its own interests most of the time, our problems, in their entirety, originate inside our country and can only be solved internally. We alone are responsible for those problems and for the fact that they remain unsolved. The excessive belief in the conspiracy theory is a confession of our impotence and an admission of the supremacy of others in the face of our ineffectiveness.
Kuwaiti Liberal: Persecution of Christians in the Middle East is Tantamount to Ethnic Cleansing
In an article in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas, liberal Kuwaiti writer and commentator Ahmad Al-Sarraf criticized the Arab countries for persecuting and discriminating against their Christian minorities. He contended that this maltreatment is tantamount to ethnic cleansing, since it often forces Christians to leave their Muslim homeland and emigrate to the West.
Many have attributed the spread of religious extremism today in countries like Egypt, for example, to external factors, such as foreign incitement and foreign financing of extremist movements in general, and of fundamentalist Islamic groups in particular.
On Sept. 11, 2001, a war was brought to our shores by a band of men, bound by a militant ideology, in an act of mass murder. The response by the United States was a so-called "War on Terror," a reflex that has proved to be as ineffective as it has been costly.
