Tag: Religious Beliefs

Sunday–16Sep18

Several years ago there was a show on SyFy about the coming end of days….I believe the show was called “Dig”….the location was modern day Israel……there seems to be something about the birth of a red calf….it is magical and telling.

Well life does imitate art…..

An Israeli Jewish fundamentalist group that received donations from the country’s defence minister has said that an end of times prophecy ushering Armageddon has been fulfilled following the birth of a “flawless” red heifer.

The Temple Institute, which promotes the construction of a third temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque, has announced the birth of the first red calf in Israel for 2,000 year. They believe that a biblical prophecy predicting the end of days has come true. The temple institute in Jerusalem announced the calf’s birth, saying it would undergo extensive examinations to determine if it is red all over.

The Jewish fundamentalist group believes that if the female baby calf is found to be “blemish free” and completely red, the institute will declare that the calf will bring the promise of reinstating biblical purity to the world.

Not to worry there have been countless predictions of the “End of Days” and we are still here….so this one is just FYI

Go now and enjoy your day….chuq

How About Some News From China

I do not write much on the China situation for I do not dwell in the Asia for much time.  But I would like to rectify that oversight on my part.

These are the biggest stories that I found while researching on the world wide web…….

Something Christians need to know….

China’s government is ratcheting up a crackdown on Christian congregations, destroying crosses, burning Bibles, shutting churches, and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith, according to pastors and a group that monitors religion in China. The campaign corresponds with a drive to “Sinicize” religion by demanding loyalty to the atheist Communist Party. Bob Fu of the US-based group China Aid said that the recent closure of churches in Henan province and a prominent house church in Beijing is a “significant escalation” and that the “international community should be alarmed and outraged for this blatant violation of freedom of religion and belief.” Under President Xi Jinping, believers are seeing freedoms shrink dramatically even amid a religious revival. Activists say Xi is waging the most severe suppression of Christianity since religious freedom was written into the constitution in 1982.

Fu also provided video of piles of burning Bibles and forms stating that the signatories had renounced their Christian faith. He said that marked the first time since Mao’s radical 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution that Christians had been compelled to make such declarations, under pain of expulsion from school and loss of welfare benefits. Chinese law requires believers to worship only in congregations registered with the authorities, but many millions belong to so-called underground or house churches. In Beijing, the Zion church was shut on Sunday by around 60 government workers, said Ezra Jin Mingri, the church’s pastor. Zion is known as the largest house church in Beijing, with six branches. The officials declared the gatherings illegal and sealed off church properties, Jin said. “Churches will continue to develop. Blocking the sites will only intensify conflicts,” Jin told the AP.

There is more religious news coming out of China……

President Trump has been quick to go after China on trade issues, but the New York Times reports his administration is poised to penalize Beijing on a human rights issue for perhaps the first time. The administration is considering sanctions in response to China’s crackdown on minority Muslims, specifically ethnic Uighurs, in the name of national security.

The AP reports an estimated 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained in interment camps in Xinjiang province for indoctrination by the officially atheist government, and their plight is a cause of growing international concern. Human Rights Watch, for example, declared in a report over the weekend “that the human rights violations in Xinjiang today are of a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.”

Dear Leader going to put Muslims first (for a change)…..fascinating.

The US seems to be always have “war games” with this country or that….and now the 2 main opponents to US foreign policy have teamed up…….

Russia launched a massive military exercise on Tuesday, its biggest since the Cold War, reports the BBC. That alone would be enough to make headlines, but another twist has cinched it: China is taking part in the war games as well—the first time Russia has invited any country beyond its former Soviet satellites, notes the Wall Street Journal. The bulk of the troops taking part in the five-day drills in eastern Russia near the Chinese border are Russian: 300,000 vs. about 3,200 from China. Mongolia also sent a small contingent. The stories note that the joint military exercise is taking place as both nations’ relations with NATO in general and the US in particular have soured of late.

“The exercise is an opportunity to prepare for a range of large-scale war and crisis scenarios,” an analyst at the think tank Rand Corp. tells the Journal. “The focus is on the Pacific theater for contingencies, in North Korea, for example. But the capabilities tested could apply to a conflict with the West.” This is China’s largest such exercise outside its own borders, reports the AP. The first day coincided with a visit to Russia by Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We’re obviously aware of it, we’re watching it closely,” said Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman. “We’re aware of Russia’s right to sovereignty and to exercise in order to ensure their readiness.”

These are stories that the American news outlets will not offer up to its listeners…..so chuq has made it his duty to give this type of info to my readers.

Another Ancient Mystery

Today must be mysteries day……

Another mystery may have been solved…..this time it is a religious artifact….the Shroud of Turin…..do you know what it is?

Supposedly it is the shroud that the body of Christ was wrapped in after death and before the resurrection……there have been many theories over the years about is it really or is it not?

The Shroud of Turin is supposedly the burial cloth that was wrapped around Jesus after his crucifixion; bloodstains on the linen shroud, which are said to have been transferred to it during the three days Jesus was in the tomb, form the image of a crucified man. But a new study reported in the Journal of Forensic Sciences finds the bloodstain image was likely faked. Researchers looking at the blood spatter found that the stains appeared to come from someone standing up, rather than someone who was flat on the fabric, Science Alert reports. As the researchers put it, the stains are “totally unrealistic” when compared to what they should look like. The shroud, which is held in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Italy, is considered an icon, as opposed to a genuine religious relic, by the Vatican; Fox News notes “the church has never weighed in on its authenticity.”

“This is the kind of forensic work done all the time in police investigations,” the forensic scientist who conducted the analysis tells BuzzFeed News. “Even a crucified or hanging person should leave a distinct blood pattern on the cloth, which would be fascinating information to have.” The study found inconsistent staining, with researchers concluding multiple poses were used to create the bloodstains—a standing model was likely used to imprint patterns on the cloth at various angles for various body parts. Another bloodstain pattern expert notes that more research could be done to see whether cleaning a body or preparing it for burial might account for the inconsistent staining, though he notes that the stains do appear to have come from flowing blood, meaning a heart that was beating at the time the stains were made. (See previous stories in the real-or-fake debate here.)

This probably will not stop the debate because if you want to believe it is what it is then nothing will change your mind….science is never the friend.

Keep in mind that all sorts of “relics” have been found in the last few decades in the Holy Land  most have been proven to be fakes….but to people that must have hard proof of the religion will grasp at anything that promises to explain everything.

It usually doesn’t explain anything.

My final post of the day….be well, be safe…..chuq

Will Secularism Return?

When I was working in the Middle East, 1979-1984, I found that many of the countries that I visited were secular…..that is the people were not bound by any religious beliefs or attitudes…..countries like Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, etc…..since I left the Middle East Sectarianism has taken control of the people’s lives……countries that now a days we would consider as governed by religion.

I guess that war will make a lot of people turn to religion for help understanding many things and government would be no exception.

I recently read an article that covers this thinking and what is happening in the Middle East…..

When one thinks of conflict in the Middle East, religious factors are probably among the first that come to mind. But, nowadays, competing strategic interests and imperial ambitions play a much larger role than religious or sectarian cleavages in defining regional politics. This is potentially a positive development.

Consider the struggle for regional influence between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Despite having long been viewed as a result of the Sunni-Shia divide, the competition is really between two opposing political systems: Iran’s revolutionary regime, bent on changing the regional balance of power, versus Saudi Arabia’s conservative monarchy, which seeks to uphold the old regional order.

In this context, Iran’s support of the Arab Spring uprisings makes sense. In an Arab-dominated Middle East, non-Arab Iran is the natural enemy; but in a Muslim Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a potential hegemon. So Iran was quick to back free elections, predicting that voters would bring Islamists to power.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-political-decline-of-religion-in-the-middle-east/

I have noticed that social media is help in the spread of more non-religious considerations especially in what may become the new Iraq……

Rayyan Hadidi was 18 years old when he lost his faith. It was July 2006, and he was on his way to school when he stumbled upon a cheering crowd that had gathered near a local mosque. The group, made up mostly of mosque leaders and worshippers, had encircled two men accused of volunteering with the Iraqi police force, which many saw as a puppet of the American occupiers. Al-Qaeda gunmen brandished their arms, preparing to execute the men, as the crowd shouted, “Allahu akbar.” Hadidi stared at the two men, flinching when he made eye contact with one of them just before they were both shot.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/07/iraq-secular-sectarian-election-mosul/564452/

For me that is good news…for like I said before I remember a secular Middle East of my youth….I realize that this will not make a difference to those hateful individuals that wants to blame all problems on a religion.

Part of the rise of extremist Islam came from the sands of Arabia for these Arabs follow an extreme form of Islam known as Wahhabism…..since the King decided to put his son in charge there has been some movement to marginalize the religion……

To cement his power, Prince Mohammed has in the past year marginalized establishment religious scholars, detained critics and neutralized members of the elite by arresting relatives, prominent businessmen, and officials and stripping them of much of their assets.

In doing so, Prince Mohammed has subjugated the kingdom’s ultra-conservative religious leaders through a combination of intimidation, coercion and exploitation of religious dogma particular to a Saudi strain of ultra-conservatism that stipulates that Muslims should obey their ruler even if he is unjust. Islam “dictates that we should obey and hear the ruler,” Prince Mohammed said.

https://lobelog.com/whither-wahhabism/

Are the Saudis leading the way?  Not in my book…they are just given the illusion of change……some minor reforms but the religion thing will remain.

And why is the MSM ignoring all the protests in Iraq since the election?

Although popular unrest is nothing unusual in Iraq, one key factor that has emerged is that all Iraqis have the same concerns, irrespective of their ethno-sectarian background. This fact could be a reason why the mainstream media have attempted to sidestep the protests and failed to give the demonstrations the attention they deserve because they prove that Iraqis are sick and tired of the sectarian nightmare that Iran exported to their country.

http://www.iraqdailyjournal.com/story-z17501228

Closing Thought–20Jun18

These days with the children thing and the quotes saying that the Bible made them do it….I thought I would look at the Founders and their religious convictions….

I get tickled because so-called conservs say that we must keep Jesus in the Constitution…well actually he was not named God was but Jesus was left out for some reason.

The reason basically many of the Founders were “Deists” and not Christians……but why not take a look at 5 of the Founding Fathers that probably could not get elected these days because of their religious beliefs……

To hear the Religious Right tell it, men like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were 18th-century versions of Jerry Falwell in powdered wigs and stockings. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unlike many of today’s candidates, the founders didn’t find it necessary to constantly wear religion on their sleeves. They considered faith a private affair. Contrast them to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who says he wouldn’t vote for an atheist for president because non-believers lack the proper moral grounding to guide the American ship of state), Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who hosted a prayer rally and issued an infamous ad accusing President Barack Obama of waging a “war on religion”) and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (whose uber-Catholicism leads him to oppose not just abortion but birth control).

https://www.alternet.org/here-are-5-founding-fathers-whose-skepticism-about-christianity-would-make-them-unelectable-today

Did you know that Jefferson put together his own version of the New Testament?

Jefferson’s goal was to clarify the teachings of Jesus which he believed provided “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

But do yourself a favor and read for yourself…..

http://thejeffersonbible.com/

Time for my posting day to come to an end…..be well….chuq

Closing Thought–27Apr18

Most everyone knows about the so-called “Islamic Extremists” that are causing most of the violent attacks in this world.

Salafi brand of Islam is one of the beliefs these killers hold on to and now one country is trying to slove that problem……

Kazakhstan’s newly created Ministry of Religious Issues and Civil Society says it is taking steps to ban the Salafi branch of Islam in the country.

Minister Nurlan Ermekbaev said on October 14 in Astana that Salafism “poses a destructive threat to Kazakhstan” and his ministry was working on steps to legally ban it.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has said that a series of deadly attacks in June in the northwestern city of Aqtobe were carried out by Salafists.

The Salafi branch of Islam has been branded as extremist and banned in some former Soviet republics.

Salafists follow a strict form of Sunni Islam and do not recognize other branches of Islam, such as Shi’ism and Sufism.

The majority of Muslims in Central Asia are followers of Hanafi, a more moderate branch of Sunni Islam.

(Radio Free Europe)

That could control the violence in the Central Asian country….however I find it a bad thing when religion is banned…..I can see both sides of this…..but since the country of Saudi Arabia is the originator of this brand of Islam maybe there is where the program to eliminate the problem should begin…..

Plus the countries around this nation are all Islam as a majority….so any hardships and the bad guys will slink across a border and regroup and return to do whatever damage they were thinking of committing.  So the ban may be ineffective as stopping the salafists.

Just a thought.

The Saffron Curtain

It is time for the old professor to throw some history in your direction….you may fall asleep if you like but your grade will reflect the nap…..

During the Cold War many techniques were used by the US to counter the expansion of communism around the world…..psyops was one of these tactics….we even went so far as to try and weaponize religion….

Of the world’s major faiths, Buddhism is often characterized as being a religion of peace, tolerance, and compassion. The Western encounter with Buddhism has largely been distilled through yoga, the beatniks, Hollywood, and Dalai Lama quotes shared on Facebook. But even a cursory glance at the news that emanates from the Buddhist world reveals a more sanguinary state of affairs.

In Myanmar, ultra-nationalist monks have fueled a genocidal crusade against the country’s Rohingya Muslim population. In Thailand, the government has responded to a long-running Malay Muslim insurgency in its southern provinces by fostering a Buddhist militarism, encouraging monks in local temples to ally with the armed forces. And in Sri Lanka, the Buddhist-majority Sinhalese were engaged in a bitter civil war against the Hindu-minority Tamils for decades. More recently, Buddhist nationalists there have stoked anti-Muslim riots.

https://newrepublic.com/article/147623/saffron-curtain-buddhism-weaponized-cold-warpolicies

Some of the policies that resulted in violence have not subsided with the death of the USSR…..lingering hatred has endured.

Closing Thought—09Jan18

…I seldom post on religion simple because it is none of my business what you choose to believe…..but when I read something about religion that I think needs attention….then I post.

In Islam one of the “Pillars” of the religion is the Hajj….Muslims are should make a pilgrimage to Mecca in the lifetime if they are capable of doing so.

The story is the Qatar is embroiled in a conflict with Saudi Arabia and its allies and that the country is preventing the Qataris from executing an obligation they have as Muslims………

Saudi Arabia has been accused of preventing Qatari pilgrims from performing the Umrah pilgrimage, according to a social media account and a Qatari newspaper report.

In its editorial on Thursday, the Al-Raya newspaper said Saudi Arabia has been taking arbitrary measures against Qatari pilgrims visiting Mecca.

Amid Qatar’s ongoing diplomatic dispute with Saudi Arabia and its allies, which began in June 2017, Qatari nationals have reported trouble trying to perform pilgrimages in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/qataris-barred-pilgrimage-saudi-arabia-180104121809114.html

I have a problem with the Saudis being this petty and preventing fellow Muslims from completing the obligation to God.

What Happened To The Religious Right?

Remember the Moral Majority?

These guys put “God” back into politics.

I agree with a friend (name withheld to protect his identity) said that he stops listening when someone says they are a Christian and that attitude seems to be the sentiment of many Americans.

At one point the “Moral Majority” held all the political power…those days are waning….what happened to those “morally” perfect leaders?

Evangelicalism doesn’t have a brand problem; it has a product problem.

Ok, Evangelicals do have a brand problem—but they also have a major product problem.

Bible-believing born-again Christians, aka Evangelicals, have had a brand problem since Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority sold the Born-again movement to the Republican party in exchange for political power a generation ago, forging the Religious Right.

The Republican party has been using Christianity’s good name to cover bad deeds ever since, all the while tapping Evangelical media empires and churches as communications and organizing platforms to bring ordinary believers along with the merger. Having become true-believers themselves, Evangelical leaders have offered themselves up as trusted messengers for this New-and-Improved political gospel project.

And it has worked.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/heres-the-big-problem-that-is-rotting-at-the-core-of-the-evangelical-movement/

I cannot say that the movement is all but dead…..for it is still strong in the Deep South….the Alabama special election showed that when with all the allegations against Moore he still won the white vote overwhelmingly.

The rest of the nation has lost confidence in this movement but it will stay strong in the South until the older generation leaves us.

Middle East Toxic Schism

Note:  There is a lot of info in this post but if the reader really wants to know what is going on it is worth the time to read…..after all US troops are involved and could be further involved……

Since 1970’s Iran has been at “war” with Saudi Arabia….it is a war of words between two divisions of Islam….Shia and Sunni….it is a war for the soul Islam….but this “war” has been raging for centuries…..

The words Sunni and Shia only emerged into public consciousness at the end of the 1970s. Before then – except among Sunnis and Shias themselves – the terms had been largely confined to the rarified world of Islamic Studies faculties. But in 1978 it became obvious to journalists grappling with the early stages of the Islamic revolution in Iran that the Shia clergy, dismissed as irrelevant ‘black crows’ by the soon-to-be-toppled Shah, were actually very important. Few political analysts – including those in the CIA and MI6 – knew much about them.

Since then, we have gone from one extreme to the other. Today, far too many commentators latch onto the Sunni-Shia divide as the root cause of all the difficulties currently faced by the Middle East and much of the rest of the Islamic world. This explanation is facile, if convenient. Nor is it confined to neo-conservatives or right-wing identity entrepreneurs in the West, who relish writing about a Darwinian struggle for the soul of Islam that fits in with their own preconceptions about the essentially violent nature of the religion. Indeed, Barack Obama is on record as stating that ‘ancient sectarian differences’ are the drivers of today’s instability in the Arab world and that ‘the Middle East is going through a transformation going on for a generation rooted in conflicts that date back millenia’.

https://www.historytoday.com/john-mchugo/islams-toxic-schism

Of course the West has fueled this division since 1979…..the M-IC has made this a centerpiece of their game plan…..the profits made from sowing fear is staggering….

Recently there was a report that has been totally ignored by the MSM…..

In a speech broadcast Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran is ready to restore ties with Saudi Arabia if it stops bombing Yemen and cuts its alleged ties with Israel.

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran in January 2016 after Iranian demonstrators attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in response to the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite dissident leader.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/rouhani-ready-restore-ties-saudi-arabia-171210084010955.html

This is an opening for a peaceful settling of the Saudi devastation of Yemen……so far the Saudis have ignored the offer……plus they have enlisted US UN Ambassador Nikki Haley to make the case of Iranian missiles fired at Saudi Arabia…..she used visual aids, pieces of a missile, to emphasize the continuing attacks by the Houthis who are backed by Iran.

The US will not see the positive side of this situation……it calls for a “coalition” to confront Iran……

The US ambassador to the UN has called for an international coalition to counter Iran’s influence in the Middle East, while accusing the country of “fanning the flames of conflict” in the region.

Nikki Haley, standing in front of what she said were the remnants of Iranian-made weapons, said the US has found evidence that Iranian ballistic missiles were transferred to, and used by, the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, a violation of Tehran’s international obligations.

“In this warehouse is concrete evidence of illegal Iranian weapons proliferation gathered from direct military attacks on our partners in the region,” Haley said during a news conference in a military hangar near Washington, DC on Thursday.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/calls-global-coalition-counter-iran-171214190652267.html

The intel that the US is using against Iran may be flawed……

The most widely remembered episode of a U.S. administration using an intelligence-based public presentation to stir up hostility toward a country with which it was intent on picking a fight was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation on Iraq to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003.

That presentation and the Bush administration’s year-long campaign, of which Powell’s speech was a part, to sell the U.S. invasion of Iraq represented a misuse of intelligence — less because of the substance than because of the whole nature and purpose of the exercise. Instead of using intelligence for its proper purpose of informing policy decisions yet to be made, this campaign was instead a selective and tendentious use of intelligence to sell a decision already made.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/16/trumps-misuse-of-intelligence-on-iran/

The US is determined that Iran is the enemy and needs to be slapped down.

But even with support from the US will Saudi Arabia ever come in direct conflict with Iran?  Some doubt it……

The geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is nothing new. Even before the 1979 revolution, which saw the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Iran under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi has been largely viewed in the Arab world as a regional rival except that, back then, Iran had robust relations with the United States and Israel.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/why-saudi-arabia-cannot-go-war-iran-9549775

The big deal about Iran is their nuke program and the deal that they have entered into that they are complying with but all accounts….the US does not want the Middle East to become a nuke hot spot…….and yet…..

Saudi Arabia might be allowed to enrich uranium, if it accepts a bid to build new nuclear reactors in the kingdom from a US company.

President Donald Trump could relax current restrictions on US companies building nuclear plants in Saudi Arabia by allowing them to offer uranium enrichment and reprocessing.

With billions of dollars at stake and a pledge by Trump to kick-start America’s nuclear industry, sources told Bloomberg that rules governing the export of uranium refinement technology to Saudi Arabia could be loosened.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2017/12/13/saudi-arabia-might-enrich-uranium-in-us-nuclear-deal

I would love to hear what Tillerson has to say about this situation……nothing about this situation will be in the best interest in a more peaceful Middle East.

The rhetoric is not good…..it is almost as vile as the rhetoric leveled at North Korea…..will Iran be the next countrry that we destroy?

Destroying Syria was to be next. And then Iran. In 2006, columnist Taki Theodoracopulos warned in TheAmerican Conservative of the “Clean Break” plan “to aggressively remake the strategic environments of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. As they say in boxing circles, three down, two to go.” Core promoters of the PNAC plan signed an open letter to then President Clinton calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. They were Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick and John Bolton, all solid members of the Neoconservative project.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iraq-syria-iran-are-we-to-destroy-iran-next/

Only time will tell just what this president will do….he talks a lot but actions will speak volumes…..