Tag: Religious Extremism

A Sunday Thought

The big news for the last week has been the votes on abortion in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi…..speaking for Mississippi a Federal judge has crapped on the religious right’s parade…..

A federal judge on Friday issued a strongly worded preliminary injunction blocking Mississippi’s “heartbeat” abortion law, that would have banned abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat is detected.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves’ order will combine the lawsuit against Mississippi’s fetal heartbeat ban with an ongoing one against the state’s previous 15-week abortion ban.

“Here we go again,” Reeves wrote. “Mississippi has passed another law banning abortions prior to viability. The latest interpretation (Mississippi’s new law) bans abortions in Mississippi after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is as early as 6 weeks.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights had filed a lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s latest abortion ban, which was set to become law July 1.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/24/heartbeat-abortion-federal-judge-blocks-mississippis-law/1227710001/

I am sure that Mississippi is not alone and there will be many more challenges to these outrageous “laws”…….

Before I go any further (there is more to be said) I need to let my feelings be known…..

I am against abortion….but I have nothing to say about it for I cannot give birth……NO man should have control over a woman’s decisions or her body…..

That said……these newest “laws” are what is known as the “heart beat laws”…….but are these laws a con job?

Within the last few years, six U.S. states — Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa, and North Dakota — have passed so-called “heartbeat bills,” a term that’s become shorthand for a proposed ban on abortions beginning six weeks into a pregnancy, or the point at which a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected. Four more states have similar bills pending. Anti-abortion activists have doubled down on “heartbeat” messaging — in a recent news release regarding the ACLU’s legal challenge of the Ohio bill, the state’s leading anti-abortion group, Ohio Right to Life, used the term eight times in 300 words.

But obstetricians say the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading, and that this scientific misunderstanding, among countless others, may contribute to negative public opinion toward abortion.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/embryos-dont-have-hearts.html

Not to worry this issue does not let facts get in the way of the con.

I understand that this is an emotional issue……but what part of it moves the country forward?  This is not a political issue and does not belong in the discourse of the nation.  When this issue builds a new bridge then I may alter my thinking but until then I shall keep my opinion.

I even wrote my thoughts on the question awhile a go…….https://lobotero.com/2019/05/17/what-part-of-this-moves-the-country-forward/

Out Of The Desert……

Let’s take a look at the future of extremism.

AQ was born of war in Afghanistan…..ISIS was born of war in Iraq…..then the progression could be true of Libya……

The blood in the sand is thanks to the extremism of the branch of Islam….Wahhabism/Salafist…….

This form of Islam is not necessarily the form of Islam most Americans will encounter on the streets of America….no more so than the extremes of Judaism……

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792) was the first modern Islamic fundamentalist and extremist. Al-Wahhab made the central point of his reform movement the principle that absolutely every idea added to Islam after the third century of the Muslim era (about 950 CE) was false and should be eliminated. Muslims, in order to be true Muslims, must adhere solely and strictly to the original beliefs set forth by Muhammad.

https://www.learnreligions.com/wahhabism-and-wahhabi-islam-250235

The conflict that began with the death of Qaddafi is breeding another extreme group to watch…..

Madkhali-Salafis (“Madkhalis” for short), followers of an ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim doctrine, are growing in influence across Libya since the fall of the Qadhafi regime in 2011. Present in major armed groups in both east and west, they wield considerable military clout and, as a result, political leverage over both post-2014 rival governments. Their rise within the security sector follows a common pattern among other Libyan warring factions, both Islamist and non-Islamist, which have sought to expand their influence by penetrating the security apparatus and converting its members to their worldview. Now, their anti-democratic agenda and rejection of Libya’s religious and cultural diversity has triggered growing apprehension from many Libyans. Libyan political actors negotiating a solution to the conflict should seek to build a professional security apparatus shielded from ideological influence of any kind. For their part, Madkhalis should publicly commit to respecting religious freedom.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/north-africa/libya/addressing-rise-libyas-madkhali-salafis
 
What are the chances of a new faction will emerge as a blight on Islam?
 
The Wahhabis, the Muslim extremists, have hijacked the faith from the end of WW1…….(this link is for those that pretend they know the Muslim faith and make false claims)(try learning something for a change)

Our century so far has been overshadowed by a plague which roots, western powers have proclaimed, can be found in Islam and its practice. And though politicians have been careful not to publicly brand all Muslims terrorists, the narrative has nevertheless been one of suspicion and assumption. The words terror and Islam have been juxtaposed too many times in the media for anyone to believe that it was not by “design.” There has been a war of words against both Islam and Muslims. Its aim is rather simple and only too predictable since it falls within an equation of greed and cynicism.

By ridiculing Islam and dehumanizing its followers, western powers have essentially laid the ground for intervention – positioning their armies within a narrative of moral salvation and liberation when their aims are everything but.

 
The possibility of a new group to be added to the terror list is forming and needs to be handled……Muslim need to step up and protect their faith from the monsters from the shadows.

Fahrenheit 451

Sunday and I am having a lovely weekend…..

Have you ever read Fahrenheit 451? How watched the movie…both original and the cheap re-make?

No?

It is about a future society that does not like people that read…..

Set in the twenty-fourth century, Fahrenheit 451 introduces a new world in which control of the masses by the media, overpopulation, and censorship has taken over the general population. The individual is not accepted and the intellectual is considered an outlaw. Television has replaced the common perception of family. The fireman is now seen as a flamethrower, a destroyer of books rather than an insurance against fire. Books are considered evil because they make people question and think. The people live in a world with no reminders of history or appreciation of the past; the population receives the present from television.

Ray Bradbury introduces this new world through the character Guy Montag, the protagonist, during a short time in his life.

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/fahrenheit-451/book-summary

This story ties in well with something else I read…….

Book burning is not a thing of the past, at least not in Poland, where Catholic priests recently burned books they believe to be sacrilegious. Among the tomes that went up in flames were Harry Potter books, thanks to concerns about witchcraft and sorcery. The evangelical SMS From Heaven Foundation posted pictures of the event on Facebook, along with Bible verses including one reading, “Burn the images of their gods” and another explaining, “Many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone.”


Also burned, per AFP and the Guardian: a Hello Kitty umbrella, books from the Twilight series, and a Hindu religious figurine. The group’s post has gone viral, and the BBC quotes some unsupportive comments left on it, including one noting, “I have not met anyone yet who would rape, murder and steal in the name of Harry Potter. In the name of the Bible, yes.” Other comments were supportive, like one suggesting, “Get rid of everything that does not please God and see how your life will change.”

Seriously?

It is the 21st century….this from a religion that spends more money protecting pedophiles but they do not want children reading fiction…this is pathetic and just another reason I do not like organized religion in any shape or style.

The garden awaits….the perfect time of the year…..cool sunny weather with a bit of rain sprinkled in (pun intended)….. I shall enjoy for as long as I can for the stifling heat of Summer is not far away……MoMo is getting her exercise…….she is a tan blur as she goes galloping past…….kids!

All Bow Down! ISIS Defeated!

The fighting against the barbaric group we call ISIS has been raging for 6 years, since 2013 and in multiple countries Syria, Iraq, Somalia, etc and now we have a new president and after 2 years he has declared that ISIS has been defeated.

All praise him!

So now our weary troops can return home to the friends and families and get some much deserved rest, right?

Probably not!

President Trump says that in the coming week the US and its allies will announce that they have captured all of the land previously controlled by Isis. He claims that US-led forces “have liberated virtually all of the territory previously held by Isis in Syria and Iraq … we will have 100 per cent of the caliphate.“

The prediction has sparked a sterile and misleading debate about whether or not Isis is finally defeated, something which will remain unproven since the movement is unlikely to run up a white flag and sign terms of surrender. The discussion has – like all debates about foreign policy in the US – very little to do with the real situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq and everything to do with the forces at play in Washington politics.

http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/trump-says-isis-is-defeated-he-is-ignoring-the-bigger-picture/

ISIS is a jihadi group that believes an extreme form of Islam, which originated in Saudi Arabia (go figure), regardless what Trump said he is mistaken……oh Hell let’s call it for what it is….he LIED!

US President Donald Trump crowed victory over the so-called Islamic State in his State of the Union Address. Like so many before it, his claim was premature. The United States and its partners have indeed reduced the Islamic State’s control of territory to about 20 square miles in Syria, down from the more than 35,000 square miles the group controlled at the peak of its expansion. The Islamic State’s black flag no longer flies over land it governs. Meanwhile here in America, homegrown terrorist attacks seem to be tapering off, and neither al Qaeda nor the Islamic State has pulled off another 9/11-style attack. Many observers, including the president, look at these outcomes and deem the terrorist threat finished — but our enemies take a different view. They think they’re winning, and they are right.

http://www.aei.org/publication/the-salafi-jihadist-movement-is-winning/

Trump says ISIS has been defeated…..maybe maybe not…..but the one thing that is a constant is the ISIS needs the US to survive…….

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president wrote. He later expanded on that sentiment in a video message, posted on Twitter. “Our boys, our young men and women, are coming home now,” Trump noted. “We won.”

But a recent attack on U.S. forces in Syria, carried out by a suicide bomber which ISIS claimed was operating on its behalf, has led to an outpouring of criticism of Trump’s precipitous decision. “ISIS has claimed credit for killing American troops in Syria today,” Senator Marco Rubio tweeted in the aftermath of the attack. “If true, it is a tragic reminder that ISIS not been defeated and is transforming into a dangerous insurgency. This is no time to retreat from the fight against ISIS. Will only embolden & strengthen them.”

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/make-no-mistake-isis-needs-the-u-s-to-survive/

Now the question is…..if the US pulls out of the battle will ISIS just slink away and die or will it join with others like AQ or will it reinvent itself?

Questions need answers……

But then ISIS may not be “defeated”……

Few weeks after United States President Donald Trump announced that Daesh has been defeated in Syria, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were waging a major battle on Monday against what has been described as the terrorist group’s last foothold in the war-torn country. By Tuesday, the SDF, comprising mainly Kurdish and Arab fighters and supported by coalition air strikes, was closing on the town of Baghouz Al Fawqani — few kilometres from the Iraqi border, where about 500 Daesh terrorists were entrenched and holding more than 1,000 civilians hostages.

https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/its-too-early-to-declare-that-daesh-is-defeated-1.62073434

ON the upside….ISIS is on its last leg……

From a self-proclaimed caliphate that once spread across much of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State group has been knocked back to a speck of land on the countries’ shared border, the AP reports. In that tiny patch on the banks of the Euphrates River, hundreds of militants are hiding among civilians under the shadow of a small hill—encircled by forces waiting to declare the territorial defeat of the extremist group. A spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighting the militants said Sunday that the group is preventing civilians from leaving the area, closing a corridor from which nearly 40,000 residents have managed to escape since December. “They are taking their last breath,” says an SDF fighter.

For weeks, the militants fought desperately for their shrinking territory. Once in control of about a third of Syria and Iraq, they now are down to what SDF officials describe as a small tented village atop a network of tunnels and caves. But they are holding on to hundreds of civilians—some of them possibly hostages—taking cover among them at the edge of a village in eastern Deir el-Zour province in Syria. As civilians trickled out of the enclave in recent weeks, the SDF and coalition officials screened them. Khatib Othman, an SDF fighter, came back from the front line a few days ago to take a break. “We want to take revenge,” he said. “We will not let the blood of our martyrs go to waste.” The capture of the last pocket of IS territory in either Syria or Iraq would mark the end of a four-year global campaign to crush the extremist group’s so-called caliphate.

Turn The Page!

That Christian Sharia

The world and the country wait on pins and needles about the outcome of the investigations into Trump and his corrupt organization……will he be impeached……would that mean Pence would ascent to the throne of power?

Personally, I would rather see a corrupt ineffective president than him to depart and give the power to a Christian Sharia advocate……Mike Pence….he is a Dominionist……surely you can remember the days when Musims would make the US live under Sharia Law….total BS but there is a chance that a Christian form of Sharia could be looming…..

Say huh?

Those involved in what’s become a major component of the evangelical right in the United States call themselves “dominionists.” They follow “dominion theology.” Pointing to the Bible, they emphasize that in it God gave humans “dominion” over the natural world and life in it. This, they believe, gives them license to exploit the earth. Further, the “dominionists” have expanded this to justify theocratic rule of society.

It is an evangelical segment that Donald Trump has sought to attract. They constitute a significant portion of his so-called “base.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/30/a-theology-of-power-mike-pence-and-the-dominionists/

Pence is a theocrat……religion is religion and politics is politics and nether the two should be intertwined.

The truth is that Pence is not a person we want in control….

Pence’s timing was even worse than his thesis. He delivered his address an hour after the U.S. Central Command announced the deaths of four U.S. personnel in Syria, an incident for which ISIS claimed responsibility. While the press widely noted the jarring discrepancy between his remarks and the fatal attack, it was silent about the strangeness of the country’s second highest elected official, a person with his own national security staff, blithely going on with such comments after the military had already tweeted to the world about the deadly attack.

Was he not accompanied to the speech venue by a member of his national security staff, or at least an aide capable of surfing the news sites on a cell phone for breaking stories that might affect the prepared remarks? Or was Pence actually informed about the Syria news and mechanically went ahead with the speech anyway? Either way, he doesn’t sound like the leader we need to manage a potential Cuban missile crisis.

Another discordant note: it was not as if Pence were haranguing a group of local notables in a Shriner’s hall in Muscatine, Iowa. In that sort of venue he could probably get away with saying more or less anything. Instead, it was an address to the Global Chiefs of Mission conference at the State Department—a foreign policy-savvy audience at a facility equipped for secure communication with all the nodes of the national command structure. That he thought he could pull the wool over their eyes with cheap talk of victory is one of those ineffable mysteries of faith.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/22/pence-unfit-office-trump

For me flush both Trump and Pence down the toilet and give Nancy the chance.

Hang ‘Em High

Closing Thought–16Jan19

I could do some retro review of a Clint Eastwood movie from the 70s but personally they were all pretty sucky movies…..the old “Spaghetti Westerns” with the weird sounding guns and the bad music.

Awhile back one of my closing thoughts was about the Congress finally making lynching a hate crime…….after 200attempts and finally a success……my post on the situation……https://lobotero.com/2018/12/20/closing-thought-20dec18/

I bring this up because there are some that want to alter the law on lynchings…..and as one might expect it is some religious sorts that want the change….

The U.S. Senate last month unanimously passed a bill that would explicitly make lynching a federal crime. Not everyone, however, is pleased with passage of the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act.

Liberty Counsel, an evangelical nonprofit that opposes gay rights, and its chairman, Mat Staver, are taking issue with the bill’s inclusion of LGBTQ people.

“The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can’t stop them from coming the rest of the way in,” Staver said in an interview with conservative Christian news outlet OneNewsNow. “This is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler [sic] at some time in the future.”

Staver told OneNewsNow that his organization, which has been labeled an anti-LGBTQ “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is lobbying lawmakers in the House to have them remove the bill’s “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” language before taking a vote.

(NBC News)

Not a fine example of Christian love, huh?

This is why I dislike most Christians……they are the most hypocritical of people…..plus they are usually conservative and that is just boring.

 

“Make America Great Again”–Part Two

I must continue with a journey through American history…..written by a Maj. Danny Sjurden a professor of History at West Point for a time….Part Two is about the religious zealots in our early history….keep in mind that some of the first Europeans to settle in the New World were religious zealots known as “Puritans”…..The Puritans were a widespread and diverse group of people who took a stand for religious purity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in Europe. Their rise was directly related to the increased knowledge that came to the common people in the Age of Enlightenment. As people learned to read and write, and as the Bible became more accessible to commoners, many began to read the Bible for themselves (a habit that was strongly discouraged in the established church). Some Puritans were connected with Anabaptist groups in continental Europe, but the majority were connected with the Church of England. The word Puritan was first coined in the 1560s as a derisive term for those who advocated more purity in worship and doctrine.

The English Puritans, who are the most familiar to Americans, believed that the English Reformation had not gone far enough and that the Church of England was still tolerating too many practices that were associated with the Church of Rome (such as hierarchical leadership, clerical vestments, and the various rituals of the church). Many Puritans advocated separation from all other Christian groups, but most were “non-separating” and desired to bring cleansing and change to the church from within. Holding a high view of Scripture, and deeming it as the only true law of God, Puritans believed that each individual, as well as each congregation, was directly responsible to God, rather than answering through a mediator such as a priest, bishop, etc. The Congregational Church in America is a descendant of the early Puritan settlers, and any group that advocates congregational rule and individual piety has been impacted in some way by Puritan teaching. Even today, theologians from many church backgrounds appreciate reading the works of the old Puritan divines, even if they differ in some points of doctrine.

Let’s look at the roots of religious zealots in Early America…..

It is the image Americans are comfortable with. The first Thanksgiving. Struggling Pilgrims—our blessed forebears—saved by the generosity of kindly Native Americans. Two societies coexisting in harmony. If Colonial Virginia was a mess, well, certainly matters were better in Massachusetts. Here are origins all can be proud of.

Our children re-create the scene every November, and we watch them with pride through the lenses of our smartphones. But is this representation of life in Colonial New England an accurate portrait of Anglo-Native relations at Plymouth, or, for that matter, in the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony? Of course it isn’t, but nonetheless the impression—the myth—persists. That’s a story unto itself.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-truthdiggers-roots-religious-zealotry/

American history is fascinating……never a dull moment….

Class Dismissed!

Closing Thought–23Aug18

Before I start with the meat of this post……they say that blondes make up about 8% of the population and it looks like most of them work for FOX News…….so a comment made by an anchor on FOX makes perfect sense…..

Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt asserted on Thursday that America is “great” because it “defeated communist Japan.”

“We want to know what you think,” Earhardt said. “We defeated communist Japan, radical Islamists. We ask our men and our women to go overseas to fight for our country and sacrifice so much for this great country so that we can be the land of the free, the land of the brave.”

(FOX News)

Have you ever read an article that made you say to yourself….”No Sh*t”!…after reading?

Well the other day I found one that was a big No Sh*t for me…..

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a “defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the state of Israel” when the Knesset enacted earlier this month a basic law (having constitutional status in Israel) making the right of national self-determination “unique to the Jewish people” and not applicable to all citizens. The law further enshrined religiously based discrimination, including a clause that points to priority for Jewish-only communities by declaring “the development of Jewish settlement as a national value” and promising “to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”

The law has been a subject of much controversy in Israel. It passed the Knesset by the narrow margin of sixty-two to fifty-five. Opponents argue that it constitutes a step away from democracy. But this was one more item on the agenda of the ruling right-wing coalition that, given the rightward move in Israeli politics in recent years, the coalition was able to push through.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/israel-not-liberal-democracy-28392

Again….No Sh*t!

Activist such as myself have been saying this for decades and few were listening……now the world is starting to see what I and others having been harping…Israel has NEVER been this shining democracy of the Middle East.

Of course Israel does not subscribe to these rights…….

The Later Crusades

Most people even if they are not a history buff will know of the 1st Crusade and the adventurism into the Holy Land in the name of Christ…..but that was not the only Crusade to try and expel the Muslim usurpers from the “Holy Land”…..

There were a couple of minor Crusades after the First….the Crusade of the Faint Hearted 1101…the Venetian Crusade and then we come to the Second Crusade of 1147…..but what happened after 1150?

Then came the Third Crusade…….

1187 saw the crusader kingdoms reach their low point. The crusaders fought amongst themselves, while at the same time Saladin was unifying large parts of the Muslim world, eventually coming to surround the crusaders. Despite this, the crusaders failed to observe their truce with Saladin, and eventually Saladin decided on war. In June 1187 he invaded Palestine. Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, was able to raise an army of almost equal size to Saladins’, but it was badly led, and the crusaders suffered a decisive defeat at the battle of Hattin (4 July 1187). Guy was captured, while the most able Crusader leader, Raymond of Tripoli, died of his wounds after the battle. The aftermath of the defeat saw the effective end of all but a tiny remnant of the crusader kingdoms. With their garrisons lost, Saladin was able to capture most cities, including Tiberias, Acre and Ascalon. Only at Tyre, where a combination of strong defences, and the arrival of Conrad of Montferrat with fresh troops thwarted Saladin. From Tyre, he moved on Jerusalem, which surrendered to him on 2 October 1187. News of the loss of Jerusalem broke on a stunned Europe, where moves were soon in hand for a fresh crusade, the Third. However, for the moment those crusaders left in Palestine has to survive.

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_acre.html

Then there was the 4th Crusade to recapture the lost city of Jerusalem from the Muslims……

The Fourth Crusade was actually conceived in 1199 at a jousting tournament held by Thibaut, Count of Champagne, at Ecry-sur-Aisne in northern France. There, in a sudden wave of mass emotion, the assembled knights and barons fell to their knees weeping for the captive Holy Land. They swore solemn oaths to go as armed pilgrims to wrest it from the infidels. In the months that followed, the crusade took form in a series of feudal assemblies headed by Count Thibaut; Baldwin, Count of Flanders; and Louis, Count of Blois. Rather than wear out their army by a long land march through hostile territory, the leaders decided to reach Egypt by sea. A delegation of six trusted knights went to Venice, the leading seafaring city of Western Europe, to arrange for passage. One of those envoys, Geoffrey of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, later wrote a chronicle of the expedition.

http://www.historynet.com/fourth-crusade.htm

The 4th failed to do what it intended to do…….which was pretty much every Crusade’s fate for 1200 on……time wasted, people dead and resources squandered all in the name of religion……some things never change.

Not to worry there were 6 more Crusades before 1291….after that year there were 6 more crusades until 1481…..

It seems that a Crusade was a popular past time in the Middle Ages.

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.