I’m proud to say that I got 8 out of 8 right in this ABC News quiz on whether particular persons, organizations and nations are Sunni or Shiite Muslims. I do have to give most of the credit to Mark Alexander’s piece, previously highlighted here, that discussed them. (That and a little luck.)
I’ll admit to not knowing my Islamic sects, but Mark Alexander at the Patriot Post distills it down to 1000 well-written words. Definitely worth a read.
And while you’re there, read the rest of today’s digest, which includes news about a push to do and end-run around the Electoral College, notice of a report from UNICEF that says the US and the UK are the two worst places to raise a child, and news of a settlement in a “wrongful birth” case. I suggest you subscribe to their e-mails.
Technorati Tags: Mark Alexander, Patriot Post, Muslim, Islam, Sunni, Shi’ite, Electoral College, UNICEF, United Nations, wrongful birth
Just ask a couple of Gideons. Their answer might surprise you. From the Alliance Defense Fund web site:
PLANTATION KEY, Fla. — Two members of Gideons International arrested for distributing Bibles on a public sidewalk will be represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys. Anthony Mirto and Ernest Simpson were arrested, booked into jail, and charged with trespassing.
“The First Amendment protects the right to engage in religious speech on a public sidewalk,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “Members of the Gideons have been highly respected for decades as peaceful providers of free Bibles to those who want them.”
On Jan. 19, Mirto and Simpson began distributing copies of the Bible on a public sidewalk outside Key Largo School. Neither man entered school grounds. After the school’s principal called police, a Monroe County Sheriff’s officer asked the men to leave immediately or face trespassing charges. As the men prepared to leave, the officer decided to arrest both individuals.
No, they haven’t been convicted yet, but handing out Bibles on a public sidewalk isn’t something that should even be a gray area. What about Salvation Army open air meetings, that have been going on (less so recently) for over 100 years? Handing out Bibles is surely less an issue, but what’s different is the culture of today with so little real understanding of freedom of religion. Today, being religious while within earshot of a school is grounds for arrest.
The Left will tell you that God hasn’t been taken out of school; kids can still pray (unobtrusively,silently) if they want. Perhaps, but I have a feeling that if God did show up at a school, He’d be in a holding cell in short order.
Hat tip to WorldNetDaily for the scoop and further details.
Technorati Tags: Gideons, Anthony Mirto, Ernest Simpson, Alliance Defense Fund, First Amendment, bibles, Key Largo School
People of middle-eastern descent are being increasingly targeted for hate crimes in Britian. After 9/11 here and the London bombings there, it would be understandable, although completely intolerable, that violence against Muslims might increase in reaction. Except that it’s not Muslims that are the targets.
Attacks on Britain’s Jews have risen to the highest level since records began.
A study published today shows the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents has almost tripled in 10 years, with more than half the attacks last year taking place in London.
The findings prompted the report’s authors to warn of a “wave of hatred” against Jews.
The number of incidents increased to 594 last year, up by 31 per cent on the previous year.
Violent assaults soared to 112, up by more than a third on 2005.
Incidents ranged from the unprovoked stabbing of a Jewish man in north London to the sending of hate mail and the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues.
Hat tip to the Rev. Sensing, who notes that the numbers in the US, while down slightly in 2006, did hit a 10-year high in 2004. While the Anglosphere bends over backward to be sensitive to Muslims, very little anti-Semitism goes noticed.
Make no mistake, violence against either group on the basis of simply who they are is unacceptable, but one group has the West cowed into not showing cartoons and whose radical suicide bombers target civilians, while the other group can take criticism in a civilized manner and whose radical suicide bombers…well…don’t exist. I’m not saying that we should accord special protection to Jews over Muslims, but we should give at least the same sensitivity to the Jews, dontcha’ think?
Technorati Tags: Judaism, Islam, Jew, Muslim, discrimination, violence, Britian
A great article on a Christian dealing with homosexual tendencies at Blogger News Network by Warren Throckmorton, PhD, is a must-read. While I think homosexual activity is wrong, this approach to dealing with it in the Christian life makes sense. As I say in a comment to the article, hetero men have the same sexual temptations (aside from the gender), and have to deal with them spiritually and behaviorally. And just because God doesn’t heal a particular physical problem–or take away homosexual tendencies–doesn’t mean that He can’t or that we’re bad people.
Loving the sinner and hating the sin goes for sin in our own lives as well. A healthy love of self includes knowing what your weaknesses are. Just continue to seek out God and let Him work through you. Great article.
Technorati Tags: homosexuality, Christianity, Warren Throckmorton
Agencies run by churches in the UK can no longer practice what they preach.
Roman Catholic adoptions agencies yesterday lost their battle to opt out of new laws banning discrimination against homosexual couples when Tony Blair announced that there would be “no exemptions” for faith-based groups.
The Prime Minister said in a statement that the new rules would not come into force until the end of 2008. Until then there would be a “statutory duty” for religious agencies to refer gay couples to other agencies.
Why can’t that “statutory duty” be good enough? Why is government coercion trumping religious freedom? Predictably, the results of an attempt at “fairness” will chase off the principled.
Last week the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, warned that the agencies would close rather than accept rules that required them to hand over babies to gay couples.
One wonders if, in some quarters, that’s the whole objective. I mean, given a situation where there are choices, and there usually are, why would a gay couple seek out the Catholic Church for an adoption agency when there are others that have no qualms about it. It’s kind of like the standard answer you hear when folks complain about the content of TV programming. “Just change the channel”, the Left dismissively says. But when it comes to their preferences, they won’t “change the channel” themselves–choose a different agency–and instead insist that government sanction their choices and force it upon everyone to accommodate it.
Technorati Tags: England, UK, adoption, Catholic Church, Tony Blair
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have opened doors to the spread of the Gospel.
More Muslims converted to faith in Jesus Christ over the past decade than at any other time in human history. A spiritual revolution is under way throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia:
Iraq: More than 5,000 new Muslim converts to Christianity have been identified since the end of major combat operations. … Also, more than 1 million Bibles [were] shipped into the country since 2003, and pastors report Iraqis are snatching them up so fast they constantly need more Bibles.
Afghanistan: only 17 Muslim converts to Christianity before 9/11/01, but now more than 10,000.
Other Muslim countries have also seen tremendous rates of conversion starting in the 80s and 90s. Read the whole article for the stunning numbers from Egypt, for example.
Technorati Tags: Iraq, Afghanistan, Christianity, Islam, evangelism
No contest in that match, according to Hugo.
In addition, you tell me if there is an unstated threat when, after ‘scolding’ the Church “for criticizing his decision not to renew the license of an opposition-aligned television station,” Chavez said:
the state respects the church. The church should respect the state. I wouldn’t like to return to the times of confrontation with Venezuelan bishops, but it’s not up to me. It’s up to the Venezuelan bishops.
Translation: If there is a conflict between me and the Church, the Church must be wrong. If Chavez was the first to spew the sort of nonsense he does so often, he might be cutely incorrigible.
But this isn’t the first time faith has heard in the distance the report of socialist war drums. What then?
Hat tip to Acton Institute’s PowerBlog, a general must read.
Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, church, government
Regular readers will have noticed that my contributions to this blog have been slight in the past few months, though they are on the rise. The reason for this is that a disease I hadn’t thought much about in the past 10 years decided to make another appearance and made typing a chore. My Multiple Sclerosis was back. But while there is bad news involved, there is certainly a lot of good news and praise to God involved
Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost takes an honest look at the religious faith of America’s Founding Fathers. His first conclusion is:
With the exception of the handful of orthodox Christians, the majority of the founding fathers subscribed to a religious view that we would nowadays classify as Unitarianism. A rejection of Trinitarianism clearly puts one outside the bounds of orthodox Christianity. We should not, therefore, claim that a historical figure is a “Christian” when we would consider someone who held those beliefs today to be a heretic. The leaders during the revolutionary era may have subscribed to a Judeo-Christian view of morality, but few of them were orthodox believers.
However, his second conclusion is:
While we Christians can claim few founding fathers as fellow believers, the atheistic secularist can claim none. Not one of the significant leaders was an atheist, much less subscribed to the modern idea of secularism.
Essentially, Carter says that the whole modern idea of government working from a purely secular/atheist point of view is not something the Founders would have generally recognized as their idea. An “established religion” meant something specific to them, and it wasn”t that government should be devoid of religious influence at all. (Military chaplains were set up by these same fellas, as an example.) The Michael Newdows of the country should take note.
Technorati Tags: government, religion, secularism, atheism, founding fathers, america, establishment clause, first amendment
