Truth or Consequences?

So what is it going to be, truth or consequences? The answer is ...both. We will reap the consequences of our disregard of the truth, and then we will be confronted with the truth, like it or not. Those who have fervently denied the truth will find themselves wishing they had chosen to fight for the truth.
Lets start with the global warming group. These people have set upon people by using fear. They use half truths and full blown lies to set a scenario of doom that cannot be reversed without all the peoples of the world changing the way they live. I am not saying science is invalid. I am saying science can be manipulated into quite a profitable industry.
The funny thing about this group is that the people barnstorming the world to get the word out are doing exactly what they tell us we should not do. They fly in private planes, are transported in large caravans of gas guzzling SUVs, live in homes so large they could shelter many families. Yet they want to come to your community and tell you that your means of transportation to and from work is ruining the planet, your house is too big, you live a wasteful life that is ruining the earth. They talk about reducing YOUR “carbon footprint”, yet in just one of their crusades to enlighten the world they leave a carbon footprint larger than the average person will leave in years. Yes, they pollute excessively to make you feel guilty about polluting excessively. You see, they know what is best for all of us, how could people like you and I know what these lofty people know.
They say if we do not stop polluting it will lead to global warming. This statement in and of itself is a half truth. Yes our pollution will HELP lead to global warming, along with pollution produced naturally by volcanos, animal waste and gases and plant waste and gases etc.. The result will be something like the last mini ice age that started in 1315. Before that time Europe had warmed to temperatures that are warmer than they are now. England was producing wine that rivaled French wines, which angered the French because they were losing business. Populations boomed. Ice bergs melted. Glaciers melted. The result in the Atlantic ocean was that so much fresh water was released by ice bergs and glaciers it essentially stopped the gulf stream. The gulf stream is responsible for the temperate climate enjoyed by much of North America and Europe. The result, a mini ice age. Climates changed drastically , people and animals died. This is a REAL model of what could happen if things continue as they are, and they will.

Now let’s look at the gay and lesbians who scream that they are an oppressed minority because society at large cannot accept their desire to marry. Really. They claim to be an oppressed minority. If they were not so serious about the subject one could laugh. They claim that by not allowing them to “marry” their civil rights are being violated. As a believer my understanding of the institution of marriage is to “bless those married with children and prosperity”.
First of all I would like to know what they are REALLY trying to accomplish. If this really were about LOVE we wouldn’t be discussing this.If it were about the right to receive benefits like health insurance, or the right to visit their loved one in the hospital, or the right to claim each other for tax purposes, or the right to claim inheritance benefits, or the right to claim life insurance, or the right to prove their love to society ,wouldn’t they be happy to accept the term “civil union”? I am sure that will not do. They want it to be MARRIAGE. You see marriage would make them feel NORMAL, even though they keep saying they are and that there is nothing unnatural with being gay or lesbian, it’s normal, for the Gay and Lesbian lobbies to go through all of this you might think somewhere deep inside they still require that approval from non homosexuals. You have to admit, quite a game. On one hand there is nothing unnatural about being gay/lesbian, on the other hand they demand we accept their behavior without question as normal and natural. What choice do we have? O.Kayyy
Lets face it, this is not about NORMAL or LOVE as much as it is about CONTROL. They want everyone to accept deviant behavior as normal. No questions. No dialogue.No arguments. No decent. The peoples vote doesn’t matter. We want what we want. If any heterosexual brings a logical argument the Gay lobbys' only method of standing up to the test is to SHOUT IT DOWN or whine about human rights/civil rights abuses.
Sex has two functions, procreation and pleasure. As far as procreation goes gays and lesbians are a dead end, lets not argue about lesbians getting impregnated, whatever they say, they still need a male of the species to become pregnant, period( they might never see the male, but a male does provide the sperm). Gay men are the ultimate dead end as far as procreation. So the homosexual lobby has failed the procreation test. Homosexuality is not functional, so it is DYSFUNCTIONAL. What about pleasure, well, I guess pleasure is what you make of it and that is highly subjective, some people find pain pleasant, so I guess all of humanity fails this test or passes it depending on your outlook.
The homosexual lobbies attempt to use “victim status” in a civil rights forum is at best odious. There are real civil rights issues where real people are being hurt and killed. To force society to focus on the gay marriage issue and not on real issues of civil rights abuse is theft, it is irresponsible, it is irreconcilable. My guess is using the word “marriage” is a way to pay back a society, churches and religious people that have long treated homosexuals like less than humans. My personal take is that if a believer in the Savior and Messiah is treating homosexuals badly, he or she has missed the point our Savior was making. Gays and lesbians deserve kindness , respect , dignity and empathy from us not a beat down. This still does not excuse wasting societies resources for selfish reasons, and ultimately, forcing people to have to accept something that is none of their business to begin with. Yes , I know some heterosexuals can ignorant and cruel towards homosexuals, this is totally unacceptable My take is, be thankful that there are heterosexuals.

Next, this will be a quick one. “Politicians represent the people”. No politicians represent themselves, politics is a self serving industry. They say they need more money to help us and then they help themselves to as much of that money as they can. Private limousines, government planes, trips on the peoples expense, trips on lobbyists expense, new furniture for their office, photo ops at McDonalds and then off to the country club for champagne and caviar, affairs with interns and pages and lies upon lies to cover lies upon lies. The government is no longer really running the nation, money is. Does anyone believe G W Bush really cared about common people, I don’t. Does anyone believe Barack Obama cares about the common people, I don’t. Obama touted himself as the candidate of change, did he make any real changes? His administration is just a rehash of what got us to where we are now. Washington insiders, career politicians. People who know how the game is played.
Real change would have been picking people outside of the beltway people who really love this country. Real change would have been to state the truth, income tax is illegal( check the Supreme Court ruling of 1895). Real change would have been to tell the Federal Reserve “ we are done with you and we are not paying you back!” You see the Federal Reserve owns the United States money, which means the Federal Reserve owns the government which means the people are no longer the government, they are the means of “cash flow” for the wealthy bankers and bank conglomerates who ARE the Federal Reserve. These bankers do not have our nations best interest in mind.
Obama IS going to bring change, check that jingling in your pocket, that IS the change. To believe that there is any difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party is to believe pink elephants fly, money grows on trees and Hitler loved the Jewish people. Good luck with that. I am not trying to imply that politicians are monsters,they are human. I’m just saying ‘They are just doin’ their job”.

And now for more lunacy, how about this one. “Islam is a religion of peace”. I may as well start off with the end, good luck with that. First of all look at the behavior. Murder is glorified, honor killings, women are discriminated against, rampant racism and intolerance of other religions and beliefs, lying is honorable and acceptable. How is any of this “peaceful”? Lets face it folks, for 1400 years islam has been doing all of the above. How do you get a man or woman to strap bombs to their body and walk into a crowd of people with only one intention, murder? How do you saw another human beings head off because he does not believe as you do or in a woman’s case , dishonor the man? How can a mother say she is proud her child blew themselves up as a sacrifice for allah and islam? Doesn’t she understand the lesson of Abraham NOT sacrificing Isaac because our Creator DOESN’T want human sacrifice? How do you justify treating women as chattel? How do you explain open hatred of any people, let alone preaching it as some kind of spiritual sermon? How can anyone get upset enough to kill because of some cartoons? Muhammed was not GOD! Why can’t he and his religion/ideology be questioned in open debate? Their only response is to scream about all the violence in the Bible. They miss the part about all those killed in Canaan practiced human sacrifice, but why isn’t that surprising. Since 1979 islam has been responsible for more than 95% of all terrorist attacks. That kind of ruins their little theory about all the violent Christian and Jewish fundamentalists. They say they don’t kill innocent people, but their books tell them only muslims are innocent. Whoops, their spokes people forgot the second half of that. Just remember this, the religion of peace is perfectly willing to kill you to prove they are the religion of peace.

Finally, for now anyway, the media. “The Main Stream Media”.
In order for lies to work, you have to have a means by which to convey information, then the lies. Word of mouth would be one way. To get the information and news out en masse newspaper, television and radio have been the standard for a long time. The internet is new and flourishing, but I suspect( speculation on my part) anyone over 25 years old gets half their information from newspaper, TV or radio.
We all know newspapers,TV and radio stations have owners, owners who have opinions. Owners are beholden to advertisers who also have opinions. There is big money involved. What could possibly go wrong? The USA is a capitalism based, free market economy, so we don’t really care where the money comes from, IT’S MONEY! So lets add some wealthy people from other countries, other countries who may or may not have our best interests in mind. Lets have these people buy into newspapers, TV and radio stations, hire journalists who cleanse/edit/censor the news. This is done so as not to offend or put the wrong spotlight on all or particular people. The media are so used to misrepresenting the truth now, they don’t even really hide it. Maybe they don’t even realize they are doing it. Just two examples from recent headlines; “Youths destroying stores in a major Scandanavian city” or “ Dutch citizen stands trial for planting roadside bombs in Iraq”. Maybe I am just s a bit critical, but it seems to me, in my opinion, when just reading those headlines, on an NBC affiliate on the west coast I was having a hard time picturing large gangs of blonde hair blue eyed Nordic hooligans ( sorry for the stereotype)destroying seven grocery stores in one town. As far as the “Dutch” citizen planting roadside bombs in Iraq, I just can’t seem to picture the “little Dutch boy” with his finger in the dike planting roadside bombs in Iraq.
The United States main stream media don’t have “political correctness” down to the degree the media in Europe do, I have lived in Europe and have family there, but the US media is well on it’s way.
It is truly sad to see, I grew up watching Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley you kind of knew you could trust what they were telling you, so we thought anyway. Maybe that is how the young people of today see current news anchors and reporters.
One thing is certain today though, like it or not, believe or not, accept it or not, almost every bit of news you get today has been cleansed and censored of as much truth as the owner wants. OK maybe not the stock market reports , sports scores or the weather, it would be a little more difficult to half truth a winter storm, but boy howdy if they could!
So what’s it going to be? Truth or Consequences? The truth has its’ own consequences. Avoiding the truth usually has worse consequences. Standing for the truth takes courage, you have to be ready to fight, EVEN IF YOU DON’T REALLY WANT TO. Taking the other path and surrendering to lies and half truths is like surrendering your wife and virgin daughter to be raped, tortured and murdered before your very eyes. Liberty or death! Freedom of speech or war! Freedom of religion or war! Equality for all who wish to live peacefully under the rule of law! I am not advocating violence in any form against any group of people. I AM pointing out how important it is to see how serious the situation has become, IT IS THAT SERIOUS. There IS a reason we have been given judgement, intolerance is not ALWAYS bad. There is only one way, you must find your way back to the Creator .

The People of the Valley

  For 1400 years now there has been a murdering, marauding, pillaging and raping folk running under their ideological banner of "spiritual struggle". The ideology was founded by a greedy, covetous man whose only purpose in life was to steal from those he perceived as having something he wanted, whether fortune, women or fame. He desperately wanted acceptance and approval from the "people of the mountain" and sought ways to counterfeit their religion, alas he was uneducated and unsophisticated in his attempt, but he managed to recruit a small group of bitter dregs from his society.  During the time when his following was small and weak he was continually rejected by the "kingdom of the mountain", he attempted to be peaceful and kind to win them over, but to no avail for they saw through his lies. Then one day he found that he had enough followers to take what he wanted by force, including those who had rejected him. So he offered the "people on the mountain" a chance to join him if only they give up all they had to him and accept him as their prophet. When they again rejected him, he slaughtered all the men and kept the women and children as slaves. That became the way for the "prophets " people, murder, rape, pillaging, lying, stealing. Forcing people to convert to his pathetic vision or die. The "people on the mountain" would have been happy to share in order to have peace, but the prophet was into profit and power, not peace. Oh he would lie when he did not have the upper hand and pretend to sue for peace, but it was a ploy to buy time until he had the upper hand , then all were killed or enslaved. The people of the valley hated the people on the mountain because the people on the mountain had true love and peace in their hearts, a gift from their creator. The people of the valley have been trying to steal this ever since, not knowing that if they stopped and examined their own heart they may find what they were looking for, but their prophet has taught them that everything they want and need is "out there somewhere". Therein lies the problem, the people of the valley have been taught to ignore their hearts and listen only to their carnal thoughts and give in to those desires. Greed and avarice are their spirituality, murder is their way to heaven, hatred, death and anger are their love. They are without hope and time and tradition are no excuse. Once the people of the valley have dispatched the people of the mountain they will turn on themselves until none are left, not even one tin soldier.

Obama's charm offensive and the global jihad - The Boston Globe

Obama's charm offensive and the global jihad - The Boston Globe

Posted using ShareThis

Same Sex Marriage. What is this?

So here we go again. If you don’t agree with gay marriage you are mean spirited, a hater, how dare you disagree. I am always amazed at how self absorbed groups of people have the audacity to try and make other people feel guilty about their own beliefs because they will not agree with said group of people. Gays and lesbians are not a large demographic, in fact, if this were the intolerant society they love to scream about, same sex marriage would not make it to the light of day as a discussion. Yet here we are again, the gay and lesbian lobby are again flying in the face of the will of the people( 61% of the people voted against same sex marriage in California, that is called a fact, polls that suggest the people have changed their mind a few years down the road are notions and nothing else ), they will utilize every tool in order to get their own way, every sad little play on words to defeat the spirit of the law. Nice people.
I am also floored by how this same group of people can insult and then demand. How can anybody with half a brain say that because you do not agree with me you must hate me. Anybody remember high school? The fact that this is the ONLY argument gays and lesbians end up falling back on speaks for itself. You cannot argue that being gay/lesbian is normal, in terms of nature, they are a dead end. They do not reproduce. Lets face it folks, if you had to tie something down and it required fasteners, what would a bag of nuts without bolts be other then useless. I realize we are talking about people, people who deserve deference and understanding, who have probably had a difficult path in life. Put yourselves in their shoes for a day and you will probably have only a fraction of understanding of what they have lived through every day of their life. Yet these very same people, who deserve to be treated with dignity, don’t seem to understand that I, as much as they, have a right to my feelings. I hate the sin, not the sinner. Is it wrong for me to believe that homosexuality is not normal? No. Is it wrong for me to teach my young children, family and friends that homosexuality is wrong? No. I, as much as any gay or lesbian, am entitled to my thoughts and beliefs. I am also entitled to express my beliefs, as they are, if you are offended I am open to discussion, I am also big enough to admit a mistake. I do NOT teach hatred of anyone. Is it wrong for me to ask the question " Why , particularly marriage?" Yes, my gay brothers and lesbian sisters, why particularly marriage? Is this a payback for all the years of oppression by a) the church b) religion in general c) society d) the good ole boys or e)_______________( fill in grievance). Or is it truly love, but if it were love, would this all be necessary? Is it to prove that you are normal? If yes, read this paragraph again. If no, well, what then. You are healthy, happy and free, God loves you and will forgive your sin, if you want, you live in the land of freedom. A healthy minded individual or group use their time and energy to make life better for all in their community, they don’t use the communities assets to get their way.
If the gays and lesbians believe in their plight and the plight of those like them, why don’t they engage the people who don’t believe they have a right to exist. Instead of pounding America for more rights than the average citizen, why don’t they speak up against those who ACTUALLY hate gays, they prove it over and over again by HANGING them. You never hear as much as a peep from the gay/lesbian groups who fight to put their marriage on the forefront. I guess they want to be a squeaky wheel , but they really don’t want to have to really fight for their beliefs. They pick a soft target, their own people in their own country, instead of standing up to real hatred. This is political pandering and the politicians and lawyers driving this have very little vision and are not concerned about the community or country they live in. So , what is this? This is forcing people to have to recognize something that 1) is none of their business 2) shouldn’t be of anyones interest what sexuality someone is unless that someone is harming another 3) As hard as this may be to believe to gays and lesbians, as repulsive as heterosexuality is to some homosexuals, homosexuality is just as repulsive to some heterosexuals . Maybe some people would rather not have to confront things that make them uncomfortable. It’s a human thing, no harm meant by most and we all know there are bad apples in all groups. So again I ask , what is this?

SLAVERY

I found this on the internet, very interesting and informative. The Gentile
The Scourge of Slavery
THE REST OF THE STORY
Muslim slave traders
Over 28 Million Africans have been enslaved over the Muslim world over the past 14 centuries
While much has been written concerning the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, surprisingly little attention has been given to the Islamic slave trade across the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. While the European involvement in the Trans Atlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day.
CONTRASTS IN CAPTIVITY
Slave routes
A comparison of the Islamic slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.
While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!
While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.
While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.
It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).
African Slaves
Slaves in Africa - in the early 20th century.
However, at least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. As at least 80% of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from the 14 centuries of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 112 million. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the Trans Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people.
THE ABSENCE OF ARABIC ABOLITIONISTS
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce led the campaign against slavery for 59 years.
While Christian Reformers spearheaded the anti-slavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America, and Great Britain mobilised her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.
Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave traders enslaved a further 2 million Africans. This despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention to limit the Islamic slave trade. By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Islamic slave trade could exceed 180 million.
Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalised slavery from their statute books. And this only after international pressure was brought to bear. Today numerous international organisations document that slavery still continues in some Muslim countries.
THE PAGAN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY
Slavery long predated Christianity and many of the early Christians were slaves in the Roman Empire. Without exception, the pre-Christian world accepted slavery as normal and desirable. The Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed: "From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule." The great civilisations of Mesopotamia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and all the civilisations in Central America and Africa were built upon slave labour.
People became slaves by being an insolvent debtor, or sold into slavery by their parents, or by being born to slave parents, or by being captured in war, or through kidnapping by slave raiders and pirates. Slave dealing was an accepted way of life, fully established in all societies. Most of these slaves were white people, or Europeans. In fact the very word "slave", comes from the people of Eastern Europe, the Slavs.
St. Patrick, the English missionary to the Irish, was once a slave himself, kidnapped from his home and taken to Ireland against his will. Patrick spoke out strongly against slavery. He wrote: "But it is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most."
Captured Slaves
About 80% of those captured by Muslim slave raiders died before
reaching the slave markets. The Greeks, from whom we derive so many modern, humanistic ideas, were utterly dependent on slavery. Even Plato's Republic was firmly based on slave labour. Plato said that 50 or more slaves represented the possessions of a wealthy man.
Under Roman law, when a slave owner was found murdered, all his slaves were to be executed. In one case, when a certain Pedanius Secundas was murdered, all 400 of his slaves were put to death.
Before the coming of Christ, the heathen nations despised manual work and confined it to slaves. When Christ was born, half of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves. Three quarters of the population of Athens were slaves.
Slavery was indigenous to African and Arab countries before it made its way to Europe. Slavery was widely practiced by the tribes of the American Indians long before Columbus set foot on the shores of the New World. Ethiopia had slavery until 1942, Saudi Arabia until 1962, Peru until 1968, India until 1976 and Mauritania until 1980. What is also seldom remembered is that many black Americans in the 19th Century owned slaves. For example, according to the United States census of 1830, in just the one town of Charleston, South Carolina, 407 black Americans owned slaves themselves.
THE CHRISTIAN ROOTS OF LIBERTY
But Jesus revolutionised labour. By taking up the axe, the saw, the hammer and the plane, our Lord endued labour with a new dignity. Christianity undercut slavery by giving dignity to work. By reforming work, Christianity transformed the entire social order.
Our Lord Jesus Christ began His ministry in Nazareth with these words: "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me.to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.and release to the oppressed." Luke 4:18
When the apostle Paul wrote to Philemon, concerning his escaped slave, he urged him to welcome back Onesimus "no longer as a slave, but.as a dear brother.as a man and as a brother in the Lord." Philemon 16.
Because of these and other Scriptural commands to love our neighbour, to be a good Samaritan and to do for others what you would want them to do for you, Christians like William Wilberforce, John Newton, William Carey, David Livingstone, Lord Shaftsbury and General Charles Gordon worked tirelessly to end the slave trade, stop child labour, and set the captives free.
From the very beginning of the Christian Church, Christians freed slaves. During the 2nd and 3rd Centuries many tens of thousands of slaves were freed by people who converted to Christ. St. Melania was said to have emancipated 8000 slaves, St. Ovidius freed 5000, Chromatius freed 1400, Hermes 1200. Many of the Christian clergy at Hippo under St. Augustine "freed their slaves as an act of piety." In AD315, the Emperor Constantine, just two years after he issued the edict of Milan, legalising Christianity, imposed the death penalty on those who stole children to bring them up as slaves.
The Emperor Justinian abolished all laws that prevented the freeing of slaves. St. Augustine (354 - 430) saw slavery as the product of sin and as contrary to God's Divine plan (The City of God). St. Chrysostom in the 4th Century, taught that when Christ came He annulled slavery. He proclaimed "in Christ Jesus there is no slave.therefore it is not necessary to have a slave.buy them, and after you have taught them some skill by which they can maintain themselves, set them free."
For centuries, throughout the Middle Ages, bishops and church councils recommended the redemption of captive slaves, and for five centuries the Trinitarian monks redeemed Christian slaves from Moorish (Muslim) servitude.
In 1102AD, the London Church Council outlawed slavery and the slave trade. By the 12th Century slaves in Europe were rare, and by the 14th Century slavery was almost unknown on the continent of Europe.
THE ISLAMIC SLAVE TRADE
However, with the birth of Islam came a rebirth of the slave trade. As Ronald Segal in "Islam's Black Slaves" documents: "When Islam conquered the Persian Sassanid Empire and much of the Byzantine Empire, including Syria and Egypt, in the 7th Century, it acquired immense quantities of gold.stripping churches and monasteries.either directly or by taxes, payable in gold, imposed on the clergy and looting gold from.tombs.the state encouraged the search and sanctioned the seizure, in return for a fifth of the finds."
Segal notes: "Female slaves were required in considerable numbers for.musicians, singers and dancers.many more were bought for domestic workers.and many were in demand as concubines. The harems of rulers could be enormous. The harem of Abdal Rahman III (912 - 961) in Cordoba contained over 6000 concubines! And the one in the Fatimid Palace in Cairo had twice as many."
Slave raid
An Arab slave raid in East Africa 1888. The death toll from 14 centuries of the Islamic slave trade in Africa is estimated at over 112 million. Islam's Black Slaves also reveals that the castration of male slaves was common place. "The Calipha in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th Century had 7000 black eunuchs and 4000 white eunuchs in his palace." It was noted that there were widespread "homosexual relations" as well. Islam's Black Slaves notes that Islamic teachers throughout the centuries consistently defended slavery: "For there must be masters and slaves." Others noted that blacks "lack self-control and steadiness of mind and they are overcome by fickleness, foolishness and ignorance. Such are the blacks who live in the extremity of the land of Ethiopia, the Nubians, Zanj and the like."
Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406) the pre-eminent Islamic medieval historian and social thinker wrote: "The Negro nations are as a rule submissive to slavery.because they have attributes that are quite similar to dumb animals."
By the Middle Ages, the Arab word "abd" was in general use to denote a black slave while the word "mamluk" referred to a white slave. Even as late as the 19th Century, it was noted that in Mecca "there are few families.that do not keep slaves.they all keep mistresses in common with their lawful wives."
It was noted that black slaves were castrated "based on the assumption that the blacks had an ungovernable sexual appetite."
When the Fatimids came to power they slaughtered all the tens of thousands of black military slaves and raised an entirely new slave army. Some of these slaves were conscripted into the army at age ten. From Persia to Egypt to Morocco, slave armies from 30000 to up to 250000 became common-place.
Even Ronald Segal, who is most sympathetic to Islam and clearly prejudiced against Christianity, admits that well over 30 million black Africans would have died at the hands of Muslim slave traders or ended up in Islamic slavery.
A dhow, the favourite slave carrying vessel of Arab slave traders.
Dhow vessel Arab traders beat their cargo into submission on the run from the African coast to Zanzibar. The Islamic slave trade took place across the Sahara Desert, from the coast of the Red Sea, and from East Africa across the Indian Ocean. The Trans Sahara trade was conducted along six major slave routes. Just in the 19th Century, for which we have more accurate records, 1.2 million slaves were brought across the Sahara into the Middle East, 450000 down the Red Sea and 442000 from East African coastal ports. That is a total of 2 million black slaves - just in the 1800's. At least 8 million more were calculated to have died before reaching the Muslim slave markets.
Islam's Black Slaves records: "In the 1570's, a Frenchman visiting Egypt found many thousands of blacks on sale in Cairo on market days. In 1665 Father Antonios Gonzalis, a Spanish/Belgian traveller, reported 800 - 1000 slaves on sale in the Cairo market on a single day. In 1796, a British traveller reported a caravan of 5000 slaves departing from Darfur. In 1838, it was estimated that 10000 to 12000 slaves were arriving in Cairo each year." Just in the Arabic plantations off the East Coast of Africa, on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, there were 769000 black slaves.
Slave Market
The slave market in Zanzibar sold an average of 300 slaves every day.
In the 19th Century, the East African black slave trade included 347 000 slaves shipped to Arabia, Persia and India; 95 000 slaves were shipped to the Arab plantations in the Mascareme Islands.
Segal notes "The high death rate and low birth rate among black slaves in the Middle East and the astonishingly low birth rate amongst black slave women" in North Africa and the Middle East. "Islamic civilisation.lagged increasingly behind the West in protecting public health. The arithmetic of the Islamic black slave trade must also not ignore the lives of those men, women and children taken or lost during the procurement, storage and transport.the sale of a single captive for slavery might represent a loss of ten in the population from defenders killed in attacks on villages, the deaths of women and children from related famine and the loss of children, the old and the sick, unable to keep up with their captors or killed along the way in hostile encounters, or dying of sheer misery."
One British explorer encountered over 100 human skeletons from a slave caravan en route for Tripoli.
The explorer, Heinrich Barth, recorded that a slave caravan lost 40 slaves in the course of a single night at Benghazi.
The British explorer, Richard Lander, came across a group of 30 slaves in West Africa, all of them stricken with smallpox, all bound neck to neck with twisted strips of bullock hide.
One caravan with 3000 proceeding from the coast in East Africa, lost two thirds of its number from starvation, disease and murder.
In the Nubian desert, one slave caravan of 2000 slaves literally vanished as every slave died.
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
In 1818, Captain Lyon of the Royal Navy reported that the Al-Mukani in Tripoli "waged war on all its defenceless neighbours and annually carried off 4000 to 5000 slaves.a piteous spectacle! These poor oppressed beings were, many of them, so exhausted as to be scarcely able to walk, their legs and feet were much swelled, and by their enormous size formed a striking contrast with their emaciated bodies. They were all borne down with loads of firewood, and even poor little children, worn to skeletons by fatigue and hardships, were obliged to bear their burden, while many of their inhuman masters with dreadful whip suspended from their waist.all the traders speak of slaves as farmers do of cattle.the defenceless state of the Negro kingdoms to the southward are temptations too strong to be resisted, a force is therefore annually sent.to pillage these defenceless people, to carry them off as slaves, burn their towns, kill the aged and infants, destroy their crops and inflict on them every possible misery.all slavery is for an unlimited time.none of their owners ever moved without their whips - which were in constant use.drinking too much water, bringing too little wood or falling asleep before the cooking was finished, were considered nearly capital crimes, and it was in vain for these poor creatures to plead the excuse of being tired. Nothing could withhold the application of the whip. No slaves dared to be ill or unable to walk, but when the poor sufferer dies, the master suspects that there must have been something 'wrong inside' and regrets not having liberally applied their usual remedy of burning the belly with a red-hot iron."
Slave Traders
Arab slave traders along the Ruvuma River, East Africa, 1866, axe a straggler.
Records for Morocco in 1876 show that market prices for slaves varied from £10 ($48) to £30 ($140). Female slaves comprised the vast majority of sales with "attractive virgins" fetching between £40 to £80 ($192 - $386). It was reported that "a considerable majority of the slaves crossing the Sahara were destined to become concubines in North Africa, the Middle East and occasionally even further afield."
CHRISTIAN SLAVES - MUSLIM MASTERS
Segal also observed that: "White slaves from Christian Spain, Central and Eastern Europe" were also shipped into the Middle East and served in the "palaces of rulers and the establishments of the rich." He records that: "All slavic eunuchs.are castrated in that region and the operation is performed by Jewish merchants."
Muslim raiders kidnapping women
Muslim slave raiders kidnapped women from Europe for harems in the Middle East.
Historian Robert Davis in his book "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters - White Slavery In the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy", estimates that North African Muslim pirates abducted and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780. These white Christians were seized in a series of raids which depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall. Thousands of white Christians in coastal areas were seized every year to work as galley slaves, labourers and concubines for Muslim slave masters in what is today Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. Villages and towns on the coast of Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were the hardest hit, but the Muslim slave raiders also seized people as far afield as Britain, Ireland and Iceland. They even captured 130 American seamen from ships they boarded in the Atlantic between 1785 and 1793.
According to one report, 7000 English people were abducted between 1622 to 1644, many of them ship crews and passengers. But the Corsairs also landed on unguarded beaches, often at night, to snatch the unwary. Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore, in Ireland, were captured in 1631, and there were other raids in Devon and Cornwall. Many of these white, Christian slaves were put to work in quarries, building sites and galleys and endured malnutrition, disease and mistreatment at the hands of their Muslim slave masters. Many of them were used for public works such as building harbours.
Female captives were sexually abused in palace harems and others were held as hostages and bargained for ransom. "The most unlucky ended up stuck and forgotten out in the desert, in some sleepy town such as Suez, or in Turkish Sultanate galleys, where some slaves rowed for decades without ever setting foot on shore." Professor Davis estimates that up to 1,25 million Europeans were enslaved by Muslim slave raiders between 1500 to 1800.
THE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE
While Islam dominated the slave trade from the 7th to the 15th Century, between 1519 and 1815 Europe also joined in this trade in human flesh. And it was those European nations which had suffered the most at the hands of Muslim slave raiders, and under centuries of Muslim military occupation, Spain and Portugal, who dominated the European slave trade.
It was the enemies of the Reformation who brought Europe into this disgraceful trade. Emperor Charles V (whom Martin Luther defied with his historic "My conscience is captive to the Word of God.here I stand I can do no other." speech) of the Holy Roman Empire who first authorised Europe's involvement in the slave trade in 1519. Because of Pope Alexander VI's Line of Demarcation Bill of 1493 which barred Spain from Africa, Spain issued Asientos (a monopoly) to other nations to supply slaves for her South American colonies. First Portugal had this lucrative franchise, then the Dutch, then the French. Finally, by the treaty of Utrecht 1713, the Asientos was transferred from France to Britain. Britain's involvement in slavery was first authorised in 1631 by King Charles I (who was later executed by Parliament). His son, Charles II, reintroduced it by Royal Charter in 1672.
According to "The Slave Trade" by Hugh Thomas, approximately 4 million (35.4%) went to Portuguese controlled Brazil; 2,5 million (22.1%) to the Spanish nations of South and Central America; 2 million (17.7%) to the British West Indies (mostly Jamaica); 1,6 million (14.1%) to French West Indies; half a million (4.4%) to Dutch West Indies and half a million (4.4%) to North America.
THE AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE
Freed Slaves
Slaves freed by the British Navy.
It is extraordinary that, considering that less than 5% of all the Trans Atlantic slaves ended up in North America, the vast majority of films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrate only on the American involvement in the slave trade, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration. However, the vastly greater involvement of Portugal, Spain and France seem to be largely ignored. Even more so the far greater and longer running Islamic slave trade into the Middle East has been so ignored as to make it one of history's best-kept secrets.
We tend to focus on what happened in North America because the United States would eventually fight a war, in part over slavery, and because of the enormous and vocal American opposition to slavery. This was in sharp contrast to the indifference that Muslims, Africans and many Europeans evidenced towards it.
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
HMS London
A steam pinnache of HMS London puts a warning shot across the bow of a slaving dhow in 1881.
The legends of European slave raiders venturing into the jungles of Africa to capture free peoples are generally just that: myths.
The embarrassing fact of history, is that the Europeans did not have to use any force to obtain these slaves. The slaves were "sold" by their black owners. There was no need for the slave raiders to risk their lives or venture into the jungles of Africa, they simply purchased the people from African chiefs and Muslim slave traders at the coast.
However, while the slave trade and slavery itself was always criticised vigorously in Britain and America, no comparable criticism was evident in the Muslim Middle East or amongst the African tribes which sold their own people, and neighbouring tribes, into slavery. Almost all of the African slaves transported across the Atlantic were captured and sold by African rulers and merchants.
Many chiefs found it more profitable to sell their enemies, criminals and debtors than to kill or imprison them. Many were weaker neighbouring tribes conquered for the express purpose of selling their people into slavery. The disgraceful fact is that there were three equally guilty partners in the crime of the Trans Atlantic slave trade: pagan African chiefs, Muslim Arabs and Christian Europeans.
The Trade, as it became known, involved a triangular voyage. Slave ships sailed from Bristol or Liverpool loaded with cloths, beads, muskets, iron bars and brandy. This merchandise was then traded in West Africa in exchange for slaves. Mostly African chiefs sold their own people, or engaged in wars and slave raids against neighbouring tribes to capture victims for this trade. Often professional Arab slave traders provided the victims.
The middle passage transported the slaves to the West Indies. Here the slaves were sold and the ships loaded with spices, rum, molasses and sugar. The third leg of the journey was the return to England. The average Englishman on the street was kept in the dark as to what was actually happening on the middle passage, until, in 1785, Thomas Clarkson's landmark study "Slavery and Commerce In the Human Species" was first published at Cambridge. According to Clarkson's research, 10% of the slaves would normally die during the middle passage. Strong men would fetch as much as £40 while the women and children were sold in cheap batches with the sick and weak men. In England 18 000 people were employed simply on making the goods to trade for slaves in Africa. This trade constituted 4.4% of British exports.
WILBERFORCE'S WAR
On Sunday 28 October 1787, William Wilberforce wrote in his diary: "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the Reformation of society." For the rest of his life, William Wilberforce dedicated his life as a Member of Parliament to opposing the slave trade and working for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire.
On 22 February 1807, twenty years after he first began his crusade, and in the middle of Britain's war with France, Wilberforce and his team's labours were rewarded with victory. By an overwhelming 283 votes for to 16 against, the motion to abolish the slave trade was carried in the House of Commons. The parliamentarians leapt to their feet with great cheers and gave Wilberforce the greatest ovation ever seen in British history. William bent forward in his seat, his head in his hands, tears of gratitude streaming down his face.
In 1809, the British government mobilised its Navy to search suspected slave ships, even foreign vessels on the high seas. In 1810, the British Parliament declared slave trading a felony, punishable by fourteen years hard labour. In 1814, the British representative at the Congress of Vienna insisted on the abolition of the slave trade being included in the International Treaty. This Treaty was signed by all the European powers on 9 June 1815. In 1825, Britain passed a bill making slave trading punishable by death.
Finally, just three days before William Wilberforce died, by an Act of Parliament in 1833, the British abolished slavery itself - setting all 700 000 slaves in British overseas territories free. Wilberforce's lifetime campaign of 59 years was now fully successful. "Thank God that I've lived to witness the day in which England is willing to give 20 million pounds sterling for the abolition of slavery!" he exclaimed. Within three days he died rejoicing. (For the story of how slavery was abolished see the chapter on William Wilberforce - Missionary to Parliament in The Greatest Century of Missions).
The "History of European Morals" suggests that "the unweary, unostentatious and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations."
The abolition of slavery was one of the great turning points in history. And the long and vigorous crusade by the British Navy throughout the 19th Century against the slave trade ranks as one of the most extraordinary and unselfish applications of national policy ever seen in the history of nations.
".where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Cor 3:17
SET FREE TO SERVE CHRIST
Samual Crowther
Rescued from slavery by the British Navy,
Samual Crowther became the first Africanbishop of the Church of England. One of the many fruits of William Wilberforce's life long crusade against the slave trade was that Samuel Ajayi Crowther, who was born in 1807 (the year Great Britain abolished the slave trade) in Yorubaland (modern Western Nigeria) was rescued by a British naval squadron. When Samuel was just thirteen years old, he was captured by Muslim slave traders for transport across the Atlantic, but rescued by the Navy. Samuel received an education in Sierra Leone, where he was converted to Christ, and after further education in England he was ordained as a minister of the Church of England for service with the Church Missionary Society.
Liberated Slaves
Newly liberated slaves in Zanzibar.
Samuel participated in the expedition up the Niger River Valley to overcome the ravages of the slave industry still entrenched there. Of the 145 Europeans on that expedition, 130 were struck down with Malaria, and 40 died. Yet the expedition succeeded in establishing a Missionary Center at Fourah Bay for training liberated slaves to evangelise West Africa. It was built on the very place where a slave market had once stood. The rafters of the roof were made almost entirely from the masts of old slave ships.
Samuel Crowther was one of the first four students to graduate from Fourah Bay's College, Sub-Saharan Africa's first university. In 1864, Samuel Crowther was ordained as the first African Bishop of the Church of England in an overflowing Canterbury cathedral. Today there are eighteen times more Anglicans worshipping in church every Sunday in Nigeria than there are in Great Britain.
LIVINGSTONE'S TRAVELS
David Livingstone
Livingstone and his team free slaves from Arab slave raiders in the Shire Valley.
However, as the British Navy was defeating the slave trade in the Atlantic, the East African slave trade was increasing. It was missionary explorer David Livingstone whose graphic descriptions brought the ravages of the East African slave trade to light. His Missionary Travels and Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi exposed the horrors of the slave trade: "Two of the women had been shot the day before for attempting to untie their thongs. One woman had her infants brains knocked out because she could not carry her load and it; and a man was dispatched with an axe because he had broken down with fatigue.those taken out of the country are but a very small section of the sufferers. We never realised the atrocious nature of the traffic until we saw it at the fountain head. 'There truly Satan has his seat.' Besides those actually captured thousands are killed and die of their wounds and famine, driven from their villages by the internecine war waged for slaves with their own clansmen and neighbours, slain by the lust of gain, which is stimulated, be it remembered always, by the slave purchases of Cuba and elsewhere."
A TRADE IN HUMAN MISERY\
The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society reported that most slaves were captured in the Lake Niassa area (Malawi and Mozambique), the Bahr El Ghazal region and in areas of Ethiopia. Slaves were taken to East African markets like Zanzibar, Kilwa and Quelimane and then shipped to Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Iraq, Iran and to the islands of Pemba, Reunion and Madagascar.
The Anti-Slavery Reporter estimated the Muslim slave trade as exporting 63000 slaves per year. Some estimates went as high as 500000 slaves exported in a single year. One researcher, Ralph Austen calculated that between 1830 and 1861 imports of slaves to the Persian Gulf averaged 3700 to 3100 per annum. This same researcher noted that about 8855 slaves a year were retained as slaves on the East African coast as slaves of African slave masters.
1833 Free slaves
1833 - All slaves in the British Empire
are set free by Parliamentary decree.
Few authors dared describe the horrors involved in the Trans- Sahara slave trade: kidnapping and castrating young boys to be sold as eunuchs ("the living dead") in the homes of wealthy Arab landlords and force marching young women across endless miles of scorching sand in the Sahara desert to become slave concubines, most dying in transit. The Muslim slave trade typically dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves: eunuchs. Eunuchs were created by completely amputating the scrotum and penis of eight to twelve year old African boys. Hundreds of thousands of young boys bled to death during this gory procedure. The survival rate from this process ranged from 1 in 10 to 1 in 30. These castrated boys brought the highest price at the slave market.
SHARIA LAW AND SLAVERY
Islam's Black Slaves notes: "the Quran stipulated that female slaves might lawfully be enjoyed by their masters." Mohammad himself owned many slaves, some of whom he captured in wars of conquest and some he purchased. The names of forty slaves owned by Mohammad are recorded by Muslim chroniclers. Islamic law (Sharia) contains elaborate regulations for slavery. A slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), slaves had no right to property, could marry only with the permission of the owner, and were considered to be chattel, that is the movable property, of the slave owner. Muslim slave owners were specifically entitled by Sharia law to sexually exploit their slaves, including hiring them out as prostitutes.
One reason why very little has been written about the Arab involvement in slavery is that traditional Islamic culture still condones slavery. The Sharia, the codified Islamic law which is based upon the teachings and example of Mohammad, contains explicit regulations for slavery. One of the primary principles of Islam is following the example of Mohammad. Whatever Mohammad did, we must do, what he forbade, we must forbid, what he did not forbid, we may not forbid. As Mohammad himself traded in slaves and owned slaves, accumulating multiple wives, even marrying a six year old, and having concubines - slavery and the sexual exploitation of women is deeply ingrained in Islamic tradition. Muslim nations had engaged in the slave trade for over 600 years before Europe became involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
SLAVERY TODAY
Slave - my true storey
Almost 200 years after the British outlawed the slave trade in 1807, slave raids and the sale of slaves in Muslim markets continues in countries like Sudan. The slave trade remained legal in Saudi Arabia until 1962, when under international pressure it was finally abolished. However, there are persistent, credible reports, that slavery persists in Saudi Arabia, and even that slaves from Sudan are ending up in Saudi Arabia.
Recently, a former slave from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, Mende Nazer, had her autobiography: "Slave: My True Story" published. Mende was captured in 1992, she was first a slave to a rich Arab family in Khartoum, and then in 2002 to a Sudanese diplomat in London, from whom she escaped and sought political asylum.
THE LAW OF LIBERTY
Although the Old Testament provided for slavery for criminals and insolvent debtors, kidnapping and enslaving law-abiding people incurred the death penalty. "Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death." Exodus 21:16
The New Testament expressly forbids both the slave trade and slavery itself. ".the Law is made not for the righteous but for Law breakers.for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers." 1 Timothy 1:9-10
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free.for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28
"From one man He made every nation of men." Acts 17:26
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.love your neighbour as yourself." Mark 12:30-31
"Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32
".where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Cor. 3:17
".proclaim liberty throughout the land." Leviticus 25:10
Dr. Peter Hammond is the author of Faith Under Fire In Sudan and The Greatest Century of Missions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A History of Christianity, by Kenneth Scott Latourette, Harper, 1953
Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean; the Barbary Coast and Italy 1500 - 1800, by Robert Davis, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004
God's Politician, by Garth Lean, Helmers and Howard, 1987
History of Slavery, by Suzanne Everett, Chartwell, 1997
Islam's Black Slaves, by Ronald Segal, Farrar, New York, 2001
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, by David Livingstone, London, 1857
Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi, by David Livingstone, London,1865
The Greatest Century of Missions, by Peter Hammond, CLB, 2002
The Slave Trade, by Hugh Thomas, 1997
Under the Influence - How Christianity Transformed Civilization, by Alvin Schmit, Zondervan, 2001

Sam Harris gets it

I found this on a blog, now Sam Harris typically writes for the Washington Post, he is very liberal, but even he can see the truth, why can't our politicians?
SAM HARRIS ON
The Huffington Post
Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world's most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam. Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna ("strife" in Arabic) over the internet. The film has been deemed offensive because it juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur'an. Given that the perpetrators of such violence regularly cite these same passages as justification for their actions, merely depicting this connection in a film would seem uncontroversial. Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders' right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of "religious sensitivity."
Witness the free world's response to Fitna: The Dutch government sought to ban the film outright, and European Union foreign ministers publicly condemned it, as did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Dutch television refused to air Fitna unedited. When Wilders declared his intention to release the film over the internet, his U.S. web-host, Network Solutions, took his website offline.
Into the breach stepped Liveleak, a British video-sharing website, which finally aired the film on March 27th. It received over 3 million views in the first 24 hours. The next day, however, Liveleak removed Fitna from its servers, having been terrorized into self-censorship by threats to its staff. But the film had spread too far on the internet to be suppressed (and Liveleak, after taking further security measures, has since reinstated it on its site as well).
Of course, there were immediate calls for a boycott of Dutch products throughout the Muslim world. In response, Dutch corporations placed ads in countries like Indonesia, denouncing the film in self-defense. Several Muslim countries blocked YouTube and other video-sharing sites in an effort to keep Wilders' blasphemy from penetrating the minds of their citizens. There have also been isolated protests and attacks on embassies, and ubiquitous demands for Wilders' murder. In Afghanistan, women in burqas could be seen burning the Dutch flag; the Taliban carried out at least two revenge attacks on Dutch troops, resulting in five Dutch casualties; and security concerns have caused the Netherlands to close its embassy in Kabul. It must be said, however, that nothing has yet occurred to rival the ferocious response to the Danish cartoons.
Meanwhile Kurt Westergaard, one of the Danish cartoonists, threatened to sue Wilders for copyright infringement, as Wilders used his drawing of a bomb-laden Muhammad without permission. Westergaard has lived in hiding since 2006 due to death threats of his own, so the Danish Union of Journalists volunteered to file this lawsuit on his behalf. Admittedly, there is something amusing about one hunted man, unable to venture out in public for fear of being killed by religious lunatics, threatening to sue another man in the same predicament over a copyright violation. But it is understandable that Westergaard wouldn't want to be repeatedly hurled at the enemy without his consent. Westergaard is an extraordinarily courageous man whose life has been ruined both by religious fanaticism and the free world's submission to it. In February, the Danish government arrested three Muslims who seemed poised to murder him. Other Danes unfortunate enough to have been born with the name "Kurt Westergaard" have had to take steps to escape being murdered in his place. (Wilder's has since removed the cartoon from the official version of Fitna.)
Wilders, like Westergaard and the other Danish cartoonists, has been widely vilified for "seeking to inflame" the Muslim community. Even if this had been his intention, this criticism represents an almost supernatural coincidence of moral blindness and political imprudence. The point is not (and will never be) that some free person spoke, or wrote, or illustrated in such a manner as to inflame the Muslim community. The point is that only the Muslim community is combustible in this way. The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence.
There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for "racism" and "Islamophobia."
Our capitulations in the face of these threats have had what is often called "a chilling effect" on our exercise of free speech. I have, in my own small way, experienced this chill first hand. First, and most important, my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali happens to be among the hunted. Because of the failure of Western governments to make it safe for people to speak openly about the problem of Islam, I and others must raise a mountain of private funds to help pay for her round-the-clock protection. The problem is not, as is often alleged, that governments cannot afford to protect every person who speaks out against Muslim intolerance. The problem is that so few people do speak out. If there were ten thousand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, the risk to each would be radically reduced.
As for infringements of my own speech, my first book, The End of Faith, almost did not get published for fear of offending the sensibilities of (probably non-reading) religious fanatics. W.W. Norton, which did publish the book, was widely seen as taking a risk--one probably attenuated by the fact that I am an equal-opportunity offender critical of all religious faith. However, when it came time to make final edits to the galleys of The End of Faith, many of the people I had thanked by name in my acknowledgments (including my agent at the time and my editor at Norton) independently asked to have their names removed from the book. Their concerns were explicitly for their personal safety. Given our shamefully ineffectual response to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, their concerns were perfectly understandable.
Nature, arguably the most influential scientific journal on the planet, recently published a lengthy whitewash of Islam (Z. Sardar "Beyond the troubled relationship." Nature 448, 131-133; 2007). The author began, as though atop a minaret, by simply declaring the religion of Islam to be "intrinsically rational." He then went on to argue, amid a highly idiosyncratic reading of history and theology, that this rational religion's current wallowing in the violent depths of unreason can be fully ascribed to the legacy of colonialism. After some negotiation, Nature also agreed to publish a brief response from me. What readers of my letter to the editor could not know, however, was that it was only published after perfectly factual sentences deemed offensive to Islam were expunged. I understood the editors' concerns at the time: not only did they have Britain's suffocating libel laws to worry about, but Muslim physicians and engineers in the UK had just revealed a penchant for suicide bombing. I was grateful that Nature published my letter at all.
In a thrillingly ironic turn of events, a shorter version of the very essay you are now reading was originally commissioned by the opinion page of Washington Post and then rejected because it was deemed too critical of Islam. Please note, this essay was destined for the opinion page of the paper, which had solicited my response to the controversy over Wilders' film. The irony of its rejection seemed entirely lost on the Post, which responded to my subsequent expression of amazement by offering to pay me a "kill fee." I declined.
I could list other examples of encounters with editors and publishers, as can many writers, all illustrating a single fact: While it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in general, it is considered especially unwise to criticize Islam. Only Muslims hound and hunt and murder their apostates, infidels, and critics in the 21st century. There are, to be sure, reasons why this is so. Some of these reasons have to do with accidents of history and geopolitics, but others can be directly traced to doctrines sanctifying violence which are unique to Islam.
A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. The Muslim world can match the FLDS sin for sin--Muslims commonly practice polygamy, forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating--but add to these indiscretions the surpassing evils of honor killing, female "circumcision," widespread support for terrorism, a pornographic fascination with videos showing the butchery of infidels and apostates, a vibrant form of anti-semitism that is explicitly genocidal in its aspirations, and an aptitude for producing children's books and television programs which exalt suicide-bombing and depict Jews as "apes and pigs."
Any honest comparison between these two faiths reveals a bizarre double standard in our treatment of religion. We can openly celebrate the marginalization of FLDS men and the rescue of their women and children. But, leaving aside the practical and political impossibility of doing so, could we even allow ourselves to contemplate liberating the women and children of traditional Islam?
What about all the civil, freedom-loving, moderate Muslims who are just as appalled by Muslim intolerance as I am? No doubt millions of men and women fit this description, but vocal moderates are very difficult to find. Wherever "moderate Islam" does announce itself, one often discovers frank Islamism lurking just a euphemism or two beneath the surface. The subterfuge is rendered all but invisible to the general public by political correctness, wishful thinking, and "white guilt." This is where we find sinister people successfully posing as "moderates"--people like Tariq Ramadan who, while lionized by liberal Europeans as the epitome of cosmopolitan Islam, cannot bring himself to actually condemn honor killing in round terms (he recommends that the practice be suspended, pending further study). Moderation is also attributed to groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist public relations firm posing as a civil-rights lobby.
Even when one finds a true voice of Muslim moderation, it often seems distinguished by a lack of candor above all things. Take someone like Reza Aslan, author of No God But God: I debated Aslan for Book TV on the general subject of religion and modernity. During the course of our debate, I had a few unkind words to say about the Muslim Brotherhood. While admitting that there is a difference between the Brotherhood and a full-blown jihadist organization like al Qaeda, I said that their ideology was "close enough" to be of concern. Aslan responded with a grandiose, ad hominem attack saying, "that indicates the profound unsophistication that you have about this region. You could not be more wrong" and claiming that I'd taken my view of Islam from "Fox News." Such maneuvers, coming from a polished, Iranian-born scholar of Islam carry the weight of authority, especially in front of an audience of people who are desperate to believe the threat of Islam has been grossly exaggerated. The problem, however, is that the credo of the Muslim Brotherhood actually happens to be "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It's not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam "really" is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.
Occasionally, however, a lone voice can be heard acknowledging the obvious. Hassan Butt wrote in the Guardian:
"When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology."
It is astounding how infrequently one hears such candor among the public voices of "moderate" Islam. This is what we owe the true moderates of the Muslim world: we must hold their co-religionists to the same standards of civility and reasonableness that we take for granted in all other people. Only our willingness to openly criticize Islam for its all-too-obvious failings can make it safe for Muslim moderates, secularists, apostates--and, indeed, women--to rise up and reform their faith.
And if anyone in this debate can be credibly accused of racism, it is the western apologists and "multiculturalists" who deem Arabs and Muslims too immature to shoulder the responsibilities of civil discourse. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has pointed out, there is a calamitous form of "affirmative action" at work, especially in western Europe, where Muslim immigrants are systematically exempted from western standards of moral order in the name of paying "respect" to the glaring pathologies in their culture. Hirsi Ali has also observed that there is a quasi-racist double-think on display whenever western powers trumpet that "Islam is peace," all the while taking heroic measures to guard against the next occasion when the barbarians run amok in response to a film, cartoon, opera, novel, beauty pageant--or the mere naming of a teddy bear.
Have you seen the Danish cartoons that so roiled the Muslim world? Probably not, as their publication was suppressed by almost every newspaper, magazine, and television station in the United States. Given their volcanic reception--hundreds of thousands of Muslims rioted, hundreds of people were killed--their sheer banality should have rendered these drawings extraordinarily newsworthy. One magazine which did print them, Free Inquiry (for which I am proud to have written), had its stock banned from every Borders and Waldenbooks in the country. These are precisely the sorts of capitulations that we must avoid in the future.
The lesson we should draw from the Fitna controversy is that we need more criticism of Islam, not less. Let it come down in such torrents that not even the most deluded Islamist could conceive of containing it. As Ibn Warraq, author of the revelatory Why I Am Not a Muslim, said in response to recent events:
It is perverse for the western media to lament the lack of an Islamic reformation and willfully ignore works such as Wilders' film, Fitna. How do they think reformation will come about if not with criticism? There is no such right as 'the right not to be offended; indeed, I am deeply offended by the contents of the Koran, with its overt hatred of Christians, Jews, apostates, non-believers, homosexuals but cannot demand its suppression.
It is time we recognized that those who claim the "right not to be offended" have also announced their hatred of civil society.

Islam loves death

I found this tidbit in the Wall Street Journal, it absolutely shows the depths that people will strive for to prove that they are right. This story shows that muslims believe in human/child sacrifice as did the tribes that lived in that area before Yahwey sent in the Isrealites for their inheritance. Unfortunately they did not do as they were told to and left enough of the child sacrificing tribes to re-infect the region. See the 2 questions at the bottom of the article I have for all muslims about this subject. Then think about how anyone would justify this by invoking a "loving deity".


Worshippers of Death
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
March 3, 2008; Page A17
Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.
At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."
[Worshippers of Death]
Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.
Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:
"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."
"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."
How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death?
The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.
Late last month, a young female bomber was shot as she approached some shops in central Baghdad. The Iraqi soldier who drew his gun hesitated as the bomber, hands raised, insisted that she wasn't armed. The soldier and a shop owner finally opened fire as she dashed for the stores; she was knocked to the ground but still managed to detonate the bomb, killing three and wounding eight. Had the soldier and other bystanders not called out a warning to others -- and had they not shot her before she could enter the shops -- the death toll certainly would have been higher. Had he not hesitated, it might have been lower.
As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."
Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?
The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.
We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

1. If you believe in God and you understand that life is a gift from God, how can you justify suicide bombings?

2.You believe in God and say you know of Abraham and are descended from him, then you know God sent an angel to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. God does not believe in human blood sacrifice. Did you not understand this to be a message about human sacrifice?