The next big Church scandal is coming--SPREAD OF ISLAM

The next big Church scandal is coming

William Kilpatrick

September 25, 2018 (Turning Point Project) – The clerical sex-abuse scandal has done grave damage to the Church.  It may seem that the situation couldn't get much worse – but it almost certainly will.  That's because another scandal is building which, when added to the first, will threaten the Church's very survival.

The second scandal is the facilitation of the spread of Islam by certain Church leaders – often the same leaders who have been implicated in enabling the sex-abusers.

As bad as the first scandal is, the second will be even larger.  The victims will number not in the tens of thousands, but in the tens of millions.

The largest persecution of Christians in history is now underway, yet Church leaders have little if anything to say about the slaughter.  Instead they have covered-up for Islam's murderous ideology, declaring it to be a religion of peace and justice.

Meanwhile, waves of Muslim migrants – most of them men – are bringing unprecedented rates of crime to Europe.  One result is a dramatic increase in rapes, with tens of thousands of victims in England and Sweden alone.  But once again, Church leaders have fallen silent.  They rarely acknowledge the victims, but never miss an opportunity to remind endangered Europeans of their duty to admit even more migrants from cultures that are misogynistic, and violent.

Catholic shepherds provided no warning about the dangers inherent in Islam.  And when the predictable crimes ensued, they covered up for them by insisting that they had nothing to do with Islam.  Instead of alerting the flock, they invited the wolves into the sheepfold.

As the hierarchy's role in enabling the spread of Islam becomes more apparent, the sense of betrayal and anger will grow.  Unless a decisive course correction is taken, the Church will be badly weakened. The outcome of the present crisis will have a profound effect on you, your children, and your grandchildren.

The Turning Point Project is one of the few Catholic voices that is speaking out about the danger.

Published with permission from the Turning Point Project.

Islam: A Giant Step Backwards for Humanity

William Kilpatrick

One of the big mysteries of our day is how so many supposedly enlightened Catholics have managed to get it so wrong about Islam for so long. It’s understandable that in the 1960s, when the Islamic world was relatively quiescent, Catholics might entertain the high hopes for Islamic-Catholic relations expressed in Nostra Aetate. But this is 2017 and in the intervening half century a lot of water has passed under the bridge.

Given all that has transpired in the interim—9/11, daily terror attacks, the accelerating Islamization of Europe, and the development of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and Iran—it seems that Catholics deserve to know more about Islam than the brief treatment presented in Nostra Aetate or the even briefer treatment in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism’s forty-four words on the subject end with the reassurance that “together with us they [Muslims] adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day” (842). Unfortunately, that has been interpreted by a good many clergy and laymen to mean “go back to sleep and don’t worry about a thing.” To get an idea of how nonchalant the Church leadership has been about providing guidance on Islam, consider that the Catechism devotes about five times as much space to a discussion of man’s relationship with animals than it does to the Church’s relationship with Muslims.

It’s not just that many clergy and lay Catholic leaders fail to appreciate the deep differences in theology between Islam and Christianity, they fail to grasp the deep cultural and human differences that flow from the theological differences. To put the matter bluntly, Christianity is a humanizing religion and Islam is not. That statement needs some qualifying, of course; but there is enough difference between the Christian vision of the human person and the Islamic vision, that Catholic leaders should be extremely careful before declaring common cause with Islam. The many declarations of commonality and solidarity with Islam that now routinely issue from the lips of Church leaders only serve to confuse and mislead Catholics.

Theologically, the most significant fact about Islam is that it is an anti-Christian movement. That’s one of the main themes in Nonie Darwish’s book, Wholly Different. Darwish who grew up in an Islamic society and subsequently converted to Christianity, contends that Islam is a counter-revolutionary faith: a rejection of core Bible beliefs. As she puts it:

[Muhammad] didn’t just quietly reject the Bible. Instead, he launched a ferocious rebellion against it… Islam is a negative religion, consumed with subversion. It is a rebellion and counter-revolution against the Biblical revolution.

The Biblical revolution was not only a revolution in our thinking about God, but also a revolution in our thinking about man. The most revolutionary moment occurred when God took on our humanity and became one of us. As Pope St. John Paul II observed, the Incarnation not only reveals God to man, it reveals man to himself.

In rejecting the Incarnation, Muhammad also rejected the heightened status of humanity that flows from it. This is not to say that this was his intention from the start. Islam didn’t begin as an anti-Christian theology, but it was almost inevitable that it would develop that way. Muhammad considered himself to be a prophet, and he wanted very much to be recognized as such. The trouble is that a prophet has to have a prophetic message. And, after Jesus revealed himself as the Son of God and the fulfillment of all prophecy, there wasn’t much left to say in that line.

Realizing this, Muhammad set about to retell the story of Jesus, recasting him not as the Son of God but as another—and lesser—prophet. This demotion of Jesus thus cleared the way for Muhammad’s claim to prophethood. (Faced with a similar problem, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, came up with a similar solution. In his telling, Jesus failed in his assigned task of marrying and creating a perfect family, thus leaving it up to Moon to carry out the unfinished mission.)

Jesus is in the Koran, but he has, in effect, been neutralized. He is not divine, he was not crucified nor resurrected, and he plays no role in the redemption of the human race. In fact, there is no suggestion in the Koran that mankind needs to be redeemed. One has to believe in Allah and his messenger (Muhammad) and obey Allah and his Messenger, and Allah will probably (there is no certainty) admit him to paradise. But one does not have to be born again.

We talk about “radical” Islam, but, in a sense, there is nothing radical about Islam. It does not require a radical transformation of the self as does Christianity. In Islam, man is not made in the image of God. Consequently, there is no call to holiness, no requirement that “you … must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). The radical transformation in Christ which prepares one for communion with God is not necessary since man’s destiny is not union with God, but union with maidens in paradise. There is no need of spiritual transformation because heaven is simply a better version of earth.

That’s one way of looking at human destiny. But the Christian view is altogether different. Saint Paul wrote “we … are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18), and “though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed everyday … preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:16-17). Whatever one may think of the truth of the Christian message, the message is that humans have a very high calling. The difference between this vision of man and the rather low estimate of human potential contained in the Koran is profound. It’s a wonder that so many Catholics are willing to dilute that vision for the sake of creating an illusory moral parity with Islam.

Islam’s lack of interest in human transformation begins with the lack of human interest in the Koran. Although it was composed some 600 years after the Gospels, it contains none of the drama of the Gospels—no divine drama and no human drama. Instead, it is a collection of disconnected statements, warnings, and curses, interspersed with Muhammad’s own versions of stories borrowed from the Bible.

Even when he retells these stories, Muhammad seems largely incapable of infusing the prophets and heroes of the Bible with personality. Indeed, the only character in the Koran that Muhammad seems truly interested in is himself. In order to emphasize his humility, Islamic apologists like to say that Muhammad is only mentioned four times in the Koran. I haven’t counted but that seems about right. Nevertheless, Muhammad manages to mention himself on nearly every page—sometimes as the “Messenger,” sometimes as the “Apostle,” sometimes as the “Prophet,” and nearly always as the indispensable intermediary between Allah and men. This repeated emphasis on his role as a prophet is also found in the hadith collections. For example, “I have been sent to all mankind and the line of the prophets is closed with me” (Sahih Muslim, book 004, number 1062).

Other than Allah, Muhammad is the main person of interest in the Koran. Which brings us back to the place of Jesus in the Koran. The truth is, he plays only a minor role. He is mentioned as one of the prophets on several occasions, and on a few other occasions he is given some lines to speak. On one of these occasions he assures Allah that he did not ever claim to be God: “I could never have claimed what I have no right to” (5:116).

Jesus has a place in the Koran, but only because he knows his place. His role is to remove the main obstacle to Muhammad’s claim of prophethood. Who better than Jesus to renounce Jesus’ claim to Sonship and thereby clear the way for Muhammad to be the seal of the prophets?

But, in stripping Jesus of his divinity, Muhammad also managed to strip him of his humanity. The Jesus of the Koran is simply not an interesting person. Indeed he hardly qualifies as a person. He seems more like a disembodied voice. When Christians hear that Jesus is in the Koran, they assume that he must be someone like the Jesus of the Gospels. Thus they can reassure themselves that although Muslims don’t accept Christ’s divinity, they will at least become familiar with his life. Anyone who bothers to read the Koran, however, will be quickly disabused of that notion. There is no life of Jesus in the Koran. There is no slightly altered version of the gospel story. Indeed, there is no story at all—just a few brief appearances in order to make the point that Jesus is only a man, not the Son of God.

This abbreviated treatment of Jesus in the Koran is matched by a diminished view of the human person. In Islam, man is little more than a slave of Allah. He can achieve paradise, but paradise is essentially a heavenly harem. According to the Christian vision, man’s destiny is union with God. According to the Islamic vision, man’s destiny is to copulate.

In rejecting the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, Muhammad also rejected the Christian vision of a redeemed humanity. The fact of the Incarnation raised the status of man immeasurably—“no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir” (Gal. 4:7). That’s why Christmas carols are so full of joy. As one hymn reminds us, the night of our Savior’s birth becomes the moment at which “the soul felt its worth.” Thanks to Muhammad’s dismal vision, however, all this is missing in Islam—no “joy to the world,” no “hark the herald angels sing,” no “ding-dong merrily on high.”

In light of the comparative bleakness of the Islamic vision, it is difficult to understand why so many Catholic prelates and theologians insist on identifying Islam as a fellow faith with which we have much in common. Likewise, it’s not easy to comprehend why so many of them want to declare their solidarity with Islam.

Theologically and humanly, Islam represents a giant step backwards. It would take us back to a time when the idea of human dignity was considered laughable—to a time when slavery was unremarkable and women were valued less than men and sometimes less than animals.

In a sense, Muhammad’s rejection of the Incarnation is a replay of a primal story. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Lucifer’s rebellion is brought on by God’s announcement that he had begotten a Son. Lucifer, who ranked very high among the angels, was nothing if not prideful. In modern terms we might say that he couldn’t stand the competition. Neither, it seems, could Muhammad—a man so obsessed with pride of place that he identifies himself as Allah’s close confidant on nearly every page of the Koran.

Like Lucifer, Muhammad rebelled against the Sonship of Christ. For if Christ is the Son of God, Muhammad is out of a job. Consequently, there are numerous passages in the Koran that deny the Trinity and the Sonship of Christ, and that curse those who do believe.

The price that the followers of Muhammad incurred was the loss of the heightened sense of humanity that the Incarnation brings. The central dramatic event in history is the birth of a baby boy who also happened to be the Author of life. He came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

But why did Muhammad come? He reveals nothing that hadn’t already been revealed in the Old Testament. In almost all respects, the Koran is simply old news. The only new element is the “revelation” that Muhammad is God’s final prophet. The good news of the Gospels is that God had become one of us; the big news of the Koran is that Muhammad has become a prophet.

Compared to the tremendous and wondrous revelations in the New Testament, that’s small potatoes. Again, one has to wonder why so many modern clerics are intent on drawing a moral equivalence between Christianity’s life-giving faith and Islam’s life-denying, rule-bound system. Perhaps they should read the Koran. Or, better yet, perhaps they should re-read the Gospels.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/islam-step-backwards-humanity

A Dark-Forces Assault on the Church?

William Kilpatrick

For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers … against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Eph. 6:12)

It’s not easy to discern the role played by the spiritual hosts of wickedness in world affairs. No one knows with any certainty what is going on in that realm, or what part the principalities and powers play in shaping events. But these are exceedingly strange times—so strange that it is difficult to make sense of some of what is happening from a this-worldly perspective. So it seems worthwhile to try to understand some phenomena from an other-worldly viewpoint.

One of the strangest developments of our times is the Church’s response to Islam and Islamic migration. Since the response runs entirely counter to the Church’s historical response, it seems legitimate to wonder if other-worldly forces are at play. If that’s the case, it should not be unexpected. Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church, but the implication of his words is that hell would surely try.

Over the years, various popes have testified to this effort. In the late nineteenth century, Pope Leo XIII reportedly had a vision of demonic spirits during the celebration of Mass. This led him to institute the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel (“be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil”), which is said at the end of a Low Mass in the Extraordinary Form. In more recent times, on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul in 1972, Pope Paul VI delivered a sermon warning that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”

What may come as a surprise to those who worry about Pope Francis’s liberal tendencies is that he also has frequently warned of Satan’s influence. A few months after his election, he consecrated Vatican City State to St. Michael the Archangel who “defends the people of God from the arch-enemy par excellence, the devil.” When he was a cardinal in Argentina, he described a legislative proposal to redefine marriage as “a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

If the smoke of Satan can enter the Catholic Church, there is no reason to suppose it cannot enter other religions as well. Without getting into the question of whether Muhammad was deceived by Satan, as some maintain, it is probable that Satan seeks to influence the direction of Islam just as he strives to have a malign influence on the Catholic Church.

It may be, then, that the current situation of the Church vis-à-vis Islam is due in part to a dual assault—one aimed at heightening Islam’s traditional aggressiveness, and the other aimed at weakening the Church’s traditional defenses. The result is a kind of dance of death: a ramping up of Islamic militancy matched by an exaggerated emphasis on tolerance, openness, and welcoming on the part of Catholics.

If this is the case, then one manifestation of the Catholic folly might be the Church’s attitude toward mass Muslim migration. Many Catholic leaders think of Muslim migration as no different from other migrations. For them it is simply a question of being welcoming or unwelcoming, of being charitable or uncharitable. But many Muslim leaders view migrations in a different light. For them it is not a question of loving one’s neighbor, it is a question of who is to be master.

If history continues on its present course, Islam will be the master of much of Europe within a relatively short time. This change of ownership will result from a combination of migration, high birth rates, and willful blindness on the part of Europe’s leaders. And it will result in a great deal of misery. The astonishing thing is that this massive threat to Europe and European Christianity scarcely registers in the Vatican. To the extent that it does register, it is dismissed as a low priority concern. Witness the pope’s recent claim that the safety of refugees should be given priority over national security.

For the most part, however, concerns over Muslim aggressiveness are simply brushed aside. Such concerns are viewed by Church leaders as signs of intolerance, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. Since the term “phobia” refers to an irrational fear, the suggestion is that the fears are groundless. But those who fear Islam’s spread seem to have the facts on their side. Their concern are grounded not only in the frequent knife, bomb, and truck attacks, but also in extensive data about the connection between Muslim migration and skyrocketing rates of violent and non-violent crime in Europe.

Against the hard evidence that increased immigration will be suicidal for Europe, the pope offers vague humanistic sentiments about “encounter,” “mutual enrichment,” and the beneficial effect of “the exchange between cultures.” Pope Francis says that those Europeans who resist migration are guilty of “intolerance, discrimination, and xenophobia.” That may be true of some, but many are simply worried that they or their children will become victims of assault or worse. The failure to recognize these legitimate fears is a form of hardheartedness. Moreover, the pie-in-the-sky attitude toward the migration situation on the part of many in the hierarchy could be considered a form of presumption.

Consider a couple of lines from Pope Francis’s address to the Council of Episcopal Conferences of Europe (CCEE) in September. “Temptations to exclusiveness and cultural entrenchment have not been wanting in the history of the Church,” said the pope, “but the Holy Spirit has always helped us to overcome them, guaranteeing a constant openness toward the other, considered as a concrete possibility of growth and enrichment.” He continues: “the Holy Spirit will help us to keep an attitude of trusting openness that will allow us to overcome every barrier and scale every wall.”

This seems to border on presumption. It’s a little akin to saying “If you jump off the cliff in a spirit of trust, the Holy Spirit won’t let you fall.” It was “trusting openness” that got Europe into its present predicament, but Francis is suggesting that the Holy Spirit will get us out of whatever further mess we create if only we accelerate the rate of trusting openness.

I may be overlooking something, but I don’t recall any Biblical injunctions to “constant openness” or “trusting openness” in regard to one’s fellow man. Instead, there are quite a few warnings about the untrustworthiness of fallen man.

Pope Francis appears to be ignoring the warnings. 

As social critic Hugh Fitzgeraldputs it:

At any time, such naivete and heedlessness as Pope Francis exhibits would be difficult to take. At this moment in world history, when the leader of the Catholic Church appears determined not to understand the meaning, and menace, of Islam, while Christians are everywhere under assault by Muslims, and Muslims are knocking at Europe’s gates and demanding to be let in without delay… his complacent buonismo [goody-goodiness] is intolerable.

In short, the pope’s response is almost the exact opposite of the response that the times seem to require. The major event of our time is the reemergence of Islam on the world stage. Yet Francis, along with others in the hierarchy, is acting as though this were still the sixties—a time when Islam was relatively quiescent. As a result, he responds to the resurgence of Islamic terror with 60s-era bromides about “encounter” and “openness.”

By all accounts, the devil is immensely intelligent. It’s been said that one of his greatest achievements in modern times is to convince people that he doesn’t exist. It may be that his second biggest achievement is to convince Church leaders that Islam is not a threat at that precise moment when the threat to Christians is growing exponentially.

If indeed the Church leadership is being subject to an assault from below, it is a particularly clever one. That’s because it takes advantage of the best Christian instincts—particularly the impulse to charity. The most persuasive part of the hierarchy’s appeal to welcome Muslim migrants, no matter how many, are the constant reminders that this is what Christ wants us to do. When the pope recently launched the “Share the Journey” campaign for solidarity with migrants, he observed that “Christ himself asks us to welcome our brother and sister migrants with arms wide open.” On other occasions he has said that “we see the face of Christ himself” in the face of migrants. On still other occasions he has likened the journey of refugees to the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt.

Even if it’s being misapplied, the appeal to scripture is difficult to resist. It somehow seems small-minded and selfish to worry about personal safety when we are reminded of Christ’s words, “I was a stranger and you took me in.”

Still, one has to wonder about charitable impulses that facilitate the takeover of Europe by a decidedly anti-Christian religious ideology. How charitable is it to consign Europeans, their children, and their grandchildren to a life of bloodshed and civil war, or else to a life of subservient dhimmitude such as Christians now experience in many parts of the Muslim world?

So, the Church’s welcoming response to Islam and Islamic migration can be looked upon as a shining example of Christian charity, or it can be looked upon as an example of stubborn foolishness and presumption in the face of a fast-spreading evil. It’s a devilishly complicated situation. And that should make us wonder if the devil himself isn’t intimately involved in it.

Of course, as I admitted at the outset, this is speculation. No one knows for certain how supernatural powers affect human events. It could be that, looked at from the perspective of eternity, the pope has chosen the right path. The subjugation of Europe by Islam could be a necessary part of God’s plan. An Islamic takeover of Europe might conceivably be a chastisement for European decadence: the natural and supernatural effect of decades of birth control, abortion, and self-centeredness.

Or it could be that the entry en masse of Muslims into Europe will be the occasion of their conversion. Pope Francis seems to be of this mind. On several occasions he has spoken of migration as a cultural encounter and exchange which leads almost inevitably to the mutual enrichment of the cultures involved. In his talk to the CCEE, Francis said that “the Church has spread through every continent thanks to the ‘migration’ of so many missionaries.” Now, he seems to envision a reverse process in which potential converts migrate to Christian lands and encounter both the generosity of Christians and the spirit of European humanism. The pope seems to believe that this encounter can lead to conversion as long as we have faith that “the Holy Spirit will help us to keep an attitude of trusting openness that will allow us to overcome every barrier and scale every wall.”

Maybe so. But, once again, this smacks of presumption. All the historical evidence suggests that when Muslims move into other cultures either by migration or by conquest, conversions are a one-way street. With a few exceptions, Muslims don’t convert to the faith of the people they encounter. The non-Muslims convert to Islam. Christian North Africa—the land of St. Augustine—succumbed to Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, and it has never been re-Christianized. To expect that today’s European Christians can accomplish what the hardier Christians of 1300 years ago could not is highly presumptuous.

As mentioned earlier, Pope Francis is acutely aware of Satan’s ability to manipulate Christians. But he is also in many ways a man of the left. As such, he is vulnerable to the liberal illusion that there is no enemy on the left. He also seems disposed toward the multicultural illusion that there can be no enemy among the “other.” Thus Francis would have difficulty accepting the reality of a major threat from Islam, let alone from a left-Islamic alliance.

The pope is not oblivious to the possibility of a dark-forces assault on the Church. But in all probability he is expecting the devil to strike from the right by exploiting the fears of all those culturally entrenched xenophobes and Islamophobes who want to build walls instead of bridges.

That’s one way of looking at it. But another, more likely scenario, is that the devil is exploiting the gullibility of liberal clergy and laymen—those Catholics that barely believe in his existence, but believe very firmly in openness, encounter, and the peaceful intentions of Islam.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/dark-forces-assault-church

The Normalization of Delusional Thinking

William Kilpatrick

I sometimes wonder how so many people can be in denial about the danger posed by Islam to the rest of the world.

The textual, historical, and statistical evidence that Islam is an aggressive religion is overwhelming, but very few are willing to look at it. On the one side, you have a ton of hard evidence, and on the other side, you have ten megatons of wishful thinking: priests, prime ministers, and Hollywood celebrities assuring us that Islam is more peaceful than Christianity, more feminist than Gloria Steinem, and more caring than the Red Cross.

It’s the textbook definition of a delusion—“a false belief or wrong judgement held with conviction despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.” But, as I’ve come to realize, this delusional thinking is not specific to the crisis posed by Islam. Rather, it’s part of a larger pattern. In many ways, delusional thinking has become a main feature of the modern mind.

Take the transgender issue. All of a sudden, a significant percentage of our social and intellectual elites have succumbed to the delusion that a girl can be a boy, and a boy can be a girl, or whatever he, she, ne, ze, zir currently desires to be. This is not merely a rebellion against social convention, it’s a rebellion against reality. It’s a rejection of basic biology.

The most disturbing aspect of the “gender fluidity” fad is not that there are young and not-so- young (e.g. Bruce Jenner) people who are badly confused about their gender, but that there are legions of professionals—doctors, psychologists, teachers—who stand ready to confirm them in their delusion and even pump them full of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

More sinister still, there are other authorities who want to punish those who fail to honor the delusion. The California Senate recently passed a bill to fine and even imprison nursing home workers who fail to address patients by their preferred pronoun. Meanwhile, the New York City Commission on Human Rights issued a “guidance” to business owners requiring them to use a person’s preferred pronoun or face a fine of $125,000 for “misgendering.”

In the old South there used to be laws against miscegenation, but nowadays in sophisticated, modern Manhattan, you can be fined for “misgendering.” Imagine that. If Max, the doorman, wants to be called “Maxine” today, you’d better go along with it, or else risk bankruptcy. And if on Thursday he decides he’s Maximilian I, the Emperor of Mexico, you’d be wise to address him as “your imperial majesty,” just to stay on the right side of the Human Rights Commission. In short, you are at the mercy of Max and his multiple identities.

There are several parallels here to what has become the standard response to Islam. As with transgenderism, we see an official denial of reality: Islamic terror has nothing to do with Islam, the terrorists (who are only a “handful”) “misunderstand” their faith, Islamic values are just the same as Christian values, and so on.

Likewise, just as you’re not allowed to call Bruce Jenner “he,” you’re not supposed to say “radical Islamic terror” or “migration invasion” or any other words that might be offensive to Muslims. If you slip up and use “Islamophobic” language, you can expect the same consequences that would follow if you called Maxine, “Max” on the wrong day of the week—namely, ostracism, job loss, and a heavy fine. Years before the New York City Human Rights Commission started policing transgressive words, columnist Mark Steyn was hauled before three Canadian human rights commissions for defamation of religion. His crime? In an article for Macleans, he noted the readily verifiable fact that Muslim birthrates in Europe were outstripping those of native Europeans.

Steyn is not alone. Dozens of prominent Europeans have faced similar trials, not because they said anything false about Islam, but because they made factual statements that Muslims found offensive. That sort of treatment sends a message, and most people have no trouble understanding the message. Whether the topic is Islam, or gender ideology, it’s not prudent to speak your mind. For example, although most adults realize that boys can’t be girls or vice versa, most are too cowed to say otherwise, except to trusted friends and relatives.

As Matthew Hanley observes in an incisive piece on the subject, such compelled speech is “degrading;” moreover, “making [others] agree to something they know is a lie is a hallmark of totalitarianism.” True enough, some people don’t know it’s a lie. They’ve been conditioned in school and college to believe that boys can be girls, that same-sex “marriage” is the equivalent of heterosexual marriage, and that Islam is responsible for most of history’s great cultural and scientific breakthroughs. The fact that these lies are believed by so many is testimony to the soft totalitarian takeover of our educational system.

The totalitarian creep has been going on for quite some time. I remember a university colleague who, back in the early nineties, excitedly told me that the big new thing in educational theory was “constructivism.” Actually, constructivism had already been the new thing in educational circles for at least a couple of decades prior to his personal revelation. It’s the idea that there are no objective truths, and hence each individual has to construct his own reality. According to this school of thought, Huckleberry Finn has no objective meaning, only the meaning you read into it. If you decide that Huckleberry Finn is a story about a transgendered adolescent seeking his true gender (your teachers will happily encourage you in that direction), then that’s the meaning of Huckleberry Finn. Whatever Mark Twain had in mind is irrelevant.

These as-you-like-it educational theories, arose in tandem with the self-esteem movement that began to sweep through schools, colleges, and seminaries in the 1960s and 70s. The self-esteem craze came out of the work of Carl Rogers, the pioneer of non-directive, non-judgmental therapy. Rogers taught that we should trust our inner selves, that morality is subjective, and that what’s right for you isn’t necessarily right for me. In his later years, as he developed an interest in Eastern thought, Rogers began to doubt the existence of objective reality. Reality, he came to believe, was something that each person created for himself.

Post-Rogers, the whole direction of education shifted—from exploring the world to exploring the self; from grappling with objective realities such as mathematics, history, and geography to discovering every nook and cranny of the subjective self. Non-directive education was the prelude to what we have now: in the case of gender ideology, the triumph of feelings over biological facts, and, in the case of Islam, the triumph of feel-good narratives over historical realities.

Another objective reality that came under attack during the self-esteem era was the existence of God, or, more accurately, the existence of the God who reveals himself in the Old and New Testaments—the God who make demands on the individual self. In his place, many substituted vague, New Age-ish forms of spirituality. Either that, or they began to conceive of God as a servant of their emotional needs—an all-understanding therapist in Heaven who just wants everyone to feel good about himself, herself, zeself, zirself.

The famous maxim attributed to Chesterton applies here: “The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.” Once you lose sight of the central objective reality in the universe, it’s easy to lose sight of all the other realities, and you end up believing in anything—no matter how counter-factual the “anything” might be. You might believe that same-sex couples are truly married, you might believe that males can become females. You might even believe—heaven help you—that Islam is a religion of peace.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/normalization-delusional-thinking

Is Islam an “Abrahamic” Religion?

For most non-Muslims and Westerners, Islam is a religion which was founded in the 7th century by the Prophet Muhammad, spread throughout the Middle East, Asia, and the Mediterranean area (including many European countries), and is now in a state of flux, making inroads in some areas, causing turmoil in others.

But this viewpoint differs sharply from the narrative accepted by many Muslims. Like (probably) the majority of Catholics who do not read the Bible, most Muslims do not read their sacred scriptures – the Qur’an, the Hadith (sayings of the apostle Muhammad), and the Siras (biographies of Muhammad). But for those who do – including scholars, enthusiasts, and converts – a very different interpretation is attached to their religion. In their eyes, Islam does not stem from the 7^th century, but has had a much more extensive history, as follows:

ŸAbrahamic religion: According to the Qur’an, which Muslims believe was dictated directly by God, Abraham (Ibrahim) was a Hanif (Muslim). [Sura 3:67] When Allah tested Abraham, he was ready to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, but was released by Allah from that duty. Abraham and Ishmael preached Islam, and traveled to Bekka (Mecca) [3:96-7], where they built humanity’s first temple, the Kaaba, the place for Muslim pilgrimage even today. [2:125-127] True Muslims believe in the original, universal Hanifi religion (din al-fitrah), which was “sent down to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Patriarchs, and what was given to Moses and Jesus and the prophets.” [3:84]

ŸJesus and Mary: Jesus was the son of Mary, the daughter of Imran, the father of Moses and Aaron. [66:12] Thus Mary was Aaron’s sister. [19:28] Jesus was born to Mary by divine help, did wondrous deeds, and preached the coming of the prophet Muhammad. [61:6] He was not crucified, but only appeared to be crucified, and then was taken up to heaven by Allah. [4:157-8]

ŸPolytheism: One of the worst blasphemies against the unity of Allah is the doctrine of the “Trinity.” This Christian doctrine, as interpreted in the Qur’an, concerns a divine trinity of Allah, Jesus, and Mary. [5:116], although – in Muslim eyes – Jesus denied that he was divine. To believe that Allah had a son is polytheism. [4:171, 5:75, 9:30]

ŸMuhammad, last of the prophets: Mecca was host to devotees of multiple gods during Muhammad’s lifetime, and his initial attempts to convert polytheists to the worship of Allah as the sole god met considerable opposition; and he acquired only a small cadre of followers. With them he fled in a famous migration (Hijrah) to Medina, where he was initially accepted cordially, and attracted converts. But as he continually received the revelations later incorporated into shariah law, strong opposition developed, especially from Jews who rejected or ridiculed his status as a prophet. His responses evolved from apparent tolerance (“let there be no compulsion in religion” [Sura 2:256]), to warnings that those who do not accept Islam will go to hell [Sura 3:85] and should never be taken as friends [3:28, 4:89, 5:51].

Mohammed (right) converses with Abraham (left) in Paradise [Persian, 15th century]

Jihad: Islamic scholars speak of the principle of abrogation, according to which later suras of the Qur’an can abrogate earlier suras. Allah himself sanctifies this principle in sura 16:101. Thus, many late revelations at Medina [e.g. suras 2, 4, 5,8, 9, 47, and 48], given the resistance of unbelievers to tolerant approaches, advocated spread of Islam by “the sword,” making war on neighboring peoples a duty [9:39, 123], and promising an instantaneous paradise of sensual pleasures, including the ministrations of 72 comely virgins for men who die in battle against infidels.

ŸFinal goals: According to the narrative of this Abrahamic religion, Islam is the original and indispensable religion for all mankind [34:28], and Muslims are the chosen people [3:110] whose religious duty is to rule the world and implement Sharia everywhere [2:193]. At the end, the Muslim version of Jesus (Isa Al-Masee) will come to destroy all crosses, vanquish the Muslim Anti-Christ (Dajjal), and thus assist the final caliph, the Mahdi, to bring about a world in which Islam remains the only religion.

ŸIslam vs. history: This extended narrative in which Muhammad becomes the agent who finally brings about the fulfillment of the true Abrahamic religion is comparable to the narratives of some other religions.

Foremost in similarity is the narrative of Mormons (Latter Day Saints), who assert that a group of ancient Hebrews (“Lamanites”) migrated to America before the birth of Christ. The Christian church apostatized shortly after the ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven, and Jesus appeared to American Indians, who were the descendants of the Lamanites, but also eventually apostatized. Finally, in the 19^thcentury, Joseph Smith, after some revelations and angelic visits, restored the true “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.”

Also similar, if mind-boggling, is the narrative of the “Nation of Islam.” According to Elijah Muhammad, its founder, blacks came into existence trillions of years ago, progressed tremendously, but were betrayed by a mad black scientist, “Yakub,” who created the white race to rule until the year 2000.

Conscientious Mormon anthropologists and geographers have tried to explain or correct Joseph Smith’s narrative. No one would try to find evidence for Elijah Muhammad’s narrative. But both narratives have dedicated believers.

Muslims would encounter especially difficult problems if they tried to establish historical evidence for their narrative. The only possible source for investigating the history of Abraham and his Hebrew descendants would be the Old Testament. But that, according to Muslims, has been distorted and is completely untrustworthy.

There is historical evidence of the life and actions of Jesus not only in the Gospels but also in historians like Tacitus and Josephus. Nonetheless, in the Muslim narrative, the New Testament – it’s claimed – is also distorted, creating false doctrines about Jesus’ crucifixion, the Trinity, and the Christian Church.

So Muslims, relying solely on the word of Muhammad, share less with Jews and Christians than is often implied in calling all three faiths “Abrahamic.”

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/01/26/is-islam-an-abrahamic-religion/

© 2017 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

The Enemy That Won’t Be Named--Fundamental Islam

The Enemy That Won’t Be Named

Regis Nicoll

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, chosen by president-elect Trump to be national security adviser, again finds himself in the crosshairs of liberal ire. This time for calling Islam a political ideology masked behind religion.

A registered Democrat, Flynn served in the Obama administration until, in his words, “the stand I took on radical Islam,” led to his early retirement.

Liberal aversion to the phrase, “radical Islam” is a symptom of what psychologists call, the “false consensus bias”—the belief that, in the global brotherhood of mankind, everyone shares the same wants, needs, desires, and values.

However, while everyone wants peace, the Western liberal and the radical Islamist promote vastly different means of achieving it—the former, through an ethic of universal tolerance and the latter, through the universal “purification” by the sword.

Waste Not a CrisisUnder the false consensus, a liberal in the West, for whom religion is largely irrelevant, cannot conceive that it could be any different for the shooter who goes on a killing spree in a crowded night club, screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Or, as just happened yesterday morning, an Ohio State freshman and Somali Muslim refugee who drives his car through a crowd of students injuring nine. Such a person can’t be motivated by religion, because religion is an outward expression of our primal longings, making every variety, even that of the jihadist, a “religion of peace.” Thus, televised beheadings and crucifixions are not acts of religious devotees, but of madmen given to fear, anger, xenophobia, depression, or the increasingly fashionable, “causes unknown.”

The tragic consequence is that each terrorist act becomes a crisis, not to be wasted, for politicians eager to mount their hobbyhorses of gun control, mental health care, and military action—measures that are ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst against the “enemy that won’t be named.”

Consider gun control. Even if all the ammunition and firearms in the world were rounded up and destroyed, the person intent on purifying the world will attempt to do so, be it with explosives, incendiaries, chemicals, biotoxins, knives, and vehicles, all of which have been used to great effect. On July 14, 2016 one of the most efficient terrorist attacks occurred in Nice, France. In only a matter of minutes, one man, armed with a 19-ton cargo truck, was able to kill 84 people and injure over 300 others.

As for mental health care, while some psychological problems have been exhibited by some jihadists, mental illness is not a common factor in Islamic terrorism. Thus, contrary to common depictions, the typical jihadist is not some deranged psychopath, but a religiously informed foot soldier who believes he has a divine commission in the imminent apocalypse.

The Enemy is Not TerroristsThen there’s military action, which has not, and never will, defeat the “enemy that won’t be named,” because “enemy that won’t be named” is not the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any other jihadist group; it is the ideology upon which those groups are founded—namely, fundamental Islam.

Notice I didn’t say “radical” Islam, but “fundamental Islam”—Islam in its most pure and aboriginal sense. Fundamental Islam looks toward a utopian state where every aspect of public and private life is governed by Islamic law under a church-state theocracy. Its holy texts and the life of its founder, Muhammad, teach that the use of forceful means is commendable to achieve those ends. To the mind of the fundamentalist, vigorous military resistance by the “crusaders,” even when successful, only serves to validate Islam’s role in apocalyptic prophesy.

Cotton-candy LiberalismThe perpetrators involved in Fort Hood, Boston, San Bernardino, Chattanooga, and Orlando came from various backgrounds and claimed allegiance to different Islamic groups, but they all were united by the same ideology: Islam, according to its historical readings. Take ISIS, for example.

Contrary to the liberal progressive who characterizes that ideology as “un-Islamic,” in a smart piece for The Atlantic contributing editor Graeme Wood writes,

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

According to Princeton Islamic expert Bernard Haykel, politically correct liberals and embarrassed Muslims alike who denounce the religious ties behind terrorist attacks, have a “cotton-candy view” of the faith that willfully ignores what Islam “has historically and legally required.” The jihadist who participates in beheadings, crucifixions, and slavery is not following some corrupted version of Islam. Rather, he is “faithfully reproducing its norms of war” which were established in the Quran and advanced by Muhammad—says Haykel.

Foolish SchemesThe failure to recognize this connection makes Islamic terrorism and its operatives, incomprehensible to the modern mind. For instance, in a frank discussion about his brain trust of three dozen interdisciplinary experts, Gen. Michael K. Nagata, U.S. commander in the Middle East, admitted, “We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it.” Even after months of meetings, Gen. Nagata confides, we couldn’t agree on “whether the main objective of ISIS is ideological or territorial.” Well, the fact is, it’s both.

The territorial ambitions of ISIS are driven by its ideological purity. Fundamental Islam promotes the establishment of an Islamic state under the direction of a caliph whose duty is to expand the caliphate through offensive jihad, if necessary, until what Allah wills done is done on earth as it is in heaven.

“Muslims [and western apologists for Islam] can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do,” writes Wood. “But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combated, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.”

One of the foremost schemes is to ignore and obfuscate any connection Islam has to the barbarism done in its name by using politically correct substitutes like “domestic terrorism,” “violent extremism,” “workplace violence,” and “lone wolf” attacks. Another is to deny the connection by expunging public statements to the contrary by the perpetrators and characterizing such as radicals, extremists, and crazies acting against the “true” reading of Islam and independently from any known terrorist group.

A Better IdeologyThe scheme, along with the military half-measures it sires, has proven (and will continue to prove) ineffective against the War on Terror. That’s because—channeling James Carville—“it’s the ideology, stupid!” And the only way to defeat an ideology is not with political correctness and air strikes, but with a better ideology.

Sadly, victory will be difficult for a country that has become ignorant, if not embarrassed, about the extraordinary ideology of its founding—one that for over 200 years has caused citizens of the world look to it as a beacon of freedom, equality, and opportunity.

The constitutional “givens” of common human dignity and natural rights derive from the Christian teaching that all men are created in God’s image. By contrast, Islam regards man as God’s creation, but without godlikeness, a being who needs redemption not by a Savior, but by the remembrance of Allah’s will, and whose path to paradise is only certain by death in holy war. Absent are the Western ideals of inherent human worth, individual liberty, and equality.

Because of its Christian-inspired ideology the United States, a nation of immigrants, has an immigrant problem, while Muslim-controlled countries have an emigrantproblem and a well-documented history of human rights violations.

What’s more, the core of that better ideology in recent years has led to the conversion of as many as 7 million Muslims worldwide. As one Middle Eastern missionary observed—giving heft to the conviction of Victor Hugo that one can resist the invasion of armies, but not the invasion of ideas—“More Muslims have become followers of Jesus in the last ten years than in the last 14 centuries of Islam.”

However, as long as our political class operates under the false consensus, failing to recognize what makes Islamic terrorists do the things they do and what makes America the exceptional nation it is without embarrassment and apology, our unnamed enemy will remain unnamed and undefeated, ably resisting our best political and military strategies as the House of Islam is advanced, slowly and incrementally, by the House of War.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/enemy-wont-named

In Denial about Islam

William Kilpatrick

“The times they are a-changing.”  ∼ Bob Dylan

Rival gangs battle in the streets and set fire to cars. Uncovered women are considered fair game. Molotov cocktails are hurled at police stations.

Syria? No, Sweden. For a long time, Sweden has been importing Middle Eastern immigrants into its small nation, and now it is experiencing many of the problems of the Middle East. The same thing is happening in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and England.

It’s often said that we in America just have to look at history to understand the fate that may be in store for us. But it’s no longer necessary to consult history books. All you have to do is look at what’s happening right now on the other side of the Atlantic.

In Germany during the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,000 crimes. But since the data only includes crimes that have been solved, the actual number of migrant crimes is likely far higher. In many parts of the country, police say they are unable to maintain law and order. More than 20,000 purses are snatched each year in Hamburg, and gangs of migrant youth have taken control of parts of the Jungfernsteig, a prestigious boulevard. The situation is much the same in Bremen, Berlin, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, and Stuttgart. All over Germany, migrant gangs and roving bands of migrant youth operate with near impunity.

Meanwhile, France has suffered through a string of massacres: first, at the office of Charlie Hebdo and at the Hyper Cacher market, then at the Bataclan Theater, and most recently along the Boulevard des Anglais in Nice. A recent survey by the Red Cross reveals that more than fifty percent of French citizens live in constant fear of another jihad attack.

Unless the French, the Germans, and the Swedes resist at some point soon, they, along with other European states, will someday be Islamic states. Europe is in the midst of a massive historical change, the significance of which rivals the fall of the Roman Empire. What we are witnessing is the gradual but inexorable substitution of one civilization for another.

Except that we are unreliable witnesses. We see, but we don’t see. Americans are being afforded a preview of what can happen here, but many seem unable to grasp the lesson. As in Europe, we suffer from a bad case of denial.

Of all the factors contributing to Islam’s hostile takeover of Europe, perhaps the most important is denial. If you deny the reality of Islamization, you can’t effectively resist it. The reality is that Europe is in a life and death struggle, but the denialists insist that it’s just business as usual. They assure us that terror has nothing to do with Islam (so don’t worry), that immigration is just cultural enrichment (it’s good for you), and that there are no no-go-zones (but it’s best to avoid them).

In Europe it’s not only the leaders who are in denial. The average citizen is expected to go along with the delusion. If he doesn’t, he can face arrest, prosecution, fines, and even jail time. In the Netherlands, individuals who post Facebook comments critical of Islam or immigration can expect a visit from the police. In Germany, citizens who express “xenophobic” views on social media risk having their children taken away. Meanwhile, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has ordered the British Press not to report when terrorists are Muslims.

Once upon a time, the West celebrated its “alarmists.” Paul Revere became an American hero for sounding the alarm about the British advance. Likewise, Churchill was lionized for warning of the gathering Nazi storm. By contrast, contemporary Paul Revere’s risk being arrested—and not by enemy sentinels, but by the representatives of those they are trying to alert. Western officialdom doesn’t want its citizens to be alerted. It wants them to stay asleep.

This officially enforced denial explains why many if not most Europeans were caught off-guard by the migration invasion of 2015-16. Although it was entirely predictable, few saw it coming. That’s because no one was allowed to talk about Muslim immigration except in glowing terms. It was a no-go subject, and everyone understood that opposition to immigration would bring charges of racism and xenophobia. In short, there was never any public debate or discussion about the downside of immigration.

Americans are fortunate in having the European experience with Islam before their eyes. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that they are paying attention. We are making the same mistakes that have led Europe to its present crisis. Instead of charting our own course, we are treading in Europe’s footprints. And few seem to notice that the footprints are leading up to the edge of the abyss.

Once again, the main problem is denial. The reason that the denialists cling to their denial is that they live in the past. European denialists live mentally in the post-war years. They must prove to themselves that Europe has abandoned its anti-Semitic ways. And for some insane reason, they have decided that the way to make up for Europe’s past sins is to welcome the “new Jews” (Muslims) into their midst. In short, they have made a colossal error and since it’s not easy to admit that you rank with history’s greatest blunderers, they must continue to maintain that the disaster unfolding around them is nothing more than a rough patch on the road to the multicultural Promised Land.

American denialists live mentally in the 1970s—the age of sensitivity. They still think that tolerance, diversity, and sensitivity to the “other” are the highest values. They believe that you show your sensitivity by yielding to the demands of whatever racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual minority is currently favored by the social and media elites. And what could be more sensitive than to open your borders to any and all comers, no questions asked?

But, as our Nobel Laureate poet reminds us, the times are always changing. In order to deal with changing times, it is sometimes necessary to change one’s mindset. When the changes are revolutionary in nature, it may be time to discard the comforting narratives of one’s youth. In the early years of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln put it this way:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present… As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

In facing the global Islamic challenge, we cannot afford to be trapped in the “dogmas of the quiet past”—especially when many of the dogmas that developed in the sixties and seventies did not serve us well even then.

As Lincoln said, we must “think anew and act anew.” But there is little evidence that our current leaders, mired as they are in outworn narratives, are capable of doing that. This is not to say that there is nothing to be learned from history. It’s because we’ve become detached from history that we fail to recognize that Islam’s current aggressiveness is a continuation of an ancient pattern.

Our “dogmas of the quiet past” are really dogmas of the recent past. These days, our cultural memory extends back only a few decades. If we had a better acquaintance with the far past we would more readily grasp the changes that are happening today right before our eyes in Europe.

Here’s another wake-up headline from across the sea:

Sharia patrol attacks girl for not wearing hijab

Sweden? No, Austria. But if could be Sweden—or Germany, or France. And if we continue to cling to our naïve dogmas, it could happen in America—much sooner than we imagine.

The times they are a-changing.     

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/in-denial-about-islam