Salvation according to Augustine

And today is the feast day of this great saint. A quote:

Salvation, such as it shall be in the world to come, shall itself be our final happiness. And this happiness these philosophers refuse to believe in, because they do not see it, and attempt to fabricate for themselves a happiness in this life, based upon a virtue which is as deceitful as it is proud.

— St. Augustine of Thagaste, The City of God, XIX, 4.

How the US attacking Syria could plunge the region into war

So 90% of the American people want NO military action in Syria, but President Obama, it seems, is intent on doing just this. This will be very bad for the whole region, though. Here is a likely scenario:

In fact, it is being reported that cruise missile strikes could begin "as early as Thursday".  The Obama administration is pledging that the strikes will be "limited", but what happens when the Syrians fight back?  What happens if they sink a U.S. naval vessel or they have agents start hitting targets inside the United States?  Then we would have a full-blown war on our hands.  And what happens if the Syrians decide to retaliate by hitting Israel?  If Syrian missiles start raining down on Tel Aviv, Israel will be extremely tempted to absolutely flatten Damascus, and they are more than capable of doing precisely that.  And of course Hezbollah and Iran are not likely to just sit idly by as their close ally Syria is battered into oblivion. 

We are looking at a scenario where the entire Middle East could be set aflame, and that might only be just the beginning.  Russia and China are sternly warning the U.S. government not to get involved in Syria, and by starting a war with Syria we will do an extraordinary amount of damage to our relationships with those two global superpowers. (From HERE)

Grim stuff. Instability is already spilling from Syria into Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. But that can be contained. This, however, would be a game changer, and certainly not in a good way. America needs to stay out of Syria. Totally and completely. Just send tents and food for women and children refugees (not men), and don't resettle ANY of them in North America or Europe. That is my advice.

Farah Shama, young Arab poet

Freedom and peace in you, Jesus...

Hi All,

I'm pretty sure this is a song from the West, with (translated) Arabic words. But I can't figure out the original. What is the original song/lyrics? Please help and share with worship music people you know.

Islam says no new churches--why?

On dhimmi/millet neighborhoods: 

Churches, synagogues, and other non-Muslim places of worship were restricted to locations outside the central public areas of the city. Usually they were located in the residential quarters where those who frequented them lived. […] In principle, non-Muslim communities remained constant, while only the community of Muslims was free to grow by way of proselytism. New mosques could therefore be built as needed, but non-Muslim places of worship could for the most part be only repaired or replaced.

The Spirit of Islamic Law by Bernard G. Weiss, p 149.

The Crap that Reza Aslam is Full Of....

More on Reza Aslam and his mediocre, sub-standard faux scholarship, this time from The Jewish Review of Books (Muslims at this point can dismiss the whole thing as a Zionist conspiracy, and feel sorry for themselves, being the "best of all nations" while also having the lamest of all countries):

Speaking on CNN in the wake of his Fox interview, Aslan ruefully observed, “There's nothing more embarrassing than an academic having to trot out his credentials. I mean, you really come off as a jerk.” Actually, there is something significantly more embarrassing, and that is when the academic trots out a long list of exaggerated claims and inflated credentials.

Read the rest here, by Allan Nadler, director of Jewish Studies at Drew University.

Quotes from the brilliant Bernard Lewis

I really love Bernard Lewis, the great orientalist. I was just reading one of his books and thought I would share with you some of great, insightful quotes I found:

Lewis, Bernard. 1993. Islam and the West. Oxford.

“The imported idea of ethnic and territorial nationhood remains, like secularism, alien and incompletely assimilated.” (p 136) 

“Since for Muslims Islam is, by definition, superior to all other faiths, the failures and defeats of Muslims in this world can only mean that they are not practicing authentic Islam and that their states are not true Islamic states.” (p 136, 7) 

“…many of the extremist organizations tend to be Christian, for in the radical extremism that they profess, Christians still hope to find the acceptance and equality that eluded them in nationalism.” (p 144) 

“After a long period of secular, liberal, and nationalist ideologies and programs, the non-Muslim minorities are no longer conditioned to revert to their former position of inferiority. Some have sought a solution to their problem in emigration; some have resorted to radical politics; and some look anxiously, with decreasing confidence, for saviors from outside.” (page 146) 

“Humiliation and privation, frustration and failure have so far discredited all the imported solutions and made increasing numbers of Muslims ready to believe those who tell them that only in a return to their own true faith and divinely ordained way of life can they find salvation in this world and the next.” (153)

Christians attacked in Egypt: press ignores it

The Errors of Reza Aslan on Jesus, a long list by John Dickson

How sad that such a mediocre book could get so much publicity. This list comes from this article (HERE) by John Dickson.

Litany of errors

Finally, the list of exaggerations and plain errors in Zealot bear testimony to Aslan's carelessness with concrete history. If this were presented as a work of fiction, there would be no shame in such oversights. But if this were handed in as an essay in an Ancient History Department, it would most likely fail, not just because of the numerous inaccuracies, but because of the disturbing confidence with which they are habitually stated.

• Aslan repeatedly calls revolutionary leaders of the first century "claimed messiahs," when this crucial term hardly ever appears in our sources and certainly not in the contexts he is claiming.
• Aslan pontificates on questions such as Jesus's literacy (or illiteracy, in his judgment) with a cavalier style that does not represent the complexities involved.
• He rushes to dismiss some Gospel passages as "fabulous concoctions" while accepting others as "beyond dispute" - and the only rhyme or reason I can detect is whether a passage fits with the story he wishes to tell.
• He informs us that Mark's Gospel says "nothing at all about Jesus's resurrection," overlooking the plain narrative signals of Mark 14:28 and 16:7.
• He declares that Mark's portrayal of Pilate's prevarication over the execution of Jesus was "concocted" and "patently fictitious." We are told that this Roman governor never baulked at dispatching Jewish rabble-rousers. This overlooks the widely-discussed evidence that Pilate did precisely this just a few years earlier with some Jewish leaders from Jerusalem.
• Weirdly, Aslan says in passing that the letters of Paul make up "the bulk of the New Testament." In fact, they represent only a quarter.
• He dates the destruction of Sepphoris near Nazareth to the period of the tax rebellion of AD 6, when in fact this city was destroyed by Varus a decade earlier in the troubles following Herod's death in 4BC.
• He says that the traditions of John the Baptist were passed around in writing in Hebrew and Aramaic throughout the villages of Judea and Galilee. This is baseless.
• He claims that Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was from the Hellenistic diaspora (and was therefore liable to fall for the un-Jewish perversion of Jesus's message he heard in Jerusalem). This is pure invention, and overlooks the fact that many Greek-speaking Jews like Stephen lived in Jerusalem for generations. They even had their own Greek-speaking synagogues.
• Aslan's claim that "the disciples were themselves fugitives in Jerusalem, complicit in the sedition that led to Jesus's execution" is disproven by the complete absence of evidence for any Roman attempt to arrest the followers of Jesus. Indeed, this is one of the reasons specialists remain confident Jesus was never viewed as the leader of a rebel movement.
• He says a certain Jesus son of Ananias, a prophetic figure who appeared in Jerusalem in the early 60s AD, spoke about the appearance of the "Messiah." Our sole source (Josephus) says nothing of the sort.
• Aslan avers that even Luke, a Pauline "sycophant," avoids calling Paul an "apostle" since only the twelve bear the title that Paul so desperately tried to claim for himself. In fact, Luke happily calls Paul and his colleague Barnabas "apostles" (Acts 14:14). Almost everything Aslan says about Paul and his place in ancient Judaism and Christianity is either wildly exaggerated or plainly false.

Conversion from Christianity to Islam in Cameroon

In this part of the continent, including Cameroon, there has been growing influence of Islam through economic development. The country is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and nations like Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey are increasingly investing in Cameroon. Other investors include Arab Contractors based in Cairo and the Islamic development bank in Jeddah, a coastal city in Saudi Arabia. These investments often come with increased Islamic influence and pressure on usually lower- income rural people to embrace Islam for the economic benefits connected with such a move. 

Read it all, at Open Doors.

Message from a Christian of Syrian Ancestry to the Americans

Message from a Christian of Syrian Ancestry to the Americans

by Abu Daoud (8/2013)

Today I was running errands and I happened by my local pharmacy to pick up some stuff for the family. The man there is a Greek Catholic Christian of Syrian ancestry and he told me about how his ancestors had migrated from Syria to where I am, back in the days of Ottoman Empire.

We got to talking and, as often happens with this sort of thing, he became rather impassioned and started to tell me his thoughts in detail about what was going on in Syria. He told me, You are American, you voted for this guy (President Obama)!  I promised him I would relay his message to people in the USA as best I could. So here I am, trying to do that. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, of course. But I did think that people in the USA (and elsewhere, too) would be interested to hear the unvarnished thoughts of an Arab Christian whose ancestral home is Syria, in Wadi al-Nasara (it’s on Wikipedia).

His main source of frustration was that, in his mind, the Obama administration was actively funding the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians. He felt that the USA and the UK were arming terrorists (Jabhat al Nusra, which is a branch of the Syrian rebels, and is affiliated with Al Qaeda) who were killing Christians. He said that these people were beasts and monsters, and that he hoped that Al Assad would kill them all. Not just beat them or chase them out. But kill them. He believes that the Obama administration is lying then they say that they think they are supporting Syrians fighting against Al Assad, because in fact they know that these people are foreigners (from Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Gulf, the USA, Europe) and not Syrians. He mentioned the famous video clip of one such fighter cutting open a man’s chest and then taking out his heart and eating it, which, yes, really exists. He said, when I’m hunting and I see a wounded animal, I kill it. I don’t feel good about it, but I do. The implication is that these Al Qaeda people are wounded beyond recovery—their humanity irrevocably damaged.

He says that before the revolution he didn’t much like Al Assad, but now he likes him. This is because Syrian regime left the people alone, and didn’t enforce religion on anyone.

I explain that the Obama administration says they only want to support the liberal, secular democratic rebels, not the terrorists who are bent on destroying Christianity in Syria (though they are working together). The logic behind this explanation seems so entirely incoherent to him that he concludes it is a lie: the Obama administration (and John McCain as well, it appears) is merely saying this to cover their tracks. The logistics of giving weapons to one portion of an army while keeping them from another portion of the same army (and a more powerful and larger portion, at that) is ridiculous, and no one would ever think that is a realistic goal, he said.

Based on this evidence—the Obama administration’s clear and unequivocal support (in his mind) for a branch of Al Qaeda bent on eliminating Christianity from the region, he concludes that Obama must be a Muslim—there is no other logical way of explaining it all. He concludes that he hates Obama. He says his wife’s parents are in Canada and he could have easily emigrated, but he loves this land and will not leave. He wants American Christians to know about his point of view.

I told him I would tell you, and I have. I will leave the evaluation of his opinions to you. As for me, he told me to pass this on, so please link to this or copy and paste. The material is not my own.

--Abu Daoud