The Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Iraq renewed his opposition this week to an article in the nation’s new national laws requiring minority-faith children to become Muslims if one parent converts to Islam.
Describing the new law as both unconstitutional and “unacceptable,” Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako has called on President Fouad Masoum to send Article 26.2 of the National Charter back to Parliament to be amended.
When Allah revealed the Verse: "Warn your nearest kinsmen," Allah's Apostle got up and said,
"O people of Quraish (or said similar words)! Buy (i.e. save) yourselves (from the Hellfire) as I cannot save you from Allah's Punishment; O Bani Abd Manaf! I cannot save you from Allah's Punishment, O Safiya, the Aunt of Allah's Apostle! I cannot save you from Allah's Punishment; O Fatima bint Muhammad! Ask me anything from my wealth, but I cannot save you from Allah's Punishment."
Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 51, Number 16All in all the topic of the intercession of the Prophet is ambiguous and very unclear. Did Muslims impose on Muhammad sayings about him being a savior later in order to exalt him above Jesus? This strikes me as likely.
After Heidar Moslehi, the Iranian intelligence minister, asked Muslim seminaries to become proactive in stopping the spread of Christianity, a high-ranking cleric declared that Evangelical Christianity is the most horrifying intelligence and security organisation in the world. This statement seems to have appeared on press agencies close to the Revolutionary Guard. In a conference on “New Age cults” held in Varamin, a district south of Teheran, Akhond Mohsen Alizadeh declared: “We should not allow these cults to question Islamic jurisprudence under the cover of mysticism.” He went on to add: “They tell the youth that God is wrathful and horrible in Islam but is love in Christianity. Also, Christian preachers answer the questions and doubts of youth in their own interest and try to attract them.” Nevertheless a whole series of signs seem to indicate that non-traditional Christianity – there are Catholics and Orthodox Christians in Iran as well as a large Armenian community – is spreading. The regime’s press recently spoke of them with concern and the number of cases of repression and condemnation following conversions is growing.
I often say to people when they say 'Christians should be reading the Bible', 'well, Christians should be reading the newspaper.'HT to VirtueOnline for this tidbit.
The secular society is a myth, and it has the power of a myth to blind people to realities. A powerful myth, such as this, has in it the power about which I was speaking in the chapter on “principalities and powers.” Christian affirmation in this context requires the unmasking of the powers. It calls for a new kind of enlightenment, namely the opening up of the underlying assumptions of a secular society, the asking of the unasked questions, the probing of unrecognized presuppositions.
I am suggesting both that the belief in a secular society is an unproven belief accepted uncritically to justify a social institution, and also that the belief is mistaken. Put very briefly, the belief is that modern society is on a steady and irreversible course toward increasing secularization, and that this is to be welcomed since it enables us to put the wars of religion behind us and to create a society in which the conflicting truth-claims of the religions do not tear society to pieces.
The human mind is triune in its being ordered to the transcendental splendor of the good, the true and the beautiful which resides in the Mind of God. Since the metaphysical is best expressed in terms of metaphor, we can say that the head can be seen as the seat of the True (reason), the heart can be seen as the seat of the Good (love or virtue) and the loins can be seen as the seat of the Beautiful (creation, pro-creation and sub-creation). The head, as the seat of the true, is the home of consciousness which seeks clarity; the heart, as the seat of the good, is the home of conscience, which seeks charity; and the loins, as the seat of beauty, is the home of creativity, which seeks chastity.From HERE.
Young people are turning to Jihad because mainstream religion is not "exciting" enough, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Most Rev Justin Welby told faith leaders that Britain's religious communities must do more to provide an alternative to extremism which gives young people a "purpose in life".
He also warned against being too quick to brand people and groups with strong views on religious matters as extremists.
Nothing will ever be achieved if the only conversations which take place involve "nice people talking to nice people about being nice", he said.
But he added: "I would want to turn the question back to us as religious leaders and say to the faith communities: what are we doing that provides a narrative about purpose in life and commitment to society and benefits of a purposeful, flourishing life that is so exciting that the evil temptations offered by extremist groups of all cultures and types anywhere in the world including this country are simply paled into insignificance?
People who think Christian sectarian militias are the solution to Iraq's problems could stand to read a history of the Lebanese civil war.Here are a few sections that caught my interest:
A lot of things have gotten worse. If Beirut is no longer the Paris of the east, Paris is looking a lot like the Beirut of the west - with regular, violent, murderous sectarian attacks accepted as a feature of daily life. In such a world, we could all "stand to read" a little more history. But in Nigeria, when you're in the middle of history class, Boko Haram kick the door down, seize you and your fellow schoolgirls and sell you into sex slavery. Boko Haram "could stand to read" a little history, but their very name comes from a corruption of the word "book" - as in "books are forbidden", reading is forbidden, learning is forbidden, history is forbidden.
Well, Nigeria... Wild and crazy country, right? Oh, I don't know. A half-century ago, it lived under English Common Law, more or less. In 1960 Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe, second Governor-General of an independent Nigeria, was the first Nigerian to be appointed to the Queen's Privy Council. It wasn't Surrey, but it wasn't savagery.
Like Lebanon, Nigeria got worse, and it's getting worser. That's true of a lot of places. In the Middle East, once functioning states - whether dictatorial or reasonably benign - are imploding. In Yemen, the US has just abandoned its third embassy in the region. According to the President of Tunisia, one third of the population of Libya has fled to Tunisia. That's two million people. According to the UN, just shy of four million Syrians have fled to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and beyond. In Iraq, Christians and other minorities are forming militias because they don't have anywhere to flee (Syria? Saudia Arabia?) and their menfolk are facing extermination and their women gang-rapes and slavery.And he has more to add to that. Check out the whole article HERE.
When you recognize that ISIS is Islam, you free yourself from the naiveté of world leaders who tell you that ISIS is an anomaly of Islam, leaders that, I am sorry to say, include US President Barack Obama, who told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria recently that, “There is an element growing out of Muslim communities in certain parts of the world that have perverted the religion, have embraced a nihilistic, violent, almost medieval interpretation of Islam.”
I am proud of my religion and nationality, I am proud to belong to my fatherland. I am a Palestinian, and I belong to this religious people who are fighting for the sake of their freedom and dignity to implement their dreams and national rights.
I support Palestinians and share their cause and their issues. We the Palestinian Orthodox Christians are not detached from their hardships.
The Palestinian issue is a problem that concerns all of us, Christians and Muslims alike. It’s a problem of every free intellectual individual aspiring for justice and freedom in this world.
We the Palestinian Christians suffer along with the rest of Palestinians from occupation and hardships of our economic situation. Muslims and Christians suffer equally, as there is no difference in suffering for any of us. We are all living in the same complicated circumstances, and overcoming the same difficulties.
As a church and as individuals we protect this people, and we hope a day will come when Palestinians get their freedom and dignity.
The official response to such domestic hostility towards European society and culture is to say, ‘Let’s not talk about it’. This is because officialdom fears that an open discussion of the cultural threat facing European society would only strengthen support for both radical Islamists and right-wing nationalists. That’s the main reason there was so little discussion of the implications of an ICM poll that showed 16 per cent of French citizens had a positive assessment of IS – among 18- to 24-year-olds, this rose to 27 per cent. The poll also revealed that seven per cent of British and German citizens supported IS.From Spiked Online.
For instance, Heather MacDonald notes that in 2011 the University of California at Los Angeles instituted a major change in requirements for an English degree, replacing three requirements in the foundations of English literature with a mandate for all English majors to take a total of three courses in four areas: “Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.” Instead of UCLA English majors being required to read Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare, then, they are required to be exposed (via the course catalogue) to “alternative rubrics of gender, sexuality, race, and class.” These radical changes were caused by a revolt by the junior faculty.
Other sceptics claim that Muslims will increasingly integrate and leave Europe’s culture largely unchanged, but this is difficult to prove. Here intermarriage is arguably the best barometer of assimilation. Leo Lucassen and Charlotte Laarman of the University of Leiden have researched this area, focusing on Muslim populations in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Britain and France. They concluded that roughly 6 per cent of foreign-born Muslims married outside the faith, rising to 10-11 per cent by the second generation. Much of the increase can be attributed, however, to the somewhat exceptional integration of French Algerians. Overall, the level of Muslims marrying out remains low. In Germany, for instance, just 7.2 per cent of Muslim men and 0.5 per cent of Muslim women were married to someone of another religious faith.Also, young Muslims are as religious (or devout) as their parents are:
An alternative route to integration is secularism. If Muslims are turning into secular Europeans, demography is immaterial. Here again, though, group boundaries are holding. Europe-wide surveys find that Muslims under 25 are as devout as those over 55, a big contrast with Catholics or Anglicans. Muslim youth are often stricter than their elders: a 2006 poll discovered that 37 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds want to live under sharia law compared to 17 per cent of those over 55.Here is the link to the article: "Europe's Muslim Future"
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) went out to the musalla (prayer place) on the day of Eid al-Adha or Eid al-Fitr.
He passed by the women and said, ‘O women! Give charity, for I have seen that you form the majority of the people of Hell.’ They asked, ‘Why is that, O Messenger of Allah?’ He replied, ‘You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religious commitment than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you.’
The women asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, what is deficient in our intelligence and religious commitment?’ He said, ‘Is not the testimony of two women equal to the testimony of one man?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Is it not true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?’ The women said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is the deficiency in her religious commitment.’
