The peaceful majority

A Muslim woman asks Brigitte Gabriel how we can fight an ideological war with 1.8 billion Muslims?


http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.ca/2015/02/must-watch-video-brigitte-gabriele-on.html

Hillary Clinton’s Top Aides Knew from First Minutes that Benghazi Was a Terrorist Attack, E-mails Disclose

From the very first moments of the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides were advised that the compound was under a terrorist attack. In fact, less than two hours into the attack, they were told that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility....

The revelations in the newly released e-mails were unveiled by Judicial Watch this afternoon at a press conference in Washington. In a press statement, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton asserted that the e-mails left “no doubt that Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers knew the truth about the Benghazi attack from almost the moment it happened.” Mr. Fitton further opined that “it is inescapable that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly lied when she planted the false story about ‘inflammatory material being posted on the Internet.’ The contempt for the public’s right to know is evidenced not only in these documents but also in the fact that we had to file a lawsuit in federal court to obtain them.” 



http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414500/hillary-clintons-top-aides-knew-first-minutes-benghazi-was-terrorist-attack-e-mails

Broken Windows The police and neighborhood safety

 The broken windows model of policing was first described in 1982 in a seminal article by Wilson and Kelling. Briefly, the model focuses on the importance of disorder (e.g. broken windows) in generating and sustaining more serious crime. Disorder is not directly linked to serious crime; instead, disorder leads to increased fear and withdrawal from residents, which then allows more serious crime to move in because of decreased levels of informal social control. The police can play a key role in disrupting this process. If they focus in on disorder and less serious crime in neighborhoods that have not yet been overtaken by serious crime, they can help reduce fear and resident withdrawal. Promoting higher levels of informal social control will help residents themselves take control of their neighborhood and prevent serious crime from infiltrating.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/?single_page=true

A Conversation with Bret Stephens and Dennis Prager regarding Israel

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Bret Stephens suggested in a public dialogue with radio commentator Dennis Prager at Congregation Beth El that Jews are appreciated in America, a country where success is admired, but are reviled in Europe and the Arab world, where success is envied.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkMN4liseeI

Bearing the cross: a letter to the Islamic State by Mark Durie

THE ISLAMIC STATE sent me a letter this week. This letter was in the form of a short film produced by the Islamic State’s Al-Hayat Media centre. 

This was not addressed to me personally, but to all Christians everywhere.  Its title was A Message Signed with BLOOD to the Nation of the Cross.  This was a video of the ritual slaughter of the 21 Egyptian Christians.  Their blood flowing in the ocean waves was the ‘signature’ at the end of the video....

The White House statement claimed that ‘ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect or ethnicity.’  Not true.  The Islamic State’s actions are constrained by its theology, and in this case its targets are also determined on religious grounds; they were Christians.  It is not an endorsement of the killer’s Islamic beliefs to acknowledge that these jihadis follow a form of Islam, and that their sect and faith does constrain their behaviour accordingly.

http://www.lapidomedia.com/guest-blog-bearing-the-cross-letter-to-isis

Caliphatalism? by RASHA AL AQEEDI

Rasha Al Aqeedi’s story on life inside the Islamic State from the latest print issue of The American Interest. Aqeedi, a former resident of Mosul who still has extensive contacts there, draws an heart-wrenching sketch of what life is like under the Caliphate:


http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/02/02/caliphatalism/

What ISIS Really Wants By Graeme Wood " Must Read" article

Over at The Atlantic, Graeme Wood has written the most important article I’ve yet read about ISIS and Islam, an excerpt:

But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”

More:

According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

Are They Really Journalists? No, They are Progressives and Must Lie

“There is something in the progressive mind-set that promotes, nay, requires compulsive lying. We see it in John Kerry and his fake stories of secret missions in Cambodia and his flying dog; Hillary Clinton, and her Bosnian snipers; Susan Rice and her video explanation for Benghazi; Eric Holder with Fast and Furious; and even FDR. . . . Your standard progressive activist has really done nothing very interesting, so he or she needs to get proper credentials, to show that he or she knows what’s what, and that progressivism is what the world needs to deal with “problems”–after all, isn’t life just a series of problems calling for progressive intervention? They want to see what they believe. We, hence, have progressives making up the sort of stuff that puts them, the elite, in the center of the battle, on the ramparts, in the muddy trenches and downed helicopters with the common schlubs–the sort of worldly experience that allows progressives to tell us how to live our lives. Telling lies is essential to progressivism.”


http://thediplomad.blogspot.ca/2015/02/are-they-really-journalists-need-we-ask.html?m=1

Folks Do the Randomest Things by Andrew McCarthy

I know you’ll be stunned to hear this, but even though Islamic terrorists have nothing to do with Islam, they appear to think Islamic scripture means what it says. So if you were randomly to peruse, say, the charter of Hamas — an Islamic terrorist group that has nothing to do with Islam and that is randomly the Palestinian branch of the “largely secular” Muslim Brotherhood — look what you find in Article 7:

Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398362/folks-do-randomest-things-andrew-c-mccarthy

Should ISIS Be Burning Captives? (David Wood)

Following the execution, many politicians, reporters, and Muslim spokesmen have condemned ISIS for burning a captive to death, insisting that Islam forbids putting captives to death by fire. The passage that condemns burning captives, however, is almost never quoted, because it explicitly promotes killing apostates: 

Sahih al-Bukhari 6922—Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to Ali; and he burnt them. The news of this event reached Ibn Abbas who said, “If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah’s Apostle forbade it, saying, ‘Do not punish anybody with Allah’s punishment (fire).’ I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah’s Apostle, ‘Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.’”

Though this hadith clearly forbids executing apostates by burning them to death, we know historically that Muhammad, Abu Bakr, and Ali all punished people with fire. How can we make sense of the Islamic position on burning captives? 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9KZU_ZgwMI

The Real History of the Crusades THOMAS F. MADDEN

Excellent historical overview  of the Crusades

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-real-history-of-the-crusades


Also

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Crusades-for-Christ

INVENTING THE CRUSADES by Thomas F. Madden

All the Crusades met the criteria of just wars. They came about in reaction attacks against Christians or their Church. The First Crusade was called in 1095 in response to the recent Turkish conquest of Christian Asia Minor, as well as the much earlier Arab conquest of the Christian-held Holy Land. The second was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Edessa in 1144. The third was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and most other Christian lands in the Levant in 1187.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/06/inventing-the-crusades

Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS's Islamic Inspirations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFkGgNsqQ_4

Obama: Christianity No Different Than the Islamic State

As the world reacts with shock and horror at the increasingly savage deeds of the Islamic State (IS)—in this case, the recent immolation of a captive—U.S. President Obama’s response has been one of nonjudgmental relativism.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, Obama counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that Christians have been equally guilty of such atrocities:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/raymond-ibrahim/obama-christianity-no-different-than-the-islamic-state/