In early 2012 the historian Emmet Scott published Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy. If you have any interest in the subject of the Greco-Roman legacy and Islam as they relate to medieval Europe, I strongly recommend that you buy this book. For those who are interested, Scott has published some excerpts from this work online at the New English Review.

Many books claim to be groundbreaking, but rather few of them actually are. Emmet Scott’s Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited falls into the latter category.

He shows convincingly that archaeological excavations paint a very clear picture of devastation brought by the Arab conquests throughout the entire Mediterranean region, from Syria to Spain, in the seventh century AD.

The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne in his work Mohammed and Charlemagne, published posthumously in 1937, suggested that Islam and the Arab conquests constituted the real dividing line between the civilization of Greco-Roman Antiquity and that of medieval Europe. Moreover, Islamic raids in the Mediterranean partially cut Europeans off from their Classical roots. Scott supports this hypothesis but goes even further than Pirenne — who focused on Europe — by showing that the Arab conquests and Islamic repression largely destroyed Greco-Roman Classical civilization in North Africa and parts of the Middle East, which were more urbanized than Europe.

In short, rather than preserving the Classical heritage, as their apologists like to claim, Arabs and Muslims did more than anybody else to wipe out Greco-Roman civilization. The modest contributions they made by preserving certain Greek texts through Arabic translations cannot in any way make up for this massive wave of destruction.

Scott demonstrates that by cutting off the normal trade of Egyptian papyrus to Europe, leaving Europeans only with expensive parchment made from animal skins as a viable alternative, the Arabs essentially doomed much of the Classical literature to oblivion due to a chronic shortage of good writing materials. Sadly, the heroic efforts made by medieval Christian monks in Europe for centuries could only partly make up for this loss.

The author also describes how certain ideas such as an early version of the Inquisition, the concept of Holy War and other often negative innovations were spread due to Islam. The first massacres of Jews in Europe were carried out in Spain by Muslim mobs early in the eleventh century; in 1011 (in Cordoba) and 1066 (in Granada).

The problem, however, is that Mother Teresa was a Christian; and playing her role required the Muslim actress to wear the crucifix around her neck and read some Biblical verses, thereby incensing Islamists, to the point that they proclaimed her an apostate infidel, through takfir—just as they did with many other artists, most recently, Adel Emam.

Earlier Tork had said that she does not “consider playing such a role as risky, due to the fact that she will be playing the role of a woman who is very religious and lives her life based on religious principals and ethics.” She is now discovering that such “ecumenism” is primarily a Western construct, and that, for many in the Islamic world, a Muslim merely acting the life of a Christian, wearing the cross or quoting the Bible, is a great crime—regardless of the saintly life led by the Christian.

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FP: Michael Coren, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you telling us why you wrote this book.

Coren: The most direct and practical answer is that the publisher, Random House, asked me to do so. The last one, defending Catholicism, had sold more than 50,000 copies, and so a large, secular publishing house had realized what a hunger there was out there for books explaining the Christian position to a mass audience. I wanted to go beyond the Catholic Church, to the attacks on universal Christianity and Christians. There are lots of books about prayer for example – perhaps too many! – but very few that respond to all of the most common attacks on the Christianity. I always take an eclectic approach. So as well as history and theology, I cover science and abortion, the De Vinci Code and biographies of great Christian writers, and so on. It’s supposed to be a handbook of Christian self-defense if you like.

FP: Share with us why and how Christians and Christianity are under attack in our culture. What are some of the lies and myths about Christianity and Christians?

Coren: The book takes on the most common and toxic of the attacks on Christianity: Jesus didn’t exist, Christians oppose progress, are scared of science, they’re obsessed with abortion, they’re racist and supported slavery, Hitler was a Christian, and so on.

But the supportive premise is that Christians are not treated fairly. Take the example of the Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik. After his arrest, it took only hours for the media to label him a Christian. He identified himself, they said, as a “cultural Christian”. Those of who understand religion, however, know that this is shorthand for “only a cultural Christian”. Then we had Breivik’s manifesto. “Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God.”

But none of it mattered. Just as it doesn’t when we’re told that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian – he left the Church when he was a youth, and wrote that, “science is my religion.” The reason that so many in mainstream media are so hysterically eager to call Breivik and McVeigh Christians, or claim that abortionists are regular targets for armed pro-life fanatics is not only that they are opposed to Christianity, but that they are obsessed with relativism.

Commentators take every shape imaginable in their attempts to report Islamic terror as something other than Islamic. Because, they argue, all religions are the same, and all equally capable of producing violent fundamentalism. Yet Christian fundamentalism is extremely rare, and when it does occur leads to rejections of evolution rather than rejections of law and order, and snake rather than dynamite handling. For the media to admit that different religions lead to different assumptions about pluralism and different approaches to human dignity would lead to the invincible conclusion that there is a qualitative distinction and hierarchy. That, to the moral and intellectual relativist, is heresy itself.

The examples of anti-Christian behavior are legion. In the west it takes the form of ejection from the public square and the workplace, legal restrictions, mockery, and abuse. In the developing and Islamic world it is far more serious: persecution, arrest, torture, murder. Objective, secular sources agree that Christians are the most oppressed group in the world right now, and the number and intensity of attacks is staggering. A mere book cannot do very much for the millions of believers who risk life and limb, but it can empower and perhaps even embolden Christians in the west who feel weighed down every time a critical remark is made.

Being a book about Christianity, Heresy is in the forgiving business. But forgiveness does not mean forgetting the truth. We have to be resolute in what is and what isn’t, which is why I’ve taken on the most frequent arguments used against followers of Christ. Some of them are simply ludicrous, the stuff of internet wisdom and website philosophy. The notion that Hitler was a Christian is schoolboy stuff, and profoundly insulting to the Christians who opposed the man and who he in turn slaughtered. Of course there were people calling themselves Christian who were Nazis, but this says nothing at all about Christianity but a great deal about hypocrisy. Nazis were often street thugs, but National Socialism itself was an ideology, replacing Messiah with Fuehrer, Church with party, love with hate, soul with will, protection of the weakest with survival of the fittest. Even a cursory reading of Nazi theorists will reveal the sheer idiocy of the claim.

Similarly with the alleged Christian opposition to science and progress. The Christian Church has in many ways been the hand maiden of science, and the only reason opponents mention Galileo all the time is that he’s about the only scientist who Christianity didn’t always treat properly – mind you, his story is far from the caricature presented by Brecht and his comrades. The same applies to the claim that there is no evidence that Jesus existed, or that The De Vinci Code is credible, or that bad things happening to good people is somehow a difficulty for Christians. This one is especially annoying, because it’s so badly thought out. Not only do bad things happen to good people, but – just as annoying – good things happen to bad ones. But that’s a problem for the atheist, not the believer. We understand that God guaranteed not a good life, but a perfect eternity. The dying child, the cancer-stricken philanthropist is a dilemma for the materialist, not for someone who knows there is an immortal soul and that life does not end in the hospital sick bed.

Neither this nor any of the other atheist talking points that I dismantle in the book are terrors to anybody who know their faith. The problem is that too few Christians do fully understand it, and many of those who do have been cowered into silence if not submission by a culture that imposes uniformity in its purported lust for diversity. There’s irony for you.

FP: A big double standard with how Muslims and the Islamic faith are treated right? How come?

Coren: As I mentioned above, the hypocrisy is overwhelming. A lot of this is the racism of lowered expectations – the liberal elite assume such behavior is typical of black and brown people, and also that it would be ban manners and politically incorrect to judge them. Sickening!

White guilt is a terrible thing to waste. Something that became profoundly clear during the trial of Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed. Although the case was shocking, it was in fact only the most recent of a dozen murders in the last twelve years, most involving Muslim patriarchs killing young girls who wanted to be horribly western by wearing nice clothes, doing nice things. Which brings us to the greater point here, with more long-term consequences than this single repugnant case. The authorities – be they police, politicians, social workers, media – are obsessed with appearing to be non-judgmental when Islam is concerned; partly out of a fear of being accused of Islamaphobia, but also because they genuinely believe that the white, Christian west has more to learn from Islam than the contrary. The Shafia girls had pleaded with their teachers for help, and while front line social workers acknowledged that the situation was potentially disastrous, the concerns evaporated as soon as they reached middle management. So Mohammad Shafia, who had written of his daughters that he hoped “the devil shits on their graves” was, effectively, permitted to commit mass murder.

Yet even months after the Shafia case, commentators are embarrassingly, cringingly, reluctant to link the crime in any way with Islam, and it is described as domestic violence. No! This was not domestic violence but yet another example of an Islamic psychosis that has its epicenter in Pakistan, but extends to most parts of the Islamic heartland, and many in the Muslim diaspora. It’s a self-evident truth that not all Muslims behave so brutally, but it’s also undeniable that Islam teaches that a woman is the property of a father, then a husband. Most fathers and husbands are kind, but if they are not they are empowered by Koranic teaching and the prism of Sharia law to behave pretty much as they like.

While it’s true that honor killings are not exclusively Muslim, Islam is the only faith that boasts textual defense and sacred justification for such grotesque acts. When 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was murdered in 2007 honor killing by her Pakistani father and brother, CAIR Canada told the gullible that, “It’s important not to generalize. There are cases of violence across all faiths and all cultures.” That was rubbish, but worse than Muslim extremists hiding the truth, are non-Muslims embracing lies without question. We saw this during the Parisian riots, when mobs of overwhelmingly Muslim youths beat and torched their way through the city, often screaming “Allahu Akbar.” Yet they were almost never described as being Muslim by the media. So different from when the Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, a freemason who wrote that he had no relationship with God and had not attended a church in fifteen years, was repeatedly defined as a “Christian fundamentalist” on international television.

In the United States, President Obama played this game of obscene hide-and-seek when he dealt with Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist  who killed 13 colleagues and wounded dozens more. Even though Hasan identified himself as a Muslim radical and told friends that it was the duty of a Muslim to wage war against the US Army, Obama refused to refer to the man’s religion.

He has gone further. Under the current administration, and to a degree even under his predecessor, moderate Muslims have been marginalized and almost excluded from the political establishment and halls of power. It’s the racism of lowered expectations. Fundamentalist organizations have convinced white liberals that only activists with beards or burkas are genuine Muslims, and to think otherwise is colonial and patronizing.

In the midst of all the important news stories competing for my attention lately, I found myself distracted the other day by what, at first blush at least, seemed a decidedly trivial one.  Apparently there exists someone by the name of Sean Stone.  He is twenty-seven years old, and is the son of Oliver Stone, the famous film director, writer, and outspoken fan of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and other charismatic totalitarians.  Coincidentally, Sean Stone has also appeared in twelve of his father’s own movies, which means he is obviously an exceedingly talented young actor.

Sean was born with the middle name of Christopher, which means “bearer of Christ.” He has now, however, changed his name to Sean Ali Stone, because he has converted to Islam.  In what seems a nod to family tradition, he did not just convert to Islam, he did it in a country run by the kind of tyrants his dad loves, namely Iran.

Young Sean explains his new faith in good old-fashioned addled-celebrity style.  On the one hand: “I have said a simple prayer, ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his messenger.’”  On the other:

“I am of a Jewish bloodline, a baptized Christian who accepts Christ’s teachings, the Jewish Old Testament and the Holy Koran. I believe there is one God, whether called Allah or Jehovah or whatever you wish to name him. He creates all peoples and religions. I consider myself a Jewish Christian Muslim.” It will be diverting to see how young Mr. Stone’s new Muslim friends will respond to his theological insights.

It is also worth noting that Sean’s conversion, according to him, followed hard upon his reading of the Koran.  He claims to have learned from his study of that volume that “Islam is not a religion of violence any more than Judaism or Christianity is.” He must somehow have missed the many passages in the book that vilify those who, like him, have a “Jewish bloodline.”

This news about Sean Stone caused my mind to wander back a few decades, to a time when the spiritual flirtations of addled showbiz types took rather different directions.  Some readers will be old enough, for example, to remember est (Erhard Seminars Training), which in its 1970s heyday snagged such big names as Cher, Cloris Leachman, Valerie Harper, and Yoko Ono.  Various varieties of Buddhism and Hinduism were also big for a while.  For a brief period, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi famously won the devotion of the Beatles, helping to skyrocket the spiritual master into a higher tax bracket and purportedly inspiring the White Album.  Mia Farrow, who had just married Frank Sinatra, was also hanging around the Maharishi’s ashram at the time, along with Donovan and the Beach Boy’s Mike Love.  (Reportedly the Maharishi made a move on Mia, and you can hardly blame him: what red-blooded guru would pass up a chance to hit on Old Blue Eyes’ wife?)

Then there’s Richard Gere and his decades-long involvement with the Dalai Lama.  As it happens, Oliver Stone also identifies as a Buddhist.  So does another famous Stone, Sharon, who says she’s a Tibetan Buddhist (but is also, curiously, an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church).  Kabbalah studies have also been a big draw, winning such notable adherents as Roseanne Barr, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and, most famously, Madonna.  And need one even mention Scientology, which would almost appear to have been contrived, right down to the last detail, to appeal to a certain kind of Hollywood mindset?

Alex Awad of Bethlehem Bible College

The Evangelical Left is hosting a “Christ at the Checkpoint” jamboree at the birthplace of Jesus Christ to identify the Savior with Palestinian liberation. This anti-Israeli mobilization will include leading evangelicals from the U.S.

“We are not accusing the Israeli military of putting Jesus at a checkpoint,” insists one disingenuous spokesman, who complains that “some” critics will incomprehensibly interpret it that way. “This is a conference about empowering the Palestinian church.” If so, then why is the conference not less provocatively titled?

Palestinian politicians are often accused of speaking sweetly about peace and co-existence in English to Western audiences but far more stridently in Arabic to their own constituency. Perhaps that same spirit afflicts organizers and defenders of Christ at the Checkpoint.

Another spokesman for Christ at the Checkpoint promises it will challenge the “theology of the land” and the “end times” beliefs of pro-Israel Christians, while advocating a “theology of peace.” But will this theology of peace also challenge Islamists and Palestinian nationalists who reject Israel’s existence or any future for Jews or Christians outside of subjugation?

Major U.S. speakers at the March 5-9 Checkpoint event in Bethlehem include evangelist Tony Campolo (former spiritual counselor to Bill Clinton), Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter (board member of National Association of Evangelicals and spiritual counselor to President Obama), Chicago megachurch co-founder Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek Community, and popular religious campus anti-war activist Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way in Philadelphia.

Church of England priest and anti-Israel activist Stephen Sizer will also speak, as will Porter Speakman, Colorado producer of the anti-Israel film for evangelicals “With God on Our Side,” plus Gary Burge of evangelical Wheaton College outside Chicago.  So too will Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action and Chris Seiple of the Institute for Global Engagement, along with Sang-Bok David Kim, chair of the World Evangelical Alliance.

Christ at the Checkpoint’s official purpose is help evangelicals to seek “peace, justice, and reconciliation” by empowering the Palestinian church and exposing the “realities of the injustices in the Palestinian Territories,” while also challenging Christian Zionism.

“Some have accused the conference as being part of a process of demonization of state of Israel,” admitted conference organizer Alex Awad of Bethlehem Bible College, who is also a missionary supported by the United Methodist Church.  “I totally and absolutely reject this accusation,” he declared, insisting Christ at the Checkpoint merely wants Israelis and Palestinians to “live in peace and harmony.”  Awad further clarified: “We are not anti-Semitic, we are not against Jewish people.”  But he admitted:  “There may be some criticism of Israel.”  No doubt!

Awad implored that criticism of Israel not equate with anti-Semitism.  Perhaps this appeal would be more persuasive if Christ at the Checkpoint includes serious criticism of Palestinian authorities and attitudes that persist in denying Israel’s right to exist.  And this event would truly convey its desire for “peace” and “reconciliation” if it condemned not just evangelical and Jewish pro-Israel theologies but also critiqued Islamist theology asserting that conquered Islamic lands may never revert to non-Islamic control.  But don’t hold your breath.  In the mindset of many Christ at the Checkpoint organizers and speakers, a Texas Baptist who believes God still blesses the Jews is more morally culpable for Mideast conflict than a Hamas-supporting Islamist in Nasrallah who believes Allah wants to drive the Jews into the Sea.

Jerusalem deserves more respect than the contemptuous words of a self-hating Jew named Matt Gross, the travel reporter for the New York Times.  His narrow focus ignored the magnificence of the City on the Hill, situated 800 meters above sea level and dominated by biblical hills and towering modern skyscrapers. Likewise, he missed the significance of the human laboratory that is Jerusalem.  The essence of Jerusalem, unbeknownst to Gross, is more than that of a city; it is a symbol of hope for humanity.

In the ancient Old City, surrounded by the Herodian and Ottoman walls, Orthodox Jews bustle about in black long coats co-mingling with priests in black robes and brown-clad monks, as well as with Arab Muslims wearing kaffiyahs on their heads.  Added to the mix, this reporter spotted a nearby mix of mini-skirted Scandinavian girls, Russian, Brazilian, Japanese, Indian, African, British, German, and American tourists, as well as secular and skull-capped Israelis seeking out souvenirs in the narrow alleys of the Arab souk (Arab market).

Just a few yards outside the Jaffa Gate is the newly built Mamila open mall with its chic stores offering clothing, fine jewelry and gift items, as well as art galleries and   restaurants.  At the Aroma, (Israeli chain of café-restaurants with branches in New York) one can witness a heartwarming sight of head covered Arab-Muslim women sitting next to a table with Orthodox Jewish women whose hair is also covered.  At another table, western attired Arabs are arguing loudly in good spirit, while at the next table skull-capped Israeli teenagers are busy talking.  In another corner of the Café, three young Arab-Muslim girls are giggling and exchanging experiences in Arabic.  Secular Israeli Jews can also be seen in this kaleidoscope that makes up Israeli society.  It is a picture of peace, in contrast to the often portrayed scenes of conflict and violence western reporters are so fond of presenting their readers in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Toronto.

Jerusalem is not merely a holy city for Christian pilgrims who come to follow the path of Jesus’  last torturous walk along the Via Delarosa’s Stations of the Cross, the Church of the Holy Sepulchere (Jesus’ burial place) or the Garden Tomb. Nor is Jerusalem’s Kotel, or Western wall (a remnant of the Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE) the only meaningful Jerusalem experience for Jews.  In addition to archaeology and biblical history, Jerusalem is a vibrant mix of culture, entertainment, and natural beauty, aspects of which Mr. Gross did not bother to examine.

The Hebrew University at Givat Ram in central Jerusalem is an outstanding academic institution that offers enriching lectures on a wide range of issues, and its Mount Scopes facility offers a beautiful view of the city.  The city is replete with museums, a biblical zoo, and historical sites, as well as a magnificent Supreme Court building and the Knesset hill.

Malha Mall, built just outside of the city, has become a hub for locals and city folk – a place where Arab and Jewish Jerusalemites come together.  And, in central Jerusalem on the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall one sees tourists, out-of-town Israelis and locals in the restaurants, falafel stands, ice cream parlors, gift stores and the ever present nut shops with mouthwatering pistachios, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, almonds, and more.  The cozy Nahalat Shiv’a, another pedestrian promenade is located nearby and offers tourists the best of Israeli artists in chic galleries, and a variety of foods in its many restaurants.

Over the Christmas holiday, comedian Denis Leary – known for rapid-fire, politically incorrect standup rants – revived a several-years-old three-minute video from his production company by linking to it on the social network Twitter. The animated video, called “Merry F***ing Christmas,” is a parody of the long-running, annual Christmas special featuring Charlie Brown and his “Peanuts” gang.  In the course of it, Leary makes a couple of jokes at Christianity’s expense and even takes a potshot at Scientologist actor Tom Cruise’s well-known contempt for the psychiatric profession. But the primary target of Leary’s Christmas satire is, unusually, Islam.

The grim-visaged Ayatollah Khomeini once famously remarked that there is no humor in Islam. Many of his fundamentalist brethren have made that point abundantly clear by rioting, torching, and murdering – or at the very least threatening to do so – whenever Islam and/or its prophet Mohammed is the butt of a joke, as in the notorious Danish cartoons or the “Mohammed” episode of Comedy Central’s South Park in 2010. And the West has learned its lesson. We have acquired a finely-tuned sensitivity toward Muslim hair-trigger rage and censor ourselves accordingly now. After all, in the multiculturalist West, everyone’s religion, race, sexuality and culture are off-limits from ridicule, except for straight white Christians.

Entertainers are comfortable taking comic jabs at the latter because they know that Christians, renowned for turning the other cheek, are a safe and easy target, and because, inexplicably, that’s what passes for “edgy” among comedians. Witness, for example, HBO’s smug atheist Bill Maher and his recent, uncalled for crudity on openly Christian quarterback Tim Tebow (in all fairness, Maher has contempt for all religions, but he reserves a particular venom for Christianity). Rare is the prominent comedian who is willing to lay into Islam these days, not only because doing so wouldn’t sit well with his or her left-leaning show biz compatriots, but because the not-uncommon Muslim response to being satirized is not cheek-turning but bomb-hurling.

In Leary’s video, a depressed Charlie Brown (here called “Farley Towne”) confesses that he is losing faith in Christianity this holiday season. Trudging downcast through the snow, he happens upon piano prodigy Linus, who says he converted to Islam in prison and recommends that Farley convert as well. Linus shares with him a volume from the popular “Idiots” series of how-to books, this one entitled “Al Qaeda’s Terrorism for Idiots” – except “Terrorism” is scratched out and replaced with “Islam.” On the book’s cover is a bearded, turbaned version of Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy saying, “Die infidels.”

“Farley” converts on the spot, changing his name to “Farley Ahmohammed al-Farouk al-Rashid.” When we next see him, he is bearded and kneeling on a prayer rug, but naturally, because he is the hapless Charlie Brown, he is incorrectly facing away from Mecca. Next, he interrupts the other kids’ preparations for a Christmas play with a bomb in hand. “With this bomb, you infidels will taste Allah’s infinite justice!” Again, because he’s Charlie Brown, the bomb fizzles out and the other kids have a loud laugh at his expense. A bearded Linus appears, but instead of delivering his expected, true-meaning-of-Christmas speech, he announces:

It is the duty of the jihadist to bring terror to the enemy and create one global, Islamic state where there is no music, no alcohol and no Western influences.

It’s a sad commentary on our unwillingness to confront global jihad that a comedian can bluntly and accurately state the goals of Islamic fundamentalists, and yet our own government has banished any mention of Islam from official discourse about national security.

Charlie Brown’s sister Sally responds to Linus’ speech by cooing, “Isn’t he the cutest radical Islamist you’ve ever seen?” Then Linus examines Charlie’s bomb and says, “It just needs a little hate.” The kids work together to beef it up into a nuclear weapon, and when it goes off accidentally, Charlie Brown and Linus wind up roasting in Hell. Charlie rubs his palms together eagerly and asks now for his 72 virgins, but when only 72 duplicates of nerdy, bespectacled Marcie appear, Charlie falls to his knees and asks, “Allah, why hast thou forsaken me?”

To what extent was Egypt’s Maspero massacre, wherein the military literally mowed down Christian Copts protesting the ongoing destruction of their churches, a product of anti-Christian sentiment?

A video of Egypt’s grand mufti,  Sheikh Ali Gomaa (or Gom’a), which began circulating weeks before the massacre, helps elucidate.  While holding that Muslims may coexist with Christians (who, as dhimmis, have rights), Gomaa categorized Christians as kuffar — “infidels” — a word that connotes “enemies,” “evil-doers,” and every bad thing to Muslim ears.

After quoting Quran 5:17, “Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary,” he expounded by saying any association between a human and God (in Arabic, shirk) is the greatest sin: “Whoever thinks the Christ is God, or the Son of God, not symbolically — for we are all sons of God — but attributively, has rejected the faith which God requires for salvation,” thereby becoming an infidel.

Gomaa then offered a hypothetical dialogue between Christians and Muslims to illustrate Islam’s proper position:

Christians: You have the wrong idea about us; we don’t worship the Christ.

Muslims: Okay, fine; we were under the wrong impression — but, by the way: “Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, son of Mary.”

Christians: But these are philosophical matters that we are unable to explain.

Muslims: Okay, fine; God is one—but, by the way: “Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, son of Mary.”

As a graduate of and long-time professor at Al Azhar university and grand mufti of Egypt (a position second in authority only to Sheikh Al Azhar), Ali Gomaa represents mainstream Islam’s — not “radical Islam’s” or “Islamism’s” — position concerning the “other,” in this case, Christians. Regardless, many in the West hail him as a “moderate” — such as this U.S. News article titled “Finding the Voices of Moderate Islam“; Lawrence Wright describes him as “a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam”:

He is the kind of cleric the West longs for, because of his assurances that there is no conflict with democratic rule and no need for theocracy. Gomaa has also become an advocate for Muslim women, who he says should have equal standing with men.

How does one reconcile such sunny characterizations with reality?  The fact is, whenever top Muslim authorities like Gomaa say something that can be made to conform to Western ideals, Westerners jump on it (while of course ignoring their more “extreme” positions).  It is the same with Gomaa’s alma mater, Al Azhar, the “chief center of Islamic and Arabic learning in the world.”

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that academic freedom really did reign on America’s college campuses. I know, it’s difficult to envision, but just for the sake of argument let’s pretend it exists.

So into our little fantasy, let’s introduce a character. Let’s make him one of the most influential young conservative Christians in America, who is also a teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate at Yale. (Ha ha ha! A well-known conservative Christian teaching at Yale! This is one crazy fantasy!)

And let’s say that in a lecture one day, he says the following things:

1. The Bible teaches that Islam is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless.

2. Muslims, therefore, are evil.

3. God says that Muslims are spiritually filthy.

4. The life and property of Muslims hold no value when we are battling them. Here in America, this is not the place and time where we can take their lives and property, but in other places, we can, and at another time, we may do it here, as well. But not here now. Not yet.

Let’s further pretend that we have audio of this teaching, widely available on the internet.

Care to speculate on the reaction from the Left? The mainstream media? Obama?

Well, their heads would probably implode.

However, last I looked, their heads are all still intact. Which means that we have one serious double standard working here. Because leaving behind our pretend scenario and turning to cold hard reality, our young influential conservative cleric at Yale is not a Christian (of course) but a Muslim. And here’s what he has to say:

1. The Koran teaches that Christianity is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless. (He calls it “shirk” or polytheism, misunderstanding the nature of the Trinity)

2. Christians are evil. It’s important to study their teachings to understand evil.

3. Allah calls Christians filthy. People who practice “shirk” (known as “mushrikoun”) are “nejjis” – filthy.

4. The life and property of Christians (mushrikoun) hold no value in the state of jihad. Not here right now, in this country. This is not the time or place. This will be the case when we are in a state of jihad, in an Islamic state, when there is a caliphate.

The teacher in question, one Yasir Qadhi, emphasizes that he doesn’t mean in America – at least not now. Qadhi is described by the New York Times as:

“…a fixture on the New Haven campus. He wore a trim beard and preppy polo shirts, blending in with other graduate students as he lugged an overstuffed backpack into Blue State Coffee for his daily cappuccino. A popular teaching assistant, he exuded a sprightly intensity in class, addressing the undergraduates as ‘dudes.’”

Dude! You’re filthy, repugnant and evil, and a day is soon coming when your iPod and skateboard – and head – are mine. But for now… let’s grab a cappuccino.

Of course, my analogy breaks down with #4, because Jesus Christ certainly does not teach that we are to take the lives or property of non-Christians. Even if we lived in a “Christian” state. Even if our leader was a pope or pastor or Billy Graham. It wouldn’t happen – that’s not what following Jesus is all about. That’s why we can live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize the Bible and our teachings. Our Muslim friends, not so much. Islamists cannot live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize their Koran and teachings. In fact, they’re not happy even if someone on the other side of the world burns one copy of their book. They’re so unhappy, in fact, that innocent people have to die because of it.

Now, which faith tradition are we calling evil, again?

Most of the nation is still celebrating the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the monster behind one of the worst days in American history. Some are relieved bin Laden can no longer aid the jihadist cause; others take pleasure in knowing the suffering he caused us has been partially repaid.

But at least one voice is having none of it. At the Huffington Post, “specialist in transformational change” (whatever that means) Dr. Pamela Gerloff writes that celebrating bin Laden’s death is mentally unhealthy and geopolitically dangerous:

“Celebrating” the killing of any member of our species–for example, by chanting USA! USA! and singing The Star Spangled Banner outside the White House or jubilantly demonstrating in the streets–is a violation of human dignity. Regardless of the perceived degree of “good” or “evil” in any of us, we are all, each of us, human. To celebrate the killing of a life, any life, is a failure to honor life’s inherent sanctity.

Plenty of people will argue that Osama Bin Laden did not respect the sanctity of others’ lives. To that I would ask, “What relevance does that have to our own actions?” One aspect of being human is our ability to choose our own behavior; more specifically, our capacity to return good for evil, love for hate, dignity for indignity. While Osama Bin Laden was widely considered to be the personification of evil, he was nonetheless a human being. A more peaceable response to his killing would be to mourn the many tragedies that led up to his violent death and the thousands of violent deaths that occurred in the attempt to eliminate him from the face of the Earth; and to feel compassion for anyone who, because of their role in the military or government, American or otherwise, has had to play a role in killing another. This kind of compassion can be cultivated, as practitioners of many different spiritual traditions will attest […]

It is hard not to think that some of the impulse to celebrate “justice being done” may also contain a certain pleasure in revenge–not just “closure” but “getting even.” The world is not safer with Osama Bin Laden’s violent demise (threat levels are going up, not down); evil has not been finally removed from the Earth; the War on Terror goes on–so any celebration must be tempered with the sobering fact that much work still needs to be done to establish peace.

There’s a lot to unpack here, most of it awful. But first, for the sake of fairness and decency one fair point must be acknowledged: If we truly recognize the intrinsic worth of all human life, we have to recognize that even the worst among us have souls, warped and polluted though they may be, and be careful not to think casually of any killing—even just and necessary killing, as bin Laden’s death clearly was. Now, I’d be lying if I told you I haven’t found some satisfaction in the confidence that Osama now knows the afterlife isn’t quite what he expected, but I also have to admit those thoughts don’t live up to the standard my Savior has set for me.

So we shouldn’t take pleasure in exacting bloody vengeance, but there is another aspect to the celebration that is entirely appropriate. As I survey the reactions of friends, acquaintances, and pundits, it seems to me bloodlust is not the primary animating force of their celebration. Justice is. People are celebrating the fact that an act of tremendous evil has been punished, ensuring that bin Laden will never again threaten the United States and sending a clear message to our surviving enemies: hurt us, and we’ll find you, no matter where on earth you go, no matter how long it takes. And when we do, you won’t like what comes next.

Celebrating the destruction and punishment of evil is not only a proper impulse in a free society it’s a necessary one. Quite simply, a society that does not strongly embrace and venerate the punishment of evil is a society that is incapable of survival.

Gerloff’s failure to understand this is bad, but it’s not what makes her piece one of the most disgustingly immoral things I’ve read in recent memory. No, that would be the moral equivalence between America and the jihadists who want us dead. “Good” and “evil” are placed in scare quotes. We’re told a better response would be to “feel compassion” for anyone involved in any military or government who “has had to play a role in killing another,” as if a drone strike on a terrorist hideout and detonating yourself in a crowded subway are equally tragic. And then there’s this:

The truth is that “celebrating justice” when one person is killed–as happens regularly in the gang wars of American cities–only incites further desire for revenge, which, from “the other side’s” viewpoint, is usually called “justice.”

Consider this: If a leader in our country were killed in the manner in which Osama Bin Laden was killed, as “justice” for his acts of aggression in the War on Terror–and supporters of that act were shown proudly chanting their country’s name, singing their national anthem, and demonstrating in the streets–Americans would likely feel more sickened than joyful, wouldn’t you think? The impulse to celebrate a death depends on what side you’re on.

It doesn’t matter how little you think of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or any American leader. It doesn’t matter how much you disagree with US military operations in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, or Afghanistan. There is no comparison between any of our leaders or actions and those of al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah. “The other side” might say their cause is justice and ours is revenge, and some might even believe it. But reality is what it is regardless of “viewpoints.” Those who seek to kill and dominate infidels are the bad guys, and the ones trying to stop them are the good guys.

Period.

If the rest of the country were so foolish as to believe that the key to peace with monsters is quashing the celebration of monsters’ deaths, the ensuing suffering would be staggering. However unhealthy the “psychology of revenge” may be, it pales in comparison to the poison that is the neurosis of moral equivalency.

The Left’s sinister love affair with Islam includes a shared  “hatred for … the Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States,” as Dr. Jamie Glazov skillfully exposes in United in Hate. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell fans the flames of this romance with his assault on Glenn Beck’s Christian beliefs. The bleeding-hearted leftist completely ignores Islamic brutality while trashing the real religion of peace, Christianity.

I dare O’Donnell to criticize Koran-believing Muslims the way he does Glenn Beck. 

O’Donnell insists Glenn Beck’s belief in the scriptures is insincere:

Beck…[lies] about being a literal follower of the Bible, which of course calls for death to children who disobey their parents and death to people who do not observe the Sabbath, and, death to adulterers.  No one believes the Bible was right about that anymore, not even Beck.  People like Beck hide from you the passages in the Bible that are clearly wrong, for the most part they get away with that.

“No one believes the Bible was right”?  Would O’Donnell have the guts (or even the desire) to tell a Muslim guest “C’mon, you Muslims don’t still believe in the Koran.”

Mr. Moody Bible Institute deliberately discounts significant facts: although Christians follow the Ten Commandments, guidelines even Hindus and Buddhists agree are morally right, Christians no longer follow Old Testament laws because Christ came to save, not condemn. That’s the reason Christians follow the Gospels of Jesus—they’re not bound to the laws of Moses anymore. Christ died to redeem mankind, not condemn the world, and ushered in an entirely new set of rules, which includes “love your neighbor as yourself.”  If you love your neighbor, you’re not going to stone him to death, even if he happens to work for MSNBC.

Those following Christ’s moral teachings realize Islamic teachings are the opposite of love and life–hate and murder. Leftists want Americans to embrace Islam as the religion of peace despite Koranic evidence proving otherwise:

Koran verse 9:5, the “Verse of the Sword,” demands Muslims:

…kill the Mushrikun {unbelievers} wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush.

Verse 8:39 commands:

And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world].

Verse 9:29 calls Muslims to

Fight against those who believe not in Allah.

Religion of peace?  According to the Koran, O’Donnell must be executed because he is an “unbeliever.” Yet his moral outrage is about Glenn Beck?

This popular post was originally published April 4, 2011.

Editor’s Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the first.

I’ve got a few weighty things on my mind that I’m about to unpack on you. But let’s ease into it gently, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh:

Q: What do God and Barack Obama have in common?

A: Neither has a birth certificate!

Q: What is one difference between Obama and God?

A: Leftists love Obama!

Q: What’s another difference between Obama and God?

A: God doesn’t think he’s Obama!

Heh heh. El Rushbo tells a good joke. And that’s a lighthearted introduction into a heavy topic – a topic that talk show host and nationally-syndicated columnist Dennis Prager opted to take on as the final keynote speaker at this weekend’s David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

God, according to Prager, is in trouble.

Of course, God is not really in trouble. We’re the ones who are really in trouble, because of what we as a society are doing to God. For the purposes of this discussion, it really doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist – the ramifications apply to us all. But Prager thinks he knows why atheism might be more attractive to a lot of people right now, and he outlined a number of reasons.

The first is the evil that people are doing in God’s name. And no, he’s not talking about the Westboro crazies (although they’re definitely in the running for consideration). He’s talking about Islam. Every time someone yells Allahu Akbar as they blow something up, or slit someone’s throat – they’re claiming to act for God. This, no doubt, is a turnoff to many.

What’s perhaps an even greater turnoff is what Prager calls the “pathetic response” to this evil from (mainstream) Judaism and Christianity. The fact that only Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians are consistently speaking out against Islam’s crimes (a good deed for which they are roundly condemned as “Islamophobic”) is indeed a sad commentary on the state of those who claim religious faith in this country.

It’s not enough, as Prager indicated, to condemn religious violence in general – because nobody is slitting anyone’s throat in the name of Jesus Christ, and nobody is yelling “Yay Torah” before blowing themselves up. Evil should be identified and denounced – and most Jews and Christians are doing a terrible job of that. It appears that their God has no teeth.

What passes for faith in most mainstream (liberal) Christian denominations and most of Judaism (outside Orthodox) has become a mushy pablum of warm fuzzy feelings instead of concrete moral standards. One can’t even discuss concepts like sin and hell (which are necessary prerequisites, by the way, for mercy and grace) without being accused of “extremism” and, in a torturous logical twist, of being just like “radical Muslims.”

The lack of critical thinking skills from which these illogical flights of fancy emerge is of course the fault, in part, of our current educational vacuum, but Prager frames it in an interesting way. If a student was homeschooled in a strict Christian home his or her entire life, never allowed to watch television, listen to popular music, read anything other than the Bible, get on the internet, or even leave the house – would you consider them somewhat brainwashed? You might – although of course, I defy you to actually find anyone who has experienced this (despite the fevered imaginations of teacher unions that oppose homeschooling or any type of Christian education).

Now Prager turns this on its head. Keeping in mind the virtually lockstep leftist leanings of popular culture, the media and our educational institutions – if a student went to a secular K-12 school system his or her entire life, absorbed countless hours of secular TV programming, listened to nothing but popular music, read nothing about teen-oriented magazines and books, and went to movies, concerts etc. that were all completely non-religious and non-conservative in nature, would you consider them to be somewhat brainwashed? Because you should – and I guarantee that you can find thousands and probably millions of kids whose lives mirror this set of experiences.

What does this have to do with God? Well, an entire generation has been inoculated against thinking about Him in any kind of serious way. And without an understanding of God, as Prager says, our concepts of good and evil grow blurry indeed, and we get all mixed up, just like the leftists who confuse hating people who fight evil with hating evil.

What’s more, as Prager points out, “When you don’t fight great evil, you fight little evils.” If you can’t be bothered to denounce the decapitation of an Israeli infant by murderous Palestinians, but you get all agitated about someone burning a book (I’m looking at you, Joe Klein, Harry Reid, and Lindsey Graham) – you’re part of this problem. If you’re an animal rights activist who is okay with PETA’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” program, which compares a barbecued hamburger with the gassing and incineration of 6 million humans – well, frankly, words fail me on that one.

But this is the kind of world we humans create when we shut out God. Our country was founded by men who, regardless of their personal relationship to any particular religion, recognized both the existence of a Deity and the moral imperative of aligning oneself with Him. They were not all Christians (although most of them were), but they all believed that the best government would be that system that understood man’s true nature (we are eminently corruptible) and crafted a system of checks and balances in full recognition of that nature.

Today, we still enjoy (some of) the fruit of those wise decisions. When we insist on denying the importance of God in our societal life, as Dennis Prager so eloquently reminded us, we do so at our own peril.

Editor’s Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the second; read the first here.

I have to give props to David Horowitz – his recent Freedom Center weekend featured a significant diversity of thought. A particularly fascinating element was a debate between Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, author of Stealth Jihad, and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander who advocates the “separation of mosque and state.”

The crux of the debate is the million dollar question – are jihad, terrorism and sharia law inextricably linked to Islam itself, or can so-called moderate Muslims embrace American concepts of liberty and justice, independent of the political aspects of Islam?

Jasser, of course, believes that type of separation can indeed happen – that Islam on its own is not inherently violent or hateful. Part and parcel of this perspective is the whole concept of “radical Islam” being some type of extremist outworking of an overall less malevolent Islamic worldview.

Spencer, who unlike Jasser is not a Muslim, argued that anyone who studies the scriptures of Islam must come to the conclusion that so-called radical Islamists are merely acting on the actual tenets of their faith – in other words, that the Islamic worldview is indeed malevolent. And Spencer’s got me convinced that he’s a lot closer to the truth than Jasser.

History teaches that Islam has not always been aggressive, as Jasser pointed out, but Spencer noted that just because Muslims were not powerful enough to wage violent jihad at certain historical moments does not mean that their goal had ever changed.

Jasser also argued that how Muslims perceive Koranic teaching is somewhat affected by their particular imam (or teacher,) the implication being that radical imams produce radical followers. He drew a parallel between that and a Jew or Christian deferring to their rabbi’s or minister’s view of scripture. But the Bible urges followers to test any teacher’s interpretation against the scripture itself – effectively minimizing the danger of a teacher leading people astray. Not to say it hasn’t happened – virtually every cult is birthed by someone twisting the words of scripture – but therein lies the point. Jasser’s analogy falls apart because any “radical minister,” for example, is soon exposed as a teacher of anti-biblical thought. In comparison, the so-called radical imams are teaching a doctrine that is in fact what the Koran says.

Another implication of the argument that Muslims can separate some of the Koran’s teachings from their everyday lives is the idea that Islam simply needs to “grow up” – that it needs to evolve into something more compatible with modern values. An unspoken assumption behind this idea is that Judaism and Christianity have already gone through such an evolution, which is why those belief systems are compatible with Western thought.

This is nonsense. Judaism and Christianity are compatible with Western thought, all right, because Western thought owes much of its lineage – the concepts of individual responsibility, private property, and fallen human nature, among other valuable lessons – in part to Judeo-Christian thinking. But Jasser misunderstands the fundamental nature of both Judaism and Christianity. They have both maintained the same teachings for thousands of years. They have not “evolved” (although they have been bastardized, by some – but that’s a discussion for another day).

So quite frankly it seems kind of insulting to Muslims to imply that, if we just give Islam some more time, it will “grow up” and become a faith we can all learn to love. The only change that can happen and is compatible with our American system of government is when individual Muslims decide that living in liberty and freedom is of higher value to them than fully embracing Islam (which, although he might not characterize it exactly so, is indeed what Jasser has chosen to do).

Regarding sharia law in particular, Jasser says that any system of law that may be said to be “of God” becomes manmade law when humans implement it – but this is a very weak argument that somehow sharia itself can be separated from Islam. In another discussion during the Horowitz event, Jasser indicated that he thought a person could embrace sharia “just for themselves” – but this is illogical. No one can embrace any system of law all by themselves, because systems of law include such things as judgment and punishments. More than one person is required for a legal system.

In defending attacks against the prophet Mohammed, Jasser implied that other faiths look up to men who were flawed, like Abraham. Jasser of course entirely misses the point that neither Judaism nor Christianity hold Abraham to be equivalent to deity, or in any way impervious to criticism. (Nobody gets killed if you draw a picture of him, either.) And the Bible is fairly clear about Abraham’s personal failings. Spencer agreed, however, that calling Mohammed out for his pedophilia does not win over most Muslims.

Dr. Jasser, somewhat poignantly, asked what he was to teach his children if Islam could not be separated from its violent, anti-Western tendencies and political visions of conquering the world. I would argue, with great respect for Dr. Jasser and his noble but misguided mission of trying to fuse his faith with American values – that in fact Islam is not a faith that he wants to pass along to his children.

Other presentations throughout the weekend underscored that reality, as speakers like Andrew McCarthy and Karen Lugo brought home, again and again, the sobering reality of fatwas, terrorism and jihad. Watch the NewsReal Blog site for video of the Enemies Within panel, in particular.

Editor’s Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the first.

I’ve got a few weighty things on my mind that I’m about to unpack on you. But let’s ease into it gently, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh:

Q: What do God and Barack Obama have in common?

A: Neither has a birth certificate!

Q: What is one difference between Obama and God?

A: Leftists love Obama!

Q: What’s another difference between Obama and God?

A: God doesn’t think he’s Obama!

Heh heh. El Rushbo tells a good joke. And that’s a lighthearted introduction into a heavy topic – a topic that talk show host and nationally-syndicated columnist Dennis Prager opted to take on as the final keynote speaker at this weekend’s David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

God, according to Prager, is in trouble.

Of course, God is not really in trouble. We’re the ones who are really in trouble, because of what we as a society are doing to God. For the purposes of this discussion, it really doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist – the ramifications apply to us all. But Prager thinks he knows why atheism might be more attractive to a lot of people right now, and he outlined a number of reasons.

The first is the evil that people are doing in God’s name. And no, he’s not talking about the Westboro crazies (although they’re definitely in the running for consideration). He’s talking about Islam. Every time someone yells Allahu Akbar as they blow something up, or slit someone’s throat – they’re claiming to act for God. This, no doubt, is a turnoff to many.

What’s perhaps an even greater turnoff is what Prager calls the “pathetic response” to this evil from (mainstream) Judaism and Christianity. The fact that only Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians are consistently speaking out against Islam’s crimes (a good deed for which they are roundly condemned as “Islamophobic”) is indeed a sad commentary on the state of those who claim religious faith in this country.

It’s not enough, as Prager indicated, to condemn religious violence in general – because nobody is slitting anyone’s throat in the name of Jesus Christ, and nobody is yelling “Yay Torah” before blowing themselves up. Evil should be identified and denounced – and most Jews and Christians are doing a terrible job of that. It appears that their God has no teeth.

What passes for faith in most mainstream (liberal) Christian denominations and most of Judaism (outside Orthodox) has become a mushy pablum of warm fuzzy feelings instead of concrete moral standards. One can’t even discuss concepts like sin and hell (which are necessary prerequisites, by the way, for mercy and grace) without being accused of “extremism” and, in a torturous logical twist, of being just like “radical Muslims.”

The lack of critical thinking skills from which these illogical flights of fancy emerge is of course the fault, in part, of our current educational vacuum, but Prager frames it in an interesting way. If a student was homeschooled in a strict Christian home his or her entire life, never allowed to watch television, listen to popular music, read anything other than the Bible, get on the internet, or even leave the house – would you consider them somewhat brainwashed? You might – although of course, I defy you to actually find anyone who has experienced this (despite the fevered imaginations of teacher unions that oppose homeschooling or any type of Christian education).

Now Prager turns this on its head. Keeping in mind the virtually lockstep leftist leanings of popular culture, the media and our educational institutions – if a student went to a secular K-12 school system his or her entire life, absorbed countless hours of secular TV programming, listened to nothing but popular music, read nothing about teen-oriented magazines and books, and went to movies, concerts etc. that were all completely non-religious and non-conservative in nature, would you consider them to be somewhat brainwashed? Because you should – and I guarantee that you can find thousands and probably millions of kids whose lives mirror this set of experiences.

What does this have to do with God? Well, an entire generation has been inoculated against thinking about Him in any kind of serious way. And without an understanding of God, as Prager says, our concepts of good and evil grow blurry indeed, and we get all mixed up, just like the leftists who confuse hating people who fight evil with hating evil.

What’s more, as Prager points out, “When you don’t fight great evil, you fight little evils.” If you can’t be bothered to denounce the decapitation of an Israeli infant by murderous Palestinians, but you get all agitated about someone burning a book (I’m looking at you, Joe Klein, Harry Reid, and Lindsey Graham) – you’re part of this problem. If you’re an animal rights activist who is okay with PETA’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” program, which compares a barbecued hamburger with the gassing and incineration of 6 million humans – well, frankly, words fail me on that one.

But this is the kind of world we humans create when we shut out God. Our country was founded by men who, regardless of their personal relationship to any particular religion, recognized both the existence of a Deity and the moral imperative of aligning oneself with Him. They were not all Christians (although most of them were), but they all believed that the best government would be that system that understood man’s true nature (we are eminently corruptible) and crafted a system of checks and balances in full recognition of that nature.

Today, we still enjoy (some of) the fruit of those wise decisions. When we insist on denying the importance of God in our societal life, as Dennis Prager so eloquently reminded us, we do so at our own peril.

As a college student I started studying the Bible and got prideful about my Bible knowledge.  I once told a friend who had a Bible with commentary in it that I disagreed with that he should just throw his Bible in the trash.  That was a horrible thing to say, but now MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell thinks Glenn Beck and really all Christians should throw away their Bibles.  To O’Donnell, only a fool would take Glenn Beck and the Good Gook seriously.

O’Donnell, the broke screenwriter turned hack Democrat political adviser, turned Olbermann low-rating replacement, now thinks he is a master theologian and knows what Scripture should be rejected. O’Donnell has picked a fight with Glenn Beck in order to get some attention for himself. Sadly for him, his hubris has taken him too far.

While Beck is part of the Mormon church, he will often talk about general biblical terms that won’t turn off his evangelical viewers.  One of the areas Beck focuses on is the Christian belief in the end times where things on earth move toward more destruction and natural disasters before Christ returns.  O’Donnell believes this is an area he can attack Beck on.  In an attempt to embarrass the popular Fox News host for talking about end time destruction, O’Donnell ends up trying to destroy the Bible.

This past week O’Donnell shifted from taking shots at Beck and his Mormonism to a full-on assault on core beliefs of orthodox Christianity.  The leftist pundit prides himself in being anti-capitalist, but this past Wednesday he looked more anti-Christian than anything else.

O’Donnell claims twelve years of formal education gives him the right to attack Christianity.  What formal education does he have?  He went to an elementary and secondary school that happened to be Catholic. That’s right, the man thinks going to a Catholic school makes you a theologian. Somehow a liberal arts education in math, English, and science makes you a religious expert if a nun happened to teach the class.  However, the MSNBC host has no scholarly theological or seminary training.

The pundit uses his weak qualifications to attack Christian beliefs and the Bible. You would think he would have limited his attack to Mormon theology (since Beck is a Mormon), but instead of focusing on the views of Joseph Smith, he turns to the traditional teachings of Christianity.

Good and thoughtful Christians do not believe the book of Revelation just as no good and thoughtful Christian literally believes everything in the Bible…Christianity has matured into a selective process where Christians take what makes sense to them in the Old and New Testament and ignore the rest.

O’Donnell argues that the Bible is not trustworthy since the Old Testament is filled with laws (like adultery or breaking the sabbath) that if broken could be punishable by death. And since no one thinks some of those laws should be punishable by death today, that means the Bible is a book that simply has some good advice.  Christians can pick their own truths to follow out of the mess of lies in Scripture.

If O’Donnell had biblical training he would know that the Old Testament has 3 types of laws listed by scholars as: Moral, civil, and ceremonial.  Moral laws are biblical statutes that are for all people for all time.  Ceremonial laws were specifically for Old Testament Jews in keeping certain ancient religious ceremonies.  And civil laws were only for Israel in the Old Testament where they had a theocratic government.  The only kind of Bible laws that applies to Christians are moral laws.

Christians don’t reject those civil and ceremonial laws because they don’t believe them or have matured (as O’Donnell claims), they simply understand their context.  The Bible is not false simply because certain laws were only meant for certain times and certain situations.

Father Lawrence closes his argument claiming that real and good Christianity had to reject most of the Bible in order for it to survive. Of course, O’Donnell must not have studied the last 100 years of church history or he would know that a small and dying breed of Christianity agrees with him, while the Bible-believers Beck is trying to reach are filling rapidly growing churches.

O’Donnell may have gotten himself some temporary attention with picking this fight, but it’s one he can’t win.  Beck has a theology different than many of his viewers, but he is smart enough to focus on the areas on which most can agree.  O’Donnell’s attack on faith is empty and it won’t hurt Beck. No, all it will do is offend the average American. And that’s precisely what MSNBC excels at these days.  In trying to trash Beck and the Bible, MSNBC has shown themselves to be the ones full of garbage.

Can Islamic jihad be resisted simply on the basis of Western secular values? Some readers of my posts on the role of Christianity in resisting Islam have objected that bringing Christianity into the debate only muddies the water. As one reader wrote, “the anti-jihad movement can better be served if blatant theocons stay away.”

A number of important individuals in what might loosely be called the resistance movement do seem to believe that secular values are sufficient to rally citizens to a defense of Western civilization. A good example of this belief is the 2006 manifesto, “Together, facing the new totalitarianism,” which was signed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, and others. The manifesto calls for “resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity, and secular values for all.” The document also speaks of “universal values,” “universal rights,” and “Enlightenment” with a capital “E.”

But how sturdy are Enlightenment values once they are cut off from their Christian roots? Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s own experience provides some perspective. In her autobiography, Infidel, she tells how, after escaping Somalia to the Netherlands, she fell in love with the thinkers of the Enlightenment. At the same time she became an atheist—rejecting not just Islam, but all religions (although she willingly admits that Jews and Christians have a more humane concept of God). Of Holland she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.”

But the problem with substituting Enlightenment humanism for religion jumps out, if not from every page of Infidel, at least from many pages. On the one hand, Holland is “the peak of civilization,” and “no nation in the world is more deeply attached to freedom of expression than the Dutch.” On the other hand, her colleagues keep warning her to keep her thoughts to herself, and in the end, enlightened Holland forces her out of the Netherlands precisely for freely expressing her opinions about Muslim treatment of women. Ironically, Hirsi Ali’s next port of refuge was the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which numbers quite a few traditionalist Christians among its scholars.

Others, such as Oriana Fallaci, Geert Wilders, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff have discovered that “enlightened” but post-Christian Europe is not nearly as friendly to freedom of expression as one might expect to be the case in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an important civilizational advance, but of late it seems to have gone a bit wobbly. Why is that?

One possible answer is that the core Enlightenment values are inextricably tied to Christian values. This view has been put forward most forcefully on the Continent in recent years by Marcello Pera (former President of the Italian Senate, and an agnostic) and by Benedict XVI (not an agnostic). They have argued that the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity organically, as a tree grows from its roots. Cut off from its roots the tree dies.

In this view the rights of man are based on a belief in the importance of man. The belief that ordinary individuals have a value and dignity of their own apart from their membership in a tribe or a society has its origin in the Judeo-Christian declaration that man is made in the image of God. Thus, if you take away God, you take away the foundation of human importance. As Thomas Jefferson undoubtedly discovered while composing the Declaration of Independence, it’s a bit difficult to establish the case for human rights without reference to the Creator.  Purely secular societies can only assume human dignity and human rights as a given. We tend to forget that these concepts are now a given because they were given to the world by Christians. Before Christianity, the idea that all human beings are endowed with intrinsic value was not considered “self-evident,” it was considered ludicrous. Espousing human equality was a good way to get yourself laughed out of polite pagan society. Human dignity may seem self-evident to us now, but that is because the Christian moral view became internalized over the centuries. Gladiatorial combats and slavery didn’t go out of fashion because societies evolved but because people began to see one another in the light of the Christian revelation.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Some seem to think that Enlightenment humanism came out of nowhere, thanks to spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. In this view, Enlightenment values can get along fine on their own without reference to God. But then you’re still faced with explaining how it is that these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those places that might legitimately be called post-Christian. Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America than in post-Christian France or Holland. For that matter, there’s more freedom of speech in Bible-belt America than in your average American university. With their speech codes and “hate speech” rules and their habit of disinviting “controversial” speakers, universities are among the least free institutions in society. And it’s no coincidence that most of them can be described as post-Christian, and in some cases, anti-Christian. There is also, of course, an increasingly anti-Semitic climate on American campuses.

What happened in the universities is essentially what happened in Europe. Both suffered a loss of faith (recall that many prestigious universities began as seminaries or denominational colleges), and in the process of losing their religion both became increasingly uninterested in cultivating or protecting genuine freedoms. Moreover, like post-Christian Europe, the post-Christian university has shown little ability to resist Islamization. Thanks to Saudi money and well-organized Muslim student associations, many universities are beginning to act like apologists for the Wahabbi faith.

Judging by the sorry records of the highly secularized European state and the highly secularized American university, it might not be a good idea to place all your bets on “secular values for all” as the main point of resistance to totalitarian Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves the gratitude of all for calling attention to the abuse of Muslim women, but she’s wrong to think that a rootless Enlightenment is going to bring them liberation. Likewise, we owe a lot to Ibn Warraq for his penetrating critique of Islam, but he’s mistaken to think that the universal values enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights would survive in the thoroughly secularized type of society he seems to favor. If these values are universal and self-evident, why is it that half the world doesn’t subscribe to them? Warraq seems not to have noticed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was composed for the most part by individuals who had grown up in Christian cultures, and had inherited a social conscience that had been formed by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Two of the chief framers, Rene Cassin and Dr. Charles Malik, made no secret of the influence Christian and Jewish beliefs had on their thinking.  In a 1969 speech to the Decalogue Lawyer’s Society, Cassin, a Jew, outlined in detail how Jewish and Christian thought had paved the way for the Declaration.  It’s also telling that while drafting the final version of the Declaration he received advice and encouragement from Cardinal Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII), then the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris. Malik, who later served as President of the UN General Assembly, was a Greek Orthodox philosopher and theologian from Lebanon and the author of numerous commentaries on the Bible and on the early Church Fathers. While making his arguments to the drafting committee he was in the habit of quoting from Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian. Jacques Maritain, the eminent Catholic philosopher was also actively involved in the work of the committee, as well as the UNESCO committee which laid the groundwork for the Declaration. Eleanor Roosevelt, the Chairperson of the drafting committee later observed that the Declaration reflected “the true spirit of Christianity.” In short, although the Declaration of Human Rights makes no mention of God, the fingerprints of a certain religious tradition are all over it.

Western culture—indeed the whole world—owes a lot to the Enlightenment, but it’s important to remember that at crucial historical junctures it was Christian activists working on Christian principles who did most of the heavy lifting. Christian Evangelicals were at the forefront of the movement to abolish the slave trade; the Civil Rights movement was galvanized by the Reverend Martin Luther King and other Christian leaders; the end of Communism in Eastern Europe was brought about in large part by the work of the Catholic Solidarity Movement, of Pope John Paul II, and of numerous priests and pastors in Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and other countries who kept alive the spirit of resistance.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, it might be useful to think in terms of two Enlightenments: the Enlightenment which remained nourished by the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the Enlightenment which cut itself off from God. The former led to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the abolition of slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. The latter led to the French Revolution, to the Reign of Terror, to the suppression of church by state, to Marx and Nietzsche, to Socialism, and Communism, and more recently to the Alice-in-Wonderland world of cultural relativism where human rights are looked upon as relative rather than universal.

It’s unlikely that a pure secularism—even a humanistic, enlightened secularism—can be the foundation for resisting an aggressive Islam. It’s precisely “enlightened” secularism that produced the spiritual and population vacuum in Europe which is now being filled by Islam. John Lennon invited us to imagine “no religion”… “nothing to kill or die for.” In Europe they don’t have to imagine anymore. Having lost their religion, many are discovering that post-Christian values may not, after all, be worth fighting and dying for—all the more so for those who are getting on in years, and are hoping the really bad things won’t happen in their lifetimes. The new motto for many middle –aged Europeans seems to be “Apres moi le dhimmitude.”

Which culture is more likely to protect human rights and freedoms against totalitarian movements? A thoroughly secular culture which has cut itself off from a transcendent reference point? Or a culture imbued with the Judeo-Christian belief that human beings possess an inalienable, God-given dignity? It’s one of those non-academic questions to which the wrong answer might prove fatal. And final exam time is fast approaching.

William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in Front Page Magazine, First Things, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World, and Investor’s Business Daily.

We’ve grown accustomed to video images of ten-year-old boys in Palestinian training camps, dressed like mujahideen and wielding AK-47’s. Luckily, the West knows how to respond to such shows of aggressiveness. For instance, in the last few years “tag” and similar games have been banned from numerous school playgrounds in the U.K. and the U.S. on the grounds that they are “hazardous” and “inappropriate.” So there, take that, you little jihadist!

As it did in the seventh century, Islam is taking on the appearance of an unstoppable masculine force. But in the West the masculine spirit looks more like a ghost. In The Suicide of Reason, Lee Harris puts the matter in stark biological terms: “While we in the West are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin, the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive, and ruthless.”

Sounds like Harris is talking war, but in reality his book is more about cultural conflict than armed conflict. War isn’t necessary if the males of one culture can cow those of another culture into submission. Such intimidation might seem unlikely in the U.S. where the percentage of Muslims in the population is in the vicinity of one percent. Still, very small but determined minorities can sometimes impose their will on much larger majorities. For example, homosexuals make up only two to three percent of the population, yet gay activists have been highly successful in advancing the twin agendas of same-sex marriage and gays in the military. Likewise, thanks to CAIR and other activist groups, Muslims in this country have already begun to wield an outsize influence.

Then, too, there is the conversion factor. Conversions to Islam in the U.S. are hard to track, but as yet there seems to be no flood of conversions. On the other hand, during the first ten years of Muhammad’s ministry, Islam looked like an initial public offering that would go bust. Then, suddenly, Islam’s stock (in terms of conversions) went skyward and continued in that direction for centuries after. In short, conversion rates can accelerate dramatically. At certain tipping points in history, time seems to “speed up” and decades of change are compressed into years. Are we at such a tipping point now?

In line with Harris’ alpha male musings, the one place where conversions to Islam are exploding is in the U.S. prison system. Roughly 80 percent of inmates who find faith during their incarceration choose Islam. That works out to 30,000 conversions per year among federal prisoners. Many of the men are in prison in the first place because they were attracted to the masculine world of gangs. And since Islam is doing a better job of appealing to basic masculine psychology, it seems the logical choice. It’s not for nothing that the progenitor of all current jihadist groups is called “the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Meanwhile, Christianity, which ought to be the rival for the affections of wayward young men, seems to be undergoing a prolonged sexual-identity crisis. There is a serious problem in Christianity today, but it’s the exact opposite of the one the popular media focuses on. To read the papers and certain works of popular fiction you would think that the main problem with Christianity is that it’s too patriarchal: no women in the priesthood, no voice for women, no recognition of the divine feminine.

But the reality is a different matter. Look around you the next time you’re in church, and count the ratio of women to men. Normally, it’s about two-to-one in favor of the women. Moreover, women are much more involved in church activities. The Notre Dame Study of Parish Life showed that 80 to 85 percent of those involved in parish ministries or in teaching religion were women. As one writer put it, “the Roman Catholic Church has a rather rigid division of labor. The men have the priesthood, the women have everything else.” As for Protestants, all the mainline denominations have female priests or pastors, and the Episcopal Church even has a female Presiding Bishop (who prayed to “our mother Jesus” at her installation). About twenty-five percent of Episcopal priests are women, as are about twenty-nine percent of Presbyterian pastors. But this has failed to produce the miracle of renewal that Catholic advocates assure us will follow upon women’s ordination. Instead, mainline congregations have dwindled. As recently as 1960, mainline churches accounted for forty percent of American Protestants. Today it’s about twelve percent. If present trends continue, the mainline churches will end up with an all female clergy, preaching to mostly female congregations in the few remaining churches that haven’t been converted to mosques or condominiums.

Contrary to what liberal Christians think, the feminization of Christianity is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem. Christianity is unattractive to many, not because it is perceived as too masculine, but because it’s perceived as too feminine. Moreover, when you add the gospel of the divine feminine to the fact of lopsided church attendance, the problem only gets worse. Da Vinci Code theology is highly titillating, but it won’t bring the men flocking back to the churches. Men have enough trouble as it is with female spirituality and with sentimentalized hymns and sermons. To think that the notion of Jesus as the first feminist will sit well with them is sheer fantasy. Men are not inclined to take up their daily crosses to follow the androgynous one. If men can be persuaded that the picture of Jesus presented in The Da Vinci Code is the true one, that gives them one more reason to avoid church.

But many Christian leaders still don’t get it. As David Morrow points out in Why Men Hate Going to Church, many of the songs now sung in church “have the same breathless feel as top forty love songs.” In addition, women are now encouraged by some Christian pastors and writers to think of Jesus in frankly romantic terms. Naturally enough, such forms of piety tend to create psychological barriers for men. The idea of Christ as our brother challenges a man to become a better man, but the idea of Christ as boyfriend is challenging in a different sense.

A feminized Christianity may work to attract a certain type of man, but he’s probably not the man you want around when the local Imam starts practicing taqiyya on your congregation. When Islam, history’s most hyper-masculine religion, is experiencing a worldwide revival and is looking to recruit more young men to its ranks, it might not be the best time for the Church to emphasize its feminine side. So, Christians had better address the feminization and emasculation of Christianity in a serious way if they hope to counter the attractions of Islam. Churches that are long on sensitivity and short on manpower might want to lay in a supply of prayer rugs.

Of course, feminization is not just a problem for Christians, but also for the culture as a whole. If Islam is all about submission, Western culture, of late, seems to be all about submissiveness. Each day brings news of some abject accommodation to Islamic law or practices. The latest is the American Academy of Pediatrics’ decision (now apparently reversed) to sanction a less radical form of female genital cutting as a concession to Islamic cultural traditions.

It’s also telling that in Europe, where Christianity exerts much less influence, the submissiveness is more pronounced. So feminization and its attendant emasculation are not problems that are specific to Christianity. Nevertheless, because it’s a large part of American culture, the health of Christianity ought to be of concern to all. Our culture derives much of its strength from its Christian faith, but a Christianity without a strong masculine presence won’t be able to keep young men from defecting to the religion of guns n’ poses. There are a lot of young men in our world who are uncertain whether to follow the sign of the crescent moon or the sign of the cross, but it’s a good bet not many of them will be interested in following the “yield” sign which some contemporary Christians have taken as their emblem.

William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in FrontPage Magazine, First Things, the National Catholic Register, Catholic World Report, World, Jihad Watch, and Investor’s Business Daily.

PBS's Tavis Smiley recently claimed that "every single day in this country" Christians commit terrorist acts. Interviewing the heroic ex-Muslim freedom fighter Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Smiley repeated common leftist dogmas about how Christian terrorists are more numerous and violent than Muslim terrorists, and have committed more terrorist acts inside the U.S. than Muslims have. Smiley's views are silly, but they're also ultimately misleading and dangerous, as they divert attention from the genuine threat from Islamic jihadists and, by sapping our civilizational self-confidence, weaken our ability and will to resist those jihadists.

On the show, Hirsi Ali was speaking about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Islamic jihadist and U.S. Army psychologist who, shouting "Allahu akbar," murdered 13 people at Fort Hood last November; and about Faisal Shahzad, the jihadist with ties to the Pakistani Taliban, who attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square just weeks ago. "Somehow," said Hirsi Ali, "the idea got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter."

Actually, there is no mystery about how they got this idea. The Koran guarantees Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah (9:111). Recruiters for suicide bombings the world over use this verse to promise Muslims troubled by a guilty conscience that they can be free of fears of hell if they kill some infidels and die in the process. But instead of asking Hirsi Ali to elucidate the motivations of such people, Smiley played the moral equivalence card, asserting: "Christians do that every single day in this country."

Hirsi Ali, an atheist, but realistic and clear-eyed enough not to fall for Smiley's moral-equivalence con job, was incredulous, and asked Smiley: "Do they blow people up?"

Smiley plowed doggedly ahead into Rosie ("Radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam") O'Donnell fantasyland: "Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that's what Columbine is -- I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians -- and I happen to be a Christian. That's back to this notion of your idealizing Christianity in my mind, to my read. There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work."

Smiley, like so many others, is ignorant of or indifferent to the key distinction here: that neither the Columbine killers nor any other mass murderer that he could invoke, even if they come from a Christian background, were motivated to kill by Christian texts and teachings. Islamic jihadists, in contrast, invoke Islamic texts and teachings both to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims....

Read it all.

Our SIOA protest against this mosque is on for June 6 at noon, outside Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. Be there!

"Bloomberg defends Ground Zero mosque as freedom-of-faith issue," by David Seifman for the New York Post, May 29 (thanks to Pamela Hall):

In his fiercest defense yet of the mosque proposed near Ground Zero, Mayor Bloomberg declared yesterday that it must be allowed to proceed because the government "shouldn't be in the business of picking" one religion over another.

"I think it's fair to say if somebody was going to try, on that piece of property, to build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming," the mayor said.

"And the fact of the matter is that Muslims have a right to do it, too."...

"What is great about America and particularly New York is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us?" asked the mayor.

"Democracy is stronger than this. You know the ability to practice your religion was one of the real reasons America was founded. And for us to just say no is just, I think, not appropriate is a nice way to phrase it

". . . If you are religious, you do not want the government picking religions, because what do you do the day they don't pick yours?"...

The Department of Homeland Security is trying to deport the son of a Hamas founder who told of his conversion to Christianity and decade of spying for Israel in a New York Times best-seller.

"Son of Hamas" author Mosab Hassan Yousef revealed on a blog hosted by his publisher he is scheduled to appear June 30 before Immigration Judge Rico J. Bartolomei at the DHS Immigration Court in San Diego.

Yousef said the DHS informed him Feb. 23, 2009, he was barred from asylum in the U.S. because there were reasonable grounds for believing he was "a danger to the security of the United States" and "engaged in terrorist activity."

An incredulous Yousef said the U.S. government's belief he is a terrorist is based on a complete misinterpretation of passages of his book in which he describes his work as a counterterrorism agent for the Israeli internal intelligence service Shin Bet.

Yousef said he's not so much worried about himself as he is "outraged" about "a security system that is so primitive and naive that it endangers the lives of countless Americans."

"If Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between a terrorist and a man who spent his life fighting terrorism, how can they protect their own people?" he asked in his blog post.

Yousef said whatever Judge Bartolomei decides will be appealed, "and this insane merry-go-round can go on like that for decades."...