I do wish that Pope Benedict would tell these swine that heÂ’ll never again apologize for allegedly insulting IslamÂ’s false prophet when he quoted a centuries-old manuscript.

Jordan's powerful Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday demanded Pope Benedict XVI apologize ahead of his Mideast tour for his previous remarks about the Prophet Muhammad that many Muslims interpreted as insulting their faith.

The controversy centers on a speech the pope made in September 2006 about Islam and violence in which he quoted a Medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

"The pope insulted Islam and deeply hurt our feelings back in 2006 and he must apologize now to clear the air with Muslims worldwide," said Brotherhood spokesman Jamil Abu-Bakr. "We expect a written or verbal apology now or right before he visits Jordan."

Excuse me, but given the fact that the Quran is full of blasphemous statements about Jesus Christ. It claims that Jesus was not the Son of God, was not crucified, and did not rise from the dead. It further claims that Jesus was a Muslim. None of this is true, and in the eyes of any true Christian constitutes blasphemy. Add to that multiple other insulting and blasphemous teachings (from a Christian perspective) that are part and parcel of Islam, and the allegedly insulting comment of the Pope ranks as nothing.

Apologize? Never! Call Muslims to repentance and conversion to Christianity? ThatÂ’s the ticket.

Posted by: Greg at 10:08 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This has been simmering in my mind for a couple of days now.

I don't know why it has stuck with me so long and so intensely.

Sunday, I went to church like always. But this time I found myself seated near someone I usually don't sit near, a NASA doctor and his family. They are really great people, and I have always liked them enough.

So, why am I noting this, days later.

It is what happened when it came time for the reading of scripture and the sermon.

Our pastor announced the Gospel reading, and they all immediately whipped out -- their iPhones!

I was shocked. Could they really be getting ready to text during the sermon?

And then I caught a glimpse of the screen of one of the phones as they scrolled down. It was, much to my surprise, the Easter story from the Gospel of John!

I guess technology is changing everything. Now you don't even need your Bible at church -- just your phone.

Any reactions?

Posted by: Greg at 10:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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AllahPundit shares the following at HotAir.

“A Catholic German bishop has come under fire for his remarks condemning atheists. In a sermon given on Easter Sunday, the bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, warned of rising atheism in Germany. ‘Wherever God is denied or fought against, there people and their dignity will soon be denied and held in disregard,’ he said in the sermon. He also said that ‘a society without God is hell on earth’ and quoted the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: ‘If God does not exist, everything is permitted.’

Most controversially, he linked the Nazi and Communist crimes to atheism. ‘In the last century, the godless regimes of Nazism and Communism, with their penal camps, their secret police and their mass murder, proved in a terrible way the inhumanity of atheism in practice.’ Christians and the Church were always the subject of ’special persecution’ under these systems, he said.”

This strikes me as pretty non-controversial. A bishop objecting to non-belief? And daring to note that there really is no objective morality absent the recognition of the existence of God? And as for daring to point out that it was the atheistic regimes of left-wing ideologies like Communism and Nazism that proved the essential bankruptcy of state-sponsored rejection of Godly values – the truth is in the numbers. I suppose the controversy is not over whether or not Bishop Mixa is right or wrong, but rather over his having had the audacity to speak the truth to a world that does not wish to hear it.

Posted by: Greg at 11:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Imagine this situation.

Your wife has brutally tortured a two-year-old family member to death.

You respond in outrage to the press.

Not because your wife is a psycho killer.

Because the cops dared take her mug shot without her hijab and then released it to the press.

The police booking photo of alleged child killer Nour Hadid released Tuesday is an "insult against our religion," says Hadid's husband, Alaeddin.

The Hadids are Muslims and Nour "never leaves the home without covering up," said Alaeddin, who's vowed to sue.

By custom, some practicing Muslim women wear the hijab, or headscarf, and cover their arms and legs when in public.

In the mug shot, a bare-headed and obviously emotional Nour appears to be protecting her modesty with her hands.

"It is against our religion; we do not do this in our culture," Alaeddin said.

Dude, get your priorities in order and direct your outrage where it belongs. You know, towards your wife -- or is it not against your religion and culture to torture toddlers to death?

Posted by: Greg at 01:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yep, Religion of Peace and all that stuff.

International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that Noor Husain, the father of a Muslim woman who eloped with a Christian man, led a mob of his neighbors and friends in an attack on his village's only church in Pakistan's Punjab province. After desecrating the church, the men forced their way into Christian homes, dragged out the women, and paraded them forcefully on the streets.

The assault, which occurred several months ago, so terrified the Christian community that 21 families fled, leaving only four Christian families who are still in the village.

"Petrified Christians locked their homes and fled to their relatives, living in other villages and cities, to save their lives," said Ashraf Masih, a Christian resident who has remained in the village.

Several Christians were injured, including two women whose teeth were broken.

I don’t think there is really much to add to this story, do you? After all, what we have here is a pogrom against a religious minority because a Muslim woman dared to exercise her free will by marrying a Christian. Such things are all too common in the Islamic world – but not in civilized nations.

H/T Gateway Pundit

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That whole death thing is such a distracting bummer – and the resurrection is a bunch of crap that distracts from the really important stuff. At least that is the argument of Erik Reece, a guest writer for the Washington Post, who goes even further in urging that Christians reject faith for a radical social agenda instead.

The fact is, American Christianity has historically been focused so obsessively on the Nicene Creed -- which says Jesus was the son of God, who was crucified for our sins and rose from the grave three days later -- that it never made much room for the actual teachings of this radical Jewish street preacher.

This is why I'm against Easter. It celebrates the death of Jesus nearly to the exclusion of his life. If the Easter miracle can save us from this life, then why bother with the harder work of enacting the kingdom of God here? It is, after all, much harder.

Which brings me back to that word faith. I believe it plays such a disproportionate role in mainstream American Christianity, be it in the rock and roll mega-churches or the humbler places were I worshipped as a child, because it is a belief in what one cannot see. But that belief -- that faith in a salvational Christ -- is what will guarantee everlasting life. But when such faith is lost, as in my case, what am I left with?
I'm left with the teachings of Jesus -- words so radical, they got him killed, words so radical, they might still bring about the end of empire and the beginning of the kingdom of God.

Of course, Reece ignores a central problem with his thesis. If, indeed, the resurrection did not happen and Jesus was merely a radical preacher who got killed for his trouble, who cares what he said? Absent the Gospel message of the birth, death, and resurrection of the Word Made Flesh, there really isn’t any “there” there. Jesus then becomes but one more exponent of a radical utopianism who was scorned and rejected by the establishment of his day. – and what makes his words any more worth following than those of Buddha, Marx, or L. Ron Hubbard? Indeed, it is only the great miracle celebrated by Christians the world over that gives the obscure preacher from Nazareth an eternal significance that makes him and his words worthy of veneration two millennia after those events.

My question – why would the Washington Post pick this time of the year for this message? What other religion would the paper seek to denigrate and deny during its holiest season? Indeed, isn’t the decision a telling one about the bias of the paper and its religion editors, Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn?

Posted by: Greg at 12:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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There might be some real violence and persecution of the BahaÂ’is then.

Dozens of Muslim villagers have attacked the homes of members of the minority Baha'i religion in southern Egypt, hurling firebombs and denouncing them as "enemies of God," human rights groups said Thursday.
The attacks began Saturday after a prominent Egyptian media commentator denounced a Baha'i activist in a television appearance as an "apostate" and called for her to be killed.

The Baha'i religion was founded in the 1860s by a Persian nobleman, Baha'u'llah, whom the faithful regard as the most recent in a line of prophets that included Buddha, Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad. Muslims reject the faith because they believe Muhammad was God's final prophet, and Baha'is have been persecuted in the Middle East.

Not only that, but the good peaceful Muslim police didn’t want to interfere with all the good peaceful Muslims who were attacking religious minorities. After all, the Baha’is are heretics and apostates in the eyes of good peaceful Muslims – and such folks really do bring such violence upon themselves in the eyes of good peaceful Muslims.

Could you imagine what would have happened, though, if Islam were not a religion that respects religious freedom and urges peaceful behavior in its followers?

Posted by: Greg at 03:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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