I once took a Middle East archeology course, back when "Muslims" were "Moslems". The professor was a scholar of Egyptology, had directed several digs in North Africa. She was an inspiring lecturer, and somewhere in the middle of the course, she invited her students to do a comparison of the Koran with the Old Testament. I took her up on it, because I wanted a A in the course, but mainly because even a cursory comparison had me laughing out loud. Seems old war-mongering Mohammed lifted, almost verbatum, passages and certainly ideas and tales from the Bible, and old pagan ideas as well. For an "inspired" vision, it was decidedly cheesy.
After awhile (I had no interest in the Koran) I gave it up because the Koran was so transparently riding on the coat-tails of the Bible for any authority. In fact the spiritual well-being of the world hangs on the question of authority: to what or to whom do we give our allegiance? There are, and will be, consequences - both now and after our so-called "death". I know the body dies, but I am not the body. As C.S. Lewis so succinctly put it: "You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
I do not believe I will die, and if so then why am I here on earth, except to remember who I am? Indeed, my one question of any importance is: Who am I? Jesus gave us some clues, and I believe in Jesus's spiritual authority, which was in no way diminished by his "death".
Now, granted, it's been a long time since my amateurish investigation, but now along comes Soeren Kern, who further debunks the Koran, and it's claim on "the one true God" - Allah.
Does it matter? Oh, it matters a great deal. Maybe not to the weak-kneed, kow-towing, European Islam apologists. But it matters to me. It may not matter to God what we call Him, but it is of supreme importance that I get it right. What you do is your affair.
American Thinker
August 23, 2007
Who Is Allah?
By Soeren Kern
Europeans love to mock the salience of religion in American society, but they won't be laughing for very long. The de-Christianization of Europe in the name of "tolerance" is rapidly driving the spiritually shiftless continent into the arms of Islam. And now, amidst the postmodern theological confusion that defines contemporary Europe, even Catholic clergy are jumping on the Islamomania bandwagon.
The latest post-Christian theological spectacle comes to us from the Netherlands (of Ayaan Hirsi Ali fame), where the Roman Catholic Bishop of Breda, Tiny Muskens, says he wants Christians to start calling God "Allah" because he believes such a gesture would promote "rapprochement between Christianity and Islam". Appearing on Dutch television, the 71-year-old cleric said: "Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? ... What does God care what we call him?"
Inquiring minds want to know: If the bishop really thinks the names "God" and "Allah" are interchangeable, why doesn't he ask Muslims to start calling Allah "Yahweh", the biblical name for God? But he won't, because he knows they won't.
Indeed, just because Christianity, Judaism and Islam are called "monotheistic" faiths, it does not follow that Christians, Jews and Muslims pray to the same God. So for those pre-postmoderns who believe that words still mean something, a quick survey of archaeology, history and theology-accompanied by a dose of common sense-can answer the question of whether the Allah of Islam is really the God of the Bible.
What Archaeology Says about Allah
Muslims claim that in pre-Islamic times, "Allah" was the biblical God of the Patriarchs, prophets and apostles. Indeed, the credibility of Islam as a religion stands or falls on its core claim of historical continuity with Judaism and Christianity. No wonder, then, that many Muslims get uppity when the claims of Islam are subjected to the hard science of archaeology.
Because archaeology provides irrefutable evidence that Allah, far from being the biblical God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was actually the pre-Islamic pagan moon-god. Indeed, it is an established archaeological fact that worship of the moon-god was the main religion of the ancient Middle East.
But what about the Arabian Peninsula, where Mohammed (570-632) launched Islam? During the last two centuries, prominent archaeologists have unearthed thousands of inscriptions which prove beyond any doubt that the dominant religion of Arabia during Mohammed's day was the cult of the moon-god.
In fact, for generations before Mohammed was born, the Arabs worshipped some 360 pagan gods housed at a stone temple in Mecca called the Kabah. According to archaeologists, the chief deity of Mecca was the moon-god called al-ilah (meaning the god or the idol), which was shortened to Allah in pre-Islamic times. Pagan Arabs even used Allah in the names they gave themselves: Mohammed's father (Abdallah), for example, had Allah as part of his name.
What History Says about Allah
Historians say that pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped the moon-god by bowing in prayer toward Mecca several times a day. They would also make a pilgrimage to Mecca, run around the Kabah seven times and throw stones at the devil. And they fasted for one month, which began with the appearance of the crescent moon and ended when the crescent moon reappeared.
These same rites form the core of Islam today: Muslims bow in prayer toward Mecca; they make a pilgrimage to Mecca and run around the Kabah seven times; and they still throw stones at the devil. They also observe the fast of Ramadan, which begins and ends with the crescent moon.
Moreover, the ancient symbol of the pagan moon-god, the crescent moon, is the official symbol of Islam; it appears on the flags of Muslim countries, as well as on the tops of mosques and minarets everywhere.
Historians say that Mohammed, who as a traveling trader was exposed to Judaism and Christianity during his visits to different parts of the Middle East, tried to mimic those monotheistic faiths by taking Allah, the main deity within the Arabian pantheon, and making it the only god. Indeed, the basic confession of Islam is not that "Allah is Great" but that "Allah is Greater". Greater than all the other idols, that is.
But Islam also draws from other pagan traditions. For example, the tale of Mohammed's night journey into heaven parallels the Zoroastrian story of Arta Viraf. Zoroastrianism also inspired the Islamic belief that dark-eyed virgins await every man who enters heaven. And the Islamic ritual of praying five times a day? That, historians say, originates with the Sabeans, Syrian pagans who practiced an ecumenical mixture of Babylonian and Hellenic religion.
No surprise, then, that some scholars refer to Islam as monotheistic heathenism.
What Theology Says about Allah
Muslims claim that Islam is Judaism and Christianity reformed. They say the Koran confirms the truth of the Torah and the Gospels. But since those texts did not jibe with Mohammad's beliefs, they accuse Jews and Christians of changing and distorting the original versions. Muslims therefore assert that the Koran "clarifies" the Bible.
Even if that were the case, the Koran and the Bible present ideas about God (especially about His character) that are so diametrically opposed that any reasonable observer would conclude that each book refers to a distinct deity.
The Koran, for example, states unequivocally that Allah is an unknowable and non-personal deity. By contrast, the God of the Bible allows Himself to be known and desires fellowship with human beings on a personal basis. Indeed, the Bible says that Abraham (the same Abraham whom Muslims say they venerate) was the "friend of God."
The Koran also portrays Allah as a vindictive deity who hates sinners and desires to afflict them. But the Bible says God is love.Moreover, the New Testament teaches that God loved humanity so much that He came to earth to pay the debt for man's sin, and that that act of grace is available for free to anyone who believes Jesus Christ is their personal Savior. But Islam denies that Christ was God or that He died in order to save humanity. Indeed, Allah does not provide any way for man to be reconciled to God.
And the theological differences go on and on, so much so that the God of the Bible cannot possibly be the Allah worshipped in Islam. Unless, of course, a Dutch bishop says so.
Allah and Eurabia
Mohammed thought the Jews and Christians of his day would receive him as a prophet. But the Bible says that any new revelation must agree with what is already established in Scripture (Isaiah 8:20). So they rejected his Allah as a false god. And Mohammed replied by setting his Islam on a permanent warpath against Judaism and Christianity that continues to this day.
The Dutch bishop and other Muslim fellow travelers think they can buy a fake peace with Islam by playing relativistic word games as a part of an "inter-faith" dialogue. But Muslims understand much better than do post-modern Europeans that ecumenical appeasement is a symptom of a Judeo-Christian civilization that is weak and dying.
The irony is that the real danger from Islam stems not so much from ordinary Muslims as it does from sickly Europeans who have subverted their Judeo-Christian heritage in search of secular hedonism. Because they live only for the moment, they are willing submit to anything, including Islam, as long as it doesn't interfere with the pursuit of pleasure today.
It has been more than 50 years since the late Christian apologist C.S. Lewis first warned about Western Civilization's disastrous lurch into post-Christianity. But even he would be surprised to see how quickly Islam is filling the religious and cultural vacuum that is post-Christian Europe.
It's not that Europeans haven't been forewarned. It's that they couldn't care less.
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P.S. I got a B in the course. I was looking for meaning, the prof was looking for scholarship. Ah, well. So. Allah is a moon-god? Ho-hum...
Trackbacked to: Woman Honor Thyself, Right Truth, Plank's Constant
Friday, August 31, 2007
Who Is Allah?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Hypocracy That Undermines Civilization
Victor Davis Hanson - His latest thoughts on Iraq, civilization and Mexico's immigration goals in a concise analysis are a timely reminder why Muslims see the West and Mexicans see America as the solution of their own failed cultural and political ideologies.
h/t Real Clear Politics
June 19, 2007
Hypocrisy That Undermines Civilization
By Victor Davis HansonThere is only a thin veneer that separates civilization from man's innate barbarity. Some 2,500 years ago the historian Thucydides once warned us about the irony of revolutionaries and insurrectionists destroying this fragile patina of culture, as if they themselves might be exempt from ever wanting it back again.
Yet no sooner, he warned, have such outsiders torn down the system of law than they are in need of it themselves when they assume power and the responsibility of governance. Even the worst terrorist apparently wants his wife and kids to be safe--and able to drink clean water when turning on the faucet. The trick apparently is to blow up the neighborhood's electric pylon while still finding enough light and power to assemble an IED device.
When the United States toppled Saddam Hussein, a number of Baathists and Sunni militant groups turned to terrorism to thwart a democratic government that would leave them as a minority without their accustomed and inordinate privilege and influence. Suicide bombing, roadside mines, and kidnapping were all welcomed tactics--along with alliances with savage al Qaeda terrorists to torture and behead innocent civilians.
But then radical Islamists in their newfound zones of control began even to butcher their erstwhile Sunni allies in horrific ways. And when they destroyed power, water, and sewer services, suddenly such nihilism seemed a bad idea. Too late--since Sunni Iraq is now a miasma of random killing, open cesspools, and abject lawlessness. Only belatedly have Sunni tribes at last come forward to join Americans and Iraqi government forces to rid Iraq of the primordial al Qaeda terrorists in their midst-- and restore the civil society that they once helped to destroy.
"The Palestinian people will never forgive the Hamas gangs for looting the home of the Palestinian people's great leader, Yasser Arafat," Palestinian authority spokesman Abdel Rahman recently exclaimed. "This crime will remain a stain of disgrace on the forehead of Hamas and its despicable gangs."
For years Fatah and Palestinian authority-sanctioned terrorists themselves have undermined civil society by torturing, murdering, and bombing innocents. It was accepted by them that the laws of civilization--due process, exemption of civilians from attacks, and the rule of law--did not apply to Yasser Arafat's government that was as corrupt as it was savage. If you ever were in need of dialysis after you blew up the local clinic and shot the doctors, you could always cross the border to the nearby Zionist entity for treatment.
But suddenly such Fatah terrorists are being out-terrorized by an even more barbaric Hamas, whose thugs have even looted the Nobel Peace Prize given Arafat. What barbarians! Where is the law?
So now the outgunned Fatah gangsters are suddenly crying about the uncivilized evils of looting, gangs, and random killings. Just as Thucydides warned about insurrectionists destroying civil society, so Fatah once erased civilization's protocols on the presumption that no one else would dare do to them what they routinely did to others. How bizarre that Arafat's followers of all people are reduced to appealing to international norms of decency and legality to avoid their utter destruction in Gaza by Hamas.
Middle Eastern and North African Muslims flock to Europe to enjoy a chance at tolerance and freedom long denied at home. But no sooner have many arrived than they slur their adopted continent as decadent, and chose instead to live by a de facto intolerant code of Sharia Law. Only in a free West do these immigrants have the opportunity of denying the free choice of association and lifestyle to their fellow Muslims. And yet if the West were to adopt their own Middle East nihilism, it would eventually itself devolve into a Libya, Syria, or Egypt. Then disenchanted, but unrepentant Muslim immigrants would desperately search for some new West that they could once again both simultaneously enjoy and destabilize.
Mexico counts on sending almost a million illegal aliens into the United States each year to ensure billions of dollars in remittance from expatriates, a sympathetic Hispanic lobbying presence in the United States, and easy exits for potential dissidents unhappy with Mexico City's failure to provide basic services for its own indigenous people.
To facilitate such massive illegal immigration, Mexican officials hector their American counterparts about our supposed illiberality in not letting millions more stream in unchecked. They have even gone so far as to publish a government comic book instructing their own citizens how to cross the American border safely--and in flagrant violation of our laws.
But Mexico has nearly the same problem with its own 600-mile southern border with Guatemala as we do with our own 1,800-mile common boundary with Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of Central and Southern Americans try to cross into Mexico, either to work as cheap laborers or to make their way eventually into the United States as competitors to illegal aliens from Mexico.
In response, Mexico's policy toward illegal immigrants on its southern border is as brutal as America's is humane. Violators are often summarily deported--if they are not first robbed by Mexican officials or beaten and killed by criminal gangs. Mexicans may lecture Americans about our purported sins in trying to secure our border, but they don't seem to care what their own government does to Guatemalans. Again, the irony arises that a government that has abandoned the rule of international law suddenly is worried that another country may be doing to it what it does to others.
What lies behind this abject hypocrisy of first undermining civilization and then demanding that it reappear in the hour of need?
Double standards depend on demanding from United States and Europe a sort of impossible perfection. When such utopianism is not--and never can be--met, cheap accusations of racism, colonialism, and imperialism follow. Such posturing is intended to con the West into feeling guilty, and, with such self-loathing, granting political concessions, relaxing immigration, or handing over more foreign aid. Left unsaid is that such critics of the West will always ignore their own hypocrisy, and, when convenient, destroy civilized norms while expecting someone else to restore them when needed.
What, then, to do? Stop feeling guilty, apologizing, and trying to rationalize barbarity. Instead insist on the same uniform standards of humane behavior from our critics that they now demand from us.
Finally, remember that there is a reason why millions flood into Europe from the Middle East and to America from Mexico--and not vice versa. There is a reason why Democrats and Republicans don't shoot each other in the streets of Washington, or why blue-state America does not mine red-state highways. And there is a reason why a Shiite mosque in Detroit is safer in the land of the Great Satan than it would be in Muslim Saudi Arabia. It's called civilization--a precious and fragile commodity that is missed even by its destroyers the minute they've done away with it.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Time To Circle The Wagons
I want to bring to your attention the nature of two different battle-fronts in which America is currently embroiled: and some thoughts on how they are inter-related.
One is the threatening encroachment of an Islamic Caliphate, of Muslim intolerance for anything non-Muslim, and their stated goal of world-wide Shari’a Law, which involves converting Dar al-Harb to Dar al-Islam - essentially, rolling up the infidel world like a giant cigar, smoking it, then putting down a new carpet, called Islam, in which the world under Shari’a Law would know peace as Muhammad envisioned. Jews die, Infidels suck hind-tit.
The other battle-front concerns the current administration’s implementation of a pan-global plan to dissolve the borders and the sovereignty of the three countries of the United States, Canada and Mexico; that is, creating a North American Union purporting to achieve dominance on the world stage of commerce and trade.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America was conceived and hatched by the Council on Foreign Relations, long considered to be a sort of shadow-government of the United States. The CFR dates back to 1921 and several successive presidential administrations have been covertly putting this proposal of a New World Order in place. Robert Pastor is currently the chief proponent and author of several books advocating a North American Union; a coalition of corporate-government agencies, conceptually similar to, and competing with the EU, winner-take-all. Whoever has the most marbles when he dies, wins. I guess.
Implementation is by stealth agenda, which is being advanced in an almost identical manner in which the European countries have seen their national sovereignties dissolve. There is no official Congressional participation. This is an end-run around the will of the American people. The global elitists want to run the world, and they don’t want the great unwashed mucking things up with things like “freedom”, and “liberty”, and “sovereignty”.
My introduction to all this insanity came as I began investigating the illegal immigration situation in America. I had no goal; I just wanted to discover the forces behind a seemingly mad immigration policy. When I discovered the SPP/Superhighway plot and it’s logical extension, the North American Union (NAU), I had part of my answer: the Bush administration hasn’t been enforcing current immigrant/border laws because it intends to dissolve the border post-haste. While investigating the desert around the Tucson/Phoenix area, I learned that it has been the residence of choice for Islamic terrorists since the 1980’s, and that the University of Arizona is pandering them. Each time I learned something new, I kept casting my net wider until the larger academic community came into focus.
There I learned from David Horowitz that the Leftists professors have hi-jacked the academic world, and that the NEA is full of secular humanists who are serving at the pleasure of Gramscian philanthropic foundations, such as Rockerfeller and Ford Foundations. It was in the foundations themselves that I saw the inter-connectedness of Socialist/Fascist policies. The Socialists need the Fascists to gather the money up - something which the Socialists themselves have never been able to do. The academic community is subservient to the vast wealth of the tax-free foundations.
The universities have come to rely on their money cows, and are thus beholden to them. So much for academic freedom and diversity of ideas. And our public school system is equally a disaster-by-design. Dumb ‘em down. Keep the parents, even the teachers out of the equation. I personally know of fine teachers who despair at the injustices the board of education hands down.
The Feds now have a tight grip on the educational processes. The Federal “No Child Left Behind” policy is part and parcel of a plot to keep our children bound by the cords of mediocrity. Keep them focused on meaningless testing, rather than educating our children. Thinkers are simply too dangerous, so they teach our children that they don’t need to think. Instead, they are taught what to think. It’s all part of the relative humanist’s plan to destroy family values. Destroy the family and people are so much easier to control. Phyllis Schlafly has written much about this, and about the collusion of the NEA with judicial branch of government. Activist judges. Activist feminist federal judges.
In a 1993 pamphlet to teachers, the NEA had this to say:
“Allegiance to a nation is the biggest stumbling block to the creation of international government. National boundaries and the concept of sovereignty must be abolished. The quickest way to do this is to condition the young to another and broader alliance. Opinion favorable to international government will be developed in the social studies curriculum in the public schools.”
I learned that our children are being taught never to offend anyone’s feelings (unless they are white), that gay is good, feminists need to be in power because men are the root of evil, Christianity sucks, two Mommies, or two daddies are just as good as a mother and father; that the ACLU is their friend in all things(especially decadent, gay sorts of things), and anyone who disagrees with NEA policies will be given further special sensitivity training, since the diversity training they get at the beginning of the year didn’t take. Parents have no say in the education of their children, nor do the teachers. They are left with no choice in the matter. Home school while you can. Oh, and if you are white, you are wrong by default. End of story. I could do a whole rant on this, but I won’t. There be treachery afoot, Gramscian ideas corrupting the liberal view of the world, and ideological intolerance contempt of a moral point of view. So much out of balance, and tilting to the left.
Investigation into school policies also revealed the true intentions of CAIR, which led me to the process of propagation of radical Islam by the Wahhabi Islamists, and the grand scheme of the Islamic Caliphate; and how the Leftist organizations in academia, politics and the MSM are providing the PC cultural climate in which the white, educated, middle-class are the skunks and anyone with a brownish tint to their skin have been granted a de facto Federal most-favored status, because they are or were somehow victims of discrimination. The Muslims have been quick to cash in on that agenda.
As I began to write about what I was discovering, I learned of The 910 Group, shortly after its inception, on the Gates of Vienna. I got hooked up with them, and have continued my investigation into the nefarious doings of organizations such as CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, et al of that stripe.
But the problem of illegal immigration continues to plague me, and my investigation into that reveals a much more sinister plot. When I go after a story, I like to get at the root of it, but damn, the more I pulled at the root of illegal immigration, the worse it got. I have spent the past six weeks digging into this whole “Brave New World” thing. And what I am finding is simply staggering to behold. Even if you discount all the conspiracy theories going around, and I do not discount them - not all of them, anyway - the sheer brazenness, the treacherousness of the pan-global plan to integrate the countries of the United States, Canada and Mexico into a New World Order, with no Congressional oversight, or discussion even - well, let’s just say, it has my full attention.
Our government under George W. Bush has been re-organized with the SPP as a national priority of the highest order, involving DHS, the State Department, the Justice Department, as well as other coordinating agencies doing the bidding of the afore-mentioned. This is not conjecture. Go to Judicial Watch, read. I will post more sources as an update to this post. (see update below)
I see two possibilities in America:
One, we step up, defeat and dismantle the global plan to take over the world, starting with hauling anyone who is involved in the SPP agenda before a Special Congressional Investigation, and uncover the true intent of this current administration regarding this whole sorry affair. Then take the steps to decommission this SPP/NAU project, and indict and convict anyone and everyone found guilty of high crimes and treason. This can all be accomplished by the power of the spoken word.
If we somehow manage to do that, we will have finally taken off our PC gloves, and will be in a position as a nation, to deal with the Leftists, and the Islamists. The Republic government will have prevailed, the will of the people restored. I am hopeful we can achieve victory mainly because the Bush administration has characteristically jumped the gun, and has also grossly under-estimated the will of the American people. Once we get the lid off this thing, the stink will be unbearable.
Two, we allow our country and its citizens to be sacrificed on the alter of the Global Elite Order of Wisdom and Beneficence, aka GREED. Then it’s good-night nurse. Democracy will simple vanish into the night. Our children will inherit a nightmare of unimaginable proportions.
You may not agree with my findings nor share my conclusions. But one thing is certain: America needs you. And the world needs America. The real America, not the rotting politicians and corporations - not the Save The World contingent, either. The world needs to see real Americans stand up and guide our country back to sanity. They need to see that good can triumph over evil. Maybe we all need to see it.
We will only see it, if we fight for it.
Cross-posted at The 910 Group Blog
Trackbacked at Woman Honor Thyself
Update: Here are a few sources on the SPP/NAU:
Council on Foreign Relations
Source Watch
World Net Daily
New American
UNC Dept. of Edu
Stop the SPP
The Eagle Forum Website
