Muslims

Eric Bearse, the former Rick Perry spokesman who is now the official spokesperson for The Response prayer rally, wants to make clear that people of all faiths are welcome to tomorrow’s event. But Perry’s rally is organized by hard-line fundamentalists, and one rally organizer said the participation of non-Christians would be “idolatry of the worst sort.” Many people may not feel welcome based on the fact that the host organization, the American Family Association, wants all immigrants to convert to Christianity and believes non-Christians don’t have First Amendment rights, or because Response endorser C. Peter Wagner promotes the destruction of Catholic, Mormon and non-Christian religious objects and endorser John Hagee has a record of anti-Catholic remarks and once claimed that God sent Hitler to be a Hunter of Jews.

Despite all of this, Bearse told the AFA’s OneNewsNow that if Christians or non-Christian people feel uncomfortable about attending The Response, it’s their own fault:

But Eric Bearse, spokesman for "The Response," assures that non-Christians are welcome to attend the prayer event on Saturday -- and if critics choose not to come, "they're excluding themselves," he says.

Indeed, Bearse thinks that “non-Christians are welcome to attend”…but only if they intend to convert to Christianity. Bearse told the AFA’s American Family Radio back in June that “the message” of The Response is to encourage non-Christians to “seek out the living Christ.”

Bearse: A lot of people want to criticize what we’re doing, as if we’re somehow being exclusive of other faiths. But anyone who comes to this solemn assembly regardless of their faith tradition or background, will feel the love, grace, and warmth of Jesus Christ in that assembly hall, in that arena. And that’s what we want to convey, that there’s acceptance and that there’s love and that there’s hope if people will seek out the living Christ. And that’s the message we want to spread on August 6th.

Banding with the discriminatory American Family Association, advocates of the radical Seven Mountains Dominionism ideology, and a litany of anti-gay zealots and End Times preachers to put on his The Response prayer rally, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is orchestrating an event that rejects both non-Christians and Christians who don’t embrace the organizers’ far-right politics and religious fundamentalism.

Over fifty clergymen from the Houston area are questioning the appropriateness of Perry’s exclusionary prayer rally, which will be held in Houston’s Reliant Stadium this weekend, in a letter organized by the Anti-Defamation League:

One of Houston's greatest strengths is its religious diversity. As part of the Anti-Defamation League's Coalition for Mutual Respect, we are keenly sensitive to the fact that Houstonians may pray differently or not pray at all. We cherish the fact that we can pray freely in our own way, because our founding fathers wisely envisioned and provided for a nation grounded in the principle of separation of church and state. This freedom from government imposed religion allows all religions to flourish in our democratic society. It is with this thought in mind that we express our concern that Governor Rick Perry has called for a full day of exclusionary prayer on August 6, 2011. This religious event is not open to all faiths, as its statement of beliefs does not represent religious diversity.

Governor Perry has a constitutional duty to treat all Texans equally regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. His official involvement with the Response at minimum violates the spirit of that duty. By his actions, Governor Perry is expressing an official message of endorsement of one faith over all others; thereby sending an official message of religious exclusion and preference to all Texans who do not share that faith. We believe our religious freedom is threatened when a government official promotes religion, especially one religion over all others. We urge our elected leaders, who have the privilege of representing us, to practice their own religion as they choose without seeking to impose their beliefs on others or using their official offices to divide citizens along religious lines. They should be role models for all Americans, and can be by honoring and respecting our constitutional freedoms.

In June, the Houston Clergy Council released a statement decrying Perry for organizing the rally with the AFA and rebuffing “Houston’s vibrant and diverse religious landscape”:

We believe in a healthy boundary between church and state. Out of respect for the state, we believe that it should represent all citizens equally and without preference for religious or philosophical tradition. Out of respect for religious communities, we believe that they should foster faithful ways of living without favoring one political party over another. Keeping the church and state separate allows each to thrive and upholds our proud national tradition of empowering citizens to worship freely and vote conscientiously. We are concerned that our governor has crossed the line by organizing and leading a religious event rather than focusing on the people’s business in Austin.

We also express concern that the day of prayer and fasting at Reliant Stadium is not an inclusive event. As clergy leaders in the nation’s fourth largest city, we take pride in Houston’s vibrant and diverse religious landscape. Our religious communities include Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Unitarian Universalists, and many other faith traditions. Our city is also home to committed agnostics and atheists, with whom we share common cause as fellow Houstonians. Houston has long been known as a “live and let live” city, where all are respected and welcomed. It troubles us that the governor’s prayer event is not open to everyone. In the publicized materials, the governor has made it clear that only Christians of a particular kind are welcome to pray in a certain way. We feel that such an exclusive event does not reflect the rich tapestry of our city.

Our deepest concern, however, lies in the fact that funding for this event appears to come from the American Family Association, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The American Family Association and its leadership have a long track record of anti-gay speech and have actively worked to discriminate against the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. The American Family Association and its leadership have also been stridently anti-Muslim, going so far as to question the rights of Muslim Americans to freely organize and practice their faith. We believe it is inappropriate for our governor to organize a religious event funded by a group known for its discriminatory stances.

As religious leaders, we commit to join with all Houstonians in working to make our city a better place. We will lead our communities in prayer, meditation, and spiritual practice. We ask that Rick Perry leave the ministry to us and refocus his energy on the work of governing our state.

During Tuesday’s edition of Focal Point, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer claimed he does not believe in “imposing” his values in the public square.

Come again?

This is the same Bryan Fischer who said that the government should treat gays like drug addicts, ban gays from becoming school teachers, prohibit gays from serving on the Supreme Court or any public office, force immigrants to convert to Christianity, bar Muslims from building houses of worship or serving in government, make the US justice system based on the Bible and stone whales according to Biblical precepts. And that’s not even the half of it.

Fischer: So these principles on which this nation was founded: the sanctity of the family, the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of private property, all of these things are established in the Judeo-Christian tradition and our nation was founded on these principles and are as valid today as they were when they were first given. So we believe that these values should be honored in our public life, not just in the private life, not just in our churches. God did not give his word just for people of faith, this was a word for his creation, the word for men and women created in his image.

We’re not talking about imposing these values, we’re not talking about insisting that other people acknowledge and obey these values, we are simply talking about public policy that honors certain behavior and discourages other behavior.

And we think that’s important, and we think our culture is in some pretty deep trouble right now because we have left our moorings, we’ve lost our way, we are wondering now in sort of this immoral wilderness, this kind of this blindly wondering aimlessly around in this moral abyss and we believe that’s left our nation in a very tenuous and vulnerable and dangerous place.

Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of America, like other anti-Muslim bloggers, now believes that she is the real victims of the deadly terrorist attacks in Norway targeted at progressives for supporting a multicultural society. Geller, who was frequently cited by the right-wing Norway terrorist Anders Breivik, initially claimed that the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslims, as reported by Robert Steinback of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Her first post, at 12:57 p.m. Friday was headlined, “Jihad in Norway?” Mocking her critics, she wrote, “But remember, jihad is not the problem. New York’s 911, London’s 7/7, Madrid’s 3/11, Bali, Mumbai, Beslan, Moscow … is not the problem. ‘Islamophobia’ is the problem. Repeat after me as you bury the dead, ‘Islamophobia is the problem, Islamophobia is the problem.’”

Islamophobia, it turned out, was the problem. The news broke that the attacker was a blue-eyed Norwegian who not only was no jihadist, but was one of Geller’s ardent admirers. Suddenly, in Geller’s view, the suspect was now a lone wolf who represented nothing larger than himself.

In an appearance yesterday on Janet Mefferd’s radio show, Geller said that she is under attack because she is one of “the most effective voices, freedom-loving voices,” and said that she is victim of a “blood libel,” a term which refers to the accusation that Jews steal the blood of Christian children for their religious rituals.

Geller: We must provide some semblance of a counterweight to this über-left, Islamic media machine. I mean look, what the media is doing now, the murder has become beside the point interestingly enough and they are going after the most effective voices, freedom-loving voices. I mean everything that I work towards is the opposite of what this man did; I mean I consistently stood for human rights, for the rule of law, for the dignity of the human person, for free speech, freedom of conscience and the equality of rights of all. There is absolutely no incitement to violence in my work or my colleagues like Robert Spencer, Ibin Warraq, in any of our work, we call for yes, discourse, intellectual discourse and dialogue, and attempting to get our ideas out there. But never do we—this is what we rail against. It’s a blood libel of the worst kind.

• PFAW Right Wing Watch-In Focus: The Right Wing Playbook on Anti-Muslim Extremism.

• TPM: At Allen West-Sponsored Event, Group Paints Thousands Of Muslims As Terrorists.

• Sarah Posner @ Religion Dispatches: Breivik’s Manifesto on Islam vs. “Christendom” as “Demographic Warfare.”

• Bold Faith Type: The Anti-Islam Industry and the Oslo Bombings.

• Think Progress Security: Right-Wing Pundits Jumped To Blame Muslims And ‘Jihadists’ For Norway Attacks.

In today’s column, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer says that after reading Norway terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto, he concluded that Breivik’s “analysis of cultural trends in Europe and the danger created by Islamic immigration and inflitration [sic] is accurate,” adding that he strongly disagrees with Breivik’s violent means even though he agrees with Breivik’s diatribe against progressive politics and cultural diversity. Fischer contends that Breivik is not a Christian but instead should be considered a “jihadist,” writing that his close resemblance to Islamic terrorists shows that he is not a Christian (since apparently, for Fischer, terrorists cannot be Christian):

Much of his analysis of cultural trends in Europe and the danger created by Islamic immigration and inflitration [sic] is accurate. But clear thinking Westerners and every Christian I know believes these problems can be solved through public policy rather than mass murder. Breivik’s angst was caused by the presence of so many Muslims in Norway and Europe, which he correctly observes is leading to “cultural annihilation.’ But he blames their presence not on the Muslims themselves but on the “cultural Marxists” and their obsession with diversity and unrestricted Islamic immigration. So he went after the Marxists rather than the Muslims.

…

He assures his would-be jihadist colleagues, “The cultural factors are more important than your personal relationship with God, Jesus or the holy spirit (sic). Even Odinists can fight with us or by our side as brothers in this fight as long as they accept the founding principles of (the) Knights Templar...So no, you don’t need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage. It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist” (pp. 1360, 1361).

Breivik is counting on the indulgences offered all crusaders by Pope Urban II and Pope Innocent III, which guarantees entrance into heaven, and which is virtually no different than a Muslim’s conviction that killing people in the name of Allah is the only way to guarantee eternal life.

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In sum, he sounds like a Nordic jihadist, much more like the 21st hijacker than anything else. Remember that the 9/11 hijackers partied down the night before they took the lives of 3000 Americans, since martyrdom in the cause was a guarantee of Paradise no matter what scummy things you were involved in even moments before. Take enough infidel dogs with you, entrance guaranteed. Breivik believed the same thing about taking down enough cultural Marxists and their young offspring.

As we learn more about the right-wing terrorist in Norway whose deadly attacks left over ninety people dead, the anti-Muslim blog FrontPageMag led by conservative activist David Horowitz is arguing that the real victims of the attacks are…anti-Muslim bloggers.

Anders Behring Breivik routinely frequented popular anti-Muslim blogs and cited American and European anti-Muslim figures in his “manifesto” against progressives, minorities and “cultural Marxism.”

Mark Tapson of FrontPageMag claims that Breivik’s actions did great damage to the cause of “Christian conservatives and critics of Jihad,” insisting that the progressive movement can’t “contain its collective glee” about the shooter’s far-right views:

Now a new McVeigh has arisen, a symbol that the Left and Islamic supremacists themselves will use to bludgeon Christian conservatives and critics of jihad for the next sixteen years – Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik is in police custody for carrying out what some are calling Norway’s “Oklahoma City,” a reference to McVeigh’s 1995 bombing, of course. Breivik, who claims to have acted alone, set off a massive bomb that devastated an Oslo government building and killed seven, then traveled to a nearby youth camp for hundreds of teen children of Labour Party politicians, where he proceeded to massacre as many as 90 of them with ruthless, methodical gunfire.

…

The Left – including the mainstream media, and stealth jihadists themselves, like the ubiquitous Muslim Brotherhood legacy group CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations – won’t even bother to contain its collective glee over the fact that Breivik is a “right-wing Christian.” The narrative is already being constructed that will use him to tar everyone on the Right, particularly vocal critics of Islamic fundamentalism. This is the same Left that hijacks any and all discussions of Islamic terrorism by jumping up to insist that all Muslims must not be smeared because of the actions of a “tiny minority of extremists,” that not all terrorism is committed by Muslims and not all Muslims are terrorists. Of course, no responsible anti-jihadist has ever made such claims, but the Left never bothers to concede this. By contrast, instead of living by the standards they demand of the Right, Leftists will now be perfectly happy to politicize Breivik’s terrorism and use him to tar everyone on the Right – Christians, conservatives, anti-jihadists, the Tea Party – everyone. And in fact, they have already begun attempting to link the Norway terrorist to Sarah Palin, of all people.

Bruce Thornton of FrontPageMag contends that the terrorist attacks in Norway should not be used to claim that non-Muslims are capable of terrorism, arguing that violence is at the heart of Islam while uncharacteristic of Christianity. He goes on to say that the attacks “expose the bankruptcy of the EU,” although Thornton fails to mention that Norway is not a member of the European Union. He claims that the EU’s “cosmopolitanism” and “multiculturalism” stoked a right-wing reaction, warning that “violence [will] be increasingly regarded as a legitimate response to the EUtopian assaults against national identity and cultural traditions”:

This fact reflects the most obvious fallacy behind the moral equivalence argument: the complete lack of anything remotely resembling a theology of violence in the Bible. Yes, there is plenty of blood and guts in the Old Testament, but as Raymond Ibrahim points out, the references to those battles are “descriptive, not prescriptive,” and reflect history rather than theology. There is nothing in the Bible remotely similar to the numerous commands to wage war against the infidel that can be found in the Koran, the hadiths, the biographies of Mohammed, and 14 centuries of Islamic jurisprudence, commentary, history, and theology.

This reliance on moral equivalence not only obscures the causes of Muslim violence. It also leads to misunderstanding the true significance of European extremism. Rather than the expression of Christian or conservative pathology, acts like the Oslo bombing expose the bankruptcy of the EU utopian dream and its notion that nationalist loyalty and Christian identity are at best passé, at worst an expression of xenophobia or racism. EUtopia has marginalized legitimate nationalist and religious identity and exalted in its place some mythic transnational cosmopolitanism and sentimentalized multiculturalism alien to the lives of most ordinary Europeans. As such it creates the conditions in which extremist, if not neo-fascist varieties of nationalism, can flourish, particularly given the growing problems of marginalized and unassimilated Muslim immigrants.

This is not to suggest that anything is responsible for the Oslo bombing other than the actions of the bomber. But it is important to understand the correct context of those actions. As EUtopia continues to unravel, both economically and as a politico-social ideal, we can expect to see extremist parties in Europe grow larger, and violence be increasingly regarded as a legitimate response to the EUtopian assaults against national identity and cultural traditions.

Mission America’s Linda Harvey is siding with a radical Muslim group in Pakistan who is protesting an LGBT-pride event hosted by the US Embassy in Pakistan. According to the AP, an extreme Islamist political party led a protest with signs declaring “Death to America” and “Americans, we will not allow you to spread your vulgar and ugly civilisation in Pakistan,” with one speaker saying gays and lesbians “should be immediately deported out of Pakistan.” Harvey says she is “on the same side” as the protesters, criticizing the State Department for claiming that LGBT rights are human rights and accused the embassy of celebrating a “deviant lifestyle, something that should be a disgrace to our nation.” Later in her radio show, Harvey chides Secretary Hillary Clinton’s “radically liberal social views” and for inviting Lady Gaga to a concert in Italy, dubbing the State Department an “agent for Lady Gaga.”

Recently there was a rare instance where outspoken Muslims and I were on the same side of an issue. In Pakistan as part of Gay Pride month, US State Department employees, those at the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, held a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride event. Can you imagine? The utter foolishness here is beyond belief. But they got what could’ve been predicted as a reaction, outrage from the local Muslim community. Of course, one is left to wonder if this wasn’t the goal: rebellion and more of the perpetual in-your-face antics of homosexual activism all to stand up for this deviant lifestyle, something that should be a disgrace to our nation.

In a brief statement on the State Department website they justified their actions; they said it was to demonstrate support for “human rights, including LGBT rights in Pakistan at a time when those rights are increasingly under attack from extremists elements throughout Pakistani society.” Well, homosexuality is not a human right, folks. God has already told us about this behavior and it’s always a sin.

You know who probably won't be defending the rights of Muslims to build mosques in their communities or exercise their religious liberties? Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission who announced in a recent email his intention to launch a program tied to the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks that will "stop Islam in America" once and for all:

We have to face the hard reality that unless we act decisively now we are headed for a show down with a more powerful and merciless Islamic foe. We must stop Islam's growth in America because if Muslims get strong enough, history proves what Muslims are going to do. It's our children and grand children that will suffer!

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For Islam to grow Muslims must lie and suppress the truth about the Qur'an and what Mohammad did, perverted things like having sex with a nine-year-old girl. Muslims strategically try to convert kids in poor neighborhoods with broken homes because they are most vulnerable to being radicalized by Islam. Because politically correct public schools refuse to tell the truth about Islam they cause our young people to be susceptible to Muslim indoctrination.

This year is the Tenth Anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. This gives us an incredible opportunity to expose the lies of Islam. That's why we are going to launch our "911 DEFEND OUR STUDENTS CAMPAIGN." We are going to defend our youth by bringing the truth to High Schools closest to the most dangerous Mosques in America. We already have cities requesting that we come and show them how to reach their community, but we can't go unless you send us.

We will peacefully distribute literature to students as they enter their school. Press conferences will be held to explain why radical mosques and negligent schools have forced us to defend our youth. The whole community will have to come to grips with the threat of Islam in their midst. With your help we will destroy Islam's ability to exploit America's next generation with their lies and share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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By the grace of God we will stop Islam in America! We plan to use the lead up to the Tenth Anniversary of September 11 to force America to face the clear and present threat to our youth. Our prayer is this will become an annual event that reaches every high school in America with the truth about Islam on the anniversary of September 11^th.