Category: moslems & jihadis

As Times Square Machete Attacker Pleads Guilty, Authorities Still Refuse to Face His Motive

When Trevor Bickford was 19 years old, on Dec. 31, 2022, he ventured to Times Square along with multitudes of New Year’s Eve revelers, but he was not interested in joining the festivities. Instead, he attacked three NYPD officers with a machete. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to three charges of attempted murder, and while his motive is abundantly clear, authorities appear to be completely indifferent about what its implications are for the future.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Bickford, who came down to Times Square from his home in Wells, Maine, said this as he entered his guilty plea: “On Dec. 31, 2022, I attempted to kill three NYPD officers with a knife while they were working in Manhattan. I know what I did was wrong and I’m sorry.” That’s swell, but it would have been more helpful if young Bickford had explained why exactly he was sorry now for an act that he carried out in accord with his newfound beliefs and ideology.

AP added that Bickford “shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ — the Arabic phrase for God is great — before striking the officers in the head with the machete and trying to grab an officer’s gun, authorities said. One officer suffered a fractured skull.”

AP’s explanation was inaccurate: While most media outlets routinely translate “Allahu akbar” as “God is great,” it actually means “Allah is greater.” That is, the god of Islam is superior to anything that non-Muslims worship or hold dear. This declaration of superiority frequently accompanies acts that are designed to enforce the subjugation and submission of the non-believer or “infidel,” amounting to a kind of explanation of why a particular act of violence is being perpetrated.

It was unusually forthright of this far-left news service to bother to mention the politically incorrect fact that Bickford shouted this at all. AP even went so far as to add that “authorities say he had studied radical Islamic ideology and decided to wage jihad against U.S. officials.”

Yet while AP was unusually forthright about Bickford’s motive, Bickford himself may have been trying to obscure it: “At the outset of the hearing,” AP tells us, “Bickford said he was taking three medications for treatment of schizoaffective disorder.” In Europe, it is extremely common for clear cases of jihad violence to be dismissed as mental illness, with the perpetrators hospitalized rather than imprisoned.

There was no doubt, however, when Bickford was arrested. He had a handwritten note in his backpack, asking his family to “please repent to Allah and accept Islam.” To his mother, Bickford wrote: “I fear greatly that you will not repent to Allah. And therefore I hold hope in my heart that a piece of you believes so that you may be taken out to [sic] the hellfire.” To his brother, he likewise wrote: “Please repent to Allah and accept Islam. I fear for you.” To another brother in the Marines, he added: “You have joined the ranks of my enemy. And for that I can give you no kind words – return to Allah.”

As Bickford pleaded guilty, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Kushner said that there was “‘no doubt’ that he attacked the officers because they were military-age men….She said Bickford had intended to kill ‘as many as possible’ of the men in uniform that he came across.” She added that he had “originally intended to go overseas and fight alongside terrorists there but eventually decided to carry out an attack in the United States instead. She said he told investigators that he had walked around Times Square before the attack, ‘trying to figure out the right time to kill.’”

The big question that remains is where Trevor Bickford, who converted to Islam not long before his machete attack, learned all this. Was it at a mosque? Was it from Muslims in his area? Authorities should study carefully what they are almost certainly ignoring, such as the questions of how and where this young man converted to Islam, and how he got the idea that his new religion, which non-Muslim authorities all over the Western world assure us is completely peaceful and tolerant, commanded him to consider non-Muslims enemies and violently attack them.

These questions are never asked, much less answered, despite the fact that converts to Islam turning to jihad violence is a distressingly common phenomenon. American intelligence and law enforcement officials don’t want to do anything to give the impression that they don’t accept the dogma that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. The fact that converts to Islam such as Trevor Bickford have somehow gotten exactly the opposite idea doesn’t ever make authorities pause and reflect upon their core assumptions.

Israeli Airstrike Kills Senior Hezbollah Commander in Lebanon

According to Hezbollah officials in a statement on Telegram, an Israeli drone strike killed a top Hezbollah military commander on Monday morning near the town of Khirbet Selem in southern Lebanon. In their statement, Hezbollah named Wissam Hassan Tawil, known as “Al-Haj Jawad,” as the terrorist who was killed in the airstrike. Tawil was a commander of a unit in the Hezbollah forces called “Radwan,” which is an alleged special forces unit in the Hezbollah military. A state-run Lebanese news outlet named National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone strike killed two unnamed individuals in a vehicle.

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US strike kills militia leader blamed for Iraq attacks, Pentagon says

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. military launched a retaliatory strike in Baghdad on Thursday that killed a militia leader it blames for recent attacks on U.S. personnel, the Pentagon said, a move condemned by Iraq’s government.

The U.S. strike took place at about 0900 GMT and targeted Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al Jawari, the Pentagon said, adding he was a leader of Harakat al Nujaba who was involved in planning and carrying out attacks against American personnel.

“The strike also killed one other Harakat al Nujaba member,” said Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, describing it as a self-defense strike. “No civilians were harmed. No infrastructure or facilities were struck.”

Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October the U.S. military has come under attack at least 100 times in Iraq and Syria, usually with a mix of rockets and one-way attack drones.

The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in neighbouring Syria focused on preventing a resurgence of Islamic State militants.

Iraqi police sources and witnesses had earlier said a drone fired at least two rockets at the headquarters in eastern Baghdad of the Nujaba militia group.

Police and militia sources said the rockets hit a vehicle in the compound and killed four people, including a militia commander and one of his aides. Health sources confirmed the death toll.

Video published by pro-militia websites showed a destroyed vehicle in flames. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.

Iran-aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria oppose Israel’s campaign in Gaza and hold the U.S. partly responsible.

In a statement, the military spokesperson for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani denounced the strike on the group, calling it an “unjustified attack on an Iraqi security entity” that was operating with Sudani’s authorisation.

Sudani has limited control over some Iran-backed factions, whose support he needed to win power a year ago and who now form a powerful bloc in his governing coalition.

Asked whether the U.S. military struck a member of Iraq’s security forces, Ryder said the individual targeted was a leader of an Iranian proxy group responsible for attacks against U.S. personnel.

Iraq slams US after strikes on Iran-aligned forces
Iraqi militia commanders vowed to take revenge for Thursday’s strike.

“We will retaliate and make the Americans regret carrying out this aggression,” Abu Aqeel al-Moussawi, a local Iraqi militia commander, said.

Last month, the United States carried out retaliatory air strikes in Iraq after a drone attack by Iran-aligned militants that left one U.S. service member in critical condition and wounded two others.

A STERN WARNING

The Houthi terrorist group is an Iranian proxy that Iran has found increasingly useful. The Houthis have attacked American assets stationed in their vicinity at will and disrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea. American forces sunk three Houthi boats attacking a commercial freighter this past Sunday.

The Biden administration has politely warned the Houthis to knock it off. Going a step further, the Biden administration has organized Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a multinational naval task force to protect commercial ships in both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden,” according to the recent New York Times story.

And yet the Houthis persist. Yesterday the Houthis claimed responsibility for the latest attack on a merchant ship in the Red Sea, as the vessel’s operator sharply raised prices between Asia and Europe. The Times of Israel reports that story here (with credit to AFP).

It’s come to this: A Joint Statement from the Governments of the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. This is the statement in its entirety as posted by the White House:

Recognizing the broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023, as well as the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea, and in light of ongoing attacks, including a significant escalation over the past week targeting commercial vessels, with missiles, small boats, and attempted hijackings,

We hereby reiterate the following and warn the Houthis against further attacks:

Ongoing Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are illegal, unacceptable, and profoundly destabilizing. There is no lawful justification for intentionally targeting civilian shipping and naval vessels. Attacks on vessels, including commercial vessels, using unmanned aerial vehicles, small boats, and missiles, including the first use of anti-ship ballistic missiles against such vessels, are a direct threat to the freedom of navigation that serves as the bedrock of global trade in one of the world’s most critical waterways.

These attacks threaten innocent lives from all over the world and constitute a significant international problem that demands collective action. Nearly 15 percent of global seaborne trade passes through the Red Sea, including 8 percent of global grain trade, 12 percent of seaborne-traded oil and 8 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas trade. International shipping companies continue to reroute their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding significant cost and weeks of delay to the delivery of goods, and ultimately jeopardizing the movement of critical food, fuel, and humanitarian assistance throughout the world.

Let our message now be clear: we call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews. The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways. We remain committed to the international rules-based order and are determined to hold malign actors accountable for unlawful seizures and attacks.

I wish Henry Kissinger were available for comment. I’m quite sure this is not how he did these things. Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that a rhetorical escalation will produce the desired deterrent effect, but that is only a guess. We shall see.

Israeli drone kills deputy Hamas chief in Beirut

BEIRUT, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Deputy Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri was killed on Tuesday night in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, a stronghold of the allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, three security sources told Reuters.

In response to questions from Reuters, the Israeli military said it does not respond to reports in the foreign media.

Lebanon’s national news agency said six people were killed when the drone struck a Hamas office. Two security sources said the strike had targeted a meeting and that another Palestinian militant commander was among them, but there were no details on the additional four casualties.

Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC that Israel had not taken responsibility for this attack, but “whoever did it, it must be clear: That this was not an attack on the Lebanese state.”

“Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” Regev said in the interview.

Arouri was deputy head of Hamas’s politburo and a founder of its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, which carried out a deadly assault in Israeli territory on Oct. 7.

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Notice, ‘locally made submachineguns’

4 Terrorists Killed in Samaria Gunfight; IDF Soldier Wounded

Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed four Palestinian terrorists during a raid overnight Monday in the village of Azzun, near Qalqilya in Samaria.

Troops from the 8211th Reserves Battalion were shot at from a house in the village and returned fire, eliminating the terrorists, according to the IDF.

One Israeli soldier was moderately wounded during the gun battle.

Following the exchange, troops confiscated three locally made submachine guns from the home.

In other raids across Judea and Samaria, Israeli troops arrested seven wanted terror suspects and confiscated weapons.

Since the start of the war against Hamas on Oct. 7, 2,550 wanted individuals have been arrested throughout Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, including 1,300 Hamas members.

The operations come amid unrelenting Palestinian attacks in the territories.

Two Israelis were wounded Sunday in a stabbing attack at the Mishor Adumim industrial zone, located east of Jerusalem in Judea.

Magen David Adom paramedics treated the victims, both security guards, at the scene before evacuating them, fully conscious and in stable condition, to the capital’s Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus.

MDA said one of the victims, a 24-year-old woman, was in good-to-moderate condition, while the other, a man in his 20s, sustained minor wounds in the attack.

A day earlier, an Israel Defense Forces soldier was seriously injured in a vehicular assault near the al-Fawwar camp, located south of Hebron in Judea.

The victim, a reserve soldier from the IDF’s 7018th Battalion, was treated on the scene before being evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva.

That attack took place close to where five Israeli soldiers were injured, including one seriously, in a similar car-ramming Friday.

BLUF
A number of commentators have written that the Israelis must not seek revenge for the atrocities of October 7. I don’t understand that. They absolutely should wreak vengeance on the Gazans. (“Everyone over there is a terrorist,” as one retrieved hostage says.) In my opinion, Israelis have a moral duty to avenge the Gazans’ atrocities. Happily, they seem to be well  on their way to doing so..

WHAT HAPPENED ON OCTOBER 7

I am generally contemptuous of the New York Times, but it deserves credit for this article on the violence against Israeli women and girls that was perpetrated by Gaza on October 7. The article is long and chilling. Organized gang rape, mutilation and murder were obviously features of the Gazans’ strategy. The evidence described by the Times is sickening; I credit a left-wing outlet for being willing to describe unflinchingly what Hamas’s supporters did.

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I have never ‘got’ the affectation of getting one’s body tattooed , but whatever….

I GUESS SHE DIDN’T MEET ANY ‘INNOCENT CIVILIANS’ DURING HER TIME IN GAZA- Sara Hoyt

Freed Israeli hostage Mia Schem ‘went through holocaust’ in Hamas captivity in Gaza: ‘Everyone over there is a terrorist’.

How the Byzantines Saved Civilization.

There was a book a few years ago entitled “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” explaining how Irish monks preserved ancient manuscripts that became the basis for much of Western thought. To give credit where credit is due, however, it must also be acknowledged that when the classic works of ancient Greek thought that form the basis of Western philosophy, political thought, and even literature had vanished almost completely from Western Europe, they were brought there not just from Ireland, but from a place that many assume had vanished from the earth long before: the Roman Empire.

If schoolchildren today pause from their lessons in Critical Race Theory and gender fantasies to learn anything about history at all, they likely learn that the Roman Empire, which at its height comprised much of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, fell in the year 476 AD, when the Gothic chieftain Odoacer deposed the figurehead child emperor Romulus Augustulus. In fact, however, Odoacer immediately pledged his fealty to the Roman Emperor Zeno in Constantinople.

Two Roman emperors? Yes. Zeno was just as much emperor of the Romans as Romulus. The empire had in the third century been considered too large to be governed by one man, and so two capitals were established, Rome and Constantinople (“New Rome”), with two emperors. The empire centered in Constantinople considered itself, and was thought of by the world, as the Roman Empire just as much as the empire centered in Rome. It only came to be called the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire after it had fallen altogether; throughout its lifetime, its people thought of themselves solely as Romans

That lifetime was a long one. The Roman Empire in Constantinople lasted until 1453, when it finally succumbed to the Islamic jihadis who had been trying to destroy it for nearly eight hundred years. Besides bringing Plato and Socrates and others West, that is a second way in which the Romans (that is, the Byzantines, but if you’re confused on this point, go back and read the previous paragraph again) saved civilization. If they had not stood as a bulwark between Western Europe and Islam for all those centuries, the jihadis would certainly have swept over all of Europe, and the civilization that gave the world ideas that are now widely considered to be universal truths, such as the dignity of the human person, the equality of rights of all people before the law, the freedom of speech and more, would never have arisen.

The Byzantines, that is, Romans, saved civilization in numerous other ways as well. The jihadis against whom they were standing firm thought of representational art as idolatrous and blasphemous. In Constantinople and its empire, however, representational art, that is, art depicting actual people, in the form of religious icons was central to the practice of Christianity, the official religion of the empire. Some, however, under the influence of Islam that pressed against the empire so persistently, began to insist that the icons were indeed idolatrous, and had to be destroyed in order to turn away the divine wrath. The assumption was that God was blessing the warriors of Islam, and turning away from the Byzantines, because of his divine anger over representational art.

It took an ecumenical council of the Church (the Second Council of Nicaea in 787) and decades of controversy to settle the issue, but ultimately art depicting human beings was approved. This became the basis for a flowering of representational art in Western Europe, culminating in the magnificent works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and so very many others. Had the council ruled the other way, those works would never have been commissioned, and the awe-inspiring artistic patrimony of the Western world would never have been known.

There is a great deal of more, all of it detailed in “Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization.” John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were much influenced by the Byzantine legal code when they were helping to formulate the Constitution and basic laws of the United States. The architectural marvel of the great cathedral in Constantinople, Hagia Sophia, had enormous influence over the construction of buildings of breathtaking beauty (as opposed to today’s Brutalist monstrosities) all over the Islamic and Christian worlds. If the Roman Empire in Constantinople had never existed, or had fallen at the same time that its counterpart in Rome succumbed, our lives would be immeasurably poorer in ways that are so numerous as to defy listing.

In these days when our history and heritage are being aggressively stripped from us for malevolent ends, it is all the more important that we recover a healthy appreciation for those on whose broad shoulders we stand.

Israeli Strike In Damascus Takes Out Top Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander Reza Mousavi.

Close friend and confidant to Qassem Soleimani, eliminated almost 4 years ago to the day in a U.S. strike. Mousavi was “the central figure in everything related to the Iranian weapons corridor to Syria and Lebanon.”

On January 3, 2020 (local time), a U.S. airstrike took out Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. Soleimani was the leader of the the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and the architect of Iran’s war on the West and Israel.

The assassination shook the world, and Iran threatened (and is still threatening) retaliation. Trump was not impressed with the threats: If Iran attacks, we will hit 52 Iranian sites “representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago”.

As we approached the anniversary of Soleimani’s demise, Israeli just took out one of his key aides, Reza Mousavi.

 

Mousavi reportedly was “a senior commander in IRGC Quds Force, he was responsible for IRGC logistical & financial channels in Syria,” which explains his presence in Damascus, and “a long time and close friend of Qassem Soleimani.”

Mousavi was a key Iranian figure:

He served as Iran’s logistical liaison (Revolutionary Guards/Quds Force) in Syria and was active in Syria for many years, possibly since the 1990s. Mousavi was actually the central figure in everything related to the Iranian weapons corridor to Syria and Lebanon, which includes the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shiite militias in Syria. It is also possible that he was involved in arms smuggling (with an emphasis on “status violating” arms) from Syria, through Jordan towards the terrorist organizations in Judea and Samaria.

 

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IDF Eliminated Over 8,000 Gaza Terrorists Since October 7.

Amid reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has eliminated more than 8,000 terrorists after eleven weeks of campaign in Gaza, the military is closing in on Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s defense minister said.

“One thing is clear – Yahya Sinwar now hears the IDF tractors above him, the Air Force bombs and the IDF’s actions. He will soon meet the barrels of our guns,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared Friday. Sinwar, who is regarded as the key architect of the October 7 massacre, is believed to be hiding in southern Gaza as Israeli ground troops bring most of the Hamas stronghold in the north under their control.

The Israeli news website Arutz Sheva reported defense minister’s remarks:

Speaking at the conclusion of a daily assessment of the situation with senior members of the defense establishment, Gallant said, “The activity of the IDF and the defense establishment continues. In the north of the Gaza Strip – the operation is gradually completing the goals we set: Disbanding the Hamas battalions and denying their underground capabilities. We also operate in the Khan Yunis area and the south of the Gaza Strip, and we will operate in other places in the future.”

“One thing is clear – Yahya Sinwar now hears the IDF tractors above him, the Air Force bombs and the IDF’s actions. He will soon meet the barrels of our guns,” the Defense Minister vowed.

“We will go and deepen our activity and complete all our goals – first of all, the elimination of the Hamas terrorist organization, the denial of its military and governmental capabilities, and the return of the hostages to Israel,” Gallant added. “The operation will be a drawn-out operation, requiring patience, but we will reach an achievement.”

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I remember an article titled; Where’s Vlad (the impaler) when you really need him? I’ll try to find it.

Civilization Has to Go Medieval on Terrorists.

“Remember we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always,” the IRA warned the world after an assassination bombing at Brighton’s Grand Hotel barely missed killing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984. The same story is being told today in the vital lanes of the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels are waging a missile war against the world’s shipping — and major shippers are getting out before their luck runs out.

Oil giant BP is just the latest firm to announce it will “pause” all shipments through the Red Sea due to the “deteriorating security situation,” according to a company statement. Taiwan-based Evergreen Line made a similar announcement, “For the safety of ships and crew, Evergreen Line has decided to temporarily stop accepting Israeli cargo with immediate effect, and has instructed its container ships to suspend navigation through the Red Sea until further notice.”

Those announcements came on the heels of similar decisions made over the weekend. On Saturday, two other major shipping firms — Mediterranean Shipping Company and CMA CGM — ceased Red Sea operations. “The CMA CGM Group is deeply concerned about the recent attacks on commercial vessels unfolding in the Red Sea Region. The situation is further deteriorating and concern of safety is increasing,” one statement said. All of their ships currently in passage have been instructed to “reach safe areas and pause their journey in safe waters with immediate effect until further notice.”

The BBC explained Monday that Houthis are “targeting ships traveling through the Bab al-Mandab Strait – also known as the Gate of Tears – which is a channel 20 miles (32km) wide, and known for being perilous to navigate.”

One or two American guided missile destroyers — dispatched from a navy that is already stretched too thin — is not enough to shoot down every Houthi missile. Shipping firms understand this and are skedaddling accordingly.

For my isolationist-minded readers who are certain this is just “a quarrel in a faraway land between people of which we know nothing,” nothing could be further from the truth. The Red Sea — and the Suez Canal that connects it to the Mediterranean — is one of the world’s most vital sea lanes.

Oil prices are up — way up — on the news. That quarrel in a faraway land is about to make itself felt at your neighborhood gas pump, and that has nothing to do with a lack of production in this country. Oil is a global commodity, so a disruption anywhere leads to higher prices everywhere.

About one in six container ships travels through the Suez Canal, carrying everything from crude oil to consumer goods. Supply chain expert Chris Rogers told CNN today, “Consumer goods will face the largest impact, though current disruptions are occurring during the off-peak shipping season.”

American prosperity has been built on international trade since before the Revolutionary War and it almost certainly always will be. The same goes for the rest of the West, including our non-Western (but friendly) commercial cousins in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Maybe even China has a role to play here. But the world’s wealthy trading nations can either get as Medieval on terrorists and pirates as they are on us, or we can kiss our prosperity goodbye.

Christian Nationalism

We’re being told that we should be afraid of this:

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.

Blesses are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God.
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.

     [Matthew 5:1-12]

And this:

And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?

Who said to him: Why asketh thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

     [Matthew 19:16-19]

And this:

But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22:34-40]

But we’re not supposed to be afraid of this:

“Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! These are hundreds of other psalms and Hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.” — Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

“The minarets are our bayonets; the domes are our helmets. Mosques are our barracks, the believers are soldiers. This holy army guards my religion. Almighty Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom.” — Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey

Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak. [Koran, Sura 4:76]

“I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.” [Koran, Sura 8:12]

“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem…” [Koran, Sura 9:5]

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, of the people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” [Koran, Sura 9:29]

“O Prophet! Struggle against the unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them.” [Koran, Sura 9:73]

Puzzling, eh?

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It’s becoming rare that my boiler gets lit over anything, these days. I’ve said too much…written too much. But among my remaining hot buttons, this one may be the hottest: people who promote contempt toward Christianity and malice toward Christians. From the way they whine and rave, you’d think we had our hands in their pockets, if not down their pants.

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Hamas Calls for Violence Against Americans, and So Does This Michigan Imam

Could the war in Israel spread to the United States? Sure. Some people want it to.

Hamas has never made a secret of the fact that its goal of destroying Israel is just part of a larger jihad to conquer the entire world for Islam. And so it was inevitable, both in light of that aspiration and the Biden regime’s shaky but still subsisting support for Israel’s defensive effort, that Hamas jihadis would call for violence against Americans. What is more surprising, at least for those who have bought into the comforting establishment fictions that have been circulating since 9/11, is that one such call came from right here at home.

Hamas operative Sami Abu Zuhri recently proclaimed that Biden regime Secretary of State Antony Blinken, despite pressuring Israel to go easy on the warriors of jihad, was just as bad as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “When Blinken is justifying the killing of women and children, the sons of our nation should say to him: You are the enemy, just like Netanyahu, and you must pay the price, just like Netanyahu. We should keep this in mind.” Yes, we should indeed.

If you’re wondering when exactly Blinken justified the killing of women and children, the answer, of course, is never. Blinken has actually parroted Hamas propaganda in warning Israel that it must do more to reduce civilian deaths, when in reality the number of civilians killed in Gaza compares favorably to the death toll of civilians in other recent conflicts, notably the battle of Mosul against ISIS in Iraq.

Nevertheless, Abu Zuhri wants to see American blood: “Now it is our nation’s turn to pressure the Americans to stop this war. We need violent acts against American and British interests everywhere, as well as the interests of all the countries that support the occupation.”

It’s hard to see how those who call for violence against people who have nothing to do with the conflict have the moral high ground, and those who are doing all they can to limit civilian casualties deserve the opprobrium of the entire world; we’d need an American university student to explain that.

Meanwhile, an echo of this call for jihad terror attacks against Americans came from a Muslim cleric, Ahmad Musa Jibril. Jibril, “whose hate-filled sermons,” according to a Friday report in the New York Post, “were said to have inspired the London Bridge terrorist attack,” is not in Britain, or in Baghdad or Balochistan. Jibril was born in Dearborn, Michigan, and while his current whereabouts are murky, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) identifies him as a “Michigan Islamic scholar,” and the Twitter/X account that posted his call for jihad in America states that it is operating out of Chicago and is “managed by students.” Jibril, who did hard time in the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex for fraud, money laundering, unlawful possession of firearms and more, clearly has considerable influence among Muslims in the United States.

Contradicting the false narrative Americans have been fed for two decades now, Jibril declared: “Yes, there is holy war in Islam, it is jihad. This may be a surprise to many who grew up in the West, especially those who were born or grew up post 9/11, because of the growing number of hypocrites, who are spreading the American-Zionist Islam, and it has nothing to do with Islam, that version of Islam is and Islam that suits the enemies.” He added that “the one who has been spreading that there is no holy war in Islam, has been defecating heresy out of his mouth for the past 20 years, downplaying the legislation of Allah and the Islamic punishments.”

That would include virtually all of the prominent Islamic spokesmen in the U.S. As far as Jibril is concerned, the only people who had it right about jihad and Islam were the ones who were (and still are) vilified, marginalized, and silenced as “Islamophobes.” And now he wants Muslims in the U.S. to start taking this holy war seriously: “The Muslims in the West, especially the youth in the West, especially the youth in America, need to wake up. The current events are a wake-up call for Muslims to start normalizing mentioning jihad’s proper meaning, and putting it back into their vocabulary. Jihad must be a common, normal term on your tongues, on your social media, and in the mosques and elsewhere.

This should, he said, be a matter of lifelong indoctrination: “It’s time the mothers nurse their infants with the love of jihad and the ambition to become a mujahid and a martyr.” A martyr in the Islamic sense is one who acts upon Allah’s promise of paradise in the Qur’an to those who “kill and are killed.” America said Jibril, is “a vicious enemy of Muslims.” And so the import of his words was clear: Muslims need to wage jihad against America. While the Biden regime’s FBI hunts for “white supremacist terrorists” and Jan. 6 “insurrectionists,” some young men in America right now are heeding the words of Ahmed Musa Jibril.