It seemed pretty obvious to me that there's a pretty strong connection between Islam and the majority of terrorism happening today. Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Taliban, ISIS (aka Islamic State os ISIL), Al-Shabaab, etc. are all, in their own express way, trying to progress the purpose of Islam. So, how is this unrelated to religion?
I have been mulling over these ideas for a few weeks, so I was extremely interested to read an essay entitled "Why Islam Needs a Reformation" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Saturday's edition of the Wall Street Journal. Near the very beginning of her essay, she wrote:
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, at least 70% of all the fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims. In 2013, there were nearly 12,000 terrorist attacks world-wide. The lion’s share were in Muslim-majority countries, and many of the others were carried out by Muslims. By far the most numerous victims of Muslim violence—including executions and lynchings not captured in these statistics—are Muslims themselves.What those with their heads in the sand are not wanting to face up to, is not just that violence is expressly called to within Islam, these various organizations also see themselves as bringing in the end of the world and are on a mission to ensure that Islam has taken over the entire world and nothing, NOTHING, is going to get in their way. What's more, this is nothing new:
Not all of this violence is explicitly motivated by religion, but a great deal of it is. I believe that it is foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself. For more than a decade, my message has been simple: Islam is not a religion of peace.
When I assert this, I do not mean that Islamic belief makes all Muslims violent. This is manifestly not the case: There are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam. Moreover, this theologically sanctioned violence is there to be activated by any number of offenses, including but not limited to apostasy, adultery, blasphemy and even something as vague as threats to family honor or to the honor of Islam itself.
The governments of the world should know that . . . Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teaching of the Qur'an will prevail all over the world.Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, January 1979
Ms. Ali goes on to suggest that the only way to change things is "to hold Islam accountable for the acts of its most violent adherents and to demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that are used to justify those acts."
However, is that realistic, when many of these Islamic extremist organizations are murdering their fellow Muslims because they're not Muslim enough?? These groups will stop at nothing to further their cause, because they believe it is the ultimate cause, a cause worth dying for and they are not going to be pressured by other Muslim groups into changing their beliefs, or actions.
What amazes me even more, is the number of teenage boys and girls leaving comfortable Western lives to join these radical groups. I'm aware that they are being actively recruited in many cases but I'm convinced that the main reason many are leaving to join these groups is simply the fact it gives them a cause to fight for, a hope to live and die for, and something greater than themselves and the shallow existence of much of western life today . . . and that is incredibly sad and terrifying, and a horrific indictment of the failure of organized religion in the west to meet the needs of today's young people, not to mention the failure of society at large.
Until and unless the Christian church rises up, preaches the full, unadulterated truth, and God's power is made fully manifest, I fear this situation is just going to go from bad to worse . . . and it's pretty horrific already!
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| Houseboats on Lake Oroville, in Northern California |
NASA also recently indicated that California has only about a year's worth of water left. As such, strict new measures are being introduced. For example, lawn and landscape watering will be limited to two days per week.
Two days per week?? Why allow it at all? Last year there were some communities in California that had no water at all in their faucets and this year is going to be even worse. Just last week I drove past a house in Rocklin that had the lawn sprinklers on, only a day after it had rained!
I was shocked not long ago when visiting Lake Tahoe to see the lake considerably lower than the end of the jetty, which is normally well over the lake. Camp Far West reservoir has also just about disappeared, as has much of Folsom Lake, and Lake Oroville.
People, if we don't cut our water usage down to an absolute minimum, we are going to run out of water completely, or, at best, it will be strictly rationed. As someone who has a well rather than city water, I'm also concerned our own well will run dry.
Come on California, we cannot affort to waste a single drop.
"What you're seeing now is Colorado, Washington through state referenda, they're experimenting with legal marijuana," the president said in response to a question from YouTube host Hank Green. "The position of my administration has been that we still have federal laws that classify marijuana as an illegal substance, but we're not going to spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue. My suspicion is that you're gonna see other states start looking at this."
“How can state and local jurisdictions continue to make something legal that is patently illegal under federal law?”
That’s a hugely important question and Don Campbell writing at USA Today takes this point logically further – and I’m very thankful he did. He writes this,
“In December, Congress approved and President Obama signed a spending bill that defunds federal prosecution of medical marijuana sales, yet a U.S. attorney in Oakland continues a campaign to shut down California’s largest medical marijuana dispensary.
“Obama [according to Campbell] has not only instructed the Justice Department to not interfere with state laws legalizing marijuana, he also has even encouraged more states to ‘experiment’ with such laws. So what happens if a Republican is elected president in 2016 and he or she orders a new attorney general to stamp out marijuana wherever it is found?”
That’s an interesting political question, but there’s a huge constitutional question here. The President took the oath of office swearing to uphold the laws of the land. Those laws, at present, include – undeniably – a very clear criminalization of the use, possession, or sale of marijuana at any quantity, for any reason. And yet the President of the United States has not only ordered federal prosecutors not to prosecute cases in those states that have legalized marijuana, but he has also openly invited governors of other states to experiment with their own laws.
How is it possible that a President of the United States, sworn to uphold the laws of the nation, can encourage the governors of the respective states to experiment with laws that violate the law that he has taken an oath to uphold? That’s the kind of question we’re asking in this very strange age. Campbell, by the way, doesn’t seem to be at all opposed to legalizing marijuana, he just thinks the law needs to be clarified and he’s calling upon the Supreme Court to make the clarification. But he also raises a point in his column that deserves some very close worldview scrutiny. He writes, and I quote,
“Doesn’t it just make sense, really, to control and profit from transactions that will otherwise be engaged in illegally by those who have a yearning for pot?”
That’s a rather convoluted sentence but he says, ‘shouldn’t the states basically take tax money and legalize what people are going to do anyway, even if it illegal, simply because they yearn for pot?’ Now, that’s one of those very interesting questions that simply have to be resoundingly answered from a Christian worldview in this way. Every single society decides to sanction, to make it illegal, even to criminalize, some things that other people want to do. You can’t simply make the argument that because people want to do it, and maybe even make the argument that inevitable they are going to do it, and then say that you ought to legalize it, tax it, and profit by it. Of course, even those who are making the argument to legalize marijuana don’t want to take the argument that far. But the point is they want to take the argument as far as the legalization of marijuana – for now. We simply have to ask the question, how long is ‘for now’?
I find the podcast fascinating and look forward to listening to it each morning as I drive to work. However, in the months of listening to this podcast, it is very clear that today's events are not good news. The rise in Islamic terrorism, the continuing denial of rights of Christians within the USA, the onslaught of liberalism . . . the list goes on.
If you really want to get a grasp of what's happening in today's world, especially if you live in the USA, I thoroughly recommend this podcast.
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