Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews. -- Tom Lehrer
"Iran speaker says Israel opposes Tehran-Cairo ties," from WashingtonTV, December 23 (thanks to James):
Washington, 23 December (WashingtonTV)--Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, on Wednesday played down any differences between the Islamic Republic and Egypt and reiterated Tehran's opposition to arch-enemy Israel.Speaking in Tehran at the end of a three-day visit to Egypt, Larijani accused Israel of opposing cooperation between Tehran and Cairo.
"Although there are differences of opinions in some areas among Islamic countries, the point is that the main enemy is the Zionist regime," he said, according to the official ISNA news agency.
Relations between Iran and Egypt have soured over disputes on a number of regional and international issues, including Israel's three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip last January.
Cairo has accused Tehran of trying to dominate the region through its alliances with the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, and Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab states to have a peace treaty with Israel.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran's strategy is to use all the forces of the world of Islam and to generate general participation in combating the Zionist regime," Larijani told reporters in Tehran....
But during Muslim Brotherhood Week, Muslim Brotherhood Week,
Shiites love the Sunnis 'cause it's very chic.
Step up and shake the hand
Of someone you can't stand.
You can tolerate him if you try.
This points up that under everything else, under the shifting alliances and misalliances, the substratum of Islam insures that no matter what else may happen in a world that bewilders so many outside analysts when they lose sight of, or never get even a Pisgah-sight of, Islam as the ideology that both can unite and, in the case of Sunni and Shi'a beliefs and narratives, can even separate. Sunnis and Shi'a may go to war, or the Saudis might wish to undercut the same Shi'a in northern Yemen whose ancestors Saudi Arabia supported in the proxy war against Nasser fought from 1962 to 1967; the Alawite despots in Syria may try to court both kinds of Muslims, the Sunnis (giving them free passage through Syria to Iraq, to kill Shi'a), and the Shi'a (Iranian clerics declared that Alawites are "real" Muslims, a designation the Alawites desperately wanted). It is the job of Infidels to create policies that exacerbate those differences, rather than attempt, as was done in Iraq, to heal them.
But it is also the job of Infidels to not be surprised to find that in the end, whatever their differences, Muslims are united in their contempt for, and hostility towards, and hatred of, all non-Muslims, and that this is a product of the texts of Islam, and that those texts are immutable, and while some Muslims may ignore them, or some Muslims living in the West may prudentially pretend to ignore them while waiting until such time as Muslim numbers grow and the previous pretense need not be maintained, the important thing to realize is that Islam, its texts and tenets and the attitudes and atmospherics that naturally arise from those texts and tenets, are a permanent danger to all non-Muslims.
The hit list, in no particular order:
1. Israel
2. The Great Satan
3. Whichever western european states are not yet under sharia after 1. and 2. are accomplished.
4. Homosexuals
5. Musicians
6. Whichever infidels are left after 4. and 5.
7. Other muslims that are not pure enough
8. ad nauseum, ad infinitum
It would be an absurdist comedy, except for the billions of petrodollars at their disposal to finance this insanity.
Andre,
Greetings and welcome to Jihad Watch University!
I do not understand why the United States (All-American presidents), collaborate with a fascist state like Saudi Arabia!
We would all like to know the answer to that question as well.
"I do not understand why the United States (All-American presidents), collaborate with a fascist state like Saudi Arabia!"
It's called oil. That's about the only reason Islam is so tolerated, otherwise we'd have reduced it to atomic ash by now for its cancerous effect on humanity. They should thank their blood war cult god that they have this oil. But once they run out or we develop the technology to replace it [ Which I hope is very soon. ], politicians will have no need for Islam.. and globally Islamists would be deported back to their crap hole countries where they can be free to be as medieval as they like. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the world sponsored a huge impenetrable glass dome over the middle east at some point to confine the murder cult to the desert once we no longer need oil.
The more I read of the nature and history of Islam, as well as my own experiences of pain and loss, the more I wonder whether God really, really needs to seek professional counseling.
Maybe an eternity alone does things to the mind; I mean, look at what he did to his Son, Jesus :(
And 1400 years of this rubbish, Islam?
Brings to mind an old sci-fi concept of a creature that lives off the painful emotions of others such as fear, physical pain and sweet, sweet tears.
I've tried hard to believe in a loving and benevolent God but lately I'm just not seeing much evidence.
Maybe Muslims are right and God really is a monster.
Urinate into the fuel tank of your automobile and see how well it runs. If it runs fine ..please notify me via JW. If it doesn't..you have an answer..and a cleanup job.
Pismopal,
That was funny! I have a VW diesel. If I could find a way to eat 20lbs of french fries each day, I'd be fat-dumb-and-happy by converting my car to a 'Greasel'.
BTW, I fully agree wtih Kota's statement (above)--it's all about oil.
Oh, and to keep standing my soapbox, my diesel gets 60mpg at cruise speeds on the highway. For all you hybrid lovers out there, you're playing on the wrong team.
"Iran speaker says Israel opposes Tehran-Cairo ties"
......................
More Shi'ite jockeying for power, making incursions into Sunni
areas of influence. The Sunnis can't object—why, they'd be playing right into the hands of the *perfidious Jews*. Can't have that.
sarc/off
The Sunnis can't object.
They'll soon be nuked by Iran if they did.
My bet is a Shi'ite led Islamic Caliphate, soon.
When Iran gets the bomb, a succession of Islamic states will fall domino-like to Shi'ite influence, under threat of nuclear annihilation.
Of course, Europe and Obama led America will do nothing.
A united Islamic Ummah, backed by Russia and China, will then march up through the Balkans - while threatening any resistance with nuclear obliteration - into Greece, Italy and France.
All attempts at resistance - nuked.
Freelance Islamic fifth-column jihadists will overwhelm attempts at law and order throughout Europe and slaughter and violent jihad will be widespread.
Chaos on the streets throughout Europe.
The police will be outgunned.
Russia and China, seeking to gain from the widespread chaos will invade Eastern Europe.
WW3
Mike
you're sounding pretty despairing there.
I commend to you the following courses of action.
1. Get, and read, slowly, a book called "The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?" by David Bentley Hart. It is as fully applicable to those reeling in the face of the monstrous horrors that humans deliberately inflict on one another, as it is to those contemplating the terrors inflicted upon us by the powers of the earth.
2. Do as a Jewish shoah survivor did (she had endured, and survived, the horrors of Ravensbruck). She went back to the ruins of the camp, many years later; she sat down on the floor of the ruined gas chamber; she took out the book of Psalms, and she read the Psalms, the Tehillim ('Praises') aloud, from Psalm number 1 to Psalm 150. So: read the psalms, all of them, the bleak, bitter, angry, despairing ones as well as those of ecstatic joy.
3. Pray for the redemption of Russia. Ask God, *our* God, to bless her with salvation and restoration. Donate to Olga Lutsenko's 'Kindness Foundation' which is giving the Bible to Russian schoolchildren. Pray for the healing of the child survivors of Beslan.
4. Pray for the redemption of China: that the Holy One will make her what I believe he intends her to be - the Flowery Kingdom, following the Way of Heaven. Read "The Heavenly Man" with Brother Yun and Paul Hattaway. And google 'Back to Jerusalem' - you might get a surprise.
dumbledoresarmy,
Thank you for those references.
Ultimately, God is in charge.
I know that.
God is omniscient and knew at the moment of creation exactly how things would turn out.
He saw the outcome, and it pleased him.
And he also allowed Satan a free hand to tempt mankind, even knowing that multitudes would be banished to hell as a result.
Ultimately, do we really have free will?
Or is it God's way, or the highway?
Christ himself said that many, many people would be relegated to eternal damnation and yet he said God was perfect and benevolent.
Why would God allow all those people to be born and led astray by Satan, whom he deliberately set loose in the world, only for those same poor souls to perish in eternal flame?
And what of all those Muslims, held captive by Islam ... are they to be banished as well?
God strikes me as a force of nature more than a benevolent being.
Honestly, he seems indifferent to pain.
Look at the sufferings of Christ, his Son!
Isn't it odd that so much evil attempts to emulate God, and yet evil is sooooooo capable of indifference and cruelty.
If one looks at creation objectively, there is a lot there that seems rather indifferent to suffering and cruelty; red in tooth an claw.
I do believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
I also believe that God is at best indifferent to suffering and at worst, completely bloody mad.
Mike (aside to others: this is an offtopic post, I'm just trying to help Mike keep his spirits up)
try this, too:
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3301
The final paragraphs of the interview:
Q: Does your understanding of evil have implications for pastoral practice in the face of evil?
D B Hart: I honestly don’t know. I haven’t a pastoral bone in my body.
But I would implore pastors never to utter banal consolations concerning God’s "greater plan" or the mystery of his will.
The first proclamation of the gospel is that death is God’s ancient enemy, whom God has defeated and will ultimately destroy.
I would hope that no Christian pastor would fail to recognize that that completely shameless triumphalism -- *and with it an utterly sincere and unrestrained hatred of suffering and death* {my emphasis - dda} -- is the surest foundation of Christian hope, and the proper Christian response to grief.
Q: So where was God in the tsunami?
A: Where was God? In and beyond all things, nearer to the essence of every creature than that creature itself, and infinitely outside the grasp of all finite things.
Almost all the reviews of The Doors of the Sea that I have read have recognized that at the heart of the book,
is a resolute insistence upon and adoration of the imperishable goodness of creation,
an almost willfully naive assertion that it is the beauty and peace of the created world that truly reveal its original and ultimate nature,
while the suffering and alienation and horror of mortal existence are, in an ultimate sense, fictions of fallen time, chains and veils and shadows and distortions, *but no part of God’s will for his creatures* {my emphasis - dda}.
This is why, at one point in the book, I grant the Gnostics of old the validity of their questions, though I go on to revile the answers at which they arrived.
To see the world in the Christian way -- which, as I say in the book, requires the eye of charity and a faith in Easter -- is in some sense to venture everything upon an absurd impracticality (I almost sound Kierkegaardian when I say it that way).
But, as I was writing the book, I found myself thinking again and again of a photograph I had seen in the Baltimore Sun.
The story concerned the Akhdam, the lowest social caste in Yemen, supposedly descended from Ethiopians left behind when the ancient Ethiopian empire was driven out of Arabia in the sixth century, who live in the most unimaginable squalor.
In the background of the photo was a scattering of huts constructed from crates and shreds of canvas, and on all sides barren earth;
but in the foreground was a little girl, extremely pretty, dressed in tatters, but with her arms outspread, a look of delight upon her face, dancing.
To me that was a heartbreaking picture, of course,
but it was also an image of something amazing and glorious: the sheer ecstasy of innocence, the happiness of a child who can dance amid despair and desolation
because her joy came with her into the world and prompts her to dance as if she were in the midst of paradise.
She became for me the perfect image of the deep indwelling truth of creation, the divine Wisdom or Sophia who resides in the very heart of the world, the stainless image of God, the unfallen.
I’m waxing quite Eastern here, I know,
But that, I would say, is the nature of God’s presence in the fallen world: his image, his bride, the deep joy and longing of creation, called from nothingness to be joined to him.
'That child’s dance is nothing less than the eternal dance of divine Wisdom before God’s throne, the dance of David and the angels and saints before his glory; it is the true face of creation, which God came to restore and which he will not suffer to see corruption."
END
You might also find it helpful to read the Scots writer George Macdonald, who had a deep and unshakeable conviction of the loving goodness of God; and Jacques Ellul, his 'Hope in a Time of Abandonment' and 'What I Believe'.
The greatest triumph of the Evil One, the Satan, is when it can deceive people into believing that *God*, YHWH, the Holy One, is...evil, or powerless; if it can bring us to despair and the frozen paralysis of despair.
Please don't let the Dementors get to you.
"Q: So where was God in the tsunami?
A: Where was God? In and beyond all things, nearer to the essence of every creature than that creature itself, and infinitely outside the grasp of all finite things."
Sorry DDA, That sounds to me like comlpete bunkum.
"the sheer ecstasy of innocence, the happiness of a child who can dance amid despair and desolation"
Very poignant.
But it doesn't explain why God allowed Islam to slaughter and supplant countless Christian and other peoples over 1400 years of Islamic expansion and brutality.
How many villages were wiped out?
How many children had their heads dashed against rocks by Muslim savages?
It's very easy to wax poetic about the love of God but measured against history, it all rings rather hollow.
*but no part of God’s will for his creatures* {my emphasis - dda}.
So we are to assume that God is completely incompetent?
If it is no part of God's will then why is it so?
What about YOU, Mike_W?
Do you feel that you are excused from responsibility to confront 1400 years of brutality, because you have convinced yourself that it was put there by some omnipotent entity that you do not understand?
Zionism as the excuse for genocide is getting a bit worn as a justification. Its also an enormous lie. Israel has only been around since 1947 so what was the reason for oppressing Jews and Christians up to that point? Recreation? Islam seeks the eradication of Israel because it wants to "purify" the Middle East of non-believers. No non-muslims in the region is the goal.