Sen. Rand Paul introduces a Resolution in the Senate to attach conditions to the aid given by the US to Pakistan, Egypt and Libya. He makes a good case against  giving foreign aid in general, and states plainly that he would like to stop it, but stresses that he is only asking for it to be restricted. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he reminds the Senate, is asking for aid to be increased to Egypt where the US embassy has been attacked and the US flag burnt. Libyans killed the US ambassador, but their country continues to get US aid. In Pakistan the doctor who helped the US intelligence services discover the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden has been imprisoned for life, and Sen. Paul wants aid to be withheld until this innocent man is released. He points out that China, to which America is heavily  in debt, continues to receive development aid from American taxpayers. China gets $27 million a year in “economic development assistance”, and $71 million goes to Russia. But  for all the aid Americans give, they get nothing back; not even the protection of their embassies. He describes how Arab and African dictators spend vast sums of US taxpayers’ aid money on luxuries and grand living for themselves and their wives while their peoples remain in abject poverty.

The video is an hour long, and Sen. Paul is not a very good speaker, but he is worth listening to because he makes a compelling case. We don’t agree with him on every point he raises, but we too are against giving foreign aid. And we certainly agree that if it is to be given to badly governed states, it should buy something for the donor –  at the very least, protection for US embassies and diplomats.

Sen. Paul says he knows that all but ten or perhaps twenty Senators will vote against his Resolution. (In fact they voted 81-10 against it.) But the people they represent, he tells them, voters in every state in the Union, are overwhelmingly on his side.

(Video via Creeping Sahria)

Who is the man who showed the video that was used as a pretext for the planned Muslim rioting?

From the Telegraph:

His inflammatory chat show on satellite television has long prided itself on baiting liberals, Christians and Jews, but last week saw Sheikh Khalid Abdullah stage the broadcasting controversy of a lifetime.

Note the bruise on his forehead, a visible boast of how much he prays, head-on-floor-butt-up, to the Muslims’ tyrant-god “Allah”.

The rabble-rousing Egyptian tele-Islamist knew he had found a ratings-grabber when he found an obscure, badly-made film on the internet called the Innocence of Muslims.

It had actually been online since July, but nobody had paid attention its crude libels against the Prophet Mohammed …

“Scornful criticism of ”  is what a Western newspaper ought to say, not “crude libels against”. Though the film itself is crude.

 … until Mr Abdullah’s showed broadcast clips from it last weekend, calling for the film-makers to be executed.

Actually, it seems the film may consist of nothing but those “clips”.

And Mr Abdullah’s whole intention was to incite rage.

Within hours the hardline Salafi Islamists who watch his programme, and who have been growing in strength since last year’s revolution, were demonstrating in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and outside the US embassy, which they stormed on Tuesday, burning the US flag.

Protests in Tahrir Square were in any case scheduled for last Tuesday, the anniversary of 9/11, which Muslims celebrate as a day of victory as Americans mourn their thousands killed in that atrocious act of religious terrorism. The video clips provided a convenient pretext for violence.

Thus came the spark to a week of violent protests against the film, leading to the killing of the US ambassador to Libya on Tuesday evening and assaults on Western embassies across the Middle East, leaving at least nine dead and hundreds injured.

The killing of the ambassador was most probably planned in advance. The question of who betrayed his “secret” whereabouts has still not been answered. Since the Obama administration has embraced terrorism-supporting Muslims (see our posts: Obama legitimizes terrorism, August 2, 2012; Whom the President praises, August 16, 2012; How Obama enormously assists the jihad, August 20, 2012), something of the sort was all too likely to happen. It’s even possible that Ambassador Stevens, who kept company with armed Muslims (see our  post immediately below), gave away the secret himself.

Footnote: The FBI is now harassing the man, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who putatively produced the film. Obviously they are doing this on orders from Obama’s Department of Justice. The guy is a nasty piece of work; a crook and a liar, he tried to shift blame for the making of the film on to a (fictitious) Jew and (imaginary) Jewish backers. But despicable though he is, he should not be hounded.

The Obama administration’s policies have done much more than the little movie could possibly do to bring about the violent Muslim protests. What it is doing through the FBI to scapegoat this one man is tyrannous jackboot stuff.

The murder by Muslims of US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was a cause for war because he was a US  ambassador.

The statement must stand without any qualification.

That said, we need to take a closer look at the man himself. He was the victim not only of Islamic savagery but also of US policy towards Islam over the past decade – a policy which under President Obama positively encouraged and finally enflamed that savagery. And we ask: To what extent did Mr Stevens himself accept, agree with, endorse, or even actively and enthusiastically promote the policy that brought him, as an official representative of it, to his violent death?    

Daniel Greenfield has also asked that question, and he writes:

Christopher Stevens was a Middle Eastern diplomat who typified the new breed going from the University of Berkeley and the Peace Corps to desks in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria. He taught English to Moroccan children in the Peace Corps and helped Palestinian Arabs in the East Jerusalem Consulate, which has a firm policy of pretending that Israel does not exist.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Christopher Stevens that he “made other people’s hopes his own” and that may serve as a fitting eulogy both for Stevens and for the disastrous foreign policy of making “other people’s hopes” our own that brought on the Arab Spring.

Stevens, like Clinton and Obama, made the hopes of Islamists his own and they repaid him for it, just as Afghans repaid America for supporting them against the Soviet Union, as Lebanon and Somalia repaid America’s peacekeeping efforts by killing American troops and on down the litany of gratitude in bombs and bullets that have come America’s way from the Muslim world.

“He risked his life to stop a tyrant, then gave his life trying to build a better Libya,” Hillary Clinton said, but if anything his murder exposed the lie that there is a better Libya now than there was before Hillary and he intervened in Libya. Clinton’s eulogy comes perilously close to conceding Stevens’ real mission and the degree of American intervention in the overthrow of Gaddafi.

Stevens was the connection between the Islamist Benghazi rebels and the Obama administration’s illegal war to overthrow Gaddafi. His mission, like the true mission of the war, was secret, and the consulate, marginally fortified and devoid of Marines, reflected that secrecy. Stevens did not think that he had anything to fear from the Islamists because they were his friends.

And he wanted to be their friend because he romanticized them. He looked at them through a veil of pro-Third World “anti-colonialist” leftist sentimentality. It made him feel good.

In the Wikileaks cables…

Useful things, those!

… Stevens cheerfully described fighters who saw “resistance against coalition forces in Iraq” as “an important act of ‘jihad’” …

Of which campaign for world domination by Islam – one must therefore conclude – he heartily approved!

For years he had walked safely in their company without understanding that he was just as much of a target as a Marine in Baghdad, but without the training, the weapons or the survival skills.

The only reason Christopher Stevens had lasted this long is that the jihadist fighters had known a useful man when they met him. And Stevens proved to be very useful, but his usefulness ended with Gaddafi’s death. Once the US successfully overthrew Gaddafi and began focusing on stabilizing Libya, Stevens ceased to be a useful idiot and became a useless nuisance. Attacks soon followed on the Benghazi consulate and on other consulates as well, but the Marines were not brought in and Stevens continued relying on local goodwill to secure his offices. It was only a matter of time until the attackers got through.

Clinton, her State Department and its media allies appear unnaturally eager to paint Christopher Stevens as an American martyr to the cause of Libyan Islamism, a kinder, gentler Rachel Corrie who willingly died so that the Islamists might have their dream of an Islamic state in Libya.

We will of course never know what was going through Christopher Stevens’s mind on September 11, 2012, as he battled the choking smoke, experiencing what so many New Yorkers had experienced on September 11, 2001. Like them, he was faced with a terrible dilemma, a choice between remaining in the fire and committing suicide by going outside.

Many in the World Trade Center chose to jump to their deaths, but Christopher Stevens chose to remain inside and die rather than face the tender mercies of his attackers. Stevens had spent enough time in Libya to have seen what the jihadist fighters did to their captives and must have known what horrors he could expect at their hands. The photos that have been released, along with claims by Libyan jihadists that they sexually assaulted his corpse, suggest that he made the right choice. And perhaps in those final moments, facing that terrible choice, Christopher Stevens finally understood the true horror of the Muslim world that he had fallen in love with as a Peace Corps volunteer.

But could he, even at that moment, especially at that moment, have allowed himself to admit the unendurable truth?

“He was an avid student of Islam and the Middle East, and consistently strove to build the proverbial bridge between our two cultures in the face of sometimes overwhelming antagonism and bitter misunderstanding,” a friend from the diplomatic service tells us. But though Christopher Stevens may have studied Islam, he had learned very little about it, and so his final lesson was the bloody one that Westerners who never really learn what Islam is about end up receiving.

“The world needs more Chris Stevenses,” Hillary Clinton said, but does it really? … Does it need men who give up the hopes and dreams of their country to take on the dreams of their enemies without ever realizing where the fatal road of those dreams leads?

Stevens’ former Peace Corps colleague says of him, “Chris devoted his career, and life, to improving relations between the Arabic/Islamic world and the West.” That he did and he died doing it …

And failing to achieve the impossible goal of course …

… losing whatever career or life he might have had if he had not embarked on a futile errand to make the Muslims who killed him and paraded his body around like him. And … the effort was to no avail.

“It’s especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save,” Obama said, repeating the same lie that he used to drag America into his illegal war. Benghazi was not in any need of saving, it was the Americans who came to Benghazi, like Chris Stevens, who needed saving.

That is the terrible blind spot in our vision which, like Christopher Stevens, tells us that we need to save the Muslims who hate us, rather than showing us that we need to save ourselves.

So it emerges that Christopher Stevens in his illusions and commitment is like John Walker Lindh, who “wanted to help” the Afghans and is serving a 20-year prison sentence for fighting with the Taliban. The only significant difference between them is that John Walker Lindh the Traitor devoted himself to helping barbaric Muslim terrorists when they were fighting against American forces as their enemy, while Christopher Stevens the Martyr devoted himself to helping barbaric Muslim terrorists when they were fighting with American forces as their ally.

And therein lies the stark proof of the confusion of values which arose when America, a nation idealizing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was forced into a betrothal with Islam, a cult idealizing total control, joyless submission, and death.

More US embassies were attacked today by Muslim mobs.

Muslim leaders deliberately stoked up the flames of riot on 9/11 and again today. They needed a pretext and by a stroke of luck they found one in a movie. It was sent as a gift to the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, through the Egyptian media, by a brainless American member of the minority it is persecuting, Coptic Christians. (Will not the Copts in Egypt pay dearly for it?) Others of the group made the film – and maliciously alleged that it was made by Jews.

This is from (Glenn Beck’s) The Blaze:

Protests in the Middle East that are being blamed on an anti-Islamic and anti-Muhammad film continue to rage. And as details unfold about the shadowy figures behind the film, the plot thickens. This morning, The Blaze provided more details about Steve Klein, a man who served as a spokesman for the film. And last night, we learned more about Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker involved who has a criminal past.

Now, information is coming out about the man who is said to have intentionally translated and sent the video to Egyptian media, thus allegedly sparking a portion of the outrage. Since the initial violent reaction to the video emerged on September 11, many have wondered how the film came to the attention of Middle Eastern media and citizens, alike.

Religion News Service (RNS) is reporting that Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian, translated the movie into Arabic and sent it to Egyptian journalists. He also allegedly promoted it on his web site and through social media, the outlet reports. RNS has more about his background:

Morris Sadek describes himself as a human rights attorney and president of a small group called the National American Coptic Assembly, based in Chantilly, Va. Sadek says on his website that he is a member of the Egyptian and District of Columbia bar associations who has “defended major human rights cases” …

But fellow Copts depict Sadek as a fringe figure and publicity hound whose Islamophobic invectives disrupt Copts’ quest for equal rights in Egypt.

The film is very badly made and acted, but at least it denigrates Islam. And neither its quality nor intention are important. Everyone in America is free to make a good or bad film with any intention whatsoever. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula the film-maker, Steve Klein the “spokesman for the film”, and Morris Sadek who translated the dialogue into Arabic and sent the thing to Egyptian journalists are very small fry indeed in the drama of chaos and destruction that is unfolding.

It is the use of the film by Islamic leaders to arouse Muslim mobs to riot, burn, wreck, assault and murder that is evil. Those leaders are guilty of the havoc, the fire and the spilt blood, but they could only do what they’re doing because the present American leadership prepared the way for them.

The events that are shaking the pillars of the world would have happened anyway, because Obama and his administration have over and over again by actions and by words, from his first speech abroad as president in Cairo in 2009 to Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday, impressed on Muslims the world over that they have been injured by America. And this despite the fact that Islam initiated war on America and is relentlessly pursuing it.

There could be no stronger reason to impeach and severely punish a president of the United States. It almost certainly won’t happen, but it should.

The attacks on American legations in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were not spontaneous outbursts of indignation over an America-made movie. They were tactical onslaughts in the continuing war Islam is waging against the United States.

Caroline Glick traces the anti-America plot to riot, burn, and murder:

On June 4 the White House confirmed that the US had killed Abu Yahya Al-Libi – Osama bin Laden’s Libyan lietenant who had moved into Al Qaeda’s #2 spot … after the Navy SEALs whacked OBL.

The top man being Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor.

On Tuesday 9/11, a tape was released of Zawahiri announcing that Libi had been killed earlier this year by a US drone attack. … Zawahiri called for his terrorist underlings to avenge Libi’s death and especially exhorted Libyans to take revenge. 

The attack in Libya was well planned and executed. It wasn’t about a spontaneous protest against some ridiculous internet movie of Muhammad. The assailants came armed to the teeth, with among other things, RPG 7s. They knew that the US Ambassador was in Benghazi rather than Tripoli. They knew how to track his movements, and were able to strike against him after he and his colleagues left the consulate building and tried to flee in a car. …

Then there is the attack in Cairo. They were led by Mohammad Zawahiri – Ayman Zawahiri’s brother. …

Egypt’s US supported Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi recently released [Mohammad] Zawahiri from Egyptian prison.

The same Barack Obama who has no time in his schedule to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu next week in New York, is scheduled to meet Morsi.

The Egyptian government has not condemned the attack on the US Embassy in Cairo. But Morsi is demanding that the US government prosecute the film’s creator.

You may be wondering how some movie no one’s heard of has caused such a hullabaloo. Well, as it turns out, the film was screened on an Egyptian Salafist television channel. Obviously the Salafists – many of whom, like Zawahiri were released from prison by Morsi, wanted to stir up anti-US violence on the eve of 9/11. So if the film is responsible for the violence, a finger needs to be pointed to its chief distributor – Al Qaida’s Egyptian friends and members.

With these facts in hand, it is clear that the attempts to present these acts of war against the US as the consequence of some stupid nothing movie are obscene attempts to deflect the blame for these unwarranted attacks onto their victims and away from their perpetrators.

When the story broke about an anti-Islam film that (supposedly) sparked the riots in Egypt and Libya, the AP initially reported that an “Israeli Jew” named Sam Bacile [an unJewish and altogether improbable name] was the producer, and that it was funded by Jewish donors. All day, the questions have swirled over who this mysterious Bacile character was, but many Israel-bashers ran with the claim that the producer holds Israeli citizenship. …

Actually, there’s no evidence that “Sam Bacile” even exists. The closest person who fits that description (at least electronically) is a self-proclaimed Egyptian “movie-maker” in California, who calls himself “Sam Bassel” on Facebook. Bassel has been registered on Facebook since 2010, and has posted regularly about the movies he supposedly produces, including the one that was used as a pretext for the Egyptian riots.

“Hello, I am a producer in a America and I live in Hollywood California,” he wrote in a July 15 post, well before the controversy erupted in Egypt. “I recently produced a movie that I believe to be one of the most historically important movie of our times. It is a 2 hour long movie about the entire life of the Prophet Muhammad from start to finish. Everything that is depicted in the movie is very true and well documented in all historical books that are found and taught in all Islamic countries.”

Bassel has posted about the film often over the past few months. …

UPDATE: The Facebook page belonging to “Sam Bassel” was apparently taken down a few hours after I posted this, but PolicyMic published some screenshots.

Hold on, though, the story gets weirder. PolicyMic also flags an AP article that suggests Bacile/Bassel may actually be a man named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who claims to be a “manager” for the company that produced the film, as well as a Coptic Christian. Nakoula denied that he posed as Bacile, but the details dug up by the AP sure sound suspicious:

“Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles that he was manager for the company that produced Innocence of Muslims, which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad and may have caused inflamed mobs that attacked U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. He provided the first details about a shadowy production group behind the film.

“Nakoula denied he directed the film and said he knew the self-described filmmaker, Sam Bacile. But the cellphone number that AP contacted Tuesday to reach the filmmaker who identified himself as Sam Bacile traced to the same address near Los Angeles where AP found Nakoula. Federal court papers said Nakoula’s aliases included Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others. …

“Nakoula denied he had posed as Bacile. During a conversation outside his home, he offered his driver’s license to show his identity but kept his thumb over his middle name, Basseley. Records checks by the AP subsequently found it and other connections to the Bacile persona.”

There must be a Jew behind it somewhere, though. [Note to the dense: We are being sarcastic. We are mocking anti-Semites.]

Trust the press agencies to keep looking for him.

Postscript, from Poynter:

A roundup of what has been reported about Innocence of Muslims, the anti-Islam film that contributed to attacks on U.S. embassies in Liby, Cairo, and now Yemen, killing US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three staffers, [suggests that] it may not exist. A squadron of reporters has failed to locate evidence that anything longer than the film’s extremely weird “trailer” has been produced.

The attacks yesterday (9/11) on American diplomats and their diplomatic compounds in Egypt and Libya, the killing of members of their staff, and most imperatively the atrocious murder and savage treatment of the dead body of Ambassador Christopher Stevens ought to be treated as acts of war.

This text by John Hinderaker and the pictures come from PowerLine:

Official accounts say that those who were in the vehicle with Ambassador Christopher Stevens as they tried to escape from the violence at the American consulate in Benghazi were shot, but that Stevens died of “suffocation.” This may have an ominous significance. Further, news accounts indicate that the ambassador’s body was dragged or paraded through the streets. This photo is said to be of Ambassador Stevens, and it certainly appears to be him. I can’t tell from the photo whether he was dead at this time or not. I hope so:

This picture is also represented to be of Ambassador Stevens. It is hard to tell; about all one can say is that the shirt appears consistent with the first photograph:

The appropriate reaction to what happened last night in Cairo and, especially, Benghazi is fury. The question is, what are we going to do – not say, do – about it?

UPDATE: This photo, said to be of Ambassador Stevens, has surfaced. It does seem to be him. The caption suggests that the people in the photo are “helping” him; that could be true, I suppose. He is also described as “unconscious.” It is unclear when in the sequence of events these pictures were taken.

Yes, we should rain shock and awe down on Egypt and Libya.

But the answer to the question John Hinderaker asks: “What are we going to do about it?” – considering that Barack Obama, an Islam-loving anti-America pacifist, is in charge of US foreign affairs – is: “Probably nothing more than issue an apology for annoying the murderous Muslim mobs in both countries.”

Indeed, such an apology has already been issued, to the disgust of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

From sea to shining sea Americans should sit down and weep.

Then rise, throw Obama out of the White House, put a fiery and decisive end to the jihad, and reclaim American greatness.

The Muslim organizers call their three-day event (from today August 31 through September 2) in Charlotte, North Carolina, “Jumah at the DNC“.

Horrible. Especially as it  is to be addressed by jihadis such as Jibril Hough and Siraj Wahhaj.

Robert Spencer provides this information about them:

Take … BIMA [Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs] spokesman Jibril Hough. Hough’s mosque, the Islamic Center of Charlotte, is owned by a Muslim Brotherhood group, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case. …

The “Grand Imam” for Jumah at the DNC is none other than Siraj Wahhaj … [who was] designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing …  In the early 1990s he squired the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, all around New York City and New Jersey, sponsoring talks by him in area mosques. The Blind Sheikh … is now serving a life sentence for his role in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, as well as in jihad plots to blow up the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. …Wahhaj … has warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has also asserted that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

So why is such a man acting as the “Grand Imam” at “Jumah at the DNC”? The Democrats are so in thrall to multiculturalism that it is likely that few, if any, DNC organizers know or care about Wahhaj’s Islamic supremacist statements and ties.

To raise any concerns about such a speaker would be “Islamophobic,” violating every rule of the anti-American, anti-Western ethos that prevails among so many Democrats today.

(Much more about Siraj Wahhaj may be found here and here.)

To what extent is the Jumah an official DNC event? The Democratic National Convention does not open there until September 3. Its website lists the Jumah on a whole program of “religious events related to the Democratic convention”. Sort of official then?

Friday, Aug. 31

• 1 p.m.: Marshall Park, 800 E. Third St.; a Muslim “Jumah Prayer” with Imam Siraj Wahhaj.

• 6:30 p.m.: Time Warner Cable Arena, 333 E. Trade St.; rosary and nonpartisan prayer vigil.

Catholic.

Saturday, Sept. 1

• 10 a.m.-noon: Pro-life prayer vigil at Planned Parenthood, 4822 Albemarle Road.

Pro-life at Planned Parenthood. So a protest really, calling itself a “vigil”.

• 10 a.m.-10 p.m.: Park Expo and Conference Center, 2500 E. Independence Blvd.; “Islamic Cultural and Fun Fest” includes concert, carnival and town hall conference on issues affecting Muslims.

All part of the Jumah, that.

Sunday, Sept. 2

• 10 a.m.: Myers Park Baptist, 1900 Queens Road; the Rev. James Forbes, pastor emeritus of Riverside Church of New York, will speak on the spiritual state of the nation.

• 10:30 a.m.: First Baptist, 301 S. Davidson St.; New York City Councilman Fernando Cabrera, a convention delegate, will give the guest sermon.

• 3-4:15 p.m.: Pritchard Memorial Baptist, 1117 South Blvd.: “Prayers for Children: An Interfaith Call to Action,” with Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Three venues for Baptists.

• 3 p.m.: Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre; “Charlotte 714,” a nondenominational, nonpartisan prayer based on 2 Chronicles 7:14. Free, but tickets required: www.charlotte714.com/join-us/

2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

So a big sin session. Some like it hot. 

Monday, Sept. 3

• 7 a.m.: State NAACP’s “Clergy, Faith and Justice Prayer Breakfast,” Greater Galilee Baptist Church, 501 W. Park Ave., Charlotte.

• 12 p.m.: Friendship Missionary Baptist, 3400 Beatties Ford Road; “Faith and the Economy” with the Rev. Calvin Butts of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem in NYC.

Baptists again. More Baptist than Muslim events, it seems.

Tuesday, Sept. 4

• 12 p.m.: St. Patrick Cathedral, 1621 Dilworth Road East; Bishop Peter Jugis of Charlotte will celebrate Mass with a sermon on election-year thoughts for Catholics.

• 2-4 p.m.: St. Peter Catholic Church, 507 S. Tryon; “Gospel Without Borders” will be shown to delegates and elected officials. An interdenominational group of bishops will lead a discussion. The film will be repeated for the public at 7 p.m. at Park Road Baptist, 3900 Park Road. To register: www.cbfnc.org and click on Events.

Wednesday, Sept. 5

• 10 a.m.-noon: St. Peter Catholic Church; “Mind the Gap,” by Sister Simone Campbell of Network social justice lobby.

• 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.: Civil Rights for Life march and rally, starting at the Diocese of Charlotte Pastoral Center, 1123 S. Church St., with rally at Independence Square, at Trade and Tryon.

Starting at a Pastoral Center, but continuing as … what exactly? Something political more than religious.

• 1:30-2:30 p.m.: St. Peter Catholic; “Building the World House” with the Rev. Johnny B. Hill.

• 4-6 p.m.: St. Peter Catholic; “Imago Dei – Journeys of Courage, Hope and Home.”

• 6 p.m.: Covenant Presbyterian, 1000 E. Morehead St.; “Soul in the City: When Faith, Morality and Politics Meet,” featuring sociologist Tony Campolo.

Thursday, Sept. 6

• 10 a.m.-noon: St. Peter Catholic; “Nuns on the Bus,” with Sister Simone Campbell.

Events through convention week

• Billy Graham Library: “God’s Ambassador to World Leaders” exhibit examines the evangelist’s relationship with presidents to prime ministers and kings, Monday-Saturday, 9:30-5 p.m. www.billygrahamlibrary.org

• First Presbyterian: 200 W. Trade St., “Welcome, Witness and Worship,” Sept 3-6, refreshments on the lawn throughout the day, 5:30 p.m. vespers

• Myers Park Methodist Church, Queens and Providence roads: Quiet time and prayers for peace and unity, 7 a.m.-9 a.m., Sept. 4-6.

Catholics will be the busiest, Baptists next, then Muslims.

All horrible enough as religious affairs. But the Jumah by far the worst politically.

These are quotations from an article by Andrew McCarthy at PJ Media:

Islamists and Leftists are frequent collaborators. …

Both ideologies are totalitarian in the sense of wanting centralized control of people’s lives, down to the small details; both elevate the good of the collective (or the ummah) over the individual; both are vigorously anti-capitalist (something most Americans still do not know about Islamist ideology); and neither can succeed in achieving its grand design without suppressing the liberties and self-determinism of the citizen. …

We learn day-by-day of more collaboration between Islamists and Leftists. The Obama administration dramatically changes American policy by engaging in formal contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood [in Egypt, where it is now the government] …

An administration official lets slip that there have [also] been “hundreds” of meetings between the administration and the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR]  — CAIR being a public relations and lawfare outfit the Brotherhood created to champion Hamas and other agenda items. The administration issues a visa for a member of a formally designated terrorist organization — one that is rabidly anti-American — so he can come to the White House, along with Brotherhood operatives, for consultations on the new Egypt. When Congress complains about it, Obama’s Homeland Security secretary says lawmakers ought to get used to it because more such consultations are in the offing. The White House continues its close relations with the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA], the most important Brotherhood affiliate in America and one which — like CAIR — was cited by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator the 2007-08 Holy Land Foundation case for its Hamas financing activities.

ISNA’s leader was front and center at President Obama’s recent Iftar dinner.

The collusion between Islamists and Leftists is not just arguable anymore, it’s conventional wisdom. … Evidently, tens of thousands of Islamists will be flocking to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte for “Jumah at the DNC,” an extravaganza starring “moderates” who champion Hamas and argue for replacing the United States Constitution with sharia.

Tens of thousands? Perhaps the Muslims will outnumber the Catholics and Baptists added together.

In all, are the Democrats more God-bothered and God-bothering than the Republicans in this convention season?

So those 72 virgins that heaven provides for good Muslim men when they “pass on” are nine years old?

Frank Crimi writes at Front Page:

As Iranian lawmakers now seek to lower the legal age of marriage for girls to nine-years-old, the number of Iranian brides already under 10 years of age is sharply rising.

The Iranian decision to allow nine-year-old girls the legal opportunity to be married to fully grown men was announced by Mohammad Ali Isfenani, chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee.

Isfenani called Iran’s current civil legislation, which sets the minimum legal age of marriage for girls at 13-years-old, “un-Islamic and illegal,” saying, “We must regard nine as being the appropriate age for a girl to have reached puberty and qualified to get married. To do otherwise would be to contradict and challenge Islamic Sharia law.”

Isenfani’s clarion call for prepubescent marriage comes at the same moment a new report from the Union for the Protection of Children’s Rights (UPCR) found 75 Iranian girls less than 10-years-old were forced to marry in the past two months, part of a sharp rise in the overall number of Iranian child brides under the age of 10.

According to UPCR, of the 342,000 Iranian marriages among girls under 18-years-old registered in 2010, at least 713 marriages involved girls under 10-years-old, more than twice as many as were registered in the prior three years. Moreover, of these underage marriages, 42,000 involved girls between the ages of 10 to 14.

There are now more than 50 million child brides, a number that is growing by 10 million each year and which is expected to reach 100 million young victims over the next decade. …

These unfortunate children are married off for a bevy of cultural and religious reasons, ranging from ensuring familial alliances to economic necessities, such as settling debts or overcoming natural disasters to ensure a family’s survival. …

Drought-stricken Africa has witnessed the emergence of so-called “drought brides” who are being sold for as little as $170. …

While the reasons behind these human transactions may vary, the one commonality is that the younger the girl, the better the deal. Specifically, it is important that these girls be sold off at a young enough age to better ensure their virginity, thus increasing their economic value and protecting the honor of their families.

Not surprisingly, once handed-off, these child brides are then consigned to a terrifyingly nasty, brutish and short-lived existence … The life expectancy of their frightful existence is likely to be cut exceedingly short given the multitude of health risks inherent in being a child bride, not the least of which is the high mortality rate from childbirth injuries, where an estimated 70,000 girls under 15 die each year from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. …

Most of these child marriages take place in predominantly Islamic countries spread throughout the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

The deeply rooted Islamic attachment to prepubescent marriage finds religious justification in the [fictitious*] Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a six-year-old child bride, a marriage consummated when she was nine-years-old …

While most would find it hard to believe that a 15-year-old-girl, let alone a nine-year-old girl, is physically or emotionally ready to start engaging in sexual activity and carrying a child, others think that girls barely removed from the womb are more than fully capable of handling those activities. That enlightened attitude was on display in January when one of Saudi Arabia’s most influential clerics, Sheik Saleh al-Fawzan, issued a fatwa allowing fathers to arrange marriages for their daughters “even if they are in the cradle.”

However, lest anyone think a man would actually engage in sex with such a young infant, al-Fawzan was quick to add that it wasn’t “permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.”

You don’t want to crush your baby bride, do you? Not when you’ve paid for her?

Given that, it’s not surprising that many believe that underage marriage is little more than legally permissible and religiously sanctioned pedophilia. Yet, some defenders of the horrid practice argue that critics have no moral or ethical qualms about child marriage but are instead driven by less than pure concerns.  One such person is Yemeni Sheik Mohammed Hamzi, an imam and official of the Islamist Yemeni opposition party, Islaah. Hamzi had been asked his opinion in reaction to international complaints to the death of a 13-year-old Yemeni child bride who bled to death after being tied down and forced to have sex with her 23-year-old husband.

Should we still call it “making love”?

Hamzi simply ascribed their dissatisfaction to the fact [sic] that “No one wants to marry these women’s-rights activists anyway. They’re just depressed and jealous that they are not married.”

We are surprised to learn that there are any “women’s-rights activists”, married or single, who are trying to save little girls from being legally raped to death in accordance with Islamic law.

We listened hard and long for the voices of Western feminists raised en bloc against the plight of Muslim women and girls, but have given up hope of ever hearing them.

* See also our post “The Prophet Muhammad” did not exist, August 26, 2012.

… of Christians now, the cause for which they must suffer martydom, is – Political Correctness.  

This is from American Thinker, by Bill Warner:

If you are even slightly awake about the world news today, it is no surprise that Christians are being killed, raped, and brutalized throughout the Islamic world. However, there is a place where you can go to escape the dreadful and relentless details of Christian annihilation by Islam. You can go to church.

Never mind the details; for the most part, Christians in the First World won’t mention the persecution and massacre of Christians in the Third World at all. In our experience, if they ever raise the subject it is to revel mawkishly in the patient endurance of their martyrs, never to accuse the persecutors and killers, never to pour out righteous anger against them. That’s the Christian way. “Resist not evil'” commanded the authors of the “Sermon on the Mount”. But we say, not to resist evil is to permit it; to permit it is to connive at it; and to connive at it is to co-author it. Christians cannot see that. Their indignation is reserved for their own heretics – and the Jews, of course.  In fact, they manage to find ingenious ways of blaming Jews for the Muslim persecution of Christians when they’re absolutely forced to admit that it’s happening. But at present they’re obstinately ignoring it. (See our post, Speaking of persecution: Christians as victims and victimizers, July 28, 2012.)

For example, Christians were killed this week in Nigeria. Nothing out of the ordinary – indeed, in the world of Christian persecution, this is routine.

And so the response found in nearly every church to the murder of Christians is…wait for it…complete silence. Not a mention or reference to it, or to the brutality against Christians that happens almost every day in the Islamic world.

This is not a passive silence, because if you try to change it, you will fail. The silence is an active, working conspiracy that goes throughout nearly all of Christendom.

Take a simple example: prayer for the persecuted. From a Christian perspective, this falls under the heading of obvious. Try taking the idea of prayer for the routinely murdered Christians in Nigeria or Egypt to ministers, boards, and any part of the structure of the church, and see how far you will get. You will get rejection with a myriad of lame and evasive excuses, since the people in power fear to recognize the suffering of Christians around the world.

If you acknowledge the suffering, you might wind up asking the question: why are these Christians suffering? Ah, there is the rub. The suffering is caused by Muslim jihadists who are following the Islamic doctrine of jihad against the Christian as found in Koran, Sira, and Hadith. Islam is the cause of suffering of Christians, as well as of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists.

But stop! We cannot say those things! Facts are the new hate speech, so we cannot speak about the jihad against Christians. Therefore, we get no prayers for the persecuted, because it would lead to talk about why the murder of Christians keeps happening. And that truth would lead to being called an Islamophobe, so we are not going there. Result: silence. …

Absurd as it is to believe that prayer – ie. talking to nothing – will have any effect, the point is they do believe it; so their withholding prayer means that they observe political correctness more conscientiously than their religion. Political Correctness is now their highest cause.     

In reality we all have pulpits. Are we using the suffering of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, women, gays, and intellectuals caused by Islam as a topic of conversation with those around us? Who is comfortable with bringing up anything negative about Islam? To tell those facts about Islam is a social crime, and you will be accused of being a hater/Islamophobe. So most of us remain silent about the evils of political Islam, and we are just like the ministers – silent in our own pulpits. Christians and non-Christians share the fear of being insulted as bigots and Islamophobes.

We don’t understand why. The “Islamophobe” label should be worn as a badge of honor.

It turns out that all of those who oppose any social evil will be hated. Think about it. It takes a massive amount of power to put into place any societal doctrine, such as multiculturalism and political correctness. The government, universities, many churches, synagogues, and the media have become enforcers of multiculturalism and political correctness. They are very powerful and believe that their dogma rules all peoples.

They are also full-throated apologists for Islam. Now it turns out that their actual knowledge about the doctrine and history of political Islam is close to zero and Muslim Brotherhood-approved, but that is no problem. The Establishment just says that those who find fault with Islam are bigots and that they hate us.

The silence of the pulpits is the greatest aider and abettor of Islam in the U.S. No one serves and advances Islam better than the silent ministers. They have abandoned their duty of courage in the face of persecution, but the rest of the flock still looks for moral leadership from them. Islam triumphs when Christian leaders do not condemn the murderous evil of political Islam.

Even worse than the silent ministers are those who go to “interfaith dialogs” and smile while the Muslims assert religious and political dominance over them. The nice, oh so nice Christians and Jews show up to tie, while the Muslims are there to win, and they do.

Oh yes. The Muslims are winning. Every time a new mosque is built in the West, they win. Every time an employer agrees to let them have time off to pray, they win. Every time a Muslim woman is allowed to keep on her hijab by an organization that allows no variance of uniform to any other member, they win. And so on.

The pulpits must become a source of courage and knowledge and stand up for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and all others who suffer under Islam’s persecution today and who have suffered for the last 1,400 years.

It isn’t just about religion; it is about the survival of our civilization.

Religion itself is the disease that makes Western civilization vulnerable. But we agree that the cowardice of the churches faced with the rise of Islam is despicable.