Life in a Garbage Dump - Burmese Migrants scrounge through trash to survive

MAE SOT, Thailand - February 2019 — When entering the landfill on the outskirts of Mae Sot on Thailand’s border with Burma, flies buzz chaotically around the waste, which ranges from metal devices to worn out clothes to rotten food, the pile standing taller than a grown man.

“We consume wasted food if it is good enough. We cook it, if needed. We make our living by collecting wasted and recyclable materials and selling them,” explained Ma San Aye, a 45 year-old Burmese woman originally from Kyaukki Township in Pegu Division who has made her home at the garbage dump for more than 15 years along with her children and grandchildren.

“We can survive on 20 baht (US$0.58) a day here,” she said, sipping her tea as flies attempt to land on the cup’s rim.

Ma San Aye prepares to head out to collect rubbish. The garbage piles stand like a small hill in an area called Mae Pa—it is where all of the waste from Mae Sot town is thrown.

“Of course it is bad for our health. Before, I had no diseases. Now, I have back pain and chest pain. It is smelly, but we have adapted to it. Before, I would vomit and I couldn’t eat for five days. But it is okay now,” said Ma San Aye said.

She said she makes around 2,000 baht (US$58) a month selling materials she finds at the dump.

Those who reside near the waste site live in makeshift tents, where they eat and sleep. Some sort through the trash during the daytime, and others do so at night.

Ma San Aye’s grandson plays in a tent near the landfill where he lives with his family. 

“We can’t survive if we are afraid of bad, dirty and smelly waste. It is like our kitchen—we eat here and live here,” said Ko Than Oo, 49, while collecting recyclable materials around the landfill.

Sweat fell on his face and his clothes were soaked with perspiration.

“I know the smell is not good for our health. I get severe headaches and dizziness. Sometimes, I have heavy coughing,” he said.  Ko Than Oo collects recyclable waste at the front of the garbage dump in Mae Sot. 

Ko Than Oo has lived near the garbage pile with his blind and aging mother for 12 years. Despite the reforms underway in Burma, he said he has no plan to go back to his homeland, as he does not have a job there. He makes about 150 baht (US$4.34) a day by collecting and selling recyclable materials. This, he said, is enough to feed himself and his mother.

Several other people, including women and children, are also busy, collecting rubbish in the heat. There are more than 100 households living at the garbage pile, and, according to residents, some have been living here for up to 20 years.

Ko Than Oo and other waste collectors work at the garbage pile in Mae Sot. 

U Moe Joe, chairman of Joint Action Committee for Burma Affairs in Mae Sot, has been supporting Burmese workers in the area for 14 years. He told The Irrawaddy that there are 300 Burmese people currently living in and around Mae Sot’s landfill; they came to Thailand hoping to escape poverty and unemployment in their hometowns.

“They depend on the garbage. They make their living by collecting waste,” he said. Although Mae Sot is experiencing economic growth, many of the benefits do not reach the Burmese migrant workers who live and work there, U Moe Joe explained, saying that instead, those who work in factories, construction, and in waste collection are frequently “left behind.”

The garbage collector Ko Than Oo said that migrants like himself are excluded from experiencing development in Mae Sot, adding, “It has nothing to do with us.”

For Ma San Aye, her relationship with the waste site has become a way of life, and a resource on which she depends in order to make a living.

“For us it is like a pile of gold and money. We rely on this garbage,” she says, smoking a cheroot in her tent while her grandchildren play nearby.

Myanmar Military violating human rights in Rakhine Unrest

Amnesty International says military shelling villages, limiting access to food and keeping humanitarian groups out.

Myanmar's military is shelling villages and preventing civilians from getting food and humanitarian help, amid an intensifying crackdown on the rebel Arakan Army in the restive northwestern state of Rakhine that has pushed thousands from their homes, Amnesty International has said.

The human rights group said on Monday its investigations also found that the security forces had used vague and repressive laws to detain civilians in its battle against the Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine group that is fighting for more autonomy.

"These latest operations are yet another reminder that the Myanmar military operates without any regard for human rights," Tirana Hassan, Amnesty's director of crisis response, said in a statement. "Shelling inhabited villages and withholding food supplies is unjustifiable under any circumstances."

Fighting between the military and Arakan Army intensified in January after the rebels attacked a police post leaving 13 officers dead.

The military responded by deploying more troops to the region, the site of a massive crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017, in an attempt to "crush" the fighters. The United Nations says some 5,200 people had been forced from their homes on January 28, as a result of the conflict.

There was no immediate response from the Myanmar authorities to Amnesty's report.

Unlawful tactics

Amnesty said it had spoken to people affected by the fighting, as well as to local activists and humanitarian workers to get an understanding of the effects of the latest unrest. It said most of those forced to flee were Buddhist and included minority Mro, Khami, Daingnet and Rakhine people. Myanmar has about 135 different ethnic groups.

It noted that unlawful tactics had been a "hallmark of the military's operations against armed groups" and that previous operations in Kachin and northern Shan states had killed and wounded civilians and displaced thousands. It added that the troop build-up in Rakhine included the 99th Light Infantry Division, a unit Amnesty and others had previously implicated in atrocities against the Rohingya in August 2017.

Two villagers who spoke to Amnesty said that they had fled their homes under military bombardment and when they returned to collect belongings discovered money and other valuables were missing. They suspected soldiers of the theft because troops had been expected to secure the area.

Another said Myanmar soldiers and police had restricted the amount of rice that people in her village could bring into the settlement even though they were already suffering from a shortage of basic foods because fighting in December had prevented them from harvesting their crops. As a result, they abandoned the village, as had other people in settlements nearby.

"We talked among ourselves that it was impossible to live in our village any more," the 34-year-old woman from a remote ethnic Mro village in Kyauktaw Township told Amnesty. "We didn't want to move to a (displaced persons) camp, but we couldn't trade what we found in the forest and we couldn't get through enough supplies."

Military presence

The unrest has also spilled over into neighboring Chin State where locally-based human rights monitors say the sporadic violence and escalating military presence in its southern part is affecting local communities.

An update from the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) that was released on Sunday said the military had imposed restrictions on movement and a curfew in three villages after troops moved into a nearby town. Residents told CHRO more than 50 military vehicles had arrived in Matupi Town, checkpoints had been erected and that there were regular helicopter flights in and out of the area.

Despite the unrest in Rakhine, the Myanmar authorities have made it more difficult for aid groups to work in the region, Amnesty said. On January 10, the Rakhine government barred all UN agencies and international organizations with the exception of the Red Cross and the World Food Program from operating in the five conflict-affected townships.

"The Myanmar authorities are deliberately playing with the lives and livelihoods of civilians," Hassan said. "As we've seen time and again, the military's priority is not to protect people in the crossfire, but rather to hide their abuses from the international community."

Amnesty said it had also gathered evidence that the military and police were abusing the law to detain and prosecute civilians, including Aung Tun Sein, a Mro village leader who had been picked up in the wake of an outbreak of fighting in the area around his village in mid-January and remained in jail. Ten other men held with him were released.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

Religion is Disappearing. That’s Great for Politics.

Article by Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic Magazine

Before the rise of the religious right in the 1980s, most politicians kept their faith to themselves. In 1945, for example, President Harry Truman wrote: “I’m not very much impressed with men who publicly parade their religious beliefs.” After his election in 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower joined a Presbyterian church, but when he heard the minister was publicly boasting about his new member the general commanded, “You go and tell that goddam minister that if he gives out one more story about my religious faith I will not join his goddam church!” John F. Kennedy discussed his Catholicism only when forced to do so by critics during the 1960 presidential campaign. In a 1964 interview with the Baptist Standard, President Lyndon Johnson explained, “I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution.” Richard Nixon was famously a Quaker, but what he practiced can best be described as religious expediency—whatever worked politically. Gerald Ford called his religiosity “very personal” and wrote, “I am most reluctant to speak or write about it publicly.” Even the openly evangelical Christian Jimmy Carter prioritized his piety below that of most political issues.

This all changed in the 1980s, when evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority (famously characterized as “neither”) convinced Christian politicians that evangelizing for the Lord included knocking on doors within the beltway. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Christian sects and faith-based organizations such as Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition of America and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family used rallies and donor support to convince politicians and candidates that if they didn’t pander to religious voters they stood little chance of being elected. The result has been a nauseating display of political cheerleading for Christ, from proclaiming Jesus as your favorite “philosopher” to petitioning the almighty at the end of public political speeches to “bless the United States of America.”

Those days might be over. To those of us who are atheists, agnostics or “spiritual but not religious,” and who prefer to keep the Constitution and the Bible in separate drawers, the Pew Research Center has recently published data from a massive representative survey of 35,000 adult Americans, revealing that the fastest growing religious cohort in America are the “nones”—those who check the box for “no religious affiliation.” Such unaffiliated numbers have been climbing steadily out of the single-digit cellar in the 1990s into a now respectable two-digit 23 percent of adults of all ages, up from 16 percent just since 2007. More telling for politicians who cater their campaigns toward younger voters, 34 percent of millennials—those born after 1981, and the nation’s largest living generation—profess to having no religion. A third! That’s a viable voting bloc.

It is really the raw numbers that should give pause to any politician or candidate contemplating ignoring this voting bloc. There are today about 245 million adult Americans. This translates into 56 million religiously unaffiliated adults of all ages, more than either mainline Protestants or Catholics and second only to evangelical Protestants. This translates into 19 million more people who have no religion just since 2007, an encouraging trend for those who have grown weary of America’s slide toward theocracy.

The trend lines are as unmistakable as they are consequential. As the religious pig makes its way through the generational python—from the Silent Generation (b. 1928-1945) to Baby Boomers (b. 1946-1964) to Generation X (b. 1965-1980) to Older Millennials (b. 1981-1989) to Younger Millennials (b. 1990-1996)—the number of the faithful coming out the other end will inexorably diminish in both number and influence. In addition, people are changing religions—the Pew survey found that 42 percent of Americans currently adhere to a religion different from the one into which they were born and raised, further eroding the quaint notion of there being One True Religion. Yes, some people raised with no religion became religious (4.3 percent of U.S. adults), but four times as many went the other direction.

Imagine no religion. This is no figment of your imagination. It is happening now and it may be the most important trend of the new century. Indeed, pulling back for a big history perspective, the shedding of religious dogmas and the demolishing of ecclesiastical authoritarianism has been underway ever since the Enlightenment, and in my new book The Moral Arc I claim that this may well be the most important thing that has ever happened to our civilization.

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Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a presidential fellow at Chapman University. His new book is The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom (Henry Holt, 2015). 

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Changing Religious Landscape of America

A dramatic rise in the number of spiritually "unaffiliated" Americans, mirroring a decline in the number of American Christians, has occurred in the past seven years, signaling significant changes for mainline Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church, a new report reveals.

According to the "America's Changing Religious Landscape" survey released early Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, 71 percent of Americans claim a Christian label, down from 78 percent in 2007, while 23 percent identify as "religiously unaffiliated," which includes atheists, agnostics and those who are spiritual-but-not-religious," up from 16.1 percent seven years ago.

The survey, which includes responses from 35,000 Americans and reprises a 2007 effort, shows unaffiliated ranks are growing "at a pace that is really remarkable," said Greg Smith, Pew's associate director of research.

Just under 6 percent of Americans identify as members of non-Christian faiths, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, the report said, up from 4.7 percent in 2007.

"If the religiously unaffiliated are growing, and non-Christian faiths are growing, it follows that another group is declining, and that's the Christian population," Smith said. Still, "the United States remains home to more Christians than anywhere else in the world, but seven in 10 Americans identify as Christians" now, versus nearly eight in 10 earlier.

Evangelical Christians, whom Pew defined as people who said they were members of churches "including the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, Churches of Christ, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Presbyterian Church in America, other (smaller) evangelical denominations and many nondenominational congregations," make up the largest segment of American Christianity. The Pew survey put their numbers at 25.4 percent of the population, down nine-tenths of a point over the past seven years. Similarly, membership in historically black Protestant churches also remained steady at about 16 million, the Pew survey found.

The evangelical stability is interesting, said University of Notre Dame political science professor David Campbell, who was briefed in advance on the study, "because it shows the evangelicals are holding on to their ranks to a greater extent than the mainline Protestants and Catholics."

Membership in mainline Protestant groups such as the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ, has declined 18.8 percent during the period, and the Roman Catholic population has dropped 13 percent in the past 7 years.

Smith said that while the most recent waves of American immigrants "are more heavily Catholic" than the rest of the population, the passing of older generations is reducing the size of the Catholic cohort. Also notable, he said, was that for every person who converts to Catholicism, more than six Catholics said they've left the faith.

The changes in the religious makeup of the country could, observers said, have an impact on social issues, political outcomes and even charitable donations in the future.

Because the unaffiliated have "a real aversion" to mixing pulpit and politics, Campbell added, "the rise of that group should concern people across the political spectrum." He said the language of American religion has long influenced the country's social and political actions.

"Just given the amount of charitable giving that comes through churches, and every social movement has come out of the churches," Campbell said, a rise of unaffiliated people means that if "we can't use that (faith-based) language" to appeal to people's consciences, "I think America will in the long run be for the worse."

Unaffiliated rise

The Pew study, Smith said, charts a dramatic rise in the number of religiously unaffiliated. He noted there are more unaffiliated (23 percent of the population) than either mainline Protestants (14.7 percent) or Roman Catholics (20.8 percent).

"The number of religiously unaffiliated adults has increased by roughly 19 million since 2007," the study stated. "There are now approximately 56 million religiously unaffiliated adults in the U.S.," second only in number to the number of evangelicals.

Moreover, the Pew study also showed that in every age category — the "silent" generation born between 1928 and 1945; the baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964; members of Generation X, born 1965 to 1980, and "older" millennials born between 1981 and 1990 — the number of unaffiliated people rose between 2 percent and 9 percent from 2007 until now.

Only the "younger millennials," born between 1990 and 1996 and who were not surveyed in 2007, were not measured for a percentage growth change. However, that group topped this most recent survey with 36 percent of respondents claiming "unaffiliated" status.

Smith held out little hope the unaffiliated would return to faith later in life. He noted the number of unaffiliated people, in an age cohort such as millennials, "tends not to change, but to tick up as they age." Fewer than six in 10 millennials identify as Christians, he added.

Evangelical author Ed Stetzer, who heads LifeWay Research in Nashville and was not briefed on the study results, said churches need to consider the specific backgrounds these people have when attempting to reach out to them.

"You need to ask and answer harder questions about why should a secular person have any interest in spiritual issues," he said. "There's no religious memory to appeal to" in today's unaffiliated, churches need to make a case as to why they should consider a Christian worldview at all.

Catholic, mainline decline

As the Pew study noted, some historically stable segments of American Christianity are now in decline.

"The large, traditionally white Christian churches, Catholics, mainline Protestants, continue to decline, and there appears to be an acceleration there as well," said the University of Akron's Green. "It's not just a decline in relative size, but also a decline in the absolute number. There are actually fewer members of those churches than there were several years ago."

Smith explained the decline in the Catholic population by saying it's in part a function of age. "Older generations of Americans among whom huge majorities are Christian and denominationally affiliated," he said. "Members of those (age groups) are beginning to pass away. Part of what's happening to explain those, they are being replaced by a younger generation of adults who are far less Christian and affiliated than their parents' generation."

The rapid, continuing decline of many historic "mainline" Protestant denominations has been "consistent" over the past 15 years, said Jeff Walton of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative Washington think tank.

Walton contrasted the mainline denominations' decline with growth found in more theologically conservative churches such as the Assemblies of God, a conservative Pentecostal denomination, or non-denominational associations such as the Vineyard or Calvary Chapel networks of churches, which he said show "pockets of significant vitality within the American Christian landscape."

Walton said the Assemblies of God "has been growing for over a generation and is now about 500 times the size it was in the mid-20th century."

In order to stem the decline, Walton suggested both "relational evangelism," where church members invite friends to their congregations, and a more compelling message that asks more of members than social activism.

"The Protestant mainline has focused so much on material needs and public policy that they've sort of become like a United Way with a religious veneer," he said.

Other religions grow

America's Jewish population, at 1.9 percent, is the largest among "other," or non-Christian, faiths in the country, the Pew survey found.

But it's "the Muslim and Hindu shares of the population (that) have risen significantly since 2007. And it is possible that the Religious Landscape Study may underestimate the size of these groups," according to the report, because the survey was only in English and Spanish, possibly restricting responses from people who principally speak other languages.

John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron and a Pew fellow who was briefed on the study, noted the increase in non-Christian religions, Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus as "significant."

And while some individuals may shift affiliations to faiths comparatively newer on the American scene such as Hinduism and Islam, Notre Dame professor Campbell said birth rates and immigration may be more important factors.

"There is a lot of misunderstanding about how many Muslims there are," Campbell said. "I think almost all of it would be demographic, as you put it. In general, I would say, particularly with Muslims, it's going to be driven by a combination of immigration, their birth rate and the rate of retention, of being able to keep young Muslims within the faith."

Societal impacts

Overall, Green said, the changing American religious scene points toward potential shifts in politics. The era of Christian dominance in politics, particularly by the mainline churches, may soon be over.

"To the extent that numbers matter in politics, the total number of people that belong to a certain religious tradition has an important implication," Green said. "The number of white Christian voters is declining, and those (mainline Protestant) groups won't have the kind of dominance they once had" in the 1950s.

Green said it is unlikely America will see a rerun of 40 years ago, when the Revs. Pat Robertson, an evangelical, and Jesse Jackson, an African-American, both endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, at the time a Southern Baptist who continued to teach Sunday School classes during the campaign. While Robertson jettisoned Carter four years later, that election was a watershed moment in Christian political unity, he said.

Instead of counting on religious affiliations, political campaigns will turn more on questions of voter turnout, a candidate's personality and the "crisis of the moment" come Election Day, Green said.

"The raw material of politics is changing," he added. "The (voting) groups that can be motivated to vote, their relative size is shifting." Green said motivating white evangelical voters will become less important, while future Republican candidates will have to find new ways of reaching non-white religious believers as well as the unaffiliated.  A&T

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Commitment to free speech? Some Thoughts and Questions...

What's the true test of one's commitment to free speech? It does not come when he permits people to be free to say or publish ideas with which he agrees. Not by a long shot. The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he permits others to say and publish ideas he deems offensive.

In March, a video surfaced of a racist chant by Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at the University of Oklahoma, a public university. It has brought widespread condemnation and the fraternity's suspension. Two fraternity students have been expelled. The University of Oklahoma's president, David Boren, said, "To those who have misused their free speech in such a reprehensible way, I have a message for you: You are disgraceful."

The Western world was shocked and outraged by another speech issue that led to the murder of 12 people at the offices of French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Islamists were retaliating for what they considered the newspaper's vulgar portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad, an insult to millions of Muslims.

What's the difference between the actions of the University of Oklahoma administrators and the actions of the Islamist murderers in Paris? Both found the speech in question offensive. Both took actions against the people involved in that speech. So what's the difference? It's a matter of degree, but not kind. Both were unwilling to tolerate speech they didn't like. Of course, the difference in responses is by no means trivial — one being expulsion and the other murder.

The principle that applies to one's commitment to free speech also applies to one's commitment to freedom of association. The true test of one's commitment to freedom of association does not come when he permits people to associate in ways he deems acceptable. The true test comes when he permits people to associate — or not to associate — in ways he deems offensive.

An evangelical Christian baker in Colorado has been threatened with jailing for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage ceremony. In 2012, for the first time in its 79-year history, the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club was forced to admit female members. At one time, blacks could not use restaurants, bathrooms, water fountains, public parks, beaches or swimming pools on the same terms as whites. In theaters, they could only sit in the balcony or in other racially designated areas. They had to ride at the back of streetcars and buses.

Permitting discriminatory practices in publicly owned facilities — such as libraries, parks and beaches — should not be permitted. That is because they are publicly financed by taxpayers and everyone should have a right to equal access. Denying freedom of association in private clubs, private businesses and private schools violates a human right.

Christian Americans are being hounded for their refusal to cater same-sex weddings. For those who support such attacks, we might ask them whether they would seek prosecution of the owner of a Jewish delicatessen who refused to provide services for a neo-Nazi affair. Should a black catering company be forced to cater a Ku Klux Klan affair? Should the NAACP be forced to open its membership to racist skinheads? Should the Congressional Black Caucus be forced to open its membership to white members of Congress?

Liberty requires bravery. To truly support free speech, one has to accept that some people will say and publish things he finds deeply offensive. Similarly, to be for freedom of association, one has to accept that some people will associate in ways that he finds deeply offensive, such as associating or not associating on the basis of race, sex or religion.

I am all too afraid that too many of my fellow Americans are too hostile to the principle of liberty. Most people want liberty for themselves. I differ. I want liberty for me and liberty for my fellow man.

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Walter Williams is an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.

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Christians are Leaving the Faith in Droves and the Trend isn't Slowing Down

(REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi) Pope Francis reacts as he leads a Wednesday general audience in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican January 15, 2014. 

An extensive study done by the Pew Research Center has yielded some fascinating information regarding the trajectory of world religions over the next four decades. 

As of 2010, Christianity was the dominant world religion with roughly 2.2 billion adherents and Muslim's were second with about 1.6 billion adherents. If current demographic trends continue however, Islam is expected to catch up to Christianity midway through the 21st century.

Furthermore, people are leaving Christianity in droves. About 106 million Christians are expected to switch affiliation from 2010 to 2050 while only about 40 million people are expected to enter Christianity.

The religiously unaffiliated (athiests, agnostics) are expected to see the largest net gains from switching, adding more than 61 million followers. 

Christians are expected to see the largest net losses from religious switching.  In North America, the fastest growing religious groups are Muslims and followers of "other religions" (an umbrella category that includes Baha’is, Jains, Sikhs, Taoists and many smaller faiths). Christianity is expected to decline from 78 percent of the overall population in 2010 to 66 percent in 2050.

Here's what the dominant religious groups in the US are by county:

Unaffiliated religions are expected to rise over that same time from 16 percent of the population to 26 percent. By 2050, the United States will have more Muslims (2.1 percent of pop.) than Jews (1.4 percent).

In South America and the Caribbean, Christianity will see a slight dip over the next four decades, from 90 percent in 2010 t0 89 percent in 2050. Over that same time the religiously unaffiliated population will add 45 million followers increasing from 8 percent of the population in 2010 to 9 percent in 2050.

If the current trends continue beyond 2050 - which is a big if considering unforeseen events that can happen over a 40 year span (war, famine, innovation etc.) - then by the year 2070 the world's population of Muslims would roughly equal that of Christians.

Here are other chief findings from the report:

1. Islam will grow faster than any other religion over the next 40 years.

2. The number of Muslims will equal the number of Christians around the world by 2050. 

3. Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.

4. The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in 2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they are today.

5. In Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population.

6. India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.

7. In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion. Muslims will be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.

8. Four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Islam... a Religion of Intolerance, Violence and Terrorism

On February 15, 2015 a video surfaced that showed black-clad jihadists of the ISIS franchise in Libya, the Islamic State in Tripoli Province, beheading 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, staining the waves with blood. These Christian victims were poor men from Egypt's rural areas who had traveled to Libya looking for work to support their families. The jihadists made it clear: They beheaded the men because they were "people of the cross, followers of the hostile [Christian] Egyptian Church." The killings raise the possibility that the Islamic militant group — which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq in a self-declared caliphate — has established a direct affiliate less than 500 miles from the southern tip of Italy. One of the militants in the video, speaking English, makes direct reference to that possibility, saying the group now plans to "conquer Rome."

Before the killings, one of the militants stood holding a knife and said in a North American-accented English: "O Crusaders, safety for you will be only wishes, especially when you’re fighting us all together. Therefore, we will fight you all together, until the war lays down its burdens, and Jesus, peace be upon him, will descend, breaking the cross, killing the swine and abolishing jiziyah. (The meaning of jiziyah:  a poll tax levied from those who did not accept Islam, but are willing to live under the protection of Islam, and are thus tacitly willing to submit to the laws enforced by the Muslim State).

Egypt launched swift retaliation, bombing at least seven locations in Libya. 

Meanwhile, Barack Obama still denied the religious causes of the violence when in his While House delivered statement said... "We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Egyptian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens. ISIS's barbarity knows no bounds." Not only does Obama deny the religious motivations of ISIS, he dishonors victims by denying why they were murdered. Not knowing the enemy -- that's how wars are lost.

Christians are under siege all over the world... in the middle-east now the siege is deadly.  It’s beginning to feel like there is a war raging between Christianity and Islam.  Too many people are struggling to grasp the fact that these two religious traditions are indeed involved in a war without borders, without traditional battle lines, where the soldiers are not easily identifiable by the uniform they wear. 

The murder of Christians around the globe is an indicator of what is to come unless the march of ISIS and aligned radical Islamic groups are not stopped.

A simple Google search tells us that Christianity is the world’s largest religion, it has more ‘adherents’ than any other. However, that’s a little misleading. The most practiced religion, the religion where people believe and adhere to the teachings of that religion more than any other is Islam, and that is where the problems begin.

We hear the word jihad on a regular basis, but we often don’t understand what we are hearing. The Quran talks of two jihads, the Lesser and the Greater Jihad and this is where we fail to understand the motivation behind the different views.

The Greater jihad is the everyday struggle that Muslims face to grow in their faith and worship Allah, something most Muslims feel is the hardest thing they are asked to do, hence the greater tag. The Lesser Jihad is the struggle they face to build a good, stable Muslim society. It is the Lesser Jihad that allows Muslims to conduct Harb al-Muqadis, or what we often hear proclaimed as holy war.

A non-military Jihad [Lesser Jihad], one conducted by, an unofficial group of Islamists is not governed by the rules of the Quran, and that’s why we see the atrocities from “organized but unofficial groups” such a Shabaab, al Qaeda, Boko Haram and of course ISIS.

Just as Christianity encompasses different denominational groups, Islam also has different sects within it. Sunni, Shi’ite, Alawite and Wahabi are some examples. They all believe in Allah, they all follow the teaching of the Quran, but their interpretation of it is very different.

It is these differences that are stoking the fires of civil unrest in Iraq. This was bound to happen. When you remove a strong dictatorial leader, however bad he is [Saddam Hussein], and then you remove the force that removed that leader [U.S. military forces], there is a vacuum left behind that rival factions attempt to fill, and this is precisely what’s happening in Iraq, giving rise to ISIS.  The goal of ISIS... what is happening in Iraq will happen across the rest of the Middle East, and Africa until the winning sect is strong enough to take on the rest of the world.

There are three main tenants of Islam that most western nations do not understand.  They are...

Islam’s ultimate goal is to rule the world. Islamic theology provides two methods for this to be accomplished. The first is spiritual, as people are lured into conversion. The second is coercive through political and physical conquest of nations. For Muslims, there are no gray areas. They see the world in black and white. For them the world is divided into two big camps: the House of Islam and the House of War. The House of Islam are the Muslims, and the House of War are the non-Muslims, of every nation, in every corner of the planet. Muslims (the House of Islam) are in a constant state of spiritual/political/physical warfare with Non-Muslims (the House of War) until they subjugate them to Islam.

Islam always employs a carrot and stick strategy. The carrot and stick that is perpetually set before Muslims is the expectation of generous rewards in this life and in eternity for those who fight for Islam. On the other hand, those who falter are warned of severe temporal and eternal punishments.

Apostasy from Islam is not an option. Once-a-Muslim-always-a-Muslim, the only official alternative is death. There is no room for changing one’s mind. The door is wide open to join Islam, but there is no backdoor for those that would like to leave it.

The third point there is important. A person considered in Islam has the religion of the father, even if one does not practice Islam. Barack Obama, president of the United States of America, even if he doesn’t wish to be, is considered under the “law of Islam” to be a Muslim.  His father was Muslin and practiced Islam.

As no attempts have been made on his life, one can assume that Islam regards him as still being a Muslim, that he has not turned his back on the faith.  Or, it could simply be that no “opportunity” to exercise a jihad against him has yet presented itself.  

Unquestionably the Muslim activists of modern times are smarter and are using more sophisticated tactics than those of ancient times. The days of the primitive methods that were used to conquer the known world, between the 7th – 17th centuries, are long gone. Islam now applies carefully studied and sophisticated strategies to achieve their goals of global conquest.

They define their targets, and decide on the best strategies to reach them. Young women are reached through love and marriage. With African-Americans the race card is used. They are deceived into believing that Mohammed was black and that Islam was birthed on the African continent. To the needy, they use money. For most people, they polish Islam and present it in an attractively revised westernized form. The violent Quranic verses are carefully excluded from recruitment strategies. The peaceful verses of the Quran are emphasized. The fact is, according to Islamic theology, the early peaceful verses that were written in Mecca are nullified (abrogated), and replaced by later violent verses that were written in Medina. To the religious establishment they claim compatibility with the Judeo-Christian faith. They cite belief in Moses, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary.  

They concur with Christianity on the existence of Heaven and Hell. Regardless of their boast that they have some common ground with Christians and Jews, the fine print in Islamic teaching tells a very different story.   The war on Christianity by Islam has begun and it’s a fight to the death.