Sunday, November 29, 2015

Million Years Ago ~

Million Years Ago"

I only wanted to have fun
Learning to fly, learning to run
I let my heart decide the way
When I was young
Deep down I must have always known
That this would be inevitable
To earn my stripes I'd have to pay
And bare my soul

I know I'm not the only one
Who regrets the things they've done
Sometimes I just feel it's only me
Who can stand the reflection that they see
I wish I could live a little more
Look up to the sky, not just the floor
I feel like my life is flashing by
And all I can do is watch and cry
I miss the air, I miss my friends
I miss my mother; I miss it when
Life was a party to be thrown
But that was a million years ago

When I walk around all of the streets
Where I grew up and found my feet
They can't look me in the eye
It's like they're scared of me
I try to think of things to say
Like a joke or a memory
But they don't recognize me now
In the light of day

I know I'm not the only one
Who regrets the things they've done
Sometimes I just feel it's only me
Who never became who they thought they'd be
I wish I could live a little more
Look up to the sky, not just the floor
I feel like my life is flashing by
And all I can do is watch and cry
I miss the air, I miss my friends
I miss my mother, I miss it when
Life was a party to be thrown
But that was a million years ago
A million years ago

Monday, November 23, 2015

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Meeting the Kurdish women fighting ISIS - Al Arabiya News

Meeting the Kurdish women fighting ISIS - Al Arabiya News

Peace Over War ~

Peace over War
War affects so many lives,
Children, parents, husbands, and wives.
First-hand terror for those that serve,
No human being, such a death deserve.
Many wars are pure political,
The pain they cause is far more critical.
We must work on our human relations,
Think of future generations.
Let's work on finding solutions,
Choose non-violent revolutions.
Hatred and anger, we must decrease,
Only path to finding peace.
by AnitaPoems.com

Poverty ~

Poverty

The more you have, the more you are occupied, and the less you give.
It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
But the less you have the freer you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.


Doing Right ~

Doing Right
There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough.
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.

On War ~

On war

"I have never been in a war before, but I have seen famine and death. I was asking (myself), 'what do they feel when they do this?' I don't understand it. They are all children of God. Why do they do it? I don't understand."

"Please choose the way of peace. ... In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause."

Jesus ~

Jesus

"There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my everything."
Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.
"The other day I dreamed that I was at the gates of heaven. And St. Peter said, 'Go back to Earth. There are no slums up here.'"
"Like Jesus we belong to the world living not for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength."

Heart

Heart

A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted God’s attention. He showed his great love for the world by giving Jesus to her.

Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty us. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace.

Prayer ~

Prayer
Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart.
Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.
"There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs—all different religions. But they all come to our prayers."
Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
"Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family. Be holy – let us pray."
A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace. - Mother T

LOVE ~

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.
Find them.
Love them.
There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives - the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

November is Orphan Awareness Month.

November is Orphan Awareness Month. It is a time to raise awareness and funding for the millions of children around the world displaced by HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty.  According to UNICEF, there are over 153 million children worldwide who have lost one or both parents. Of these orphans, HIV/AIDS has orphaned 17.9 million of these children, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
There is good news.  The peak deaths has been reached, in 2005, and since then AIDS related deaths have declined by 30% worldwide. Moreover, while in 2002, less than 50,000 people in Africa had access to anti-retro viral (ARV) medications, today, over 10 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa have access to ARVs thanks to U.S. global leadership and American tax dollars.
With this decline should also come the decline in orphans, as well. More parents will live robust lives. More families will stay together. And more children can stay children, without becoming adults too early in life shepherding younger brothers and sisters.
This being said, there are miles to go and many children who still need our support.
There are over 220 million women around the world who say that they want to avoid their next pregnancy but they lack the education or resources to do so. Many of these women are child brides, married by the time they are sixteen wishing to delay the debut of their first pregnancy so that they can stay in school and finish their education. Some of these women have had several children, and they simply cannot afford to feed or educate each child each day and wonder how they will ever support yet another.
And, very sadly, many of these women – that is, more than 287,000 – will die due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth. These younger women, if in their late teens, are three times more likely to die than if they could wait until after twenty years of age to have their first child. Yet, over 80 percent of these deaths are preventable and treatable.
When a mother dies during childbirth, the newborn is ten times more likely to die within two years of their mother’s death.
We can address these issues. We can contribute to ending the orphanhood crisis.
One critical intervention is healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies (HTSP) for women in developing nations.  If we can address these millions of women with the knowledge and access to contraceptives to better time and space their children, we can save lives, close the gap on maternal mortality, and contribute to the prevention of orphanhood among children.
One great example of a faith-based program deploying HTSP is World Visions’ MOMENT projects in Kenya and India.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

In Richmond, Kasich tempers call for agency to promote Judeo-Christian values - Richmond Times-Dispatch: Virginia Politics

In Richmond, Kasich tempers call for agency to promote Judeo-Christian values - Richmond Times-Dispatch: Virginia Politics

McAuliffe: Virginia will not seek to keep out Syrian refugees - Richmond Times-Dispatch: Virginia Politics

McAuliffe: Virginia will not seek to keep out Syrian refugees - Richmond Times-Dispatch: Virginia Politics

All We Need

Heaven is the Presence of God, being with Yeshua, and that is all we will ever need. If you love God and God loves you, what need do you have of the world to come, of rewards, accolades, recognition, and so on? The love of God is all you need, and whatever else heaven might mean is surely found in that. If we do not live today - now - are we really living? As it is said, "For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand, today - if we hear his voice" (Psalm 95:7).

Don't Call Me Refugee

Don't Call Me Refugeeby Lamiya Safarova 
My life, my destiny
Has been so painful, so don't call me refugee.
My heart aches, my eyes cry,
I beg of you, please don't call me "refugee".

It feels like I don't even exist in the world,
As if I'm a migrant bird far away from my land
Turning back to look at my village.
I beg of you, please don't call me "refugee".

Oh, the things I've seen during these painful years,
The most beautiful days I've seen in my land,
I've dreamed only about our house.
I beg of you, please don't call me "refugee".

The reason why I write these sad things
Is that living a meaningless life is like hell.
What I really want to say is:
I beg of you, please don't call me "refugee".

Little Angel ~

Little angel, little angel,
swept by the shores of the sea.
Little angel, little angel,
oh, the cost of mankind, you were made to pay!

Little angel, little angel,
what were they thinking!
Little angel, little angel,
you were only three.

Little angel, little angel,
oh, the quest for peace!
Little angel, little angel,
will there ever be?

Little angel, little angel,
the land is pregnant with the fury of blood.
Little angel, little angel,
and your life consumed by the flood.

Little angel, little angel,
you now sleep.
Little angel, little angel,
but now, we are left to weep.

10 reasons why Christians need to welcome Muslim refugees with open arms —

10 reasons why Christians need to welcome Muslim refugees with open arms —

Monday, November 16, 2015

Genocide ~

In northern Iraq religious genocide is reaching end-game stage. Islamic State (IS) soldiers, reinforced with military equipment originally supplied by the US, are driving back Kurdish defenders who had been protecting Christians and other religious minorities. While hundreds of thousands of refugees have been fleeing into Kurdistan, around 40,000 Yazidis and some Christians are trapped on Mount Sinjar, surrounded by IS jihadis. (Yazidis are Kurdish people whose pre-Christian faith derives from ancient Iranian religious traditions, with overlays and influences from other religions.)
The Assyrian Aid Society of Iraq has reported that children and the elderly are dying of thirst on Sinjar. Parents are throwing their children to their deaths off the mountain rather than see them die of thirst or be taken into slavery by IS.
The IS jihadis are killing the men they capture. In one recent incident 1500 men were executed in front of their wives and families. In another incident 13 Yazidi men who refused to convert to Islam had their eyes plucked out, were doused with gasoline and burned alive. When the men are killed, captured women and children are enslaved to be used for sex, deployed as human shields in battle zones, or sold to be used and abused as their new owners see fit.
The United States has ironically called for greater cooperation.UN Ambassador, Samantha Powerurged ‘all parties to the conflict‘ to allow access to UN relief agencies. She called on Iraqis to ‘come together‘ so that Iraq will ‘get back on the path to a peaceful future‘ and ‘prevent ISIL from obliterating Iraq’s vibrant diversity‘.
Of course it is not ‘vibrant diversity‘ which is being wiped out in Iraq, but men, women and children by their tens of thousands. This is not about the failure of coexistence, and the problem is not ‘conflict‘. This is not about people who have trouble getting on and who need to somehow make up and ‘come together‘. It is about a well-articulated and well-documented theological worldview hell-bent on dominating ‘infidels‘, if necessary wiping them off the face of the earth, in order to establish the power and grandeur of a radical vision of Islam.
The American administration, according to Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute, ‘withholds arms from the Kurds while awaiting a new, unified Iraqi government with a new prime minister. Meanwhile … no Iraqi troops are in Nineveh province.‘ Only at a few minutes to midnight on the genocide clock has the US begun to launch military strikes against IS forces.
These events ought to be sobering to the West, not least because thousands of the IS jihadis were raised and bred in the mosques of Europe, North America and Australia, not to mention the madrassas of nations such as Malaysia, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Having been formed by the theology of radical Islam in their home societies, would-be jihadis are flocking to Syria and Iraq where they seek victory or martyrdom, killing and raping as they go.
Why is this so? How did the Arab Spring, hailed by so many armchair western commentators as the next best thing for the Middle East, blossom bright red into a torrent of blood?
Theological illiteracy
Part of the answer is that the West is in the grip of theological illiteracy.It has stubbornly refused to grasp the implications of a global Islamic revival which has been gaining steam for the best part of a century. The Islamic Movement looks back to the glory days of conquest as Islam’s finest hour, and seeks to revive Islamic supremacy through jihad and sacrifice. It longs for a truly Islamic state – the caliphate reborn – and considers jihad to be the God-given means to usher it in.
This worldview was promoted in compelling, visionary terms by Indian scholar Abul A’la Maududi, whose writings continue to be widely disseminated by Islamic bookshops and mosques across the West. Maududi argued in his radicalisation primer Let us be Muslims that the only valid form of government is Islamic theocracy – i.e. sharia rule – and Muslims are duty-bound to use whatever power they can muster to impose this goal on the world: whoever you are, in whichever country you live, you must strive to change the wrong basis of government, and seize all powers to rule and make laws from those who do not fear God. … The name of this striving is jihad.’ And ‘If you believe Islam to be true, you have no alternative but to exert your utmost strength to make it prevail on earth: you either establish it or give your lives in this struggle.’
My own copy of Let us Be Muslims, which lies open before me as I write, was bought from a well-respected mainstream Islamic centre here in Melbourne, Australia.
Violent protests
When Pope Benedict gave a lecture in Regensburg in 2006, in which he suggested that Islam had been spread by force, the Muslim world erupted in violent protests.
Sheikh ‘Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, responded with a revealing defence of Islam’s record. Without a glimmer of irony he argued that the Pope was wrong to say Islam had been spread by force, because the infidels had a third choice, apart from death or conversion, namely to ‘surrender and pay tax, and they will be allowed to remain in their land, observing their religion under the protection of Muslims.‘ He claimed that those who read the Qur’an and the Sunna (the example and teaching of Muhammad) will understand the facts.
The reality unfolding in north Iraq today reveals to the cold light of day exactly what the doctrine of the three choices means for conquered non-Muslims populations, and why the dogma of the ‘three choices‘ is no defence against the assertion that Islam was spread by the sword.
Jizya
It is crystal clear that IS is not playing by the world’s rules. It has nothing but contempt for the Geneva Convention. Its battle tactics are regulated by sheikhs who implement the sharia’s rules of war. Many of the abuses committed by IS being reported by the international media are taken straight from the pages of Islamic legal textbooks.
Consider IS’s announcement to Christians in northern Iraq: ‘We offer them three choices: Islam, the dhimma contract – involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this, they will have nothing but the sword.’
These words are cobbled together from the pages of Islamic sacred texts. It was Sa’db. Mu’adh, a companion of Muhammad, who said of the pagan Meccans ‘We will give them nothing but the sword‘ ( A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, OUP 1955 p. 454). Muhammad himself was reported to have said ‘When you meet your enemies who are polytheists [i.e. they are not Muslims] invite them to three courses of action. … Invite them to Islam… If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the jizya. … If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them‘ (Sahih Muslim. The Book of Jihad and Expedition [Kitab al-Jihad wa’l-Siyar] 3:27:4294). When the Caliph ‘Umar attacked Persia, he announced to them ‘Our Prophet [Muhammad] … has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or pay jizya‘ (Sahih al-Bukhari, The Book of al-Jizya and the Stoppage of War 4:58:3159).
Prophesy
I have analysed the doctrine of the three choices in my book The Third Choice: Islam, dhimmitude and freedom, drawing extensively on Islamic sources to explain the worldview of jihad and the dhimma. That book now reads as a grim prophecy of the tragedy unfolding in Syria and Iraq.
The Arabic word jizya is derived from a root j-z-y which refers to something given as compensation, in substitution for something else. According to Arab lexicographers, jizya is tribute taken from non-Muslims living under Islamic ruleas though it were a compensation for their not being slain‘. It is paid by defeated communities to compensate or reward their attackers for forgoing the right to kill, enslave or loot them.
The nineteenth-century Algerian Qur’anic commentator Muhammad ibn Yusuf at-Fayyish explained that jizya is ‘a satisfaction for their blood. It is … to compensate for their not being slain. Its purpose is to substitute for the duties of killing and slavery … It is for the benefit of Muslims.‘ Over a thousand years earlier, Abu YusufYa’qub, a Hanafi jurist wrote ‘their lives and possessions are spared only on account of the payment of the jizya.’
Compensation
In 1799 William Eton, in a survey of the Ottoman empire, reported that Christians underOttoman rule, on paying the jizya, were addressed with a standard form of words to the effect that ‘the sum of money received is taken as compensation for being permitted to wear their heads that year‘ (Eton’s emphasis).
To be sure, there are other ways to interpret the Qur’an, but the point is that this understanding of jizya has become the operative one in Northern Iraq and Syria. It also has the backing of centuries of Islamic jurisprudence and practice. It was with this understanding of Islam that the Middle East, South Asia and large parts of Eastern Europe were conquered and occupied under Muslim rule until modern times.
This grim fact – that the IS jihadis can ably defend their theology on the basis of Islam’s history and religious traditions – means that it will be no easy task to persuade Muslim clerics and intellectuals to ‘debunk‘ them. Such a strategy, which has been proposed by Peter Leahy, former head of the Australian Army, will be fraught with difficulties. Debunking would be a whole lot easier if radical ideologies were in fact bunkum. The problem is, the jihadis hold far too many theological trump cards from the Qur’an and the precedent of Muhammad’s example to be so easily routed on the field of ideas. Indeed it is the radicals who have become expert at debunking, as their successful global recruiting drive shows.
Let us consider some of the weight behind the radicals’ theology.
Surrender
According to Islamic law, Christians and other non-Muslims who agree to keep their religion and their lives by paying jizya are subject to a dhimma treaty of surrender.
The word dhimma is derived from an Arabic word meaning ‘to blame‘. It implies a liability or debt arising from fault or blame. The idea is that the non-Muslims, known as dhimmis, owe a debt to their conquerors for their lives, and non-observance of the treaty of surrender would attract blame and thus incur punishment. The dhimma conditions include payment of jizya by adult men, but also many demeaning legal disabilities which are enforced upon non-Muslims and apply in one form or another across most of the Muslim world right up to the present day: one example is widespread restrictions on building new churches in areas formerly conquered by Islam; another is restrictions on freedom of religious expression.
The imposition of these disabilities upon non-Muslims is in accordance with a command of Muhammad:
… I have been sent with a sword in my hand to command people to worship Allah and associate no partners with him. I command you to belittle and subjugate those who disobey me, for whoever imitates a people is one of them (cited from Musnad (chain of) Ahmad Ibn Hanbali, founder of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence).
Belittling
One of the means of belittling non-Muslims has been to ensure that they would not ‘look alike‘, by requiring that they wear discriminatory clothing, patches or even, in ancient times, seals around their necks.
A modern-day manifestation of the principle of not ‘looking alike‘ is the application of the Arabic letter nun (for Nazrani, the Arabic word for Christians) to the exterior of Christian homes in Mosul. Using similar reasoning, the Taliban required that Afghan Hindus should wear discriminatory patches on their clothing, so their non-Muslim status could be instantly recognizable.
IS is even looking to the model of first century Islam to set the level of the jizya tax. Early Islamic sources state that the jizya was a minimum of one gold dinar, and up to four dinars, depending upon the wealth of the individual dhimmi. Following these provisions to the letter, IS has made the following declaration:
Christians are obligated to pay Jizya tax on every adult male to the value of four golden dinars for the wealthy, half of that for middle-income citizens and half of that for the poor . . . they must not hide their status, and can pay in two installments per year.’
A gold dinar weighs about 4.5 grams, which at $45 a gram means that a tax regime of one to four dinars equates to $200 to $800 US dollars per non-Muslim adult male. This is a heavy burden for a conquered people in a war zone, and the reality on the ground in both Syria and Iraq has been that the jihadis demand much more, and not once a year as its textbooks state, but again and again.
Convert or die
Reports show that IS has been setting jizya so high in both Syria and northern Iraq, and levying it so often, that it cannot be paid.This gives Christians who wish to stay in their homes but two choices: convert or die. Most have fled, but some, including those who are too frail or disabled to flee, have had to convert to save themselves. The fleeing refugees are in a particularly desperate situation, because they are progressively stripped of their belongings by IS checkpoints as they escape.
There is nothing new here. Throughout history the jizya has been a heavy imposition for non-Muslims.Large numbers of Christians converted to Islam in the early centuries of Islamic rule in order to avoid this tax. Dionysius, a Syrian patriarch writing in the eighth century, reported that the jizya often had to be extracted from Christians by beatings, extortion, torture, rape and killings. Many fled destitute from town to town after they had sold everything they owned to pay the tax.
Arthur Tritton reported in The Caliphs and their Non-Muslim Subjects about eighth-century Egypt that for ordinary day labourers the jizya tax was around a quarter of annual earnings, or ten times the zakat tax paid by Muslims. Shlomo Dov Goitein, writing on the situation of Jews in medieval Egypt, reported that men would enslave themselves or their family to pay the tax. Centuries after Dionysius of Antioch, he also reported that many, having sold all they had to pay it, took to wandering homeless as beggars.
Rules of war
The treatment of captives by IS is also in accordance with orthodox rules of war in Islam, which permit men to be killed, while women and children are enslaved. Sex slavery – concubinage – is permitted by the sharia principles which guide IS. The Reliance of the Traveller – a respected Sunni manual of sharia law – states: ‘When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled’ (chapter o9.13). The option of converting to Islam to avoid death or capture – which is being urged upon non-Muslims by IS – is also clearly supported: ‘Whoever enters Islam before being captured may not be killed or his property confiscated, or his young children taken captive‘ (chapter o9.12).
The widespread looting of property is also validated by Islam’s rules of war: ‘A free male Muslim who has reached puberty and is sane is entitled to the spoils of battle when he has participated in a battle to the end of it‘ (chapter o10.1). And ‘Anyone who … kills one of the enemy or effectively incapacitates him, risking his own life thereby, is entitled to whatever he can take from the enemy, meaning as much as he can take away with him in the battle, such as a mount, clothes, weaponry, money or other‘ (chapter o10.2).
The grim reality is that the fate of Christians and Yazidis in northern Iraq today all too often matches the stipulations of Islamic textbooks: non-Muslim men are killed, their women and children enslaved, and their property and possessions looted.
It is regrettable that the hard cold reality of Islamic imperialism and the dhimma system have been denied and obscured by scholars. For example Bernard Lewis claimed that ‘The dhimma on the whole worked quite well.
As part of this obscurantist veil, the true meaning of the words jizya and dhimma have been hidden by scholars.
Anglican priest Colin Chapman, who was the then Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, claimed in his widely-ready book Cross and Crescent that Jews and Christians were ‘protected‘ and implied that the jizya was paid in compensation for them not doing military service or paying the Muslims’ alms tax (zakat). In reality the main protection afforded to dhimmis is that they can keep their heads away from the sword of jihad, and it was in return for this privilege that the jizya is exacted.John Espositosimilarly claimed that jizya is an ‘exchange‘ in return for keeping one’s religion, protection from ‘outside aggression‘, and exemption from military service.
Islamic rule
Such dissimulations, also advanced by Muslim apologists, have served to prop up the myth of convivencia and a golden age in which Christians and Muslims lived contentedly side-by-side under Islamic rule.
Architects of multiculturalism and advocates of interfaith dialogue have repeatedly promoted this mythical Islamic construct as a model for different religions to flourish side by side in Europe today. This has gone hand in hand with the claims that European culture owes an unacknowledged debt to Islam, and Islam’s historical record has been misrepresented by hateful, bigoted people.
In reality Islamic coexistence with conquered Christian populations was always regulated by the conditions of the dhimma, as defined above, under which non-Muslims have no inherent right to life, but had to purchase this right year after year.
Bigotry
Willful historical ignorance has been deeply debilitating for the intellectual elites of the West, who feel righteous in dismissing evidence that contradicts their corrupted worldview, on the grounds that they are taking a stand against the bigotry of Islamophobia. They have been schooled in this self-hatred by their Muslim dialogue partners.
Also debilitating has been the trend among scholars to deny or downplay the military meaning of jihad. An extreme example is Yale theologian Miroslav Volf’s preposterous claim that the use of military force to expand Islam isrejected by all leading Muslim scholars today’.
The promotion of the idea of the ‘greater jihad‘ as a personal spiritual struggle has also served to distract western leaders, such as CIA director John Brennanwho stated that ‘jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community’.
True meaning
In reality the meaning of jihad in all sharia textbooks is warfare against unbelievers.If the true meaning of jihad was a spiritual struggle with the self, IS would not be attracting so many willing volunteers from around the globe to the killing fields of Syria and Iraq.
There is a chronic and urgent need for a dialogue of civilizations between Islam and the post-Christian West. However this dialogue cannot be based upon myths.At the top of the agenda must be the twin institutions of jihad and the dhimma. It is essential for Western people to emphatically reject and stigmatize these two pillars of Islamic law, and to deplore to Muslims their application both throughout history and in the contemporary world.
Cultural blindness
One of the effects of enforced cultural blindness and intellectual amnesia is rampant theological illiteracy among Western policy makers. This is now having the direst of consequences for Christians and others in the Middle East. Those who managed the Western occupation of Iraq were deeply ignorant of the dangers to non-Muslim minorities posed by the Islamic revivalism combined with Western inference, and in particular by the re-establishment of the jihad-dhimma system.They overlooked the fact that re-establishing the dhimma has always been part of the agenda of Islamic revivalist movements. They did not grasp that jihad war zones always prove especially deadly to non-Muslims, even when the main conflict is between Muslims.
It had also been forgotten that advances in the rights of non-Muslim populations across the Middle East – such as the official dismantling of dhimma laws by the Ottomans in the mid-nineteenth century – were only achieved due to sustained political and military pressure from the Great Powers, and at the cost of suppressing mainstream Islamic dogmas. Indeed this ‘humiliationof Islam is one of the very things the global Islamic revival is supposed to be winding back: this is why the deterioration of the human rights of non-Muslim minorities – from Malaysia to Egypt – has been so marked in recent decades.
Today Islamic revivalist dogmas, which have become deeply entrenched in Muslim communities both throughout the West and in Muslim majority states, eulogize Islam’s glory days, when Christians and other non-Muslims paid jizya to keep their heads. Revivalists look forward to a time when sharia principles, implemented through unfettered jihad, will enforce the view that non-Muslims do not have an inherent right to life, but only a conceded right for which they must compensate Muslims in gold. We need not be surprised or shocked when young men from around the globe, reared on this poisonous theological cocktail, volunteer for jihad in Syria and Iraq to usher in a longed-for Islamic utopia. It should not shock us that they have no qualms about shedding non-Muslim blood.
The effect of the cultural jihad, waged not only by Muslim apologists, but also by Western elites, is that Western policy makers have become blind to the enormity of present-day non-Muslim suffering under the yoke of Islam, for they have no reference points to comprehend it. To engage with this suffering and develop policies to counter it would require acknowledgement of its root causes, namely the theological framework of jihad and the dhimma, but that is simply too frightening for societies who have multicultural dogmas rusted onto their psyches, having embraced a false view of history and stubbornly obscurantist views about theology.
As long as policy makers continue to seek intellectual solace in calls for ‘conflict resolution‘ and ‘reconciliation‘, the vulnerable will continue to be killed, raped and looted in the name of Islamic revivalism. The lives of tens of thousands of vulnerable and peaceful Christians, Yazidis and others, whose crime is that their religion is unacceptable, now hang in the balance in northern Iraq, while the West sits paralyzed on the side lines, stunned and stupefied by the lies it has told itself for so many years.
Infidel West
This is not to say that reconciliation is unnecessary. Usama Bin Ladin got it right when he asserted that the doctrine of the three choices is the crux of the West’s problem with Islam: ‘The West avenges itself against Islam for giving infidels but three options‘:
Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue – one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice – and it is: “Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually?” [The answer is:] Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, through physical though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword – for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die.
Bin Ladin was right about this, that Islam’s doctrine of three choices, encompassing the theological institutions of jihad and the dhimma, is and must be the central issue for the West in its dialogue with the Islamic world. An understanding of this doctrine and its implications for the human rights of non-Muslims should be a cornerstone of public policy in relation to Islam, both now and in the foreseeable future.
This will not be an easy or comfortable dialogue, judging from the howls of protest that greeted Pope Benedict’s comparatively mild Regensburg lecture in 2006. Yet appeasement of howling objectors through conflict-avoidance manoeuvers will bring nothing but grief, as we are seeing in northern Iraq.
According to the ‘Vicar of Bagdad‘, Canon Andrew White, what is needed right now to help non-Muslim victims of Islamic jihadism is three things: Protection, Provision and Perseverance. The lie foisted upon the world was that there was nothing non-Muslims needed to be protected from.
Right now IS’s victims deserve military intervention, food, water and medical supplies. Many will need permanent sanctuary outside of their homelands.
Longer term, much more is needed. Certainly the will to persevere, because the world is in but the early stages of a (now resumed) centuries-long war with militant Islam, but above all, in order to make sustained progress in the long struggle ahead, we will require a greater appetite for the truth.
Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist, pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and director of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992.

- Psalm 137

How Shall We Sing the LORD’s Song?
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion....
On the willowsa there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the LORD’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
~Psalm 137

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Sam Smith - Stay With Me (Live) ft. Mary J. Blige

Angelshine ~

"Little girls are the nicest things that happen to people. They are born with a little bit of angelshine about them, and though it wears thin sometimes there is always enough left to lasso your heart." -

Friday, November 13, 2015

The Journey by Mary Oliver

Your Story

“Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Any starting writer starts out with other people's voices. But as quickly as you can start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there will always be better writers than you and there will always be smarter writers than you, but you are the only you.”
Neil Gaiman

Future

“How simple it is to see that all the worry in the world cannot control the future. How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now. And that there will never be a time when it is not now.” -

“Abraham the Hebrew”

Abram was called “Abraham the Hebrew” in Genesis 14:13, which is the first time that the word is used in the Bible. Where did this term come from, and what does it mean?

The word "Hebrew" in the Hebrew language is עברי (Ivrie). The root letters are used to mean cross over, or pass through. Today in Israel, we can use the word to talk about moving houses, transgressing laws, going through some difficulties, crossing the road, crossing over a river, and so on. Traversing, passing, or crossing over, essentially. In the Bible, it seems to have primarily referred to those who traversed rivers. The symbolic meaning of this should not be lost on us who love the Word of God!

It is speculated that Abraham earned the name “Ivrie”, or “One that has traversed” to be referring to the fact that he came from the other side of the river. He and his family had travelled from close to the river Euphrates, crossed over into Haran, and then God called him back over the river again to the land which we now know to be Israel. He also had an ancestor with that name (עבר - Eber, Gen. 11:14) which might explain the link, but either way, the association between these Hebrews (עברים - Ivrim, plural) and the crossing of rivers appears a few times in the Bible.

Joshua gives us this account of events and a clue to how the descendents of Jacob/Israel became known as Hebrews - Ivrim - those who had traversed:

As you can see, there are several mentions of watery crossings - Abraham coming from beyond the River Euphrates, the dramatic Red Sea crossing of the Exodus, and then the entry into the Promised Land as they crossed over the River Jordan. These Hebrews, these Ivrim, have sure done a fair amount of traversing! You can see why the Egyptians might have called them Hebrews - ones who came from beyond the river - and why Abraham was the ultimate Hebrew. As if to emphasise the point, the Hebrews went through not one but two rather miraculous water crossings; the first and most famous one being the parting of the Red Sea, but also when they finally reached their destination, the Jordan River piled up on either side as the priests set foot on the river bed, and the Hebrews crossed over on dry ground into their inheritance in the Promised Land.

But what is wonderful about this passage in Joshua is that it lines up the idea of leaving behind a life of idol worship and crossing over into worshiping the One True God of Israel.


For Joshua the symbolism was clear: on one side of the river is idol worship, but we have left that life behind when we crossed over to the other side. Now we will serve the Lord.

The astute will notice that just as the blood of the Passover Lamb preceded going through the waters of the Red Sea, just as the blood sacrifice is offered on the altar outside the tabernacle before the priests come towards the Holy Place and wash themselves with the water of the giant laver, blood and water feature in our salvation in the same order: the blood of Yeshua and the water of baptism. When we come through the waters of baptism, we publicly declare that we are leaving our old lives behind, beyond the river, and are crossing over into a new life of serving God alone.

Hundreds if not thousands of believers come from all over the world to be baptised in the River Jordan, but each one of us who has received forgiveness, thanks to the blood of the Messiah, has crossed over from death to life - from darkness to light. We have left our old life “beyond the river” and gone through the other side, into a whole new life.
We can intentionally put away the ‘gods’ that we used to serve - whether it was money, attention, success, validation, distraction… leaving all these ‘gods’ behind in the region beyond the River that we passed through, from death to eternal life. We have joined the Ivrim who have crossed over! Let’s declare with Joshua, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”.

My Heart Will Go On ~

My heart will go on and on
I will write till my last breath
Even though very few like me or my writings
Still, my emotions will continue to express love
With my tender heart, I try to write, more and more
Even though, my words are never really perfect
Still, I will forever express through feelings of mine
Until I finally do breathe my last.
I will continue on expressing love through my words
As the day I leave this world, then I will forever be silent
That will be the moment when you can finally consider me as dead
Dead, then I will be for this world
As well for words, I will actually be no more
Until then it is my love and my free verse poetry, which is the only thing I know
Till then I will remain alive in this world as my heart will go on and on.
                       

William Wordsworth

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

- William Wordsworth

Simplicity ~

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”

Hearts

In the Heart of Everyone

O Lord, to see You in the heart of everyone,
I the traveller am alone walking along the road of Eternity.
The flowers that drop before they are blossomed
have become my friends.
I know not what is written on my forehead.
No matter if my life ends like a flower before it is blossomed
or my life ends before I have seen Your Feet,
I know I shall always bow to You.

Nothing Remains ~

Whatever appears to leave us
Actually does not leave.
Whatever appears to stay with us
Actually does not stay.
Nothing remains.
Everything is a mystery
Of constant gain and loss.

Farewell ~

Farewell

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.
O, beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.
If I may ne’er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve, for aye, their memory.
That voice, the magic of whose tone
Can wake an echo in my breast,
Creating feelings that, alone,
Can make my tranced spirit blest.
That laughing eye, whose sunny beam
My memory would not cherish less; -
And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam
Nor mortal language can express.
Adieu, but let me cherish, still,
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.
And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?
By: Anne Bronte

I tell You ~

Grief

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death–
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

The Eyes Sees the World

The Eye Sees the Entire World

‘Nayan Nehare Bishwa Bhuvan Herena’
The eye sees the entire world
But it sees not its own life;
Therefore, keeping the two eyes closed
The Yogi meditates on You,
O Lord Supreme.
The ear hears only
The messages and the clamour of the outer world.
It hears not the messages
Of the highest Heaven;
Therefore, the true seeker of wisdom
Always tries to keep his ears
Under his perfect control.

O Bird of my Heart ~

O bird of my heart,
Fly on, fly on.
Look not behind.
Whatever the world gives
Is meaningless, useless
And utterly false.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Need ~

“-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength,
to resist our weaknesses,
-We need more inspiration,
to lighten up our innermind.
-We need more learning,
to erase our ignorance,
-We need more wisdom,
to live longer and happier,
-We need more truths, to suppress deceptions,
-We need more health,
to enjoy our wealth,
-We need more peace, to stay in harmony with our brethren
-We need more smiles,
to brighten up our day,
-We need more hero's, and not zero's,
-We need more change of ourselves, to change the lives of others,
-We need more understanding,
to tackle our misunderstanding,
-We need more sympathy,
not apathy,
-We need more forgiveness,
not vengeance,
-We need more humility to be lifted up,
-We need more patience and not undue eagerness,
-We need more focus, to avoid distraction,
-We need more optimism,
not pessimism
-We need more justice,
not injustice,
-We need more facts, not fiction,
-We need more education,
to curb illiteracy,
-We need more skills, not incompetence,
-We need more challenges,
to make attempts,
-We need more talents,
to create the extraordinary,
-We need more helping hands,
not stingy folks,
-We need more efforts,
not laziness,
-We need more jokes, to forget our worries, -We need more spirituality,
not mean religion,
-We need more freedom,
not enslavement,
-We need more peacemakers,
not revolutionaries...with these, we create an heaven on earth.”

You Chose ~


You Chose

You chose.
You chose.
You chose.

You chose to give away your love.
You chose to have a broken heart.
You chose to give up.
You chose to hang on.

You chose to react.
You chose to feel insecure.
You chose to feel anger.
You chose to fight back.
You chose to have hope.

You chose to be naïve.
You chose to ignore your intuition.
You chose to ignore advice.
You chose to look the other way.
You chose to not listen.
You chose to be stuck in the past.

You chose your perspective.
You chose to blame.
You chose to be right.
You chose your pride.
You chose your games.
You chose your ego.
You chose your paranoia.
You chose to compete.
You chose your enemies.
You chose your consequences.

You chose.
You chose.
You chose.
You chose.

However, you are not alone. Generations of women in your family have chosen. Women around the world have chosen. We all have chosen at one time in our lives. We stand behind you now screaming:

Choose to let go.
Choose dignity.
Choose to forgive yourself.
Choose to forgive others.
Choose to see your value.
Choose to show the world you’re not a victim.
Choose to make us proud.”
  

Slowly ~

“He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience,
dies slowly.He or she who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones "it’s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings,
dies slowly.
He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives,
die slowly.
He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops,
dies slowly.
He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know,
die slowly.
Let's try and avoid death in small doses,
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.
Only a burning patience will lead
to the attainment of a splendid happiness.”
Martha Medeiros

Spring after Winter ~


“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
  

Love ~

“Peace is life. Love is life. No river holds a grudge against a rock in its path. No leaf refuses to blow in the breeze. No plant denies water or sunshine. We, as human beings, have the gift of self-awareness, but this gift quickly turns to self-destruction if we do not learn to use it. We must learn to turn our minds towards the peace and love that we are flowing within at any given moment. This is the key to serenity. This is The Love Mindset.”
Vironika Tugaleva

Your Sunrise ~

“It may be a tough world, but its a magical world;
Where a mere sunset will make you smile....
Amidst all the hardships,
When the life you want to live seems a strange place,
Be the first to chart this new territory;
And leave a clear path for others to follow,
They will follow.........

You do not have to fell the pressure to lead....
You merely followed the horizon where the sun set,
which became a beautiful sunrise...

Your Sunrise.....”
 

Read It ~

“Read it with sorrow and you will feel hate.
Read it with anger and you will feel vengeful.
Read it with paranoia and you will feel confusion.
Read it with empathy and you will feel compassion.
Read it with love and you will feel flattery.
Read it with hope and you will feel positive.
Read it with humor and you will feel joy.
Read it with God and you will feel the truth.
Read it without bias and you will feel peace.
Don't read it at all and you will not feel a thing.”
 

Peace ~

“Unless and until we have peace deep within us, we can never hope to have peace in the outer world. You and I create the world by the vibrations that we offer to it. If we can invoke peace and then offer it to somebody else, we will see how peace expands from one to two persons, and gradually to the world at large. Peace will come about in the world from the perfection of individuals. If you have peace, I have peace, he has peace, and she has peace, then automatically universal peace will dawn.”

Become ~

“We don’t look at the sky anymore- we don’t walk barefoot any more, we refuse to kiss the earth with our feet, we keep busy worrying , we exist and die . We ignore the beauty of a butterfly and the power of the eagle, we have forgotten the scent of flowers, we are too busy to enjoy nature, we live together but we do not connect, we are asleep. I want to cleanse myself of societies’ noise, walk barefoot, and kiss the earth with my feet . I want to rejoice of who I am, and what I will become.”

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Dignity ~

Dignity


1. The moment you realize that the person you cared for has nothing intellectually or spiritually to offer you, but a headache.
2. The moment you realize God had greater plans for you that don’t involve crying at night or sad Pinterest quotes.
3. The moment you stop comparing yourself to others because it undermines your worth, education and your parent’s wisdom.
4. The moment you live your dreams, not because of what it will prove or get you, but because that is all you want to do. People’s opinions don’t matter.
5.The moment you realize that no one is your enemy, except yourself.
6. The moment you realize that you can have everything you want in life. However, it takes timing, the right heart, the right actions, the right passion and a willingness to risk it all. If it is not yours, it is because you really didn’t want it, need it or God prevented it.
7. The moment you realize the ghost of your ancestors stood between you and the person you loved. They really don't want you mucking up the family line with someone that acts anything less than honorable.
8. The moment you realize that happiness was never about getting a person. They are only a helpmate towards achieving your life mission.
9. The moment you believe that love is not about losing or winning. It is just a few moments in time, followed by an eternity of situations to grow from.10. The moment you realize that you were always the right person. Only ignorant people walk away from greatness.”
Shannon L. Alder