Jonathan Kay: On Canadian campuses, it’s open season on Christian social conservatism

Say what you want about the financially beleaguered Sun News and its signature firebrand, Ezra Levant. But sometimes, he and his colleagues do manage to get things exactly right. 

On Wednesday, Mr. Levant interviewed Arun Smith, the 7^th year “human rights and sexuality” major who took it upon himself to tear down a “free speech” installation set up at Carleton University by a group called Carleton Students for Liberty, because he was offended by socially conservative jottings on the wall that expressed support for traditional marriage, and opposition to abortion. Even putting aside Mr. Smith’s appalling act of vandalism, Mr. Levant noted, the very notion that university students feel they need a “free speech zone” is telling. “We have a free speech zone in Canada,” Mr. Levant declared. “It’s called ‘Canada.’”

 Read the rest of Jonathan Kay's column at the National Post

Religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel - Obama makes last ditch effort to sell his "Christian values"

More at The Blaze

The Elephant in the Classroom

On the basis of legal decisions and relatively recent traditions, Christianity and the Bible in particular are informatis non grata in Canadian schools. The reasoning behind Christianophobia derives from equity policies that strive to remove preferences accorded to what are seen as dominant, privileged forces. People familiar with the system understand that "equity" policies are not designed to create equality. If that were the case than the word Christmas would not be banned from December school "Holiday Concerts" while  celebration of Hanukkah, Eid, Diwali, and a variety on non-Christian holidays are classroom topics. Equality would not prohibit Christian school prayer while allowing school cafeterias to be converted to gender segregated mosques during class time.

So in practical terms, the goal of school Equity policies is clearly not to remove all religion from school, but to take Christianity, the dominant religious force in Canada since the nation's inception, down a peg or two while trying to raise the beliefs of oppressed minorities. At least minorities who are viewed as being in the oppressed class within the framework of the oppressor/oppressed binary equation by which radicalized education policy makers view the world.

But here's the problem with taking the Bible out of schools: you can't really understand anything about western civilization, be it history, literature, politics or culture, without a reasonable familiarity with the Old and New Testaments. Writers like Shakespeare, Melville, Dickens, Twain, C.S. Lewis, even Mordecai Richler and Margaret Atwood cannot be fully understood without familiarity with the Bible. European, and by extension, Canadian and American history, as well as the conquest of New Spain cannot be understood without knowing the religious conflicts that drove events forward, based on differing interpretations of the Bible.

The value system and to a great extent the legal system upon which Canada was founded is based on principles and ideas expressed in the King James translation of the Bible.

But school children are not allowed to be taught that all-important key to knowledge in public schools for fear that they may actually believe what they read.

If only the texts in university courses that produce education policy makers were scrutinized as closely. If they were, we might not have the idiocy that prevails in school boards throughout this land.



Thanks to SDAMatt for the video

Merry Christmas from Hamas

Hamas' Islamonazis to Christians in Gaza: No Christmas for YOU!

h/t Tarek Fatah

Anti-Christian, Anti-Jewish bias surfaces at "progressive" Walrus Magazine

To understand the editorial slant at Walrus Magazine, it would be appropriate to remember that Marci McDonald's anti-Christian screed, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, was a drawn out version of an article making the same arguments that she wrote for that "progressive" Canadian monthly.

The basic premise of McDonald's much discussed commercial flop was that the Conservative government was driven by a fundamentalist vision of Christianity that believed in an "End Times" scenario. McDonald accounted for Conservative support for Israel was motivated by a urge to hasten the Apocalypse. There was no actual evidence to support McDonald's profoundly ridiculous contentions which singled out Christian and Jewish influence in government as being secretly motivated by religious fanaticism or Zionist fervour, whereas members of any other religious groups got a free pass.

The possibility that Conservatives who happen to be Christian were influenced by their faith's principles of charity, honesty and justice was evidently outside the scope of McDonald's thinking. Similarly, that support for Israel could be due to its shared values with Canada, such as democracy, free speech, an independent judiciary and equality before the law, and that it is in conflict with some of the most repressive, violent, anti-democratic countries in the world, was not something that could permeate McDonald's brain. In her obsessive bias, it could only be more evidence of a sinister conspiracy between Christian fundamentalists and Zionists.

Now, Walrus has clutched on to McDonald's vacuous argument in a way that suits it best, as a comic strip. In this case, one that is filled with anti-Semitic imagery and political bigotry against Christian belief.

The comic projects that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's opposition to the unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood is part of his scheme to bring about Armageddon and The Rapture.

The fact that Harper has not made any statements as a political leader that suggest he has any such beliefs are irrelevant. This anti-Christian narrative is one that the radical Left in Canada has forcefully incorporated into their way of thinking, immaterial of the overwhelming body of evidence that contradicts it.

But why should that be any surprise? These are the same sort of fanatics who continue to embrace Marxist-influenced socialism after that discredited ideology contributed to the murder of 100 million people by Communist Russia, Mao, China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba,  Kim's North Korea, et cetera.

The people at Walrus evidently have a hard time learning.


You can see the comic here at Honest Reporting Canada

Why are socialist moral relativists silent in the wake of the Norwegian terrorist attack?

After the al-Qaida bombings on 9/11, moral relativists like Noam Chomsky rushed to condemn, not the perpetrators of that horrific atrocity, but the United States of America, for ostensibly having done something to anger the terrorists enough to murder 2977 innocent people.

Rather than outright condemnation of the perpetrators of this abominable mass murder, Chomsky, on the very next day, before the bodies of the victims of Jihadi terror were cold, wrote:

"we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes, which means making an effort to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators. If we choose the latter course, we can do no better, I think, than to listen to the words of Robert Fisk, whose direct knowledge and insight into affairs of the region is unmatched after many years of distinguished reporting. Describing "The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people," he writes that "this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps." And much more.

Again, we have a choice: we may try to understand, or refuse to do so, contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead."

Chomsky was not alone is his morally relativistic justification of Jihad, or even worse, those like Robert Fisk, Richard Falk, Michael Keefer and a cast of irrational or malevolent anti-Capitalists and Jihad apologists who, like Holocaust deniers, strove to deny, and this defend the real perpetrators of the crime against humanity that was committed on September 11, 2001. In some cases, the 9-11 terrorists were even celebrated as heroes, as they were by throngs of Palestinians.

Now that an insane terrorist has murdered dozens of innocent people at a government building and a socialist youth indoctrination camp in Norway, no conservative or Christian of note has come forward to attempt to justify or attempt to mitigate or deflect blame from the depravity of Anders Behring Breivik.

Nor will they. Breivik is a terrorist and mass-murderer for whom there is no justification.

But it is interesting to observe that no anti-capitalist or socialist commentator who was so quick to find a moral justification for 9-11 has not leaped to assuage Breivik's crimes. The question is not why they should do so, for no decent human being possibly could. The question is why they are so anxious to defend and enable the murderers of innocents in the West when the murders are committed in the name of Jihad.

UPDATE: It didn't take long for the crazies to come out of the woodwork. Khaled Muammar, who until earlier this month was president of the Canadian Arab Federation, which was defunded by the federal government for expressing support for terrorist groups, is spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. This one by conspiracy whack-job Stephen Lendman, who says the Breivik killings were a Mossad plot. Lendman is at least consistently crazy. He also says that Bobby Kennedy was killed by the CIA.

(Update h/t Blazing Cat Fur)

US State Dept speaks out as Iran orders Christian to recant faith or die

"We are dismayed over reports that the Iranian courts are requiring Youcef Nadarkhani to recant his Christian faith or face the death penalty for apostasy"

More info at Winds of Jihad

Toronto Islamic conference to feature homophobic, anti-Semitic, Christian-hating speakers

Lucky Toronto!

The Islamic Journey of Faith Conference is set to coincide with Pride weekend!

Toronto mayor Rob Ford has no plans to attend that either, and probably a good thing.

This convention of hateful bigots features speakers like Bilal Philips who calls homosexuality "a threat to society as a whole"  and compares being Gay to pedophilia and incest:



And here are some of Philips' other interesting views from his own website:

On Jews: "They are misguided human beings who need Islam and we must treat them in this way."

On Christianity: "All that we are certain of is that the crucifixion of Jesus did not take place, as Allah said, "he was not crucified"

On marriage:"To deny the validity and legality of polygyny is tantamount to denying the comprehensiveness of the Islamic marriage system and the wisdom of the divine decree."

Or how about Abdur Raheem Green who said: "The Jews and the Christians have taken their priests and their rabbis as gods beside Allah."



Or  how about this charmer, who is on the speakers' list?

Or Abu Usamah Atthahabi who FOX News reported has al Qaida links and calls for the "crucifixion of the kuffar" (the kuffar would be any non-Muslim).

Or this genius that argues for arranged Muslim marriage: "marriages that begin with emotions usually end in divorce."

The list goes on...and on... and on....it's like a miscreant convention...

The mainstream press like the Toronto Star and Globe can't be bothered to report about it, because it might take away from the space they need to bash Rob Ford for wanting to spend a long weekend at the cottage.

The lack of protest by the usual suspect groups like Queers Against Israeli Apartheid that only seem to be focused on what Israel does, creates even more of an appearance that they too are motivated by anti-Semitism and not social justice.

UPDATE: Looks like the Star finally got the message and published this

Is Religion a Tool of the Devil?

Religion has been giving God a bad name for all of recorded history, and probably before that too.

Abram, who later became Abraham and fathered what would become Judaism, Christianity and Islam, left his home because he was fed up with the local religion. So he took off and started a new one. And it has continued in much the same way since then.

The fact is that there are some astoundingly good people who are religious. The three Abrahamic religions are based on noble principles of justice and charity. Most people who devote their lives to their religion practice those principles to a greater degree that the average person. Critics of religion who point to all the evil done in the name of God by religion naturally provoke the sincere souls who practice the humanitarian aspects of their faith and participate in a community of others who do the same.

That religion has corrupt, evil practitioners no more makes it an inherently malignant institution than Tammany Hall made American democracy inherently malevolent. It is, however, undeniable that lots of very, very bad people do very bad things in the name of their religion, while claiming they are doing the work of God or Allah.

But in the increasingly heated debate between atheists and defenders of traditional religious practice, there is yet another approach.

.....................

From the outlook of a believer, any obstacle between a person and God is an evil impediment.

Is organized religion something that fosters closeness to God, or is it a deceptive obstruction that encourages sublimation of our relationship with the Almighty in favour of a tellurian authority, making it a metaphorical tool of the devil?

To examine that question, let us begin with another: What is the most precious gift that God bestowed on Mankind?

Other animals have great strength, remarkable speed or the ability of flight, any of which in a human would be considered superpowers. It is man’s ability to reason, to learn, and to build upon this body of knowledge that distinguishes our species and has given us the ability to dominate and shape our world.

Yet organized religion frequently requires us to discard this gift that God gave us in favour of faith. But not a faith in God or our individual ability to be guided by Him. Religion often demands we stifle reason in favour of catechism. In effect, telling us to affirm obedience, not to God, but to humans claiming to know His will. Many of whom, throughout history, have had rapacious motives. What could be more an instrument of the devil?

Religion abhors atheism, but does God? If God lives, He is not an imaginary friend who ceases to exist if you don’t believe in Him. God can employ atheists to His purpose just as He does believers. In fact, atheists are frequently more moral, better people than many who profess religious beliefs.

God does not require worship and he does not require one insignificant being in His incomprehensibly large universe to defend his reputation from another.

The biblical story of Babel in the Book of Genesis describes God’s confounding the language of the peoples of the earth, ”that they may not understand one another's speech.” But people have the capacity to learn other languages. What they can learn but not accept is another’s creed.

What if the story of Babel is not about God separating and setting the peoples of the earth against each other with language, but with religion? And what if that was not the work of God, but of the devil?

Tower of Babel
MC Escher

The idea that religion can stand in the way between us and our relationship with God is not a new one.



Religions frequently become institutions concerned more with their temporal authority than being a conduit for the divine spirit. The Reformation and Luther’s 95 Theses were a reaction to corruption within a Medieval and early Renaissance Catholic Church which sold, for money, not only ecclesiastic authority but tickets to Heaven. Indeed Christianity emerged as a reaction to the stagnation and rigidity of Judaism.

The founders of the first monotheistic religion understood how codification of religious practice countered God’s design that our relationship with Him should be evolutionary. Judaism separated the Written Law, consisting of the Five Books of Moses, the books of the Prophets, and Psalms, from the Oral Law. Jewish tradition teaches that the penalty for writing the Oral Law was death. The motive being that old beliefs and traditions were supposed to die out as our progressive comprehension made them irrelevant.

The Babylonian Talmud was recorded in violation of the law to preserve knowledge that Diaspora Jews feared would be lost. By doing so, they created a template changing Judaism from an evolving body of understanding into a time capsule of antiquated rituals. And all major religions operate from similar templates.

If we are God’s children, then evolution can be seen as the maturation and education of mankind. Religion is the invention of answers of which the inventors have no way of knowing. As a caveman would not be able to comprehend the principles of advanced physics, we are far from the ability to comprehend neither the nature nor the will of God as it applies to the universe. Yet the arrogant presumption of that capacity is the embodiment of what religion represents.

To criticise religion is not a denigration of religious people. But just as Marxism has individual adherents who are good people, in practice, that system always leads to totalitarianism. So is religion a poison tree that sometimes produces beautiful fruit.

This is not an argument to discard faith. It is an argument to have faith in God and His ability to guide you personally and directly without an intermediary.

Every soul is its own cathedral, each mind its own bible. As God’s creations, we have the individual capacity to be a prophet and messiah to ourselves, if only we learn to listen and to use the gifts He gave to all of us.

Thursday's This Vs That: Christianity vs Judaism

Not a cage match, a comparative chart prepared at The Resource Center Blog.