TRUMP TELLS DEMOCRAT MINNESOTA GOVERNOR TO SHOVE IT AS HE REJECTS REQUEST FOR DISASTER AID AFTER LEFTIST RIOTS

★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★

President Trump Tells the Democrat Minnesota Governor to SHOVE IT as Trump DENIES his request for the federal government to pay for the riots that Minneapolis’ Democrats encouraged! In this video, we’re going to take a look at the governor’s request for disaster relief and precisely why President Trump rejected such a request, and we’re going to find that when all is said and done, President Trump’s rejection is really rather simple: there can be no disaster relief for Democrat-ruined cities precisely because Democrats ARE the disaster; you’re not going to want to miss this!

MAXINE WATERS: TRUMP AND SUPPORTERS ENSURING BLACKS “DO NOT RISE TO ANY LEVEL OF INFLUENCE AND POWER”

They “believe that it is their right and their responsibility”

Maxine Waters: Trump And Supporters Ensuring Blacks "Do Not Rise To Any Level Of Influence And Power"

BY STEVE WATSON

SEE: https://www.infowars.com/maxine-waters-trump-and-supporters-ensuring-blacks-do-not-rise-to-any-level-of-influence-and-power/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters declared Sunday that President Trump and his supporters are universally racist and believe that it is their duty to impede the progress of black people.

Appearing on MSNBC’s AM Joy, Waters pointed to the commuting of Roger Stone’s sentence by Trump, and declared that there is a “need for Trump and those who support him to want to, you know, have absolute power.”

Waters said that Trump and his base “believe that it is their right and their responsibility to ensure that blacks and people of color and others do not rise to any level of influence and power, significant that would cause them not to be in total charge of the country.”

Waters proclaimed that “This justice system is broken,” adding that “it has never really been in our favor, and it has basically been responsible for ensuring that we could never ever get beyond this suppression and this oppression that has been forced upon us for so many years.”

“So those who criticize Black Lives Matter, they can continue to do that, but I want to tell you the time has come now where we are joined by so many others who really were not there for us in the past.” Waters continued.

She argued that racism is endemic in the US, and that it is to blame for most social problems in America.

“You saw it in all of the protests where you had whites and blacks and Asians and old and young, all saying something is wrong with this country. Something is wrong with our criminal justice system. Something is wrong with our policing,” Waters asserted.

“It is racism,” she concluded.

 

YARDLEY, BUCKS COUNTY, PA: BLM ANTI-POLICE HATE FEST COMES TO SMALL TOWN AMERICA

This is what a cultural revolution looks like.

Demonstrators took a knee in memory of George Floyd and others.

BY DAWN PERLMUTTER

SEE: https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/blm-anti-police-hate-fest-comes-small-town-america-dawn-perlmutter;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Yardley Borough is a small river town in Bucks County, Pennsylvania located on the Delaware river across from Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. The town has a total area of one square mile and according to the last census has a population of 2,434 of which 2,224 are white. It is known for its beautiful historical district that includes 18th and 19th century buildings that contain homes, shops, restaurants, and offices on Main Street. It is the site of the second oldest Quaker meeting house in Pennsylvania. Quakers were significantly active in the abolition movement against slavery and Yardley was an essential station for the Underground Railroad. In the past few weeks, it has become the unlikely scene of Black Lives Matter protests.

On June 19th in the guise of a Juneteenth celebration a Black Lives Matter anti-police hate fest descended upon Main Street surrounding people at outdoor restaurants and blocking traffic. Protesters were chanting “No Justice No Peace, No Racist Police” in front of local officers whom many have known their whole lives. The protesters were predominantly high school and college students and self-loathing affluent white middle-aged women attempting to show how woke they are. Many brought their children and grandchildren who held handmade signs with popular BLM and anti-police slogans.

A previous rally was held on June 4, 2020 and over a thousand people showed up. At that protest Black Lives Matter activists led a humiliation ritual in which the white townsfolk bowed down to BLM organizers in a solemn prayer like vigil. They somberly repeated the names of black men who were described as killed by the police. They also engaged in gestures and slogans such as “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” and “Say His Name”. Thoughts of Jonestown and other cults were running through my mind as I watched men and women willingly debase themselves. Many of the white women genuinely feel guilty about their privilege because they never worked a day in their life. Kneeling in submission while reverently repeating anti-police affirmations and apologizing for being white was a form of expiation, an atonement ritual. For these spoiled hypocritical women, the BLM protest was a method for them to assuage their guilt for having black women clean their toilets and take care of their elderly parents. The largest part of the crowd were high school and college students who have been taught to hate their country, schooled in revisionist history, made to feel shame for being white and conditioned to disrespect the police.

These men, women and students are the result of years of indoctrination by academia, the media, radical Marxist and black nationalist organizations whose primary strategy is to make white people, corporations and the entire next generation feel guilty for their ‘white privilege’. BLM’s goal is power, money and a totalitarian revolution. It may be one of the biggest shake downs in American history.  

The BLM organizers stood in front of the small Yardley Borough Municipal Hall that houses the towns offices, post office, police department and public meeting room. Although the protests were along the entire length of Main Street, they chose to make their stand in front of the town Hall to symbolically challenge local government. It was there that BLM organizers led the humiliation ritual where white townsfolk kneeled before them. They seemed to take pleasure in degrading the white residents of Yardley. Who is oppressing whom? The submissive town folk bowing to them had the blissful look that all brainwashed useful idiots have right up until they realize they have been conned.

Although Yardley was a longtime Republican town it now has a largely Democrat town council with one independent. The new Council President is an activist with no roots in the community and ambitions to fundamentally transform the town that was founded in 1682. In his short time on council he introduced and passed a gun control resolution, an LGBT ordinance, took a moment of silence against police violence and recently made Juneteenth a recognized holiday. The Vice President of Council is a young millennial mom whose primary accomplishment is virtue signaling. She often publicly apologizes for her white privilege, but it is just a pretense for her political ambitions. She posted after the protest that “I weep with my black brothers and sisters for the systemic and institutional racism that has infiltrated and consumed our communities, our governments, our police forces and our very souls. Yesterday was a day of mourning in Yardley Boro for all the lives gone too soon because of racism. It was a day to reflect, as an elected official, how I can do better to be fair and compassionate, balanced and inclusive.”…… “To use the platform and privilege of our affluent town to elevate the voices of the oppressed."

After the first BLM demonstration the town council complimented each other on how the peaceful protest went, they neglected to disclose that a 12 year old girl wearing a Trump t-shirt was harassed and a small group of counter protesters were spit on. While the town council sugarcoats the anti-police hatred and racist rhetoric that occurred at the protests, they have gone out of their way to cover up anti-Semitic hate crimes in Yardley even though the only school in the small town is a private Hebrew Academy.

While the council embraced the Black Lives Matter protests Covid-19 was used as an excuse to cancel the three biggest annual events in the small community. They canceled the Memorial Day Parade, a long tradition that honors local veterans where neighbors make floats, veterans are honored, and kids ride their bikes at the end of the procession. The same day they voted to make Juneteenth a recognized Yardley Holiday the annual longtime September tradition of Harvest Day was canceled. The October 2020 Yardley Beer and Wine Fest was also canceled. The symbolism was clear we are canceling your culture, your history and your traditions and replacing them with the holidays that Black Lives Matter dictate. If the message of BLM fascism wasn’t clear enough, in front of the Memorial Plaque on the Municipal Hall that lists the names of the towns fallen soldiers someone wrote in large letters BLM and Blacks killed by Cops then wrote names including George Floyd, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin and many more. This was an obvious mockery of the memorial to the towns fallen heroes who died in WWI and WWII.  Soon these plaques will either be vandalized or just removed by the town council who will declare them symbols of racism.

Knowing that residents were not happy after the first protest, the town council deliberately did not officially inform any of the businesses or residents of the second protest. However, the Chief of Police who understands how thin the blue line is that separates chaos and order, put into effect crowd control protocols. Almost every officer in town and over a dozen from nearby communities and a Major Incident Response Team (MIRT) were on duty for the “Juneteenth Peaceful Protest For Justice”. Fortunately, Yardley has a Chief of Police who understands how a protest can turn violent with just one brick. Unfortunately, when the Chief of Police was asked at a council meeting if any tickets were given when the BLM protesters blocked Main Street, a major State road, he said “No violations were issued, you cannot ticket a thousand people”. Not surprising since Yardley Borough Council votes on his contract which expires the end of next year.

Business owners who just reopened after the Covid 19 lock downs closed their shops and stood in front of their stores guarding them from potential looters. One restaurant owner had to cordon off his sidewalk tables with caution tape to protect his customers from the crowds. A long-time Yardley friendly couple that regularly sit on their front porch on Main Street were visibly armed as the protesters marched in front of their home. There are a lot of residents who are not happy about having an anti-police hate fest walking down Main Street blocking a state road and forcing businesses to close.

One of the saddest sights were the faces of the young people who are ashamed of their country and have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into believing that police are racist.  Ironically, Washington’s Crossing is just four miles up the road from Yardley and although they were raised here, they have no concept of their own country’s history or how men younger than them fought and died for their freedom. Their teachers, parents and community leaders have failed them by filling their hearts with hatred and lies. BLM exploits the anger they inculcated and now have an army of deluded young white activists who they are using to destroy their own futures. The few bright students that see through the lies are bullied and ridiculed into silence.  

Soon after the protests residents started taking down their American flags and putting up Black Lives Matter signs on their lawns. This is either the result of fear of being ostracized, a deterrence against looting or just virtue signaling in actual support. This is what a cultural revolution looks like, a small towns history is eradicated, town leaders sell out, useful idiots bow down, cowards acquiesce and the few patriots that are left load their weapons. In the spirit of Yardley’s original brave abolitionists local officers continue to protect our freedoms even when they are being called racists and killers.

 

SON OF FORMER SOUTHERN BAPTIST PRESIDENT SAYS GAY & TRANSGENDER PEOPLE WELCOME AT GOD’S TABLE

SEE: https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/06/29/son-of-former-southern-baptist-president-says-gay-trans-people-welcome-at-gods-table/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

The celebration of sodomy is now not only mainstream in the world, but very quickly becoming mainstream in the Church. This past week, Jen Hatmaker revealed that her daughter is a lesbian in a mini pride-fest version of Hatmaker’s podcast which explained why several years ago she came out in favor of sodomy and sexual immorality. She explained that she knew since the time her daughter was 12-years-old that she was gay and she immediately exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped the creation rather than the creator.

It was on Jonathan Merritt’s publication that Hatmaker came out in favor of sexual transgression several years ago. Jonathan Merritt, who was outed as having a gay fling and hooked up with another man at a Christian conference, is the son of former Southern Baptist Convention president, James Merritt. James has repeatedly stood by his son as he relentlessly promotes sexual immorality and homosexual activism in the name of Christ.

Jonathan Merritt, who also supports transvestites handling preschool children in public librarires for “special playtime” has repeatedly come out in defense of “Christian” sodomy. Celebrating pride month, Merritt released a video stating — in direct opposition to what the Scriptures say in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 — that all of the sexually immoral will receive the Kingdom of God despite the fact that they continue in rebellion against God.

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,[b] 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. — 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

 

BETHEL CHURCH INVOKES “LORD OF THE RINGS” SPIRIT TO END RACISM

SEE: https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/07/13/bethel-church-invokes-lord-of-the-rings-spirit-to-end-racism/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Just when you thought that the charismatic underworld of Bethel Church couldn’t get any crazier, there is always something else that comes along to blow your mind. From grave-sucking to performing a seance to try to raise people from the dead, witchcraft is at the core of Bethel, Redding’s theology.

Bethel Church in Redding, CA is pastored by Bill Johnson who claims to be an Apostle — that is, he claims Apostolic authority just like the twelve men during Christ’s time on Earth. Bethel Redding, like all cults, is filled with aberrant, unbiblical teachings and doctrines of demons, including false manifestations of the Holy Spirit, grave-sucking, and the Prosperity Gospel.

Now, unsurprisingly, Bethel has invoked the spirits of other religions as a method to eradicate cultural evils and placate the world in its endless pursuit of Utopia–something that cannot be achieved apart from Christ’s return. Watch as Bethel Church summons the spirits of the Lord of the Rings to end racism.

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Bethel Church Casts out Demon of Racism with Wizard Staff and Incantations

SEE: https://pulpitandpen.org/2020/07/07/bethel-church-casts-out-demon-of-racism-with-wizard-staff-and-incantations/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Listeners of Bethel Church’s Transformation Now series were treated with a sight not usually seen when prophetess Marlene Barrett, in a bid to end racism within Bethel and the Ekklesia movement, whipped out a wizard staff- a sure sign that some tomfoolery was afoot. There, on stage, she led Bill Johnson and others through a ritual incantation to cast out the demon of racism by prophetically reenacting a scene from Lord of The Rings. No joke.

Calling the opportunity a “very powerful and prophetic act,” Apostle Ed Silvoso, the architect of “transformational Christianity” told the audience that “faith without works is dead” and lead them in a “work” to demonstrate their faith.

With the gang all gathered up on stage and for some good old fashion binding and loosing of the spirit of racism, one of the participants bring out what can only be described as a large, weathered staff, possibly a movie prop or a replica from the film.

The prophetess recounts how she received a “prophetic vision regarding a prophetic act” saying “I’m going to ask us right to all grab a hold of this in our hand. Every single one of us…We are going to lift the staff and will command the spirit not only to leave, but he shall not pass!”

But before the spirit can be commanded, she reminds the audience:

“Apostle Silvoso said you need to oil your door. So I encourage you if you haven’t done this in the proper order, you must put oil on your door, and then go in front and repeat this act with us…so that the spirit of racism can leave your house.”

As she is set to begin she is told, “I think it’s important of you to share the vision of Gandalf.” Barrett agrees and proceeds to recounts the vision while drawing parallels to their own situation.

She speaks of her vision of Gandalf and the Hobbits (their own fellowship on stage) deep in the heart of Moria on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains, with Gandalf sensing the presence of Durin’s Bane. (i.e., the Spirit of racism) As the Fellowship flees to the Bridge of Khazad-dûm (Bethel Church), Gandalf stops and confronts the demon that was holding court. This is the same thing this band of misfits is doing as they employ “the authority of Gandalf.”

Stating that the authority can “only be released by an apostolic decree” they decree and declare that racism will end. Then, as one fellowship, they all take hold together and lift up the wizard’s staff and bang it on the podium, shouting “thou shall not pass” to the demons.

The scene sadly does not look as cool as they likely envisioned it. Watch the video. It’s an uncoordinated and awkward routine that they really should have practiced.

This is how many in the charismatic NAR movement deal with racism. Rather than going through the scriptures and employing confession and repentance to combat the sin of racism, these purveyors of the dark arts are out there seeing visions of the spirit of racism and engaging in some Grade-A level of unbiblical shenanigans. Sadly, they’re not comprehending that the bible does not command Christians to bang wooden sticks down on a podium while shouting movie lines in order to combat racism.

Also, if we’re being accurate to the metaphor, prophetess Barrett seems to forget that Gandalf fell into the black abyss to his death with the Balrog after he said those words.

If Bethel members don’t leave this false religion soon they’re going to end up in that darkness with them.

 
 

TURKEY: WHY ERDOGAN CONVERTED THE HAGIA SOPHIA TO A MOSQUE & WHY THE STATE DEPARTMENT SHOULD BE CONCERNED

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/07/why-erdogan-converted-the-hagia-sophia-to-a-mosque-and-why-the-state-department-should-be-concerned;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

My latest in PJ Media:

Most Western media analyses of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision Friday to convert Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque have asserted that Erdogan has wanted to do this because the move is popular among Turks and will shore up his base. But there is a great deal more to it: The conversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque is actually as clear an indication of Erdogan’s overall plans as Mein Kampf was of Hitler’s, and just as sinister, as well as just as likely to be disregarded until it is too late.

The Jerusalem Post reported Saturday that following the announcement that Hagia Sophia would again become a mosque, the Turkish Presidency website stated: “The resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the footsteps of the will of Muslims across the world to come… the resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the reignition of the fire of hope of Muslims and all oppressed, wrong, downtrodden and exploited.”

The Post added that Erdogan “linked the decision to reviving Islam from Bukhara in Uzbekistan to Andalusia in Spain. This terminology, linking al-Aqsa in Jerusalem to Hagia Sophia and Spain, is a kind of coded terminology for a wider religious agenda.”

No kidding. Erdogan is signaling his aspiration to restore the caliphate, the single unified Islamic government to which, in Sunni Islam, all Muslims owe allegiance. The last caliphate was abolished by the secular Turkish government in 1924; now that Erdogan has just about completed his work of destroying Turkish secularism, he is moving more directly than ever to reestablish the caliphate that the secularists themselves destroyed.

In light of that, the reconversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque has enormous importance. For nearly 1,000 years, from 537 to 1453, Hagia Sophia was the foremost cathedral in Christendom. When the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror finally defeated the Byzantine Empire and took Constantinople on May 29, 1453, he almost immediately had the Islamic call to prayer proclaimed from Hagia Sophia, so as to herald its conversion to a mosque.

The glory days of the caliphate and Hagia Sophia’s status as a mosque thus went together. Hagia Sophia stood as a symbol of the triumph of Islam over Christianity, and of the power of the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan is positioning himself as a new Mehmet, destroying the monument to secularism that the Hagia Sophia museum has been since 1935, and emulating his illustrious predecessor by converting it to a mosque once again.

There is more. Read the rest here.

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Turkey: MP says “Decision to convert Hagia Sophia to mosque will make life more difficult for Christians here”

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/07/turkey-mp-says-decision-to-convert-hagia-sophia-to-mosque-will-make-life-more-difficult-for-christians-here;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Indeed it will, as it is a new indication that Erdogan intends to destroy Turkish secularism altogether and restore Islamic rule to Turkey, which will involve the subjugation of the country’s remaining Christians as dhimmis.

“Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan formally makes Hagia Sophia a mosque,” by Suzan Fraser, Associated Press, July 10, 2020:

…Turkey’s high administrative court threw its weight behind a petition brought by a religious group and annulled the 1934 Cabinet decision that turned the site into a museum. Within hours, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a decree handing over Hagia Sophia to Turkey’s Religious Affairs Presidency.

In a televised address to the nation, Erdogan said the first prayers inside Hagia Sofia would be held on July 24, and he urged respect for the decision.

“I underline that we will open Hagia Sophia to worship as a mosque by preserving its character of humanity’s common cultural heritage,” he said, adding: “It is Turkey’s sovereign right to decide for which purpose Hagia Sofia will be used.”

He rejected the idea that the decision ends Hagia Sophia’s status as a structure that brings faiths together.

“Like all of our other mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be open to all, locals or foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims,” Erdogan said….

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian upper house of parliament, called the action “a mistake.”

“Turning it into a mosque will not do anything for the Muslim world. It does not bring nations together, but on the contrary brings them into collision,” he said.

The debate hits at the heart of Turkey’s religious-secular divide. Nationalist and conservative groups in Turkey have long yearned to hold prayers at Hagia Sophia, which they regard as part of the Muslim Ottoman legacy. Others believe it should remain a museum, as a symbol of Christian and Muslim solidarity.

“It was a structure that brought together both Byzantine and Ottoman histories,” said Zeynep Kizildag, a 27-year-old social worker, who did not support the conversion. “The decision to turn it into a mosque is like erasing 1,000 years of history, in my opinion.”

Garo Paylan, an ethnic Armenian member of Turkey’s Parliament tweeted that it was “a sad day for Christians (and) for all who believe in a pluralist Turkey.”

“The decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque will make life more difficult for Christians here and for Muslims in Europe,” he wrote. “Hagia Sophia was a symbol of our rich history. Its dome was big enough for all.”…

The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, considered the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, warned last month that the building’s conversion into a mosque “will turn millions of Christians across the world against Islam.”

On Friday, Archbishop Elpidophoros of America said the decision runs counter to the vision of secular Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk “who understood that Hagia Sophia should serve all Turkey’s people and indeed the whole world.”

“The days of conquest should remain a closed chapter of our collective histories,” he told The Associated Press, adding that Turkey’s government “can still choose wisely” but letting Hagia Sophia remain a “monument to all civilizations and universal values.”…

Some Islamic prayers have been held in the museum in recent years. In a major symbolic move, Erdogan recited the opening verse of the Quran there in 2018….

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Christian theologian: “Christians should be delighted” at Hagia Sophia becoming a mosque

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/07/christian-theologian-christians-should-be-delighted-at-hagia-sophia-becoming-a-mosque;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Useful Idiots such as Giles Fraser, who couch their capitulation in the guise of being broadminded, tolerant, and generous, will be the death of us.

Giles Fraser has offered an argument from authority, which is the weakest of all arguments: Christians and Muslims worship the same God because the Pope Francis and the Second Vatican Council say so. In reality, there are immediate and obvious differences: the Trinity, the crucifixion, and the divinity of Christ. Beyond that, Islam in its traditional theological formulations denies free will, the nature of good and evil (both of which, says the Qur’an [91:7-8], are placed in the soul by Allah, while the Christian idea is that evil stems from a rejection of God), and the nature of the deity. Allah is absolute will; Islamic theologians throughout Islamic history have held that even to expect consistency in moral or physical laws would be placing restraints on his sovereignty.

All this was known in the Christian world up until the 1960s. Vatican II’s affirmation that Muslims and Christians together worship the one God, and pointed omission of any discussion of what had led the two to be in conflict for 1,400 years, was a radical departure from the statements of many popes, as well as of saints and martyrs.

“Theologian: Vatican II Justifies Hagia Sophia As Mosque,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, July 10, 2020:

ISTANBUL (ChurchMilitant.com) – A controversial theologian is quoting Pope Francis and Vatican II to justify Turkey’s decision returning the world’s largest Byzantine basilica to its conquered status as a mosque.

Giles Fraser, a liberal Anglican, says he “cannot but applaud” radical Islamic president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “desire to return this once holy place back to a mosque.”

“Christians should be delighted” if Hagia Sophia reverts to being a mosque because “Muslims are our brothers and sisters with whom we share a faith in the living God,” Fraser argues.

Church Militant reported Thursday that the Council of State, Turkey’s top administrative court, reached a unanimous verdict declaring that secularist President Kemal Atatürk’s 1934 decision to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum was unlawful.

Fraser, a Nietzsche scholar, claims he is offering “no less an authority than the pope himself,” to “those Christians who believe that Muslims and Christians worship something different.”

The former columnist for The Guardian quotes Pope Francis’ tweet ahead of his trip to Morocco last year to make his case that Christians and Muslims worship the same God: “We Christians and Muslims believe in God, the Creator and the Merciful, who created people to live like brothers and sisters, respecting each other in their diversity and helping one another in their needs,” the pontiff tweeted in March 2019.

“This view goes back to the Second Vatican Council, where it was affirmed that Muslims, ‘together with us adore the one, merciful God,'” writes Fraser, citing Lumen Gentium.

“And from the Muslim side, the Qur’an makes it clear that Muslims worship the same God as the Jews,” notes Fraser, providing a hyperlink to the Koran (2:132).

“Giles Fraser has offered an argument from authority, which is the weakest of all arguments: Christians and Muslims worship the same God because Pope Francis and the Second Vatican Council say so,” distinguished Islamic scholar Robert Spencer told Church Militant.

“In reality, there are immediate and obvious differences — the Trinity, the Crucifixion, and the divinity of Christ,” said Spencer, author of over 20 books including Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics: 100 Questions and Answers. “All this was known in the Christian world up until the 1960s.”

Spencer explains:

Vatican II’s affirmation that Muslims and Christians together worship the one God — and pointed omission of any discussion of what had led the two to be in conflict for 1,400 years — was a radical departure from the statements of many popes, as well as of saints and martyrs….

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Turkey’s New Mosque a Monument to Western Decline

We may think we’re exhibiting high-minded principles, but our enemies know the score.

BY BRUCE THORNTON

SEE: https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/turkeys-new-mosque-monument-western-decline-bruce-thornton;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Last week Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that on July 24 Hagia Sophia, for a thousand years one of Christendom’s most storied and significant churches, will once again become a mosque. So far, the remnant of established Christianity has been silent. But this affront to the faith that is one of the pillars upon which the West was founded reveals how damaging has been the historical amnesia and appeasing double-standards that have compromised our response to the challenge of Islamic jihadism.

Until recently Turkey had been a poster-boy for the dubious globalist consensus that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism are the destiny of all humanity, including Muslims. In 1923 founder Kemal Atatürk created Turkey to be a modern Western nation-state, with religion separated from the secular government. He abolished the caliphate, closed Islamic courts, gave women equal rights in divorce and inheritance, allowed them to vote, restricted sharia to religion, and secularized education for females as well as males. In 1934 Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum, part of Atatürk’s program to recognize Turkey’s pre-Muslim history and strengthen Turkey’s modern global identity and prestige.

But over the years it took the military to maintain this modernizing, secular program in the face of the more traditional and conservative Muslim masses and their discontent. Starting as mayor of Istanbul in 1994, Erdoğan became their champion, and as president has abandoned Atatürk’s democratic, secular program: He has jailed more journalists than any other country, and built 17,000 new mosques. Nearly a century of efforts to reconcile Islam with liberal democracy are failing under Erdoğan’s incremental Islamization. Turning Hagia Sophia back into a mosque is an important sign of his success, and a gesture of defiance of the “rules-based international order.”

And it is a repudiation of the West’s belief that transforming Islamic majority states into secular liberal democracies, what we spent lives and resources futilely attempting to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, could defuse the materialist and political dysfunctions that the idealistic internationalists champions claimed created jihadist terrorism. This belief is a colossal failure of imagination, enabled by a refusal to take seriously the traditional doctrines, scriptures, jurisprudence, and behavior documented in 14 centuries of Islamic history.

One constant of that history is the totalizing role Islam plays in Muslim societies, and the depths of a religious fervor now nearly extinct in the Christian West, where Christianity has been driven from the public square, and relegated to private and, at holidays, commercial life. Contrary to our focus on material causes to account for historical and political change, as Bernard Lewis has written, Islam’s “most characteristic, significant and original political and intellectual responses [to Islam’s retreat before the West] have been Islamic. They have been concerned with the problems of the faith and the community overwhelmed by infidels.”

Given that religious focus, Lewis also writes, “In most Islamic countries, religion remains a major political factor,” for “most Muslim countries are still profoundly Muslim in a way and in a sense that most Christian countries are no longer Christian.” Given how secularized the West is, we discount faith and its doctrines and look for material, economic, political, or psychological causes of jihadist terrorism and violence, from the lack of economic development to justified anger over the West’s sins such as imperialism, colonialism and modern versions like globalism.

Moreover, our fashionable civilizational self-loathing leads us to accept these specious causes, even to the point of whitewashing Islam’s long history of violence in the name of Allah, and styling Islam, as presidents from both parties have done, as the “religion of peace.” This bad habit explains as well the relative indifference of Western politicians and clergy to Erdoğan’s announcement that one of the West’s most glorious and beautiful cultural treasures, already partially defaced by its first conquerors in 1453, will be turned into a venue for the faith that attacked, plundered, occupied, and enslaved Westerners for a thousand years, and continues today to slaughter and enslave Christians.

This dismissal of faith has also led to a double standard in the West’s responses to events. Addled by multiculturalism and its noble-savage fantasies of the exotic “other,” we strain out the Western mite and swallow whole herds of non-Western camels. Churches across Christendom are vandalized or demolished with scarcely a “tut-tut” from our political and ecclesiastical leaders. But let one mosque be defaced with graffiti, and passionate denunciations of “racism” and “Islamophobia” will fill the airwaves and bandwidth for days.

Similarly, scarcely a day passes when we don’t hear heated complaints about Israel’s “illegal occupation” of its traditional homeland as documented in historical writing, inscriptions, and archeological finds. But seldom, if ever, do we hear that for nearly 50 years Turkey has illegally occupied and colonized northern Cyprus, ethnically cleansing Greek Cypriots; destroying, looting, and vandalizing more than 550 churches; and refusing to this day to inform the Greeks about the fate of over 2000 of their compatriots who disappeared during the invasion.

Worst of all, we allow mosques to arise on Western lands and solicitously protect them, even as many are centers of jihadist recruitment and indoctrination. Germany alone has 2400, 900 of which are controlled by Turkey. Yet Saudi Arabia will not allow a single church on its territory, and punishes Christian evangelism with death. Other Muslim countries restrict, according to sharia law, the number and size of Christian churches, which are frequent targets of vandalism or destruction. Turkey continues to forbid new churches, though a few years ago it did allow a new church to be built––the first in 90 years.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this cringing double-standard as well as the continuing Arab control over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The holiest site of Judaism, it was strictly off-limits to Jews during Jordan’s occupation, as was the Old City. Forty to fifty thousand headstones from the Mount of Olives cemetery were desecrated, some being used to pave latrines, and 56 synagogues were destroyed.

Yet despite this record of destruction and contempt, after the 1967 Six Days War and Israel’s reconquest of Jerusalem, Israelis didn’t just let the two mosques on the Temple Mount survive, but allowed Arabs to maintain significant control over the Mount. Worse yet, in 1996 a new mosque and prayer hall was built below the Temple Mount on the remains of Solomon’s Stables, and during construction excavations thousands of precious artifacts from the as far back as the First Temple era were contemptuously dumped in the Kidron Valley along with excavation spoil. Israeli archaeologists for years had to sift from the mounds of dirt 1000 ancient objects like coins, inscriptions, building stones from the two temples, and tools.

Finally, this myopic and cringing double standard is manifested in the use of “imperialism” and “colonialism” as epithets to delegitimize the West and Israel, which in Arab propaganda is routinely characterized as a Western colonial and imperial outpost. This bad habit is particularly cringing, given Islam’s long record of imperial conquest, colonization, and occupation: At one point three quarters of the Roman Empire and over a third of what was then known as Christendom were occupied. From the beginning, as historian Efraim Karsh writes, Muslim armies “acted in a typically imperialist fashion . . . subjugating indigenous populations, colonizing their lands, and expropriating their wealth and labor.” And whereas Western imperial powers abandoned almost all their colonies and continue to aid those peoples in determine their own political destiny, the descendants of Muslim invaders, colonists, and occupiers continue to live and rule most of the territories they conquered centuries ago: all of North Africa, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Iran––all except the last had been Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian, i.e. proto-Western, for as long as nearly 3000 years before Islam even existed.

Which raises some questions: By what moral calculus do the imperialism and colonialism of the past in the West come in for constant condemnation and scapegoating for the rest of the world’s problems, while no one holds Islam and its colonial and imperialist sins to the same standards of judgment and accountability? Or why does the West’s history of brutal slavery remain an indelible stain on today’s Westerners, while Islam’s much longer and more brutal history of slavery, not just of Africans, but of millions of Europeans, is scarcely mentioned, though it continues to this day? Or why are the richest, freest women in the world defended by militant feminists against sexist “microagressions,” while in many Muslim countries, the misogynistic customs and laws, including polygamy, veils, genital mutilation, honor killings, and inequality before the law, are, when not just ignored, admired as exotic chic by ignorant Western activists?

Accepting a double-standard is always a sign of weakness, inferiority, and fear. We may think we’re just displaying our high-minded principles and cosmopolitanism, but our enemies know the score: We are displaying a civilizational failure of nerve, and a sordid materialism that will not let us risk our rich dolce vita lifestyle. Just like the current destruction of America’s history as expressed in statues and monuments, and just like the libelous revision of American history to legitimize an illiberal collectivist ideology and its impossible utopias, the shrugging off­­––with a few exceptions like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo­­––of Turkey’s conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque bespeaks a civilization that no longer is willing to defend and fight for its ideals, its history, its achievements, and its future.

The word for that condition is “decline.”

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Hagia Sophia Is a Mosque Again! (But That's Not as Terrible as You Think!) 

On July 10, 2020, Turkish President Erdogan announced that Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom"), which had been a museum since 1935, was again being converted into a mosque. Since the Church of Hagia Sophia was built by Christians in honor of Jesus Christ, many are upset about its reconversion to a mosque. David Wood, however, has a different perspective.