Forced Conversion--What Would Peter Do--Part II

This post was placed in La Shawn Barber's comments portion concerning yesterday's discussion of forced conversion to Islam. It also ties nicely with a discussion we had going with Flametoad a couple of weeks ago. The guy knows his stuff, historically, as well as the propensity of Wahabi Muslims. The radicalization gets worse. Moderates; if there truly were such a thing, are vanishing. I think the blueprint he lays out in this post is just the way it's going to go, unless it's stopped cold. Somehow.

Islam is a menace to Western society, and it does not tolerate any other religion, way of life, or viewpoint. We cannot coexist and maintain our way of life with a religion like this. I think this ought to motivate the rest of us non-Muslims. Don't give a freaking inch to this evil. Historically, appeasement has never worked. You simply give the enemy a stronger foothold when it comes at you again.

Sometimes, despite Flametoad's feverent wishes otherwise, all-out conflict is the only solution. We may not want it, but we may not have any choice in the matter; if we want to preserve our own existence, religion, and way of life. The historical evidence indicates that is exactly where this is headed.

I hope and pray otherwise. But I'd prepare for this conflict to get a lot worse.

See this post for an example. This kind of behavior is getting more and more widespread, as warned. Hat tip again to Michelle Malkin, and Drudge Report.

What Did Peter Do?

As you probably know, the kidnapped Fox journalists were released, after they were forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam.

La Shawn Barber discusses this, and wonders what she would have done as a Christian. Read this post and discussion.

I wonder, myself.

I'll post more on this later. This is something worth discussing.

A tip of the hat to Michelle Malkin's website for finding this little discussion.

_______________________UPDATE_____________________________

Well, that's certainly a deep subject to kick around.

I would like to think that I'd stand firm. The truth is, I don't know. I would hope that I would stand like the girl we've all read about at Columbine, and die a martyr. What I really hope is that I never have to be tested like that.

On the one hand, Paul tells us the only unforgivable sin is to deny the Holy Spirit. So what does that mean, exactly? Have you denied it when you convert to Islam at the point of a gun?

I can say honestly that I don't know. My first impression is that I don't think so. I think that a person hasn't really given up on Jesus when faced with certain death at the hands of nuts like this. That is, if he's really accepted Jesus in the first place. I think God would know what's in a man's heart. The survival instinct in a person is pretty strong. It's a God-given response, built in there for the specific purpose of keeping our happy rears alive.

I think back to what Peter did, in the face of the capture of Jesus. Peter stated that he would never deny him. Jesus, knowing a bit better, predicted Peter would disavow any knowledge of him not once; but three times. When the soldiers came and took Jesus before the Sanhedrin, Peter cracked. He did exactly what Jesus figured he'd do. He vowed he didn't know Jesus at all. By doing so, he stayed alive.

I think Peter never really gave up on Jesus. That much is obvious, given what he accomplished in Jesus' name later on. He was just overwhelmed with the survival instinct that God gave all of us. Later, he was martyred, in a pretty horrible way. I don't know for sure, but I think Peter probably made it to Heaven. He stood up when he was supposed to. And maybe that's the answer. We'll play whatever role God has decided for us.

Bottom line: I sure can't judge these two journalists. It's not my place. I don't know what I'd do. I know whatever conversion I supposedly made would not be what was in my heart. I just hope God doesn't place me in that position. But if he does, it will play out the way he wants it to. I'm not going to sweat it. Nor am I going to condemn these guys for wanting to stay alive at all costs. I'm sure some Christians will, but it's really not their place.

I do think this is illustrative of what the West will face with Islam. This is not an historic anomaly, by any means. The whole history of Islam vs. everybody else is rife with stories like these. I'll bet this won't be the last time this little problem comes up.

Right On

Every once in awhile, I read something that makes me want to cry, scream, and stand up and cheer. All at once.

Kim Du Toit is usually pretty good at it.

This is a very moving piece, and worth the read.

Just looking at the place gives me the creeps.

He's right: this can never be allowed to happen again.

Vs. Flametoad

In a friendly sense, of course. We've had a very interesting and entertaining discussion about the threat of Islam over at Flametoad.com. I don't always agree, but I learn something always, and I am forced to examine my own points of view to see how they hold up. Thoreau stated that the unexamined life is not worth living. That's true of my opinions and beliefs as well. If they don't hold up to scrutiny and active testing, they might not be as good of opinions as we think they are. So I engage these kinds of debates when I can, and it's educational every time. I hope it is for the other side as well. I love doing this kind of thing, simply because it allows me gorw intellectually. Lord knows I need it. And this was a good, reasoned debate with good points being made on all sides.

At any rate, I came away from the discussion and the debate with things to ponder, and new avenues of thought to pursue. This is a very good thing.

As to the thoughts about radical Islam and what they are teaching in the moderate mosques, take a look at this post. It serves as pretty good support for both Flametoad's and my points of view on the subject.

Robert Spencer was on CNN. They played some of his comments to a "moderate" Muslim apologist, and let him comment on Spencer's assertions. This is Spencer fisking those comments (which he didn't get to debate the guy on air, by the way, he was never asked to) and dissecting what the Muslim was saying.

I hope moderates will disavow the literal translations of the Koran, and stamp out this sort of mentality. Ackbar doesn't seem to really address the issue, instead he does some pretty convoluted side-stepping about the issues. He is correct, a war against 1.4 billion people would be beyond horrible.

Go check the Flametoad debate, and read Spencer and Ackbar's point-counterpoint exchange.

It's fuel for thought, to say the least.

---------------------UPDATE--------8-17-06----------------------

Check this post out. Terrorism does have the ability to influence policies and procedures worldwide. I think this is indisputable. The policies and procedures have to change, just to prevent their nutball actions. This post indicates a certain degree of kowtowing to the Muslim world by a small country with an embassy in Israel. Tips to Michelle Malkin's incomparable website for this information.

This sort of thing is a prime example of why I think Flametoad is a bit off the mark in saying terrorism isn't as large a threat as the Soviets were back in the day. The effects might not be as overt as the Soviet's effect, but they're still there and just as earthshaking in our day to day lives. Nobody's shoes were being x-rayed in airports back in the early 80's. There was no Patriot Act. No terror threat levels.

This might be worse, overall. Flametoad seems to blame the government for mass hysteria regarding terrorism. But how are we to know it wasn't the same thing with the Soviets? There were lots of peaceniks that argued the same thing back in the day. I've never PERSONALLY seen a Russian nuke. I've never PERSONALLY seen a terrorist, either. I believe they all exist, though. Flametoad seems to want to exercise a selective recognition of threats, which is to ignore reality, unless it IS just an attempt to cow the masses through hysteria.

Again, it's fun intellectual discourse, one way or the other.

A Low Down, Dirty Shame

Two US Border Patrol Agents are facing a minimum of ten years in prison for doing their jobs. Read the story.

I watched a report on O'Reilly last night, and Glenn Beck did an interview with one of them tonight on his TV show. It's pretty sad. They are up for sentencing on August 22nd.

Basically, the agents came under fire after pursuing a drug smuggler, returned fire, and were found guilty of aggravated assault. They face federal minimum sentencing of ten years. Here's the problem with federal criminal law. The judge has no discretion in what sort of sentence is handed down. It's all prescribed by law, so justice can't really be had.

So the bottom line is that agents were doing their jobs, returned fire when they were shot at, and are going to prison. To me, this shows that our government has no interest in protecting us whatsoever. The prosecuting attorney should be flogged for bringing something like this. The judge should be drummed out of office for not dismissing this case. The EL Paso jury should be ashamed of themselves for doing this, but what did we expect from an El Paso jury against La Migra? Not exactly a fair venue for this trial.

Plus, the drug-soaked wetback is suing us for 5 million dollars. My only regret in all of this is that the prosecuted agents didn't shoot straight enough to hit something vital. Glenn Beck pointed out the same guy has been re-arrested for drug smuggling since this incident, and deported yet again. Yet he's suing for a violation of his civil rights.

Tell me what kind of sense that makes. When something like this is allowed to happen, it pretty much indicates we are living in a world gone completely mad.

Grassfire.org has a petition aimed to shame Bush into pardoning these guys. Go sign it.

Then start kicking every rotten elected official out of office that condones, either passively or actively, crazy crap like this.

We will not survive as a nation if this idiocy keeps up.

Exploding Communist Suicide Islamo-Frogs From Hell

How's THAT for a title? It'd make a great band name. It's apropos of nothing, I just couldn't figure out what else to title this post.

Check out this post at Flametoad, and the discussion therein. The combustible amphibian seems to think the Soviets were a bigger threat than the Islamo-fascists. I don't. The difference is their willingness to pull the trigger. The Soviets ultimately didn't nuke us because that wouldn't win anybody anything. The jihadists would happily nuke us, because they're freaking loons.

This is my problem with peaceful co-existence. I think it's a fundamental law of human nature that two diametrically opposed social forces can't exist in balance. One side struggles for dominance, and will eventually win out by hook or crook. The lions don't share the same space with the zebras without somebody getting killed. When one parses down the conflict between Islam vs. any other religion, ultimately the two cannot peacefully co-exist forever. Why? Because each is an anathema to the other. In the case of radical Islam, they are taught to kill, convert, or enslave us. We can't get along with that. Sooner or later it's going to come to a head.

I hope I'm wrong. But I haven't seen any evidence that would convince me otherwise.

Philosophical Thought Experiment For The Evening

Work with me on this one. Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution recognize that humans are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...etc.

The purpose of the Bill of Rights (1st 10 Amendments of the Constitution, for those of you who slept through government and political science) is to codify some of the universally recognized human rights. Freedom of speech, of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.

Here's where it gets interesting. These rights are not given to us by government. It's just the opposite. The Bill of Rights tells us exactly what the government CANNOT take away from us. In other words, there are concepts greater than the government. There are things that no human should ever have taken away from them. Yet in other words, the Bill of Rights is not a statement that the benevolent government is giving us these rights, and we should be grateful for its graciousness. Instead, this is telling the government that IT CANNOT TAKE THESE BASIC FREEDOMS AWAY FROM US. (Have I made this point yet?)

The Bill of Rights, along with the Declaration of Independence, are codifications of our Founders' belief there is something greater than government out there. There is something higher at work that says that we all have the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and Uncle Sam can't take it away from us.

The problem that we see nowadays (in my humble opinion) is the refusal to recognize there is something greater than government. I think liberals see government as a cure-all. Give it enough money and power, and it will fix all our problems and woes. In effect, liberals make government their higher power.

Basic human rights are recognized only when it is apparent there is something greater than government at work. There is something in the universe that cries out when a slave is beaten, a communist regime takes away all private ownership of property, a religious fanatic slams a plane into a skyscraper, or when a woman is slapped by her husband. There doesn't have to be a law against any of these things. It's just wrong on some fundamental level. We may not be able to explain it, but we feel an unsettling in the pit of our stomachs when faced with it. Something in our inner fiber recognizes there is injustice, and something tells us that this is not the way it's supposed to be.

If we suppress this innate justice detector and replace it with man-made laws, we are in trouble. Man's laws change all the time, in accordance with social pressure and the mores of society as it exists when the laws are written. The pure genius of our Founding Fathers is the recognition that unless they specifically said what the government couldn't do; sooner or later somebody would think the government should do it all.

Call it what you will. There's something in the Universe that generates these feelings, and these rights. Liberals have no humility, I think. They don't seem to realize it's the people who empower the government, not the government empowering the people. A good government recognizes that as good as it might be, its moral authority comes from something beyond what laws are on the books. If it does not conduct itself in accordance with this universal standard of right and wrong, then it's not a just government at all. It has no moral authority, because it doesn't recognize anything beyond itself. It's not accountable to anything other than what laws it creates.

So ponder that one awhile. The government doesn't GIVE us anything, especially not our basic human rights.

How to Be French...

Try surrendering, like the world and Israel seem prepared to do. Then, act snobby about it, and pretend your country is the source of all culture in the world.

If you haven't heard, Israel agreed to a moronic cease-fire agreeement the UN has brokered. But don't worry, the French will lead the peacekeeping force. I'm sure everyone in Israel will sleep better knowing they are protected from Hezbollah by the French. Remember, this is the country that was just about destroyed by rioting Muslims last year. They're just what is needed to stop Islamo-fascism in its tracks.

I was hoping Israel would just keep on trucking, stopping around Tehran or so. Honestly, I expected better of them. We were finally going to see the eradication of a terrorist outfit. I hope Israel is fooling everyone, and has no intention of stopping until they have a terrorist-free zone around them.

Basically, world pressure is forcing Israel to stop its offensive to wipe Hezbollah off the face of the Earth. This is a mistake of monumental proportions. As the links and the commentators therein indicate, Hezbollah has now received some recognition and legitimacy from the UN. We shouldn't ever sign off on a resolution that basically gives the terrorists anything resembling a victory. And even a stalemate is a victory to the terrorists, at this point. They now know that if they hang on long enough, the UN will jump in and basically save them.

Terrorists should be treated like roaches and exterminated. Otherwise, they'll continue to breed until they overrun everything.

I think it's pretty ignorant for Israel to halt its offensive. They haven't yet, but they might very well by Sunday. It seems stupid to halt the momentum of a military campaign, especially when things seem to be going Israel's way as far as the conflict goes.

Bill O'Reilly notes in his latest column that much of the Iraqi insurgency is Iranian-sponsored. It's pretty hard to argue that the terrorists are simply a bunch of hardcore nuts that don't represent the majority of Islam when an Islamic country is sponsoring so much grief. And let's not forget that many of the rockets hitting Israel came from Iran. And Iran's benighted leader has called for the wiping out of Israel.

Don't tell me that Islamo-fascism is a minority movement with no popular support from within the rank-and-file Muslims. That's intellectually and factually dishonest, and it's time to speak the truth about such matters.

Is it not becoming apparent to even the most ignorant liberal that a war is coming between Islam and everybody else? While Israel has the upper hand, let them go. That's less fighting the rest of the world is going to have to do later.

The always-great Kim Du Toit writes an insightful piece, and quotes a Brit as rightly observing that Muslims want their religion and freedom respected, and don't give a rat's butt about anybody else's.

This is no surprise to anyone conversant with what Islam is teaching its followers. Don't take my word for it, though. Read, study, and make up your own mind about the subject. A great site for information is Jihad Watch.

When are we going to wake up and face the threat? It's not going away, and the world is going to have to either deal with it, or let the world fall under sharia.

FIGHT THE POWER!!

There's a very interesting post on Reasonablenut's site. Go here and read this. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I probably jammed his comments section like an overworked toilet, but my comments are based on what I've observed since getting in this crapslinging profession laughingly called the practice of law. I can't wait to get out of it.

The long and short of it is: it can happen to you. Don't think otherwise. I work this system, and it's as crooked as they come. This is not how our Constitution was set up and meant to work AT ALL. Trust me on that one.

Cognitive Dissonance Part Deux

So the media is all over Mel Gibson for anti-Semitic remarks made during his recent DWI arrest. The basic thing we're getting from all these liberal hacks is that it's just awful to be disparaging the Jews like that.

I think getting rockets dumped on their heads by Hezbollah is a bit more than disparaging. I think hearing from the leader of a foreign country, stating unequivocally that he wants your nation wiped off the face the the earth is a bit more unsettling than what another Hollywood twit has to say. (See Iran)

It's awful to say bad things about the Jews, says the liberal press. But it's ok to give positive coverage to the people that are trying to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth.

I guess the press doesn't consider itself biased because it doesn't come right out and say it thinks Jews stink. It is OK, on the other hand, to talk about the plight of the poor Palestinians who want nothing more than the death of every Jewish person in Israel. It's ok to give good press to Hezbollah and their claims of atrocities the IDF supposedly committed in Qana. It's ok to show the families of dead terrorists weeping and wailing, making Israel seem like the bad guys. Israel's citizens have been killed by terrorist attacks since Israel existed as a modern nation. The media doesn't seem overly concerned about their dead, their living in fear every day of their lives. Where's the outrage over the Israeli civilians who died at the hands of some nutball jihadist?

But they want to condemn Mel for saying some stupid stuff while bombed out of his gourd. I think what the mainstream media is doing to Israel is far worse than anything Mel has done.

And another thing...why are is the world wailing and gnashing its teeth about a "proportionate response" from Israel? My philosophy about fighting is fairly simple: avoid if at all possible. But if the situation is such that you are forced to fight, you're probably facing serious bodily injury or death. That means you fight back with everything you have, until the threat is stopped. For instance, I'm not going to drop my gun if a knife-wielding crackhead kicks in my door. My response isn't proportional to his knife attack, but gosh darn. I'm not wanting a fair fight. I want to survive. I want my family to survive.

Same thing here. Israel knows the enemy is committed to its destruction. They are dumping missiles on its civilians on a regular basis. They have aid and support from neighboring countries. Time to end the threat.

So Mel Gibson gets roasted for doing something stupid while drunk. That seems to happen fairly regularly with people and alcohol. So what? Isn't it far more anti-semitic to fail to condemn people who think Israel doesn't have a right to exist? Isn't it far worse to praise the courage of Hezbollah terrorists?

Which is it, mainstream media? They can't condemn Mel Gibson without a hard look at their own slanted coverage of this thing. It's probably an uncomfortable self-examination.

The truth about Islam what it teaches ALL of its followers is uncomfortable, but must be faced. Kill, enslave, or convert. No middle ground is permitted. Israel has made up its mind that it will not be killed, enslaved or converted. And it really doesn't care what Mel Gibson said when he was drunk. It's got more serious issues to deal with right now.

Hollywood, the mainstream media, every liberal in America needs to understand something. (We'll take our Christian religious views out of the picture altogether for a moment or two.) The Muslims want to kill, conquer or convert all of us. That includes liberals. We have one Middle Eastern friend in the war on terror, and that's Israel. We owe them our support and loyalty, because they are the front line against an enemy that will take ALL of us down. Even liberals. Israel understands that. If we're not going to help Israel, let's at least get out of their way.