Atheists, Agnostics Hold Festival for First Time on Military Base By Anugrah Kumar

The U.S. military hosted an event meant specifically for atheist and agnostic soldiers for the first time Saturday on the grounds of a large Army base in North Carolina.

“Rock Beyond Belief,” an event featuring secular speakers and musicians, was held on the main parade ground at the Fort Bragg military base. It was modeled after the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association‘s “Rock the Fort” evangelistic event that was held at the same venue in 2010.

“I love the military,” The Associated Press quoted Sgt. Justin Griffith, main organizer of the event and the military director of American Atheists, as saying. “This is not meant to be a black eye.”

The organizers claim on the event’s website that they are not interested in being a counter-event to the “offensive” “Rock the Fort” concert, or in putting on an anti-Christian, anti-religious event. “Rock Beyond Belief” is a day of fun and entertainment, they say.

Griffith had invited Christian soldiers to the event, and had said a free barbecue meal would be provided to the first 1,000 Department of Defense cardholders.

Atheist and agnostic soldiers at Fort Bragg have been pushing for gaining recognition as a faith group that would have the right to hold meetings inside the facilities. And Saturday’s concert, attended by a few hundred people, was also aimed at making a case for that demand.

Prominent British atheist Richard Dawkins was a speaker. “We’re never antagonistic toward religious believers, we’re antagonistic toward religious belief,” he claimed. “There is no good, honest reason to believe in a god or gods of any kind, or indeed in anything supernatural. The only reason to believe something is that you have evidence for it.

“We got any Darwin fans in the house?” asked Baba Brinkman, a rapper, before launching into a song about evolutionary biology.

The Delaware-based Stiefel Freethought Foundation, which promotes and supports the free thought movement, had donated $70,000 for the event. Its founder Todd Stiefel was quoted as saying that the Army should not host events like Saturday’s concert and the BGEA-sponsored event that prompted it. “I would like this to be the last one of these events.”

Garrison Commander Col. Stephen Sicinski at Fort Bragg said the hosting of “Rock the Fort” was a non-issue. “We don’t treat soldiers who are atheists as atheists, we treat them as soldiers,” he said. “They’re soldiers first.”

The post commander had earlier refused to allow the festival to be held on the main parade field. Griffith had to cancel the event scheduled for April 2 last year. However, with the backing of groups working for church-state separation, Griffith complained to the Secretary of the Army that the fort was discriminating against certain religious groups. Cooperation was pledged as a result.

“This just might be the turning point in the foxhole atheist community’s struggle for acceptance, tolerance and respect,” Griffith said after the permission to hold the event was granted last August. “It’s an amazing time to be a nonbeliever in the U.S. military on the cusp of a major breakthrough.”

Jason Torpy, president of the Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers, told The Christian Post in an earlier interview that it’s important to understand the background of how the atheist event came about. The festival was conceived as reaction to the Billy Graham’s event, which received some manpower and financial support from the base command at the request of some chaplains.

Griffith and atheist groups objected to it, alleging it was an army-sponsored platform to seek converts.

Retired Navy Chaplain James Klingenschmitt earlier told The Christian Post that when the Billy Graham event was held atheists threatened lawsuits, wrongly arguing that an “evangelistic rally” jointly sponsored by U.S. military personnel and evangelical Christian churches and ministries violates the U.S. Constitution and must be canceled.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/atheists-agnostics-hold-festival-for-first-time-on-military-base-72431/

How to Behave in Church

“That thou mayest know how…to behave…in the house of God.” 1Ti 3:15

The church is like a garden; it has great potential for growth and beauty. But cultivating a garden calls for time and labor; it also requires being on the lookout for weeds and pulling them up before they grow and kill your plants. Two of the most common weeds in the church are: (1) Favoritism. “Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel” (Ac10:34-36 NIV). Peter, who struggled with prejudice, said, “I now realize…that God does not show favoritism.” How about you? Do you realize that too? Or do you mix only with “your own kind”? Cliques in church are high treason to the King of Kings. If there’s one lonely soul in your church, you have work to do! The Bible says that God “gives families to the lonely” (Ps 68:6 TLB). When people are shy, wounded, insecure, or lacking in trust, you must reach out and bring them into your circle of fellowship. (2) Gossip. “Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters” (Jas 4:11 NLT). When you hear gossip about someone, stop it dead in its tracks. Unless you are willing to talk directly to the person, don’t talk about them. And don’t let anybody else talk about them either. Gossip is the art of saying nothing, and leaving nothing unsaid. If you want to promote harmony in the family, don’t indulge in it.

http://theencouragingword.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/how-to-behave-in-church/

A Song and a Psalm

For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A song. A psalm.

“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us.” — Psalm 67:1

Throughout the book of Psalms there are some commonly recurring phrases that serve to introduce the various chapters. Many psalms are introduced with “a song of ascents,” “a psalm of David” and of course, “Halleluiah!” Psalm 67 begins with a seemingly repetitive phrase, “A song. A psalm,” or in Hebrew, shir mizmor.

Is there a difference between a song and a psalm? Why does the psalmist mention them both?

The Hebrew word for song is shira (which is also a popular girl’s name), but like all biblical words, there is a deeper significance as well. Shir doesn’t only mean song; it signifies a connection and, interestingly enough, is the same word for both a domesticated animal and a leash. With this understanding, shirah means a song connecting the singer with God above.

Psalm, or mizmor, on the other hand has nearly the opposite connotation. Mizmor comes from the Hebrew word zamoor which means to cut or prune as in Leviticus (25:4), during the Sabbatical year, “do not prune (tizmor) your vineyard.” The message here is that before offering a psalm to the Lord, we must first cut out any inappropriate forces or desires that may interfere with our devotion.

The challenge for us then becomes to live each day as the psalmist suggests — by offering “a song” and “a psalm,” connecting ourselves to God, while cutting away those things that keep us from Him.

What might you cut out from your daily routine that is keeping you from God? In what ways can you better connect with Him? As you offer a song and a psalm to God, you will be in a better position to receive His gracious blessings that He wants to bestow upon you.

http://www.holylandmoments.org/devotionals/a-song-and-a-psalm

How to Be Rid of Contempt

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones–Mat 18:10

The Savage Are Characterized by Contempt of Others

The spirit of contempt is very strongly developed among savage races. A savage is nurtured to hate or to despise. Between his own tribe and every other tribe there is a deep and quite impassable gulf, and it has never entered into the savage heart that love or kindness should seek to bridge that chasm. If other tribes are powerful they must be hated. If they are weak they must be treated with contempt. There is the belief, then, in the sad creed of many a savage, that there is virtue in despising others.

The Spirit of Disdaining Others

And when we pass from the wild life of savagery to the civilisations of the ancient world, the remarkable thing is that we are immediately confronted with the same spirit of contemptuous disdain. We might have hoped that the culture of the Greek, and his swift appreciation of all things of beauty, would have given him a large sympathy with mankind. We might have expected that the world-conquering Roman, strong in his masculine sense of law and order, would have been too large-hearted to belittle. And above all, we might have trusted that the Jew, to whom had been granted the vision of the eternal, would have learned in the great glory of that vision to call nothing common or unclean. But history tells us a very different story. The old world is flooded with the spirit of contempt. And we do not need to go beyond the Bible story to learn how the Greek looked down on the barbarian, or how the Jew disdained the Gentile world. Everywhere, then, where the spirit of Christ is not, we are confronted with the spirit of contempt. A Christless world, if it believes in anything, believes in the holy duty of disdaining. And it is like the courage of the Lord Jesus Christ that He dared to lift up His voice against the past, to charge it with error in its cherished virtues, to tell it that it had gone utterly astray. For all this our blessed Lord was doing, when He taught the lesson of not despising others.

The Duty of Holy Scorn

Of course we must distinguish this despising from what I might call the passion of noble scorn. A man is a poor creature and a poorer Christian, if he has lost his capacity for scorn. There are deeds that a right-thinking man will scorn to do. There are books that an earnest heart will scorn to read. And there are men and women whom a heaven-touched soul would scorn to number in its list of friends. A man is out of line with Jesus Christ who does not hold scorn for certain things. For if ever in the world there was the passion of scorn, it was in the heart of Jesus in the Temple, when He raised His whip and drove the traders out. Such scorn as that is a very holy thing. It is the kindling of a man’s best into a flame. It is all that is purest and most divine within us raised to white-heat by intolerable evil. And a man must be very lukewarm for the right, and have sadly confused weakness with charity, who is never stirred so in a world like this. But to despise is something very different. There is nothing of moral passion in despising. It does not spring from any love of goodness. It is not rooted in any hate of wrong. True scorn is an utterly self-forgetful thing. But the man who despises is always full of self.

The Evil Brought about by the Spirit of Contempt

And I think it is not difficult to see the evil that is wrought by the spirit of contempt. It was as the Champion of the weak and the oppressed, so that they might have an atmosphere to grow in, that our Lord spoke so sternly of despising. It is easy to be good when we are loved. It is not very hard to play the man when we are hated. But to be courteous, charitable, gentle, loving, kind, when all the time we know we are despised, is a task that would try the powers of an angel. There is nothing so likely to make a brother despicable, as just to let him see that you despise him. There is nothing so certain to touch the flowers with frost-bite, and chill the air, and make the spirit bitter. And I think that Jesus Christ hated contempt, and banished it imperiously from the kingdom, that chilled and suppressed hearts might have a chance. There is only one thing worse than being despised by others. And that is to be despised by one’s own self.

Christ Was Also Despised

And let me say in passing that we must bear that in mind if we would really know the beauty of Christ’s character. The wonder of it is deepened a thousandfold for me, when I remember that He was despised. If it is hard for you to hold fast to lovely and lowly things, if it is difficult to be good and to be tender, when in the eyes that look on you, you see contempt, you may be sure it was not less hard for Jesus. Nay, on the contrary, it was far harder; for Jesus was far more sensitive than you. We have all been dulled and coarsened by our sin; Jesus alone knew nothing of that coarsening. In looks that we could never have interpreted, in words whose sting we never should have felt, Christ felt in its bitterness that He was despised: yet what can match the beauty of His character? Had it been only antagonism that confronted Him, I think I could understand Christ Jesus better. For a man is often roused by fierce antagonism till all his slumbering powers take the field. But that Jesus of Nazareth should have wakened every morning and said to His heart, I shall be despised today; that He should have gone every evening to His rest saying to His heart, Today I was despised; and that in spite of that He should have moved on to the cross, brave, tender, loving–that is the great mystery for me. May it not have been because our Lord knew to its uttermost the temptations of the soul that is despised, that He spoke so strongly on not despising others?

Spirit of Contempt Rooted in Lack of Understanding

Now what are the sources of this contemptuous spirit? Why is it we are so ready to despise? Well, I take it that contempt has two main roots, and the first of them is want of understanding. There is a great text in Job of which I often think; it occurs where Elihu is justifying God to men. And he says, “God is mighty and despiseth not any; He is great in strength of understanding.” Now Elihu was not a very brilliant person; one can hardly imagine even patient Job listening patiently to Elihu’s preaching. But I could forgive Elihu a whole volume of commonplace for this one thought that flashed on his poor brain. For Elihu means that just because God is great, and knows each separate heart with perfect knowledge, and reads, without an error in one syllable, the intricate story of the worst and weakest, because of that, God is a God of pity: “He is mighty and despiseth not any.” That means that if we knew our brother as God knows him, we should never dare to despise him anymore. In the last analysis man may be a sinner, but in the last analysis–thank God–man is not despicable. If only we knew what the weakest and worst had borne, if only we understood how they were tempted, if we could read the story of their secret battle, could fathom their wretchedness, could hear their cry; if only we realised that under that dull exterior there are heaven, hell, loneliness, cravings, love, I think we should cease despising in that hour. God understands all that, and therefore despises no one. We despise because we do not know.

Contempt Rooted in Lack of Love

And then the other root is want of love. Where love is, there can be no contempt. A man may have twenty despicable traits, but to the one who loves him he is still a hero. And that is why, in the love of Christian homes, men who are not thought much of in the city are sometimes wonderfully good and gentle. They are not hypocrites. It is the absence of even the suspicion of contempt at home that brings out all that is best and brightest in them. I have seen a deformed or crippled little boy or girl sadly despised in the playground and the street. They have had to stand many a bitter jest–for children can be terribly cruel. But though all those in the playground despise the shrunken limbs, and make very merry at the arrested brain, there is one at home who would sooner lie down in her grave, than think of despising that little shattered frame. Where a mother’s love is, there is no contempt. It is want of love, then, and want of understanding, that lie at the roots of most of our despising. And the question I wish to ask in closing is this: How does the Gospel of Jesus combat that? Christ never says do this, and leaves us there. When He commands, He gives the power to fulfil. And I wish to ask what are these powers, that have been called into action by the Christian Gospel, to banish the contemptuous spirit from the kingdom?

The Christian Ideal

First, then, there is the height of the ideal that dawns on a man when he becomes a Christian. In his new standards of the measurements of things, there is less difference between him and others than he thought. A little green hillock of some thirty feet high might well despise the molehill in the field. But place them both under the shadow of Ben Nevis, and there is little room for boasting or contempt. The schoolboy who has mastered Caesar despises his junior still struggling with the rudiments. But in the presence of a ripe Latin scholar there is not so much difference between the brothers after all. Just so when a man sees little higher than himself, it is tolerably easy to despise. But when the ideal is lifted into the glory of Christ our superiority has a strange trick of vanishing. It was the Pharisee, whose standard of all things was the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as other men. But the poor publican, with his God-touched conscience, and his vision of the splendour and purity of heaven, could only cry, “God be merciful to me the sinner.” With such heights to scale, and with such depths to loathe, it was impossible to despise the sorriest brother. And every man who has been wakened to the eternal has been wakened to the sight of heights and depths like that. It is that heightening and deepening that comes through Christ that robs a man of shallow self-content. And to rob a man of shallow self-content is a sure way to guard him from despising.

The Gospel Teaches Human Brotherhood

And then the Gospel insists on human brotherhood. “Our Father which art in heaven” is its prayer. Did the cultured Greek look down on the barbarian? Did the elect and covenanted Jew despise the Gentile? Did the free man look with an infinite disdain upon the slave? Clear as a trumpet, strong as the voice of God, there rang this message on a dying world: there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but all are one in Christ. Yes, and when that word of command was obeyed, and the Gospel of Jesus was carried to the heathen, and when the peace and hope and joy and comfort of it was offered in all its fulness to the slave, slowly, like a dark cloud, the contemptuous spirit of paganism scattered, and the star of brotherhood rose in the sky. It is our kinship in Christ, then, that is blotting out contempt. It is our brotherhood that has lightened that burden of despising. God meant us to be like that tiny lass in Edinburgh who was carrying a strapping infant in her arms, and when a stranger said, “Why, what a burden for you,” she answered, “Please, sir, he’s not a burden, he’s my brother.”

Who Can Despise Someone for Whom Christ Died?

But the greatest power of all has still to be named. It is the life and death of our Saviour Jesus Christ. No man can struggle to be true to that ideal, nor feel the love that brought Him to the cross, without the contemptuous spirit we are all so prone to, taking to itself wings and flying away. I ask you to trace the story of that life, and tell me if you find a trace of despising there. The fact is, Christ was despised for not despising: the Jew could never understand His charity. Did He despise the woman of Samaria though all her village held her in contempt? Did He despise the publican, the harlot? Did He ever look with disdain on the little children? Christ saw the worst as you have never seen it–felt all the loathsomeness and guilt of sin–yet for the worst all things were yet possible; there was some chord still capable of music. The sorriest sinner was good enough to live for. The sorriest sinner was good enough to die for. A man may be poor, unsuccessful, vulgar, very dull; but if he can say “Christ Jesus died for me,” I do not think I shall despise that man again.

http://devotionals.ochristian.com/george-h-morrison-devotional-sermons-devotional.shtml

 

Tozer Devotional-”Being” Determines “Doing”

“Being” Determines “Doing”

To teach that the filling with the Holy Spirit is given to the Christian to provide “power for service” is to teach truth, but not the whole truth. Power for service is but one effect of the experience, and I do not hesitate to say that it is the least of several effects. It is least for the very reason that it touches service, presumably service to mankind; and contrary to the popular belief, “to serve this present age” is not the Christian’s first duty nor the chief end of man. As I have stated elsewhere, the two great verbs that dominate the life of man are be and do. What a man is comes first in the sight of God. What he does is determined by what he is, so is is of first importance always. The modern notion that we are “saved to serve,” while true, is true only in a wider context, and as understood by busy Christians today it is not true at all. Redemption became necessary not because of what men were doing only, but because of what they were. Not human conduct alone had gone wrong but human nature as well; apart from the moral defect in human nature no evil conduct would have occurred. Fallen men acted in accord with what they were. Their hearts dictated their deeds. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth” (Gen. 6:54). That much any moral being could have seen. But God saw more; He saw the cause of man’s wicked ways, and that “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5). The stream of human conduct flows out of a fountain polluted by evil thoughts and imaginations. To purge the stream it was necessary to purify the fountain; and to reform human conduct it is necessary to regenerate human nature. The fundamental be must be sanctified if we would have a righteous do, for being and doing are related as cause and effect, as father and son.

http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=506

God’s Joy · Max Lucado

God’s Joy · Max Lucado.

A New View Of Change

People hate change, or so I hear. But the change we generally resist is the kind that we think will make our situation worse rather than better. We eagerly change jobs when it means higher pay and more influence. We happily move to a bigger house in a better neighborhood. So it’s not change in general that we hate; it’s change that involves loss—sometimes physical; other times emotional or psychological.

Change is both inevitable and necessary. If everything stays the same, no one is growing. But we have a Shepherd who guides us through change and leads us to a better place. Getting there may be difficult, as it was for the Israelites in reaching the Promised Land. They grumbled when their situation got worse rather than better (Ex. 15:24; Num. 14:2). But we have the example of Jesus. In less than a week, He went from being the leader of many to being abandoned by all. Between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, the Good Shepherd became the Passover Lamb. Because Christ willingly went through suffering, God elevated Him to the highest place (John 10:11; Phil. 2:8-9).

Not all change is pleasant, but when we’re being led to a better place by Someone who loves us, we don’t need to fear it.

I know not, but God knows; Oh, blessed rest from fear! All my unfolding days To Him are plain and clear. —Flint

Faith in Christ will keep us steady in the stormy sea of change.

http://odb.org/2012/04/01/a-new-view-of-change/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+odb%2Ffeed+%28Our+Daily+Bread%29

The Eighth Station: Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross by Mark D. Roberts

Luke 23:26

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.

Luke 23:26

What a shock this must have been for Simon! After traveling almost a thousand miles from Cyrene in northern Africa to Jerusalem (Cyrene is in northern Africa, where Libya is today), he found the city jammed with pilgrims who, like Simon himself, had come to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. So Simon set up camp out in the countryside. On his way into the city, he stumbled into what might have looked from a distance like a parade. But then, as he drew near, Simon saw the horrific spectacle of a badly beaten man stumbling as he was forced to carry the beam of his cross on the way to being crucified. We don’t know whether Simon had any knowledge of Jesus prior to their encounter on the road to Golgotha. It’s likely that he knew nothing about the suffering man before that moment.

As Simon watched in horror, all of a sudden he found himself pressed into action. The Roman soldiers, recognizing that Jesus didn’t have sufficient strength to carry his cross by himself, “seized” Simon and demanded that he carry the cross instead. No doubt Simon was hesitant, fearing that he might end up sharing Jesus’ fate. Yet he knew enough not to provoke the soldiers, so he took the cross as ordered. We don’t know much more about Simon than this, since he disappears from the biblical record at this point.

Although Simon only helped to carry the cross of Jesus and was not actually crucified, he nevertheless illustrates the theological truth found in the letters of Paul in the New Testament. In the letter to the Galatians, we read: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:19-20).

When we put our faith in Christ, we shared in his death, not by literally dying, but by dying to sin. Our old self is crucified so that we might be set free from our bondage to sin. Thus, we are alive in Christ, who lives in us.

Therefore, in a sense, we ought to identify with Simon of Cyrene, who found himself a surprised participant in the crucifixion of Christ. This is especially true since many of us became Christians without really knowing that we were dying to our old selves so that we might live anew in Christ. We were pitched a gospel of salvation and eternal life without the corollary call to servanthood, sacrifice, and death to sin and self. Thus, it was only later in our Christian pilgrimage when we discovered, like Simon, that we were expected to be “crucified with Christ.”

Unlike Simon, however, we aren’t forced to pick up the cross of Christ. Jesus invites us to follow him. Even though he is our Lord, he doesn’t force us against our will to join him. Rather, he beckons to us, calling us to take up our cross and offering abundant life in return. As he once said to those who were interested in following him: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).

If we take up the cross of Christ, we will lose our lives, only to discover that we have found true life in Him.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION: In what ways have you taken up the cross of Christ? How do you respond to his invitation to take up your cross in your daily life and work?

PRAYER: Dear Lord, the powerful example of Simon reminds me that I am also to take up my cross and follow you. You have called me to die to myself so that I might live for you. I confess that sometimes I resist this call, even though I know that in dying to myself I find true life in you. So help me, Lord, to carry my cross, to give my life away so that I might receive the abundant life of your kingdom.

I could not do this were it not for the fundamental fact that you took my place on the cross. Through you, I am forgiven and invited into the fullness of life. In your death, I am raised to new life. All thanks and praise be to you, Lord Jesus, for bearing my sin on the cross, so that I might bear the cross into eternal life, both now and forever. Amen.

http://www.thehighcalling.org/reflection/eighth-station-simon-cyrene-helps-jesus-carry-his-cross?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheHighCallingDailyReflections+%28Daily+Reflection+%26+Prayer%29

Helpful or Heartless Toward Others?

Helpful or Heartless Toward Others?.

Blindsided: 9/11 Was the Rule, Not the Exception

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and America woke up to the terror of jihad. I use the words “woke up” because jihad existed long before that terrible morning. And it continues to cause much of the world’s violence today.

On 9/11, we were blindsided. But we never should have been.

The word jihad literally means “struggle,” but it’s often used to communicate the concept of holy war. It is on the lips of violent terrorists, but it is also shouted by Egyptian mobs who assault Coptic Christians. And it’s the first word that Palestinian children learn from their reading primers.

It is critically important to understand the permeating motivations of Islamic extremism. For that reason, I wrote Blindsided: The Radical Islamic Conquest,which is being released on April 1.

I was born in the Middle East. I was raised within its culture and return there often. I have had many long conversations in Arabic with Muslims, including Islamist hardliners. I have witnessed Islamic practices and understand the thought processes. Because of that, I know that jihad is an unavoidable and pervasive reality.

In Blindsided, I write:

 

Many scoff when jihad is declared by a small group of extremists from a tiny Islamic nation about which little is known. The imperative to subjugate non-Muslims, however, runs deep among Muslims around the world—not just in the hills and caves of Afghanistan or the remote sands of Yemen. 

Jihad is an essential ingredient of Islamic philosophy, and all who truly love the Koranic faith are devoted to jihad. The concept of jihad is the nail on which hangs all rationales for the use of political power, military force, and terrorist violence to advance the Islamic cause.

 

Although the Koran decries murder and urges mercy in general, mercy is not to be extended to those who stand in the way of Islam’s domination.

The Koran states: “When the sacred months are past, kill those who join other gods wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them with every kind of ambush; but if they convert and observe prayer and pay the obligatory alms, let them go their way” (Koran 9:5).

September 11 turned over a rock to expose the horror of jihad against Americans—the “infidel crusaders.” But the recent uprisings across the Middle East have exposed the everyday occurrences of jihad.

Its overthrown dictators, although ruthless and violent themselves, had kept a check on Islam’s militant urges. But now, without that restraint, it is a very dangerous time to be a non-Muslim.

After 9/11, President Bush and others declared that Islam was a “religion of peace.” But every day, that statement is proven to be false.

On March 4, 1,500 Muslim villagers, brandishing swords and knives, converged on a school in Egypt. Chanting Islamic slogans, they trapped nuns, who were volunteer teachers, and threatened to burn them alive.

Last week, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, reportedly declared that it was “necessary to destroy all the churches” in the region. Al-Asheikh’s words supported the belief that no other religion except Islam should be tolerated.

Because of the constant stream of jihad-inspired attacks, Christians throughout the Middle East are fleeing for their lives. According to Raymond Ibrahim of the Stonegate Institute, half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians have fled. Approximately 100,000 Christian Copts have escaped Egypt. And up to 95 percent of Christians in Yobe, a state in Nigeria population have left that country. Now, as al-Qaeda and others fight the Assad regime in Syria, Christians living there are coming under attack.

Norman Geisler, co-author of Answering Islam, writes: “What Islam engages in is consistent with the teachings of the [Koran] and Muhammad, while what some Christians did in the Crusades is contrary to the teachings of the Bible and Jesus Christ.” Geisler says that although violence is the “illogical” result of Christianity, “Violence is the logical outworking of Islam”

That is why, in Blindsided I write:

 

Some Americans believe that by rounding up hundreds or thousands of Al-Qaeda leaders and fighters, we can end Islamic terrorism. But this would be like washing blood with blood. No matter how many terrorists you kill, there are always more lining up to take their place. Though the War on Terror is critically important to restraining the jihadist onslaught, war alone is not the answer.

 

We must also fight for the hearts and minds of Muslims. Jihad is at the core of Islam. It is the method through which militant Islam tries to rule the world. It is the rule, not the exception.

Until we confront that reality, victories over terrorism will be short-lived. Peace will be elusive.

Tags:                 Middle East            ,                                    Muslim Brotherhood            ,                                    Islamic Extremists            ,                                    Radical Islam            ,                                    9/11

Michael Youssef

Dr. Michael Youssef is the author of 27 books including his most recent and timely Blindsided: The Radical Islamic Conquest. His blog: www.michaelyoussef.com Follow on Twitter: @MichaelAYoussef

http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelyoussef/2012/04/01/blindsided_911_was_the_rule_not_the_exception/page/full/