Russia and the West Have Swapped Spiritual and Cultural Roles - Israel, Islam & End Times

Russia and the West Have Swapped Spiritual and Cultural Roles 

Dec. 7, 2015 Israel, Islam & End Times

THEY are familiar with the bitter fruit of atheism and have no appetite for the bleak and barren wasteland it produced”

Russians are returning to Christianity in a modern and contemporary context”

“in Russia, Christianity is associated with being modern and progressive”

“the young, the hip, the wise and the wealthy, express their Christianity as a completely natural and straightforward thing”

“Today, the spirit of communism shows itself in western worship of human rights, freedom of speech and the elite’s utopian notions of so-called open societies. We are headed for the very wasteland that the Russians were relieved to leave behind.”

“Russians perceive activists like Pussy Riot as latter-day Bolsheviks”

The subject of this interview is a Danish journalist and theologian  who hosted a series of five programmes, entitled “From Russia with Love” on Danish national public service radio,Radio24syv, with the sub-heading “An Unbiased Look at Putin’s Russia.”

Inspired by Emperor Constantine, she believes Christianity in the West can be rejuvenated by looking to the East. Iben is aware of the sheer enormity of this task. “Such, alas, is the depth to which Western hatred for Christianity has sunk,” says the theologian, who does not hesitate to defend President Putin, on whom the Western media delights in heaping derision and scorn.

“The Pussy Riot case opened the door to Russia for me,” she explains.

“I understood that Russia is a country that refuses to compromise on Christian values. Russia is not just a country or a nation, Russia is a spiritual concept, a state of mind. Criticism of President Putin was not the crime for which the activists were tried and convicted. Their crime was the invasion of the Christ-The-Saviour Cathedral, the holiest of places, and engaging in a blasphemous act in front of the iconostases.

In the West, freedom of speech is widely deployed for the purpose of desecrating religion, but Russia does not permit crossing the line into blasphemy. That really fascinated me, and so I travelled to Moscow to learn more and this eventually resulted in a series of radio programmes trying to help Danes move beyond the tedious and unhelpful caricature-like clichés and provide them with a nuanced view of Russia.”

What was your impression of Russia?

“I experienced a fantastic energy, a moral energy similar to America in the ’50s with the old moral values. I met helpful, poetic and cultured people with a spirit of self-sacrifice I have not seen before. The atmosphere in Moscow is completely different from that of any capital in Europe, and unlike here in the West, I feel much more spiritually free in the East.

While the West is deriding and disowning Christianity and Europe revels in self-loathing, Russians are returning to Christianity in a modern and contemporary context. Bear in mind that Christianity was suppressed under Communism, which was atheistic. Russians are familiar with the bitter fruit of atheism and have no appetite for the bleak and barren wasteland it produced.

The interesting thing is, that in Russia, Christianity is associated with being modern and progressive. It is the spirit of the young, the hip, the wise and the wealthy, who express their Christianity as a completely natural and straightforward way of life. Christianity is simply fashionable, but not in the superficial Western pop manner. Christianity’s roots grow deep in the soil of Russian life, and they look with amazement at how we guard, or rather, disregard, our spiritual heritage.

Not only that: They discern in our obsession with political correctness, and the social liberal opinion policing of the general media and academia, a new manifestation of the terror of totalitarianism they counted themselves blessed to escape after 75 terrible years.

After the Cold War, East and West swapped roles spiritually, culturally and morally. Cultural Marxism now holds unrestrained sway in the West.

But Communism and Social Democracy are probably not the same?

“Let me put it a different way. During the rule of Communism, Russia found itself in the grip of a culture of death, but she is returning to life, in the sense of Christian culture with a strong awareness of the historical roots and continuity.”

The situation in the West is the complete opposite. We celebrate death and have surrendered to the satanic view of man in a self-righteous rage and rant against God. We can divorce with ease on-line. We prioritise work and career above family responsibilities especially raising children. We favour euthanasia, abortion on demand, homosexual rights and same-sex marriage while our cities are submerged in Islam and growing segregation.

Russia has chosen a completely different direction, and it is one of the reasons that many Russians perceive activists like Pussy Riot as latter-day Bolsheviks. They invade and desecrate the sanctity of the church, a holy place. The West celebrates this as progress and prosperity. Russians are reminded that the spirit of communism is still alive. It merely assumes new forms and takes up residence in the West, where liberals and progressiveslove and adore Pussy Riot.

Today, the spirit of communism shows itself in western worship of human rights, freedom of speech and the elite’s utopian notions of so-called open societies. We are headed for the very wasteland that the Russians were relieved to leave behind. Patriarch Kirill has warned the West: “Do not take the path we took. We tried it and it leads to destruction!”

Recently the Russian military held an exercise based on the scenario of an attack on northern Norway, Aaland, Gotland and Bornholm. Do we just turn the other cheek?

“Well, that’s not the true way to look at it. The Russians hold such an exercise because of the geopolitical pressure that NATO creates by deploying hostile military forces along the Ukrainian border and in the old Warsaw Pact countries.

Russian foreign policy has long been demonized. Russia is compelled to respond to a situation it did not create, which is not the same as aggression. Why should Russia accept being cut off from access to the sea, from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok? Such a thing is unthinkable. With bald-faced hypocrisy, the West makes it look like Russia is our new enemy. The truth is exactly the opposite. The West is its own worst enemy.

Why Hillary And Obama Prefer Islam To Christianity - Nov. 18, 2015 II&ET

THE left prefers Islam to Christianity. They’ll fight against anyone drawing pictures of Mohammed, but they’ll lose their minds if Christians complain about an “artist” soaking a statue of Jesus in urine

On Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the American woman most responsible for the current refugee crisis in the Middle East, blasted Republicans for not wanting to accept unvetted Syrian Muslim refugees in the aftermath of last week’s Paris terror attacks

She tweeted:

Hillary Clinton
✔@HillaryClinton

We've seen a lot of hateful rhetoric from the GOP. But the idea that we'd turn away refugees because of religion is a new low. -H  1:33 PM - 17 Nov 2015

This, to be sure, is odd. Hillary decrying hateful rhetoric smacks of irony – she despises Republicans so much that she labeled them her enemies during the first Demoratic debate. Furthermore, Hillary is no fighter for religious freedom. In April, she told the Women in the World Summit that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed” to allow for abortion. And in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s egregious same-sex marriage decision in June, Hillary explicitly called for the government to force churches to sanction homosexuality, explaining, “Our work won’t be finished until every American can not only marry, but live, work, pray, learn and raise a family free from discrimination and prejudice.” Pray – as in attend church “free from discrimination and prejudice.”

But she’s sure hot and bothered about what she terms discrimination against Muslim refugees. This isn’t particularly surprising – the entire left has a peculiar soft spot for Islam.

That seems weird, given Islamic countries’ fundamental rejection of leftist values ranging from same-sex marriage to abortion to women driving. But it isn’t so weird when considered in the context of Marxist philosophy, which sees Islam not as a religious philosophy of its own, but as a sort of bizarre cultural outgrowth of poverty. Impoverished people believe weird things, say the Marxists; if we just gave ISIS jobs, they’d stop all this nonsense and start behaving like members of the ACLU. Leftists see Islam not as an ideological force converting millions, but as a knee-jerk response to lack of basic living standards.

In fact, leftists see all religion this way: as the refuge of the weakminded underclass. As Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Barack Obama agrees: as he said back in 2008, poor people “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

The view that all religious practice is essentially the domain of the exploited would cut in favor of seeing all religious practices as equally worthy of dismissal.

But the left prefers Islam to Christianity. They’ll fight against anyone drawing pictures of Mohammed, but they’ll lose their minds if Christians complain about an “artist” soaking a statue of Jesus in urine.

Why do leftists treat Christianity and Islam differently, if both are merely chimerical responses to the vicissitudes of life? Because leftists see Christianity as the creator of Islam’s rise, and Christians as the victimizers of Muslims. The Obama State Department won’t recognize Christians as victims of incipient Muslim genocide in the Middle East, but President Obama will equate ISIS violence in 2015 with the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. President Obama believes, like many on the left, that Western civilization was founded in racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bigotry – and that Christianity, as its wellspring, provided that impetus.

Furthermore, Obama believes that Western civilization has exploited the rest of the world, and that it therefore bears culpability for the poverty that gave rise to the Islamic wave. Muslims are benighted victims of poverty; Christianity made them victims of poverty in the first place. Christianity thus bears blood guilt for the sins of Islam, but Islam bears none of its own. As Dinesh D’Souza puts it, Obama is an anti-colonialist and believes “that the rich countries got rich by looting the poor countries, and that within the rich countries, plutocratic and corporate elites continue to exploit ordinary citizens.” Taken one step further, those rich countries – Christian countries – exploited non-Christian countries, impoverishing them and opening them to the opium of Islam.

How else to explain the left’s romance with Islam and simultaneous dismissal of Christianity? How else to explain the left’s preoccupation with allowing Muslim refugees into the Christianity-founded West while demanding nothing of Islamic countries which are murdering Christians en masse?

Hillary Clinton says it’s hateful for Western countries to discriminate in choosing refugees based on religious philosophy. It’s far more hateful to suggest that Christianity must bow and scrape before Islam, particularly when Islamic terrorists target non-Muslims the world over.

Qatari minister says Israel is ‘offending 1.5 billion Muslims’ - II&ET

ISRAEL, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, TEMPLE MOUNTNovember 9, 2015

QATAR’S Foreign Minister rules out cooperation with Israel, says it offends Muslims with its actions on the Temple Mount

Qatar’s Foreign Minister on Wednesday ruled out the possibility that his country would cooperate with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of “offending 1.5 billion Muslims”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera and quoted by Haaretz, the minister, Khalid Al Attiyah, said, “I don’t think we are in a position to have any cooperation with Israel at this stage” in the absence of a peace process.

He proceeded to accused Israel of being provocative regarding the status of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

“You are offending 1.5 billion Muslims when you are talking about the Masjid Al Aqsa…and we have raised the flag before,” said Al Attiya, who warned that the current unrest is a “third intifada” that could become “the worst intifada” yet.

“The people who went to the street… [were] born after the Oslo Treaty and they saw there is no hope,” he claimed.

This is not the first time that the Qatari minister, whose country is known for its ties and support for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Hamas, has attacked Israel.

In August, Al Attiya blasted Israeli “occupation” when discussing the crises in the Middle East, claiming that “the Middle East is suffering from the failures of the peace process due to the Israeli occupation” of Palestinian land.

Al-Attiya accused Israel of “intransigence” in dealing with the Palestinians and said it must end its “illegal blockade of Gaza”.

There were reports several months ago that Qatar halted its financial support for Hamas in order to push the group to change its policy against Egypt, which Qatar had just reconciled with.

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said, however, that the report was completely untrue.

Brutal Warning to America From Egyptian Woman: Wake Up or Be Wiped Out - II&ET

Brutal Warning to America From Egyptian Woman: Wake Up or Be Wiped Out - Nov. 9, 2015 II&ET

“IF you listen to the cries of the Copts of Egypt, the Christians of Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and all the other Muslim countries, you will hear the descriptions of the horrors of Islam.

An Egyptian woman under the pen name Magda Borham wrote a letter to Western countries, warning them of their immediate danger from Islamic invasion via “immigration.” And she has a brutal message for Americans.

Having lived in Egypt for more than 30 years, she states:

“Nobody else in the world knows Islam and the mentality of Muslims more than those who have suffered by having Islam as a part of their life.

“If you listen to the cries of the Copts of Egypt, the Christians of Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and all the other Muslim countries, you will hear the descriptions of the horrors of Islam.

“See and feel the tears of the minorities in every Islamic society. These tears will tell you the true stories of Islam. Hear the blood of the ex-Muslims pounding. It’s their blood that is shouting out every single second, asking the rest of the world to ‘Wake up!'”

She clarifies what few Americans understand: Islam is not a religion. Islam is a totalitarian political ideology that rejects the basic principles of freedom and liberty protected by the U.S. Constitution. In fact, Islam is the clearest and most present danger to America’s existence.

She explains the suffering of minorities, including herself as a woman who has lived through Egypt’s transformation into an Islamic country. She writes:

“Like so many others, I have been burned by this transformation. This transformation has seen me witness and experience Islam turn my home country to ruins and its followers are now threatening to bring the same fate to your own country.

“Islam is a supremacist, racist political and social ideology wrapped in a thin peel of religious rituals. It seeks domination and supremacy over all other systems and religions. Islam is worse than Nazism and fascism systems combined without any doubt.”

She warns Americans that they will suffer the same fate unless they end the senseless immigration policies that are enabling Muslims to freely invade with the intention of destroying America from within. She points to decades of failed liberal policies that have eroded American values, which she argues Muslims are using against Americans to their own detriment.

Her message is brutal and straight forward:

“Muslims use your own democratic laws and values against you, and they do it successfully while you keep sleeping as if as in a deep coma. This is why the leftists are the people who are worthy of the title ‘useful idiots.’ They are in a perpetual state of shame and self-loathing and will be the first victims of Islam once it takes over.

“Muslims use them as a stick to beat you with, but even they will never ever be accepted as friends to the Muslims after, and they will definitely be their first victims. Leftists, liberals, progressives, Antifa, Code Pink and so on are all appeasers of Islam. Appeasing evil is cowardice. They are fooled people who feed crocodiles, hoping they will eat them last. They are the enemy within your countries.

“Your country is like your house; you expect visitors who come to your house to respect you and respect your rules, not the opposite. Visitors must appreciate your kindness and your generosity for receiving them into your home and not imposing their own rules on you. This is your house, you own it, so you have the obligation to protect it and defend it.

“If the visitor doesn’t like your rules, all he has to do is to leave. Nobody obliged him to visit you, and nobody will prevent him from leaving. As he came to your house by his own choice, he can leave your house freely or by force, if required.”

And she notes that Islam is rooted in racism and bigotry. The labels Muslims use against non-Muslims (Islamaphobic, bigot, racist), she says, are actually a reflection of Islamic ideology.

Islam is the only religion/ideology that specifically orders its followers to kill Jews and Christians, an obvious hate crime.

“One final thing you must be aware of. Muslims are projectors of themselves. They accuse you of what they truly are. They accuse you of being racist, while they are themselves racist.  Islam is all about racism. They accuse you to be a hater, while they themselves hate unconditionally. Islam is full of hatred incitement and violence. They accuse you of being a bigot, while Muslims act supremacism and are bigotry themselves.

“Remember, Muslims love and need to portray themselvesalways as ‘victims.’ This is their greatest weapon against you in the west. Victimhood enables them to act violently and give them the pretext to attack non-Muslims around the world. It fuels them more and more with hate.

“This hate generates more violence. Additionally to this victimhood allow them to silence you and stop you from resisting their agenda. This is why the easiest thing for them is to label those who criticize Islam or reveal its reality as ‘racist’ an ‘Islamophobe’ or ‘bigot.'”

Her entire letter can be read at nocompulsion.com. Her message was originally written in Arabic, which was translated into English by Mr. John Hayward.

Sadly, however, it seems that the West, and America, has not listened to her warning and will suffer the same fate she and other minorities have and continue to endure throughout the Islamic world.

MIDDLE EASTNovember 5, 2015

Freed Yezidi Teen Tells Of Life As ISIS Sex Slave - II&ET

E RBIL, Kurdistan Region – A young Kurdish Yezidi woman who became pregnant while being held as a sex slave of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, for more than three months tells her story.

The woman, 15, is originally from Shingal. Her name has been changed to Hind in this account to preserve her safety. She was abducted when ISIS fighters overran the Yezidi’s ancestral homeland.

“On August 3 at 2am, the war started in Shingal. The fight lasted until 9am and then the Yezidis and Peshmerga were defeated. I left with my brother’s wife to my uncle’s house. I had my little sisters with me and my aunts had their daughters, and we managed to find a car. My father and mother along with my uncle walked to the mountain. Those who walked towards the mountain managed to escape but those who took a car were stuck and ISIS caught them,” she told Rudaw.

Hind said she distrusted some local Arabs and suspected they had waited for this moment to attack the Yezidis.

She said most of the families who failed to escape were caught on the Syrian border and then taken to a camp in Khansor.

Hind had said she and two of her sisters were taken to Baaj and then transferred to Tal Afar. After Tal Afar, they were taken to Badoosh prison where they stayed for 25 days

“They took us again to Tal Afar and we stayed in a school. They separated the families with the young girls. We were around 700 girls,” she said.

She said she stayed at a three-storey house in Mosul and one day one an ISIS emir came and took her and one of her friends.

“At 3am he raped me. That ugly monster,” she told Rudaw. “For more than three months, I cried myself from the morning until the night.”

Hind and her friends never lost hope. They tried to escape but they were caught by the militants and taken to base where hundreds of other Yezidi girls were held as hostage.

“My friend and I were taken to a basement and stayed there for one week with no water and food,” she said.

Hind and her friend were continuously transferred between places. She said they were even taken to Syria and then returned to the basement.

“I still live in fear and have nightmares every night,” she said.

“The first one who raped me was tall and had a long beard. He was originally from Syria,” she told Rudaw.

Hind said she was sold once for $200 and once given as a gift from one ISIS fighter to another.

Finally, she was forced to marry an ISIS member who eventually took her to a Christian house.

“We managed to find a cell phone and gave the phone to my friends and they charged it. I talked with my family and they helped us find a smuggler who was secretly working to buy the girls who were in ISIS captivity,” she said.

“At 3am, my friends and I jumped from the second floor. A car arrived and took us to a house in Mosul. We stayed there for three days. Another smuggler came to take us to Jazira near Mosul,” she said.

Hind managed to return back to the Kurdistan region in November 2014. Four of her siblings are still held by ISIS.

“I would look them in the eye and ask, ‘Why are you doing this? Don’t you fear God?’ I told them, ‘We are the same age as your daughters. There is no mercy in your hearts. You hit me. You rape me’.”

She said the ISIS fighters would say, “Islam allows it and we will do it.”

“They forced me to read Quran and pray in front of them. And I had no choice but to obey,”

Hind said most ISIS members are foreigners and some spoke English. She said some were from Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, the United States, China and other countries. She said the foreigners mostly stayed in Syria and did not come to Iraq.

During her captivity, she noticed that the militants were eager to pray and fast. She said they frequently mentioned heaven.

Hind said that some ISIS members drank alcohol, but only in secret because it is not allowed in Islam.

Hind said some of the foreign women who joined ISIS were very happy. She said a woman from the UK told her, “ISIS is very good. They provide us with everything: money, houses and guards.”

Hind said went to school and learned how to read and write, but after what ISIS did to her she remembers nothing.

“I was raped by three different ISIS members with different nationalities. I had no idea I was pregnant. I felt sick all the time and one day I started to bleed. I was taken to the doctor and they told me I was pregnant. I lost the child because the child was threatening my life,” said the woman.

“I am just happy that I did not carry an ISIS child into this world,” she said.

Hind was also left heartbroken and ashamed.

“Before ISIS attack, I was in love with a guy. After I returned, he told me that he is not interested in me anymore because I was raped,” she said.

Hind said that she has no desire to get married.

Hind now lives at a camp with her family in Erbil.

“Life at the camp is very hard, “ she said.

“Soon, I will leave to Europe and will never come back, even if this place becomes a heaven on earth.”