Defending Jesus and Judaism

By Alan Caruba

As a book reviewer I receive countless requests to read books and, when I received one regarding “Kosher Jesus” by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, I was intrigued by the title. In addition to fathering nine children, the rabbi has written 27 books, is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and the profile on his website is filled with achievements and encomiums

I was, quite frankly, floored by his book. As a longtime informal student of world religions, I found his comparisons between the biblical and historical Jesus impressive. As word of this book gets out, I suspect he will be contested by Christians because he meticulously reclaims the historical Jesus as quintessentially Jewish without a hint of the Christology that was applied to his life following his death at the hands of the Romans.

With some irony, it is another rabbi, Immanuel Schochet, who recently issued a letter banning anyone from reading “Kosher Jesus”, calling it heretical. Rabbi Boteach replied saying that “America is not Iran and rabbis in the American Jewish community are not the Revolutionary Guard.” Well said!

Debuting officially on February 1st, I suspect Rabbi Boteach is going to come in for a world of disputation from elements of both the Jewish and Christian communities. Their problem will be that Rabbi Boteach is a serious student of the Torah, the Talmud (rabbinical analysis and commentary on the Torah), and the New Testament.

His book is testament (no pun intended) to his central assertion that Jesus was a charismatic rabbi, a Jew preaching exclusively to Jews at a time when Israel was seeking to throw off the occupation of the greatest pagan power of his era, the Roman Empire. Indeed, their rebellion would culminate in the destruction of the Second Temple and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews in 70 CE.

Rabbi Boteach dissects the gospels, all written well after the death of Jesus, and the writings of Saul of Tarsus, saying in effect, that Christianity wrongly asserts that the Covenant and laws of Judaism had been replaced by a religion based entirely on faith in the belief that Jesus died for the sins of the world and accepting him as a personal savior removes one’s personal responsibility to live a holy life, a righteous life, and one that accepts the Torah as God’s word and law.

Among Jewish and Christian martyrs who died for their faith, Rabbi Boteach places Jesus as the best known Jew in the world. He condemns the New Testament for seeking accommodation with the Roman Empire, composed of idol-worshipping pagans, by turning the historical Jesus into an enemy of Judaism and thereby letting loose two thousand years of anti-Semitism.

The rabbi is not seeking to convert Christians to Judaism and notes several times that Judaism does not proselytize. “Theologically, Christians and Jews think differently about the nature of the world.” Instead, he seeks to restore Jesus “to his authentic Jewish roots” to “allow a new era of Jewish-Christian reapproachement to begin.” Indeed, in the wake of the Holocaust and the reestablishment of the nation of Israel, it is clear this change has been occurring.

In a time of resurgent Islamism, Rabbi Boteach rightly says that “Jews and Christians have so much in common, we must unite behind our democratic values, defend the embattled State of Israel, and participate in a unified front against those who have vowed to defeat us.”

Amen to that!

“Kosher Jesus” will not be an easy book for Christians to read because it rebuts much of what the New Testament has to say about Jesus. It eviscerates the claims of the gospel writers and of Paul, an apostle who never knew the Jesus he promoted as part-god, part-human, a distinctly pagan belief. The Romans routinely believed their emperors were gods. The Greek pantheon of gods had distinctly human characteristics and failings.

“Restoring his Jewish identity makes (Jesus) available to us as a flesh-and-blood hero who fought for what is right, in place of a celestial icon utterly detached from human experience”, says Rabbi Boteach.

The perfection attributed to Jesus, the rabbi notes, is comparable to that attributed to the Buddha and, in the Hindu faith, to Krishna. Humanity longs for such perfection, but Judaism believes that we achieve righteousness in our struggle to do the right thing, by our acts, not by faith alone. Jews know it is human to fail and that is why God offers redemption. Indeed, the word “Israel” means “he who wrestles with God.”

I recommend “Kosher Jesus” to anyone who wrestles with God, who wrestles with their human imperfections, and who strives to live a righteous life.

Editor’s note: One can read Caruba’s monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction at http://www.bookviews.com./

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Christianity's Triumph

By Alan Caruba

“By far the most important event in the entire rise of Christianity was the meeting in Jerusalem in around the year 50, when Paul was granted the authority to convert Gentiles without them also becoming observant Jews.”

So wrote Rodney Stark, the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. His most recent book is “The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion” ($27.99, HarperCollins).

For Christians in particular, I recommend it if only because so many have a tenuous grasp of Christianity’s real history, as opposed the versions that too often are casually accepted as truth.

The truth is that the rise of Christianity is one of the most extraordinary stories of the past two millennia. Stark not only has the knowledge of his vast subject, but he writes with such felicity that it is hard to put the 500-page book aside for both its revelations and its devotion to the facts.

Despite the fact we live in a society that has at most only 4% who self-describe themselves as atheists, the more active among them have the audacity to demand that Christmas be banished to the privacy of homes or the pews and pulpits of churches. They rebuke religion in general as the source of conflict and wars, but ignore the spiritual support and ethical lessons that Christianity provides along with its promise of salvation.

While Judaism was the bedrock of morality and faith that gave it birth, Christianity made it more accessible and significantly includes the Torah as part of its liturgy.

To ignore the rise of Christianity is to be ignorant of an essential element of Western history. Likewise, to ignore the threat of Islam whose beginning is usually dated around 622 CE and which exploded following Mohammad’s death in 632 CE is to ignore the greatest threat to civilization, past and present. Less a religion than a battle plan for world conquest, Islam preaches death to all “unbelievers.” Take heed!

Stark provides a summation to his book and, even so, I shall select only parts of it in the interest of brevity.

“The first generation of the Jesus Movement consisted of a tiny and fearful minority” of a religion, Judaism, that had already been around for a thousand years or more before the assertion was made that the messiah had come and was a crucified Galilean rabbi who mainly and briefly preached in that area of Israel.

“The mission to the Jews was quite successful: large numbers of Jews in the Diasporan communities outside of Palestine did convert to Christianity.” The Diaspora were the Jewish communities in the Middle East and throughout the Mediterranean nations, including Rome, living in places where pagan faiths were dominant.

“Christianity was not a religion based on the slaves and lowest classes of Romans, but was particularly attractive to the privileged.” Moreover, in its earliest years, women often played important roles. Contrary to popular belief, however, “Paganism was not quickly stamped out, but disappeared very slowly.” Paganism involved the worship of multiple gods as well as a belief in magic.

Despite impressive cathedrals, in medieval times church worship among Christians was largely ignored and, as often as not, the clergy were ill-informed about the faith and sometimes not even baptized.

Despite what is said of the Crusades, they were a campaign to reclaim the holy land from Muslims who had conquered it and they were led by men who knowingly bankrupted themselves and often died in this cause. Though Christianity had been widely observed in the East, the armies of Islam destroyed all but remnants, thus shifting its survival to Europe in the West.

“Science arose only in the West because efforts to formulate and discover laws of nature only made sense if one believed in a rational creator.” Even the misnamed “Dark Ages” were actually times of technological development. Likewise historians have determined that the Spanish Inquisition was “a quite temperate body that was responsible for very few deaths and saved a great many lives by opposing the witch hunts that swept through the rest of Europe.”

Perhaps the greatest surprise was the damage done by Constantine who, having made it the religion of his empire, gave rise to an indolent and hypocritical Church hierarchy initially composed of Roman aristocracy. It fostered a clergy who were ignorant of the faith and indifferent to its mission. Not until the Reformation was competition introduced, forcing the Church to return to piety, as various Protestant sects emerged, and energized Christianity in the process.

Stark concludes that “The claim that religion must soon disappear as the world becomes more modern is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of academic atheists. Religion is thriving, perhaps as never before. More than forty percent of the people on Earth today are Christians and their number is growing more rapidly than that of any other major faith.”

And that, as they say, is the good news.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Islam: A Battle Plan to Conquer the World

By Alan Caruba

As Christians around the world celebrate Good Friday and then Easter, it behooves them to understand what the Koran, the book held sacred as the word of God (Allah), says about Christianity, Judaism and all other faiths.

This is particularly pertinent in an era in which Islam, the religion of more than a billion people throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and in increasing numbers, Europe, has entered upon a period of terrorism and warfare to advance its domination of the peoples of the Earth. Suffice to say Islam is not about tolerance.

In 2001, Diane Drew wrote a comparison of Christian scriptures with the teachings of Muhammad as found in the Koran, as well as a collection of his sayings, the Hadith. Ms. Drew makes no claims to being anything other than a Christian. She knows her Old and New Testament, and the Koran. Her website provides a clarity that is a gift to Christians who should make the effort to understand a religion that divides humanity between Dar es Islam and Dar es Harb, the world of Islam and the world of War.

I have taken the liberty of quoting from her exegesis—interpretation—that reveals not just the deep differences between Christianity and Islam, but the threat it poses to Christians, Jews, and all other “infidels”.

“Islam rejects the concept of the Trinity. The Koran misrepresents the teaching of Christianity regarding the Godhead, claiming Christians believe in ‘three gods’—Father, Mother, and Son.” (Sura 5:116, 5:73-75;cp. – Koran 5:114)

“Islam regards Jesus a prophet just like Moses, Abraham, and Noah” whereas, at the heart of Christianity is the belief that “Jesus was more than a prophet. He is God.” (Matthew 17.5; Mark 1:1; Luke 1:35; Philippians 2.6; Hebrews 1:8; 1 John 4:15). “Islam rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ.” Other religions share this view, but they do not call for the death for those who refuse conversation or death for Muslims that convert to other faiths.

“Islam rejects the doctrine of original sin” citing Muhammad’s assertion that “Every human being is born in a state of a pure nature; but through the influence of his parents, he may become non-Muslim.”

Islam denies the crucifixion of Jesus. “They denied the truth and uttered a monstrous falsehood against Mary. They declared ‘We have put to death the Messiah Jesus the son of Mary the apostle of Allah. They did not crucify him, but they thought they did…They have no knowledge thereof but the pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain, but God took him up to Himself.” (Koran 4:154-158).

Of particular concern for Christians and Jews is the way that “Islam both allows and forbids murder and violence, depending on who is the recipient of the act,” says Dew, noting that the Koran calls on Muslims to “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme, (Koran 8:37)

“The Koran instructs not to make friendship with Jews and Christians (Koran 5:51), but to war against them: ‘When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Koran 4:5)

More to the point, the Koran instructs Muslims to “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Koran 8:12, cp. 8:60).

What Ms. Dew’s scholarly comparison of the texts of the Old and New Testament with the Koran reveals is less a religion than a battle plan for the conquest of the world. It is not the religion of love that Christianity professes, but of hatred for the unbeliever (the infidel) who must either convert or be killed.

Islam’s holy scriptures are regarded by Muslims as the word of God (Allah) and Islam regards Muhammad’s life as a guide to the practice of Islam.

I can make no claim to any great knowledge of Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but like anyone else, I can read and compare their holy scriptures. You can, too.

Islam is a religion divided by two sects, Sunni and Shiite, the members of which do not hesitate to kill each other, attacking each other’s mosques, murdering those attending funerals.

No one, not Jew, nor Christian, nor Buddhist, nor Hindu, nor atheist, is safe from Islam.

Americans and others around the world learned that afresh on 9/11. As Christians gather for Good Friday and for Easter, they must absorb, understand, and gird themselves against this harsh and dangerous reality.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Hating Infidels 24/7

By Alan Caruba

The Holocaust of the last century is remembered for the mass murder of Europe’s Jewish population, an estimated six million who perished. In total, an estimated eleven to seventeen million Europeans, Jews and Christians, died in the Nazi concentration and death camps or were murdered outright in their homelands.

Records were lost or didn’t list religion, but the lesser known story of the Holocaust was the death of millions of Christians, three million of whom were Poles, predominantly Catholics, killed by the Nazis for being Poles. They have a special place in Jewish history because many Poles, risking immediate execution if caught, were among the “righteous Gentiles” who were rescuers of Jews.

I cite this because there is a new Holocaust abroad in the world and it is directed at Christians, particularly in the Middle East and throughout Africa, wherever Islam is the dominant religion. Nor is this is a new phenomenon; Christians were widely persecuted under the Ottomans (Turks) when their empire encompassed much of the Middle East.

It is clearly manifesting itself again and to far too little notice.

Let it be said, too, that Islam is an equal opportunity enemy of all other faiths as was seen in the 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, that included India’s tiny Bene Israel Jewish community. The conflict between Islam and India’s Hindus goes back centuries and resulted in the creation of Pakistan as a separate Muslim state when India gained its independence.

Why has there been so little consistent coverage of the on-going attack on Christians? This is especially curious insofar as it is estimated that there are more than two billion Christians worldwide, about a third of the global population. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they are the victims, not the perpetrators of this horror.

Today thousands of Iraqi Christians are fleeing to the comparative safety of the Kurdish area and other countries. Indeed, many Americans are unaware that much of the U.S. Arab population is, in fact, Christian, not Muslim.

In mid-December, The Telegraph, a London daily, reported that “some 1,000 families, roughly 6,000 people, have arrived in the northern Kurdish areas from Baghdad, Mosul, and Nineveh” according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “Several thousand have crossed into Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.”

Egypt is home to some twelve million Copts, otherwise known as the Coptic Orthodox Church. They have been in Egypt since 54 A.D. when St. Mark, a North African Jew, one of seventy apostles of the early church brought Christianity to that ancient land. The invasion of Muslims in 643 A.D created the inevitable adversity. On New Year’s Eve, there was a terrorist attack on the Coptic Church in Alexandria that killed 21 parishioners.

Copts have been routinely targeted for all manner of abuses and, unsurprisingly, Egypt is the epicenter for anti-Semitism in the Middle East. Officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, it has been ruled by President Hosni Mubarack since 1981. By contrast, the U.S. has had six presidents since then.

Boutros Boutros-Ghalli, a Copt and former secretary-general of the U.N., is president of the National Council of Human Rights in Cairo. In a Jan 21 article in the Wall Street Journal he cited Egypt as “a model of religious tolerance in the region” and noted that “thousands of Muslims gathered around churches across the country (on Jan 6, the eve of the Coptic Christmas) to act as human shields, protecting their Christian neighbors during their Mass.”

The exodus of Christians from the Middle East and incidents in African nations where an estimated 40% of the population are Christians speaks to the persecution that has spread everywhere before and since the rise of the Islamic Revolution, sparked by events in Iran in 1979. This has since led to the creation of Hezbollah and Hamas, two Iranian proxies. Al Qaeda, created to expel the Russians from Afghanistan, has been the tip of the Islamist sword, perpetrating 9/11 and other attacks worldwide.

The persecution historically directed against Judaism is now commonplace in its more lethal manifestations against Christians. Since the Old Testament is part of the Christian liturgy, an attack on Jews is an attack on Christians and vice-versa.

The post-war rise of secularism in Europe, along with demographic shifts in which large numbers of Muslims have taken up residence in European nations is having its affect on both Christian and Jewish communities there.

In America, the denigration of Christianity it is less visible and is not by definition persecution. A majority Christian nation, America has been experiencing a rise in efforts to diminish the acknowledgement of Christianity’s role in the nation’s history and by efforts to limit Christian symbols, prayers, and even the celebration of Christmas in public institutions and places.

Slowly, American, European and Christians worldwide are beginning to realize that they are locked in a religious war. It is a war that Christianity must engage. The silence of church leaders is no longer an option. It is a war between the 7th century and the 21st century.

It is a misnomer to call it a “war on terror.” Terror is a tactic, but this is a war against Islam because Islam has been at war with all other faiths since its inception.

In New York City, when Muslims seek to build a mosque within steps of Ground Zero, they are simply exalting the atrocity of 9/11. It begs the question why its confessed perpetrator, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has not, ten years later, been brought to trial.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

No Peace for the Prince of Peace...Or Anyone Else

By Alan Caruba

As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, an apostle of love, the other two monotheistic religions view from the sidelines.

While Christians have nothing to fear from the tiny minority of Diaspora Jews and those in Israel, a very real threat exists from Islam.

Islam holds Christianity and Judaism in contempt, but because these two faiths have, as any Muslim will tell you, “a book”, they are spared an even worse judgment of Hinduism or Buddhism which do not have a central text around which their faiths revolve.

In this decade, in March 2001, the world witnessed the destruction of two ancient Buddhist statues, 114 feet high, carved out of a mountain at Bamiyan, Afghanistan. It signaled a new stage in an ancient war. It took place six months before the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11.

The statue's destruction was ordered by the fanatical fundamentalist Taliban. How fanatic? They told the Shiite Muslim residents of Bamiyan that they could either convert to Sunni Islam or they would have to leave their homes. To those who fled, the destruction was an evil and repugnant act. The outcry worldwide was unanimous.

After 9/11, the American response was a military operation to drive the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is ancient, invaded many times over the centuries, and its people still cling to their tribal ways. As in all guerrilla wars, the land belongs to the people who live there and foreign occupations won’t change much.

For Christians and Jews, the struggle against Islam has defined the last nearly 1,400 of the two thousand years that are measured from the birth of Jesus and establishment of Christianity.

Had Islam not been driven from Spain and stopped outside Vienna, there would have been no Europe, no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, and most surely no Western civilization. Christians and Jews would have been dhimmi, second class citizens in their own lands, forced to pay taxes and show their obedience to Muslim overlords.

Following 9/11, the invasion by America and forces from allied nations in Afghanistan and later Iraq are reflections of the Crusades sent to reclaim Jerusalem and Muslims know it. That it was occasioned by their own actions is immaterial to them. If Iran is ultimately attacked to destroy its nuclear facilities, it will claim it is the victim, not the aggressor.

The same need to destroy the Buddha statues in Bamiyan was the same need to build Al Aqsa, a huge mosque over the holiest place in Jerusalem for Jews, the Dome of the Rock sits atop the spot attributed to where God intervened to stay Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, Isaac. It was to signal an end to human sacrifice, to idolatry.

The same drive to conquest led to the proposal to build a mosque within sight of Ground Zero in New York, a triumphalism that ignores the feeling of Americans that the martyrdom of those who died there at the hands of Muslim terrorists imbues the site with a sacred memory. The contempt the mosque represents is palpable.

I think Americans sense that an ancient war, a religious war, continues in their time, but are loath to believe it even as we fight a hot war in Afghanistan or reduce our troop strength in Iraq. As a fighting force, we may not fully leave the Middle East for a very long time because, put simply, we dare not.

After clinging to a belief in tolerance, Europeans are stirring from their reluctance to confront Islam and beginning to draw lines between themselves and the many Muslims who moved there to find work, but who never assimilated as French, as German, as Dutch, as Swedish or as British. Europeans have slowly come to realize they have an enemy in their midst.

It is why travelers fear to board airlines at this time of year.

It is why British authorities just arrested jihadists planning attacks during the Christmas holiday.

It is why Christmas mass has been abandoned in Iraq this year because of countless assassinations of Christians. Many are now fleeing that nation.

It is why the U.S. Attorney General has warned that Americans “have to be prepared for bad news” if Muslim terrorists, domestic or foreign, are successful.

It is why Americans still wait to bring a U.S. major to trial for killing thirteen soldiers at Fort Hood.

It is why we detain jihadists in Guantanamo.

It is why Palestinians have spurned any overture of peace with the Israelis.

As Christians celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, they and others, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, know there will be no peace so long as Islam makes war on all other faiths, not in the name of God, the universal Creator, but of a former Meccan moon deity named Allah.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Editor's Note: To see and hear the message of Islam, view this short video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSftYIGH6-w&feature=player_embedded

Killing Missionaries, Fellow Muslims, and Civilization

By Alan Caruba

The latest news out of Afghanistan is the brutal murder of missionaries who were part of a Christian medical team. Among the many excuses for Islamic barbarism is that the West is at war with Islam. No, Islam is at war with civilization.

In early August, after having hiked for more than ten hours to bring medical aid to isolated Afghan villagers, a team composed of six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton, doctors, nurses, and logistical personnel, were gunned down by Taliban in the remote Parun valley of Nuristan province about 160 miles north of Kabul.

Their crime, according to Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, was that they were “spying for the Americans” and “preaching Christianity.” They were members of International Assistance Mission (IAM), one of the longest serving non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.

The team leader was Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, New York. He and his family had been in Afghanistan for thirty years with a break during the Afghan-Soviet conflict. He and his wife had raised their three daughters there. AIM receives private donations.

None of this made any difference to the Taliban that killed him and the others. Elsewhere in Afghanistan that day, a child was murdered by Sunni bombers and a bomb hidden in a wheelbarrow left five others dead. In Pattani, Thailand, a Buddhist husband and wife were murdered by Muslim gunmen in their bicycle shop and their 4-year-old nephew was wounded. In Kirkuk, Iraq Muslims shot a woman to death and in Baghdad two civilians were blown to bits by bombers.

Islam is an equal opportunity “religion of peace.” It kills Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and anyone else in the name of Allah. All this killing is rooted in the Koran, justified by the view that unbelievers have no right to life unless they convert. Even then, the schism between Sunni and Shiite Muslims is sufficient reason to kill each other.

There are well over a billion Muslims in a world of some six billion people and, while most undoubtedly want peace, their religion requires that the world be divided between Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb, the world of Islam and the world of war.

It can be argued that Christianity has blood on its hands and, historically, that is true, but what is most true about Islam in the last century and this one is that it represents a war on civilization itself.

In a Europe that has seen an influx of Muslims, nations there are struggling with them wherever they have gained large enough numbers to demand submission to Sharia law and other imported customs inconsistent with modernity.

Americans paid little attention to Islam until 9/11 destroyed the Twin Towers and a portion of the Pentagon. Up to then, Islam seemed far away despite a series of embassy bombings and other events.

Now Americans struggle with an Islam that wants to build a mosque within steps of Ground Zero in New York City. This has come as a shock to many, but Islam has a long tradition of building mosques over the sacred ground of others.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem was built over the site of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, sacred to Jews. In Constantinople, now Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia Cathedral was converted to a mosque. Throughout India, an estimated 2,000 mosques were built on the sites of Hindu temples.

Wherever Islam gained a foothold and became the state religion—in Islam there is no separation between church and state—the backwardness, the oppression of women, the refusal to accept another religion unless its practitioners accept a second-class position in society, are all endemic to Islam.

Islam is mired in the seventh century mentality of its founder and charged with a hostility, not just to other faiths, but to modernity itself, to the advances of civilization that seeks to reduce tensions between nations and peoples.

We are not dealing with people devoid of contact with modern civilization. Al Qaeda recruits via the Internet. They show how they behead “infidels” and urge more attacks everywhere against them.

For those who leave Islam, the punishment prescribed in the Koran is death. For those who “insult” Islam, the punishment prescribed is death. And for those who bring free medical care to villagers is death.

The proposed New York mosque should be built only when a synagogue or church can be built anywhere in Saudi Arabia where Islam began and where the harshest form of Islam, Wahhabi, is practiced.

If Islam calls the world of unbelievers Dar al Harb, the world of war, why can’t the world understand that Islam is at war with it?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Thoughts on the National Day of Prayer

By Alan Caruba

I feel sorry for atheists and this is particularly true on the National Day of Prayer, May 6th. Curiously, almost every atheist I know has read the Old and New Testaments from cover to cover, apparently looking for a loophole.

I suspect that the earliest ancestors of modern man were praying in their caves and on their savannas. Prayer comes as naturally to our lips as a kiss.

Thinking about prayer led me to conclude that what we call prayer today is yet another gift of the Jews, one that preceded the gift of a messiah to Christians, even if Jews prefer to wait for one.

"The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside—our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact—new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice—are the gifts of the Jews." -- Thomas Cahill, Irish Author.

Adin Steinsaltz, writing in “The Essential Talmud” notes that, “In the First Temple era, prayer was entirely spontaneous; when a man felt the need to petition his God or thank Him, he prayed in his own words.” However, the “formal regulation of prayer had already commenced; the first psalms had been composed and were sung by the Levites on special occasions in the Temple, so the general public was aware of the existence of certain official prayer ceremonies that took place at fixed times.”

“The need for a recognized version of prayers became pressing at the beginning of the Second Temple era. “ Having returned from a long exile in Babylonia, the Jews had only sparse knowledge of the Hebrew language and of basic concepts of Judaism. “When they wanted to pray, they lacked both language and content.” As a result a Great Assembly was held and out of that came the decision to compose a standard prayer. It was composed of eighteen benedictions.

Much of this official prayer has survived to this day and it should escape no one that the Jews and Judaism have survived as well. And not just survived, but returned in our lifetimes to rebuild Israel as the world’s only Jewish state. No one with any knowledge of history and a sense of a greater power at work in the affairs of men can ignore the significance of this.

Olive Schreiner, a South African novelist and social activist, wrote: "Indeed it is difficult for all other nations of the world to live in the presence of the Jews. It is irritating and most uncomfortable. The Jews embarrass the world as they have done things which are beyond the imaginable. They have become moral strangers since the day their forefather, Abraham, introduced the world to high ethical standards and to the fear of Heaven.”

“They brought the world the Ten Commandments, which many nations prefer to defy. They violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common sense and historical evidence. They outlived all their former enemies, including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks. They angered the world with their return to their homeland after 2000 years of exile and after the murder of six million of their brothers and sisters.”

Christian Americans, increasingly feeling the sting of rejection, ridicule, and efforts to isolate them, now have more reason than ever to identify with and understand the centuries of oppression Jews endured.

Jews will join in the National Day of Prayer and no doubt they will regard it as a good thing, having bequeathed a heritage of the earliest prayers and having institutionalized prayer to make it available to all, inside or outside of the temple.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

A Culture Clash with Islam

By Alan Caruba

The news out of Israel is that its air force has introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day. The Heron TP drones are said to be “primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads.” I love that last one, “diverse payloads.”

Once again the Israelis have demonstrated their ability and intent to remain on the defense in a Middle East that has resisted their existence since 1948 with wars and campaigns of terror.

Better than every other nation, the Israelis understand the culture of the Middle East and the nature of their enemies. They do not underestimate them. Six decades of seeking peace with the Palestinians, pawns of Iran and the other nations that refuse them citizenship, have taught that there is no way to negotiate peace with them. All past efforts such as the Oslo Accords, withdrawal from Gaza, et cetera, lay in tatters.

History records that the Jews lost their homeland in 70 AD, disbursed into a vast Diaspora, and were unable to reclaim it until 1948. Jews had declared Israel their homeland more than three thousand years ago. Jerusalem was and is their capitol, though holy to Christians and to Muslims.

The harsh reality is that you cannot negotiate with people who want to kill you. This is the lesson of the Holocaust that cost the lives of six million European Jews in the last century. It is a lesson that neither America, Europe, nor other nations around the world have absorbed.

Ever since the advent of Islam, the invention of Muhammad, in 622 A.D., this alleged religion has waged a war of conquest to impose a universal caliphate on the world.

Islam is not a religion of tolerance. It is not a religion of peace. It is opposed to all Western concepts of public and private conduct. It is incompatible with democracy. By all standards of modern thought and behavior it is barbaric.

America has been dealing out retribution to Muslims since the days of Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary pirates. In the modern era, Arabs and Persians have been nursing grudges going back to the Crusades, to being driven out of Spain in 1502. Thereafter in the last century the Middle East was subject to the colonialist designs of England and France after World War One.

The discovery of vast reserves of oil transformed the history of the Middle East, not so much that the lives of its people improved, nor that its monarchs and despots were any less brutal, but that the West had an essential stake there based on its need for oil.

Since 9/11 the United States has spent billions waging war in Iraq because Hussein Saddam threatened Kuwait as well as sharing a long border with Saudi Arabia. It did so in the term of George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. It was always about oil, essential to the U.S. and the West, and there is no good reason to think otherwise.

The irony of this and the current conflict in Afghanistan where no oil exists is that America has now set up an Islamic republic in Iraq and is striving to maintain the semblance of one in Afghanistan. So far the score is one less despot in Iraq and a score of mujahadin calling themselves Taliban or al Qaeda. We are engaged in “nation building” but we are simply rebuilding Islamic nations.

Despite this, the Arabs and the Persians continue to see themselves as the “victims” of America and the West. They would have no oil industry were it not for the West. They would not have the illusion of representative governments were it not for the West. They would have had no hope of joining the march of history were it not for the West.

These “victims” killed nearly 3,000 Americans who were not at war with them on September 11, 2001. They had been waging war against America and American interests from World War Two and all the years since then. They raised the level of bloodletting in the 1980s, in the 1990s, and in the first decade of the new century.

They have killed “infidels” in London, in Bali, in Beirut, in Mumbai, our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and they kill their fellow Muslims with abandon in Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Somalia, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East and Africa.

In 2007, Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton University said, “There are many religions in the world, but as far as I know there are only two that have claimed that their truths are not only universal—--all religions claim that—--but also exclusive; that they—the Christians in one case, the Muslims in the other—are the fortunate recipients of God’s final message to humanity, which is their duty not to keep selfishly to themselves—--like the Jews or the Hindus—--but to bring to the rest of humanity, removing whatever obstacles there may be on the way.”

“This self-perception, shared between Christendom and Islam, led to the long struggle that has been going on for more than fourteen centuries and which is now entering a new phase.”

If the escalating threat of an Iran with nuclear weapons worries you, remember, it is a new phase of a very long struggle. People who behead other people, who routinely take hostages, who send their children to die as suicide bombers, and who hold women in virtual bondage are not like us, despite the “diversity” rubbish taught in our schools and preached as political correct everywhere else.

Some cultures—-ours—-are manifestly superior to others. America is proof of that.

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010

Israel in the Crosshairs

By Alan Caruba

There are few nations on Earth other than Israel with a greater claim to exist as a homeland for a specific people. Along with China and India, Israel reaches back thousands of years, predating both Christianity and Islam.

For some 3,500 years, Jews have lived in Israel. In good times and bad, Jews have always identified themselves with Israel even when, as a Diaspora, they spread for their survival to many other nations. The re-establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948 led to two immediate events. Within eleven minutes after the announcement, President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation. Within hours, the Arab League declared war.

With only six hundred thousand Jewish residents at the time, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq joined together to destroy Israel. They failed. They tried again in 1967. They failed. They tried in 1973, attacking on one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. They failed.

Following the 1967 war, eight Arab nations gathered in Khartoum and issued their “Three No’s.” No peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel. In time, Egypt would sign a peace treaty; though not abandon its animus. Jordan would make its accommodations. The others remained hostile.

To understand Israel’s situation, it is necessary to understand that (1) Jews had lived there since the days of Moses, (2) the early Zionist movement members that moved there purchased land on which to farm and live, (3) the land which was captured in successive wars had always been part of Israel, and (4) both the United Kingdom and the U.S., for their own reasons, have not been honest brokers, particularly so far as their demand that Israel negotiate with people who never had any intention to negotiate peace.

The Israelis did not steal their own land, nor are they illegitimate “occupiers” of their land regained as the result of having been attacked. What they gained in wars against them historically was always theirs and had been denied to them by the Arab nations that claimed them.

Israel has never known a day of true peace in just over sixty years of its modern existence. In his latest book, “The Late Great State of Israel”, Aaron Klein spells out why Israel is closer to destruction than anyone might imagine except for its implacable enemies.

I want Israel to exist and to thrive, but I find it unsurprising that a totally Muslim region, the Middle East and throughout the Maghreb, the Islamic northern nations of Africa, would see Israel through their xenophobic lens as in invasion by the West; by European Jews who began settling there in the early 1900s, by the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, by the host of Russian Jews granted permission to leave the former Soviet Union, and even the many Jews who felt compelled to flee Arab nations following Israel’s founding.

While Jews had always lived in Israel, the Arabs who lived there prior to its establishment identified themselves loosely as citizens of pre-World War One Syria. The land had known many conquerors, dating back to the Romans who renamed the nation Palestine in a vain effort to remove its Jewish history. Muslims fought many wars, including the Crusades, to extend and maintain their control over Jerusalem Their utter scorn and contempt for Israel and the Jews is found in the Koran and infuses Islam as does its core belief that all religions must bow down to Allah.

Christians know the fall of the Jewish state to present-day Muslim invaders would mark the end of any opportunity to visit the birthplace and ministry of Jesus and would be taken as a sign that Christianity was vulnerable wherever it is practiced. In many towns and cities of Israel where Christians had lived for centuries, they have been forced to flee before the hostility of Muslim “neighbors.”

Herein is the warning that Klein issues in his book. Those who would destroy Israel are not just external, they include (1) the Arab nations surrounding it and the so-called Palestinian “refugees” laying claim to it, (2) the United Nations that has supported the Palestinians since 1950 along with its endless resolutions singling out Israel as racists, and (3) even the largely unreported aid that the U.S. has given to Fatah, the alleged Palestinian Authority with whom Israel is supposed to negotiate peace.

Other than (4) Iran that has openly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”, the latest threat is (5) the Obama administration that is demanding a two-state accommodation with the Palestinians that they have always refused to accept because their goal is Israel’s destruction.

To put the U.S. demands that Israel stop building settlements in the disputed West Bank and other areas, consider that, according to the World Almanac, Israel is comprised of 7,849 square miles. By comparison, New Jersey is 8,721 square miles. Imagine, then, if the federal government insisted that New Jersey cede Delaware all the area from Atlantic City to the Delaware border?

Internally, from its founding, Israel has been divided between its socialist and largely secular Jews, the men and women who took up Zionism as an answer to the bigotry Jews faced in Europe pre-dating the Holocaust, and the religious Jewish community who see Israel is the fulfillment of the Torah prophesy and as the center of world Judaism. This latter group has always felt the scorn of Israel’s secular Jewish government.

Without delving into the complexities of Israeli politics, Klein makes a strong case that Israelis in recent times have been ill-served by the secular Likud and former PM Ariel Sharon’s Kadima parties. The withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the 2006 short war led by Hezbollah shattered the image of Israel’s impregnable and powerful military capabilities.

Israel’s forced removal from Gaza of its longtime Jewish residents, its abandonment to the Palestinians, and the recent military action against Hamas simply demonstrates that the Palestinians have figured out a way to demoralize Israelis with constant rocket attacks. Giving Gaza to the Palestinians merely created a new staging area for attacks.

Klein documents how several U.S. administrations have provided weapons and financial aid (through the United Nations) to Fatah. Fatah and now Hamas have used both to kill Israelis and yet successive Israeli government has participated in this lethal charade.

For now I will take some small comfort that Benjamin Netanyahu is once again Israel’s Prime Minister, but unless Israel is prepared to assert its right to its ancient and re-conquered land;

Unless it destroys the Iranian nuclear facilities for an America too weak or unwilling to address this necessity;

Unless it refuses the wrongful demands to turn over Jerusalem, its holiest sites, and other Jewish cities to their control;

Israel’s future may disappear in a nuclear cloud. There has been one Holocaust in my lifetime. I do not want to witness another.

At stake is more than Israel’s right to exist. The failure to support and protect Israel puts the entire basis and future of Western civilization at risk.

A Christian Nation

By Alan Caruba

My areas of expertise are, generally speaking, energy, environmentalism, education, immigration, and anything else that I find of interest which, to be candid, is just about everything.

I got to thinking about this while doing an hour’s radio Tuesday morning with Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, along with his co-host, Marvin Sanders. The program is aired by the Christian Radio Network on more than 200 stations in 34 states, 19 affiliates, and in Canada.

I have been doing radio for some twenty-five years, so I have a finely tuned antenna for the mood and style of radio hosts. These two fellows were as relaxed about their Christianity as one could find. It wasn’t something they had to prove. It wasn’t something they felt compelled to talk about all the time. I was not there to discuss religion, but energy issues.

At one point, a caller asked some arcane question about American and Christian values. My first thought was that they are one and the same. It has never been a question or an issue for me that America was and is a Christian nation. It was founded by men who were profoundly influenced by Christianity, but like Benjamin Franklin were also interested in the sciences and natural world.

One cannot take a walk around the nation’s capital without reading inscriptions or finding statuary everywhere that reflect the religiosity of the founders and those who followed in their footsteps.

To those who insist that we must make all determinations by numbers, it is clear that more Americans describe themselves as Christian than any other faith. Sadly, a growing percentage of Americans self-describe themselves as no longer believing in God or any specific faith.

This lack of faith, the acceptance of mushy morals, has led some in the nation to accept things like people of the same sex marrying one another. The issue of abortion will not go away so long as there are people whose faith has taught them that killing babies is murder and a sin. An X-rated society is a society in decline.

As they wrestled with the larger issues of the question that was asked, Wildmon and his co-host seemed a bit hesitant to affirm the proposition that America was “a Christian nation” so I did it for them.

Then I asked how we have come to have a President who, in Turkey, told the entire Islamic world that America is not a Christian nation, but rather some amorphous collection of creeds and values. I answered my own question by saying that someone named Barack Hussein Obama might have his own reasons for saying something that appallingly stupid.

If America were not a Christian nation, a tolerant nation, Obama would not be President. His twenty years or so of listening to Rev. Jeremiah Wright spew hatred for America hardly qualifies him to call himself a Christian.

It is no accident that the very First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” First among the protections cited in our Bill of Rights was freedom of religion!

You won’t find such laws in many Islamic nations. You won’t find much or any tolerance either, yet despite 9/11 America’s Muslims have not had to concern themselves for a moment about the practice of their faith.

Sadly, Christianity is under attack in America these days. Frankly, I wish more Christians would be more outspoken in the defense of their faith. Christmas is not “Festus”, it’s Christmas, damn it! Christians have got to stop apologizing for being Christian.

At this point, it would be a good idea to confess that for many years I have not stepped foot in a church or synagogue except to attend the funeral services of people I have loved.

Am I less religious because of this? No, I carry my religion around with me in my genes. It was passed to me by countless generations and by grandparents who had the good sense and great courage to get on a boat and come to America.

Hanukah, Miracles, and Victories

By Alan Caruba

Hanukah began at sundown Sunday evening. A friend of mine points out that all Jewish holidays begin at sundown because the ancient Jews didn’t have watches or clocks; just the sun that rose reliably in the morning and set in the evening. That’s how time was told for centuries.

By watching the heavens, the ancients got pretty good at developing calendars to know when each of the seasons began.

Hanukah celebrates the reclaiming of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem from the Assyrians and its reconsecration in the second century BCE. Oil was burned for light and, as the story goes, there was only enough for one night, but it lasted for eight. As miracles go, it’s not an especially big one.

The real miracle, of course, is that a people—the Jews—can trace their history back 3,500 years and that their religion was re-written as the basis of two of the world’s major religions. At the heart of Christianity is the story of a Jew named Jesus, his disciples, and the virtual creation of the faith by a Jew named Saul—later called Paul—who enjoyed Roman citizenship. He was educated in both cultures. The longing for a messiah had been around a long time by then.

Historians attribute the stubborn refusal of Jews to yield to Roman rule as a key factor for the downfall of the empire. Some nasty work by barbarians finished it off. In 70 AD, the Romans disbursed the Jews and many found sanctuary in Babylon. The mutual history of the Persians and the Jews goes back to those times and was always one of tolerance and friendship until Islam was introduced there. Some Jews still reside in Iran today though I would not want to trade places with them or the Baha’is, another persecuted minority. If you want to visit a beautiful Baha’i temple, you will find one in Haifa , Israel.

At the heart of Islam is a profound hatred of Jews and, not surprisingly, of Christians. Mohammad warned Muslims not to take either as friends saying, “they are only friends to each other.” Well, Christians do not have a very good record of friendship as far as Jews are concerned. In one of the most Christian of nations, Germany, at the midpoint of the last century, they tried to round up every Jew in Europe and kill them.

If you want a miracle, I suggest the reestablishment of Israel sixty years ago after centuries of life in the Diaspora was as great a miracle as one can imagine in modern times. Jesus was one Jew sacrificed for his faith in his day (the story that the Sanhedrin gave him over to the Romans must be taken with some skepticism. Jews would not have turned their co-religionist over to pagans.) But then, the New Testament was written decades after the actual events.

Today’s Israel came into being only after the sacrifice of six million innocent souls. Surely the religious scholars can find a miracle in that if they look hard enough.

And, of course, the Muslims were and are the most opposed. If the Jews could reconstitute Israel after two thousand years, what does that say of an Islam that wasn’t invented until a thousand years after Judaism and seven hundred years after the advent of Christianity?

It was during the Maccabean Revolt that the temple in Jerusalem was recaptured. The Jews were not a passive people. They knew how to put up a good fight. So Hanukah, a relatively minor celebration in Judaism, is really about a military victory as much as the story of the oil lasting longer than expected. That’s not unusual in history which is mostly about battles won and lost.

A new war has been declared against Christians and Jews by a fundamentalist element of Islam. It’s not a war that should be taken casually. It well may be, however, that the war will transform or reform Islam in significant ways. That, too, would be a miracle.

The Prince of Peace Vs the Prophet of War

By Alan Caruba

In the most general terms, there are about two billion people in the world who will celebrate Christmas in some fashion or other. That leaves four billion who subscribe to some other deity or to none at all.

There is some confusion over Islam because it says it respects the Jewish prophets and Jesus, but the reality is that Islam has always striven to replace anything Jewish, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist wherever it is the dominant religion.

The world was appalled in 2001 when the Taliban blew up a 2,000 year old statue of Buddha carved into a mountain wall in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, but expresses little concern that the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is built directly over the Temple Mount, a place sacred to Jews. In April 2002, Palestinian terrorists retreated to the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem knowing the Israelis would not attack them there. They defiled this most Christian of holy places.

The utter contempt Muslims show for Judaism and Christianity seems to elude a lot of people who, while turning the other cheek, find Muslims seeking to impose their sharia law on them and elbowing them out of the way as, for example, in England where many British have abandoned their churches only to see them replaced as mosques. The Church of England has devolved into a grotesquery in which its leaders make light of the most fundamental beliefs of Christianity.

If anyone doesn’t believe that there is a war of religions occurring, they are not paying attention.

You won’t find many Christian preachers speaking ill of Islam from their pulpits on the birthday of their savior, Jesus, but there is little doubt that too many Muslims will hear a different view of Jesus spoken in their mosques. It will mock the New Testament because the Koran mocks the New Testament.

The trendy rise of atheism cannot go unnoticed either, but atheists will not go unscathed should they find themselves in a Muslim-dominated society one morning. If Muslims think ill of “unbelievers”, atheists will be at the head of the line for a forced conversion or a far worse fate. Next in line will come the Jews whom Muslims are taught to hate from birth. The few Christians left will become “dhimmi” or very second-rate citizens. This is their fate throughout the Middle East where many now have fled for their lives.

If this seems a harsh look at Islam and its more than a billion followers, perhaps it is time to consider a world in which they become the dominant religion. They want to be the only religion around and some feel justified to achieve that with suicide bombers and even by flying commercial jets into buildings to kill 3,000 Americans.

On Christmas day, as churches fill and carols are sung about the “Prince of Peace”, it would be well to remember that ancient Roman dictum, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”; If you want peace, plan for war.

Saving Jerusalem

By Alan Caruba

Word is rapidly making the rounds of the blogosphere of an emergency coalition that has been formed to save Jerusalem from being divided up between the Israelis and the Palestinians as yet another effort to secure peace with the Muslims.

On the face of it, this is such an idiotic act that one can hardly imagine why the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would even consider it, let alone actually put it on the same table of utterly failed “negotiations” with various Palestinian groups whose sole objective is the destruction of Israel.

Was nothing learned from the Oslo Agreements that were almost immediately followed by Yasser Arafat’s “Intifada” and, after his death, by the civil war between his Fatah organization and Hamas?

The U.S. State Department policy toward Israel these days seems to be peace at any cost and, of course, that never was and never will be way to achieve peace. Pressuring Israel, an invaluable ally in the region, to give up a piece of Jerusalem is as wrong-headed as all the previous efforts to negotiate "a roadmap to peace" when few of Israel's neighbors are even interested in that prospect.

As other nations fall all over themselves to "make nice" with Muslims, history records that the current Middle Eastern mess that began with the debacle of the post-WWI Versailles Treaty and subsequent League of Nations, has demonstrated an Arab resistance to Western powers, then and now. In fairness, all England and France did was divide up the region for their own imperial, colonial, and economic interests.

Then- U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was a naive onlooker whose chief aim seemed to be the conversion of Arabs to Christianity and his pie-in-the-sky notion of a world governmental body that would end the prospect of future wars. That idea got blown to hell in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. (It reasserted itself in the form of the United Nations and it is still the "great powers", now called the Security Council, that makes all the big decisions about war and peace.)

In sum, Jerusalem is Judaism’s holiest city, home of the Temple Mount, its most revered site. To get an idea of how much the Muslims respect other religions, after conquering the city in 636 AD, they built the al Aqsa mosque right on top of the Temple Mount and to this day Jews are not allowed to visit any closer than the famed Wailing Wall. Before and after the Six Day War, the governance of the mosque was ceded to Jordan, a nation that has maintained good relations with Israel.

The Palestinians have systematically desecrated other sites in Israel that have also been sacred to Christians and their once flourishing Christian populations have been driven out. Even the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem, is now largely a Muslim city. The notion of transferring some of Jerusalem’s holy sites to Arab sovereignty will do no more to secure peace than any of Israel's previous efforts.

One need only see the failure of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza strip to understand the truth of this. The Gaza today is a place from where Israel is rocketed daily.

Among the organizations that are part of the emergency coalition are the National Council of Young Israel, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Council of America, and the list is growing daily.

It is entirely likely that many American Jews, even assuming they favor an independent Israel, do not understand the significance of the proposal to relinquish part of Jerusalem. Indeed, American evangelical Christians may grasp it better than their Jewish friends.

The future of Jerusalem has no place on any negotiation table with any Palestinian/Muslim entity.

Jerusalem existed for more than two thousand years before the existence of Islam. Nowhere in the Koran is the city even mentioned by name. The only reason it plays any role in the Muslim world is that it was conquered in past ages and fought over during the Crusades before lapsing into a backwater of the Ottoman Empire.

Muslims claim that Mohammed journied there one night on his favorite horse, flying through the air, ascending to heaven to spend time in the company of Jewish prophets and Jesus. On this fanciful story rests the Muslim claim to Jerusalem!!!!

What can you do? You can suggest saving Jerusalem as a sermon topic in your church or synagogue.

If you belong to a group with a Christian or Jewish affiliation, you can get the group to issue a statement opposing any transfer of control over any part of the holy city.

You can email the office of Israel’s prime minister to let him know you oppose the proposal.

If you have a blog, you can post this commentary or one of your own to let more people know about this.

If Jerusalem goes to Muslim/Arab control, the whole of Israel will follow in time and with it the dreams and hopes of countless generations of Jews and Christians.

One of the websites on which you can garner more information is:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/

The Third Rail of God

By Alan Caruba

The third rail in a train system is the exposed electrical conductor that carries high voltage power. Stepping on the high-voltage third rail usually results in electricution.

The phrase “third rail” has come to mean an idea or topic that is so "charged" and "untouchable" that any candidate for office, public official, and these days anyone who posts to the Internet, who dares to deal with the subject is likely to find himself or herself in hot water.

Nothing gets Americans more worked up than religion. In what was the first experiment in which a nation was forbidden from declaring a national religion by its founders and which has a long tradition of tolerance, religion rallies Americans like nothing else. A Newsweek poll earlier this year found that 91 percent of those surveyed believe in God.

Unsaid, however, is that these same Americans believe in a largely Christian God. When Christians say God they mean Christ Jesus. Catholics take it a step further with the concept of the trinity. Jews reference only a single God figure. The god of the Muslims is Allah, the name of a former Arabian Moon god adopted to represent the God worshipped by Christians and Jews. When Muslims pray, they face Mecca. When Jews pray they face Jerusalem. Buddhism, by contrast, is opposed to violence and doesn’t posit an omnipotent god.

American politicians have their job cut out for them when it comes to religion as they must, by tradition, embrace all as equal and valid. That can create some interesting situations. For example, the White House just hosted an iftar dinner to mark the beginning of Ramadan and there was a ceremony held on Monday, October 1 in the Pentagon for approximately 100 Muslim Department of Defense employees.

If the notion of Muslims working in the DOD at the same time a considerable portion of our military is deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq gives you pause for concern, you are not alone. Afterall, the task at hand is the killing of their co-religionists who are bent on imposing Islam on the world. Grant that not all Muslims are jihadists or believe in the establishment of a new global caliphate, even if only 10 percent do, that’s still more than a hundred million Muslims! That said, Middle Eastern Muslims seem to have no problem with killing other Muslims, often for belonging to the “wrong” sect, be it either Shiite or Sunni.

In contrast to the Christian message of love and forgiveness, Islam’s message is “convert or die” or keep your religion, become a “dhimmi”, pay a tax to your local mosque to be left alone, and accept a variety of unpleasant conditions meant to remind you that you’re going straight to hell because Mohammed said so.

While Ramadan was beginning—its month-long fast no doubt borrowed from the fast that Jews observe on Yom Kippur—there was a convention not far from Pentagon headquarters, sponsored by the Atheist Alliance International. Held at the Crown Royal Hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, this past weekend, it featured some of the stars of Atheism as speakers.

One of my favorites was the writer Christopher Hitchens, a genuine talent. He shared honors with Oxford professor, Richard Dawkins, and author Sam Harris, all three of whom have some bestselling books decrying religion as myth and God as the biggest myth of all. According to reports, several hundred attended the event.

A general theme of atheism is that religions start wars, are responsible for all manner of persecution, animosities, et cetera. And this is empirically true. Anyone familiar with history can point to a long list of awfulness involving the three major religions, even citing accounts from the Old Testament and, of course, the execution of Jesus by the Romans. The rise of Christianity was essentially a conflict between the new religion and the older gods of Hellenism. The Koran is one long account of battles fought, truces broken, and the Hadith, the book based on Mohammed’s life, also tells of assassinations and dreadful behavior.

The West, led by the United States, is engaged in a new religious war. Some say we invaded Iraq for the oil, but we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because Osama bin Laden and others have declared war on the West, i.e., Christianity and Judaism, in the name of Islam. Islam has an equal contempt for Hinduism and Buddhism. We can either choose to wage war against them to preserve ourselves and Western civilization or we can surrender.

That’s where the third rail of God has gotten very dangerous for the politicians running these days for their party’s nomination. None dare come out and say this is going to be a long and bloody war. None dare even suggest it is a religious war. Consider the charades going on in the White House and Pentagon to hide this fact.

The split between the parties is quite obvious. Democrats declare they intend to withdraw from the Middle East’s field of battle. Republicans are intent on waging the war no matter how long it takes. And Republicans bring to the voting booth their religious beliefs while Democrats rarely even mention having any.

In November 2008, a lot of voters—many of whom believe in God—are going to decide whose side they’re on, His or His enemies.