Rolling Stones Mock Pro-Palestinians and Honour Israel's 65th Birthday

I've always loved the Rolling Stones. Now I know why.

The Rolling Stones openly taunt pro-Palestinians.

Despite a barrage of attacks and even threats from European and American anti-Israeli groups, Mick and co. maintained their planned concert in Jerusalem for Israel's Independence Day on 15 April 2013.

Mick Jagger said that they received many criticisms and provocations, but that only made them resolve to have two concerts rather than one.

A pro-Palestinian activist retorted that this was a huge mistake by the Stones, and threatened that they would lose much money and fans, many of whom support the boycott of Israel.

When Jagger was asked if indeed this move could damage the Rolling Stones' image or career, he answered that he is not a businessman.

It is an important gesture because they are prepared to lose fans over this, and they are a role model to many. If many more people in the West had their courage or at least defiance for group-think, things would get better.

There have been accusations that the above picture has been photoshopped with the addition of the Israel flag, but the news remains true.

A Soviet Spring Spells Christian Persecution

There has been an increase in the persecution of Christians in the former Soviet Union, especially the central Asian republics where it looks like the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship, in a pattern maybe similar to that of the “Arab Spring”, has “liberated” the radical elements within the Muslim communities.

The above video is an interview with Sergey Rakhuba, President of Russian Ministries, an expert on mission issues related to Russia and the former Soviet Union.

It's been a long road since the revolution that swept away atheistic communism in Eastern Europe 20 years ago. The wave of religious freedom that swept the region now seems to be receding.

Citizens of the former Soviet Union are facing growing restrictions on their religious freedom. On Wednesday a panel of experts in Washington reported that governments are closing more churches, fining and arresting their religious leaders, and destroying church literature.

"Twenty years ago when the Soviet Union fell apart, collapsed, when the Berlin Wall fell, everybody was sort of excited about all the future possibilities. Twenty years later we are again talking about freedom. What happened?" Victor Ham, vice president for the Billy Graham Evangelical Association Crusades, said.

The situation might not be a return to the Soviet era, but the signs spell trouble.

"Churches are being torched, crosses are being burned. There's a lot of anti-Semitism, a lot of negative things appearing in the press about different organizations. So there's some reason for concern," Lauren Homer, with Homer International Law Group, said.

The atmosphere is thick with intolerance in these countries. Individual pastors are reluctant to speak out against abuses and restrictions.

"He's not so interested in going to the government and speaking to the ministers and so on because really it is a question of security most of all," Matti Sirvio, with Greater Grace Protestant Church, said. "Will it be used against them? Will their persecution become even worse."

In Uzbekistan, Sirvio encouraged church members to connect to the outside world as their best defense.

"I think people should all learn how to use the Internet, they should all learn the English language," he said. "And these two things will connect them in the future with the rest of the world and especially with the Body of Christ around the world."

Russian Ministries hopes that by shining a spotlight on these issues, international politicians and human rights proponents will do more to defend religious minorities in the former Soviet Union.

UK: Jihad Seekers Allowance Is the New Form of Jizya

Jihad Seekers' Allowance (a pun on Jobs Seekers' Allowance that unemployed British people receive as state welfare benefits) is considered by many Muslims as a form of jizya, the tax that only non-Muslims have to pay as dhimmis, the condition of submission they are forced to live in under Islamic rule.

In the remarkably candid video above Anjem Choudary, a Muslim cleric and preacher, tells other Islamists that they should follow his example and live on welfare paid for by British taxpayers who, as infidels, are slaves and are supposed to give money to their Muslim masters. This is nothing other than Islamic law:

Anjem Choudary, who in the past has planned to disrupt the minute's silence on Remembrance Sunday, also openly mocked hard-working Britons, calling them 'slaves'.

The Sun newspaper secretly filmed him saying Islam will overrun Europe, David Cameron and Barack Obama should be killed and calling the Queen 'ugly'.

But today he said he had been 'joking' and his words had been misconstrued.

He also maintained that Osama Bin Laden was his 'hero'.

The father-of-four takes home more than £25,000 a year in benefits and lives in a £320,000 house in Leytonstone, East London.

He told a crowd of around 30 fanatics: 'People will say, 'Ah, but you are not working'. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar (non-Muslim).

'So we take Jihadseeker's Allowance. You need to get support.'

In another video a grinning Choudary is recorded telling his disciples that it is justifiable to take money from non-believers.

He said: 'The normal situation is to take money from the kuffar. You work, give us the money, Allahu Akhbar (God is great).

'Hopefully there's no one from the DSS listening to this.'

He also called Mr Cameron, Mr Obama and the leaders of Pakistan and Egypt the 'shaitan', or devil, and said he wanted them to be killed.

Choudary spoke glowingly of the 9/11 attacks and urged his followers to have 'hate' in their hearts for core British concepts like democracy, freedom and freedom of religion.

The 45-year-old former lawyer added: 'We are going to take England — the Muslims are coming. Brussels is 30 per cent, 40 per cent Muslim and Amsterdam. Bradford is 17 per cent Muslim.

'These people are like a tsunami going across Europe. And over here we're just relaxing, taking over Bradford brother. The reality is changing.'

O'Neill Got It Wrong: Gay Activists Want More than Liberation, not Less

Brendan O'Neill totally missed the point.

He compares the gay radicals of the past who did not want marriage because they saw it as a form of oppression to the LGBT movement of today who demand same-sex wedlock, and concludes that the latter have become bourgeois and integrated, renouncing the radical ideology of the beginning, when Stonewall was young and fighting for liberation from matrimony, not enslavement by it.

The point he misses is that the homosexual activists have become more radical, not less.

What they demand from society now is a total redefinition of marriage, something that goes to the core of this institution and pierces it through the heart. They want to shape society in their own image, not just more or less politely ask society to leave them alone.

What was a negative request, "Do not interfere with our personal lives", has become a much stronger, positive demand, "Change the meaning of marriage to fit our bill".

This can be seen especially clearly when you consider the LGBT movement's request for same-sex marriage in church, when it is obvious that the people who intend to take advantage of this "right" do not believe in the precepts of the Churches whom they would require to celebrate their wedding.

It is transparent that church gay marriage is a travesty of Christian marriage, as I have written elsewhere:

We must not forget that, for believers, marriage is a sacrament; and for non-believers, what's the point of wanting to marry in church other than mocking the Church?

There was a male gay couple interviewed on the [British] TV. One of the two, in late middle age, with all the seriousness in the world said: "I want to marry in a church because this is the way I was brought up". One should ask: were you also brought up to have a homosexual relationship? And, if you can accept to depart from your background and education in one aspect, what's wrong with doing the same for the other aspect as well?

If as a gay couple you got married in church, it would not mean anything, because the creed and doctrine behind the sacrament of marriage does not include unions of this kind. It would be an empty ritual, a gesture without significance behind it.

It would confuse form with substance, appearance with reality. It would be a travesty.

It would be like thinking that a man wearing a wig and fake breasts is a woman. He may look like a woman, but he is not; similarly, a church gay marriage may look like a Christian marriage, but it is not.

Homosexual wedding in church is an insult to the people who believe, it's like an enormous joke at the expenses of Christian clergy and faithful alike. Why does a homosexual really want to marry in church knowing that, given the Christian teachings on homosexuality, that "marriage" is meaningless, if not to give Christianity the finger?

Why should gay activists want to make a mockery of other people's genuine Christian beliefs? And why should the British government want to give in to this offensive request, as it has already done to all other gay requests without exception [bar abolishing the minimum age of consent]?

Geert Wilders: The Reality of Islam in Europe

California: the Islamic Supremacists Next Door

This is the plight of an American family living in a California apartment complex. The father has written to me asking for his difficult situation to be made known, adding that they had a rousing support from Australia and the UK and less from USA, hence the wish for more exposure of their case.

The family's Muslim neighbours have made their life very difficult, with invasions of privacy, bullying of their children by the Muslim kids and several rows.

Eventually the family has contacted the apartment complex's Management, which has responded by accusing them of being “racist” and committing “hate crimes”. The father wrote that the Management even went as far as "pursuing a case of defamation and malicious prosecution of our family in spite of significant evidence to deny the validity of their claim".

This is an excerpt from the letter the father had sent to Jihad Watch, which posted it under the headline "The Islamic supremacists next door". The excerpt gives you a flavour of the situation this family found themselves in:

We took the opportunity to communicate the bullying behavior of her oldest daughter Soumaya (8 years old) toward our daughter Emma (5 years old), exposing Emma to the horrors of Hell as described in the Koran. We witnessed the children talking in the playground and Emma coming in running and crying, explaining that Soumaya (quoting passages from the Koran) had told her that she was "going to burn in boiling oil in Hell, having layers of her skin peeling off while being burnt alive for not being Muslim, and Santa Claus is not real and your parents lie." At this point we confronted Aisha with the bullying situation and she smiled in reply to the story saying, "That's because Soumaya has started studying the Koran."

Muslims Are not so Moderate, the French Think

The more a group of people knows Islam and comes into contact with it, the more they tend to dislike it.

The French, who enjoy the questionable cultural enrichment and dubious benefit of having among them the highest percentage of Muslims of any Western European country, have revealed in a recent survey that they profoundly reject Islam.

Le Monde has published the results of an IPSOS opinion poll with the headline "The Muslim religion is the subject of a profound rejection by the French".

A distrust of Islam has been clearly expressed by the French population, says Le Monde.

74% of those surveyed by Ipsos think that Islam is an intolerant religion inconsistent with the values ​​of French society

Even more damning, 80% believe that Islam tries to impose its way of thinking on others.

And 54% hold the view that individual Muslims are fundamentalist, predominantly (10%), or at least partly (44%), in their attitudes.

This last claim, says Andrew Bostom in The American Thinker, is consistent with a remark made by Gamal al-Banna, brother of the jihadist and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hasan al-Banna, who in a 2011 interview said that "most Muslims today are Salafis":

Gamal al-Banna attributed this mass Muslim phenomenon to the 10th century onset "closure of the gates of ijtihad " (ijtihad being the process whereby the most select, learned Muslim legists were allowed narrow interpretive "flexibility" regarding Sharia mandates), leaving the preponderance of Muslims, ever since, to blindly follow mainstream, traditionalist, i.e., "Salafi," interpretations of Islam.