Wednesday 23 December 2015

Is the practice of religious freedom in danger in the United States of America

U.S Postage Stamp, 1957
U.S Postage Stamp, 1957 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Islamophobia in many democratic countries makes it a danger for the religious freedom. Even the coutnry that always says it is so proud to be the 'Country of the free' and where they shout carrying weapons is part of the freedom, they seem to be willing to restrict the freedom of religion.

Lots of Americans are wanting that others only believe what they believe and how they practice their Christian faith.

According to many their president is an obstruction for Christians but I think he is the best for all Americans, believers and non-believers who all should have the same right when living in a free country. America at the moment has also a president with sense. At the moment he is also aware of the danger coming over America.

With all the fear going on and a bully shouting America should put up walls against others coming in, the president sees it useful to call to his people

The recent terrorist attack that was carried out by Muslim extremists in San Bernardino, California was a tragic event. The killing of 14 innocent people have caused many U.S. citizens to live in fear, and they would like special measures and surveillance placed on all Muslims. Some people would even like them all deported from the country.
What people need to understand is that there have been many hundreds, if not thousands of attacks and killings in the history of this country carried out by American Christian and non-Muslim terrorists than there have been by Muslims. The crime facts show that if you or a loved one was to be murdered, it would most likely to be done by the hands of a family member or friend than anyone else. The next most probable terrorist that may try and take your life would be at church by a crazed Christian hell bent on doing God's work or at school or a movie theater by a drugged up teenager who wants their 5 minutes of sick fame.

So, let us use logic and reason to show us our true realities and do not let media fear and or religious nuts sway you from the truth.
The facts are that there are currently over 7 million Muslims living in the United States of America and their numbers are growing every year. To put it simply, there will be many more people of this faith coming to the states in the near future, and Muslims will always be a part of the American landscape. In fact, they have been here since the founding of our country.

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Additional reading

  1. Christian fundamentalism as dangerous as Muslim fundamentalism
  2. Economic crisis danger for the rise of political extremism
  3. Migrants to the West #2
  4. Migrants to the West #3
  5. Migrants to the West #5
  6. Migrants to the West #10 Religious freedom
  7. Not true or True Catholicism and True Islam
  8. Being Charlie 2
  9. Being Charlie 9
  10. Are people willing to take the responsibility for others
  11. Don’t be Muslim
  12. Refugee crisis, terrorist attacks and created fear
  13. Back from gone #3 Giving worries to God and believing in His promises
  14. Before you blame All Muslims for the terrorist attack in Paris
  15. Solidarité: The Paris Attack and the Refugee Crisis
  16. A world with or without religion
  17. The Meaning of Paris
  18. Spike In Anti-Muslim Attacks Casts Spotlight On Government Policies
  19. Islamophobic hate crimes rise in UK following terror attacks
  20. Walls,colours, multiculturalism, money to flow, Carson, Trump and consorts
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Government school classroom assignment on world religions in discussion and Islamophobia gone wild

The Shahadah (first part ašhadu 'al-lā ilāha i...
The Shahadah (first part ašhadu 'al-lā ilāha illā-llāh - I testify that there is no god (ilah) but God (Allah)), the creed of Islam. The letter Alif is highlighted in red to demonstrate its different usage in Arabic scripture. This illustration was designed in order to teach the letter Alif, but not the creed itself! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At a Virginia high school (Riverheads High School in Staunton) understandably a lesson in calligraphy for ninth-graders has caused an uproar among some parents. But the Virginia school district is defending the classroom assignment that required students to practice calligraphy by writing the Muslim statement of faith,
 “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
For the first part the Christian Americans should not be afraid because they too should believe that there is only One God, only Allah the Elohim Adonai, Hashem Jehovah. the God of Abraham should be the only One true God for Jews, Christians and Muslims.

It can not be called bad to have during a world geography class to have the students to feel how it is to live in a certain area and to dress like the people who live in such area.  I would call that a very good integrated lesson.
The lesson of the day focused on world religions, among them Islam. As part of the assignment, social studies teacher Cheryl LaPorte had her ninth-grade students copy a piece of Arabic text known as the shahada, which is the most common Islamic creed. 
Recitation of the shahada in public is the first formal step in conversion to Islam. However, according to school officials, the ninth-graders were not asked to translate the statement or read it aloud.
Students were also shown copies of the Koran, and female students were invited to try on a scarf as part of a lesson about the Islamic concept of modest dress.
Parents being infuriated to see that their children learned Arabic should know that it is a language spoken in many countries and in case Westerners would be able to read and understand it they could understand much more what is written on slogans and in books and could answer the right way to those speaking about the Arabic books or saying something wrong what would so called be written in those books.

It is also totally wrong to think a teacher would indoctrinate her pupils by talking about the Islam faith or any other faith and to have their kids reading the books of that faith.

Parent Kimberly Herndon was infuriated when her son came home with the assignment sheet from Mrs LaPorte’s world geography class.
‘When I saw the language, the Arabic language, immediately I had a bad feeling come over me,’ the mother of six told NBC29.
Herndon, who is a devout Christian, accused the teacher of indoctrinating unsuspecting students into the Islamic faith. The mother has not sent her son back to school since the incident and said she would be willing to take this case all the way to the US Supreme Court if she must.
‘She [LaPorte] gave up the Lord’s time,’ Herndon said of the religious lesson when speaking to the Staunton News Leader. ‘She gave it up and gave it to Mohammed.’
The Augusta County parent on Tuesday organized a meeting attended by more than 100 people at Good New Ministries to discuss the controversial calligraphy lesson.
Debbie Ballew, a former English teacher who was present up at the public forum, said had she asked her students to copy a passage from the Bible, she would have lost her job.
Strange that the teacher would have lost  her job when she would have asked to copy a passage from the Bible. Even more strange that such an exclusion would take place in the United
States of America which always shouts it is so proud about her constitution including 'Freedom'.

‘Out of an abundance of caution’
after consulting with law enforcement Augusta County School Board President Eric Bond noted that there was no specific threat to students but announced Thursday that schools would be closed Friday over security concerns sparked by parents’ outrage in response to an Arabic calligraphy lesson.

Recitation of the shahada in public is for many considered the first formal step in conversion to Islam. However, according to school officials, the ninth-graders were not asked to translate the statement or read it aloud.

 Bond said
It’s a sad state of affairs when we’ve reached the point where children can’t even learn what Arabic or Islam is without offending someone’s fragile sensibilities.
 Arabic calligraphy

There are countries, like Belgium where religious education is obligatory and children have to learn about all major religions of the world. As such they learn about the monotheist faiths and about several heathen religions. Having to read the Torah, Nevim, Kethuvim Aleph, Kethuvim Bet (or Messianic Scriptures or New Testament), the Koran and certain Buddhist and Hindy sacred scriptures they can get a pretty idea what the believers of those faiths should follow.

In lots of faiths we do see that fundamentalist can get so strong because many followers of them do not get to know their Holy Scriptures very well.

In many countries we also see that lots of people do not know their own Sacred Scriptures, and that is why we see lots of them not living according to the faith rules of the books they are so called to follow.

Having children to know the other culture can best be done by dumpling them under in such a culture.

This is a very good way to have children getting an idea about a culture and about how people who live in a certain area can feel themselves or how they have to live.

Ideal would be to have them dress, eat and having to do the same activities as others would have to do in the region studied or when it would be about camps and torturing to have a sort of experience what it would be in such a camps and under such interrogation. In Latvia (Letland) people can have such an experience how it was under Soviet regime. In the Riga camp special tours are organised to 'undergo' one day or 'a day and a night' a similar experience the prisoners would have had. Many people eyes are opened by such experiences and come to appreciate the values of the democratic free countries much more.

Congratulations for the teacher who dared to tackle the difficult subject and has done a lot of preparation to work out her class.

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Tuesday 22 December 2015

Who would not mind to send Sis. Lisa Firmstone some card

Dear Brothers, Sisters and Friends:

Sis. Lisa Firmstone is a member of the Honesdale Ecclesia (a very small ecclesia down the road from Camp Ladore, Pennsylvania).
They used to attend Sunday Service at Camp Ladore which was a highlight of their ecclesia seeing they were somewhat isolated in their small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Lisa is in her 40's now but was baptized as a young lady back in her 20's. She has been a strong courageous sister who has endured much hardship with her Cerebral Palsy which she has had since birth. It is very debilitating and she gets very depressed sometimes. Her greatest joy is letters, cards and pictures from the brother and sisters. As stated below she has been going through a particularly hard stretch the last few months and is very withdrawn.


She celebrated her birthday on December 15, 2015 so for that you might think it would be too late, but even belated birthday cards, pictures of ourselves and other brothers and sisters to Lisa would lift her spirits greatly.

About a dozen young people along with Bro. Mike Kemp (Washington, D.C.) visited her after Camp Ladore one year about 15 years ago and she was do elated but also overwhelmed by the emotions she struggled at the amount of people at one time.

Perhaps some individual visits in small groups could work. If any have a little time to reach out to Lisa she would find great joy in it as well as her mother.

You can mail cards to her:

Lisa Firmstone
716 Maple Avenue
Honesdale, PA 18431 


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Tuesday 15 December 2015

25 Orthodox rabbis issued a statement on Christianity

The moral introspection generated by the Holocaust was further stimulated by the campaign of some Jewish intellectuals, notably Jules Isaac, who urged the Catholic Church to undo the “teaching of contempt” that had characterized its approach to Jews through the ages.
However, exclusive attention to this dimension obscures the larger forces transforming the moral and intellectual landscape of the 1960s. The egalitarian impulse that produced the civil rights movement in the United States and de-colonization worldwide did not sit well with traditions of religious exclusivism and triumphalism, let alone the condemnation of the other to discrimination and damnation.

There have been commemorations celebrating the 50th anniversary of the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions” titled “Nostra Aetate,” whose fourth section deals with Judaism and marks a genuinely significant moment.

Jewish reactions were for the most part highly favourable, though various objections were raised that strike me as expressions of hypersensitivity. Thus, the document should have “condemned” anti-Semitism rather than merely “decrying” it; the final version should have retained the term “deicide” in characterizing the offence for which the Jews bear no guilt.

The declaration was seen as too little, too late, and the notion that Jews were being exonerated for crucifying Jesus was seen as at least marginally insulting. Thus, some Jews whose long-standing bill of particulars against the Church featured the guilt that it assigned to the Jewish people for the Crucifixion nonetheless dismissed the historic revocation of this theology as an event that should have no consequences for their own resentful stance.

To implement the new relationship, the Church established a Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, which issued its first official document (“Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate (No.4)”) in 1974. In 1985, it issued “Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church.” And in 1998, it issued a document on the Holocaust titled “We Remember.” Despite occasional formulations that some Jews, rightly or wrongly, found inadequate or objectionable, these documents fleshed out “Nostra Aetate” in a direction that reflected advances achieved by ongoing dialogues and even dealt with some of the specific concerns that Jews had expressed regarding the original declaration.

In “Nostra Aetate” itself, and much more so in subsequent Church documents and papal utterances, the abiding value of Judaism has been affirmed and even emphasized. In theological language, the covenant between God and the original Israel remains in effect. What precisely that covenant is—the Abrahamic and/or the Mosaic—is not quite settled, and some Jews have virtually demanded that Christians declare that the Mosaic covenant remains in full force. I have argued that this demand is unwise. It raises intractable questions about the parameters of the Jewish need to observe that covenant and constitutes a telling example of the inappropriate dictation to others of what their own religion must teach.

> Please do read more about this subject:

Vatican II at 50; Assessing the impact of ‘Nostra Aetate’ on Jewish-Christian relations By David Berger

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Wednesday 2 December 2015

Temple Mount Project Unearths Rare Seal Dating Back to King David Era

JNS.org – A rare stone seal that is believed to date back to the periods of King David and Solomon in the 10th century BCE was recently uncovered by a 10-year-old Russian boy and deciphered by experts.

The rare seal uncovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Photo: Temple Mount Sifting Project.
The rare seal uncovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Photo: Temple Mount Sifting Project.
The limestone seal features two crude engravings of animals possibly representing a predator and prey, according to Dr. Gabriel Barkay, one of the co-founders of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which sorts through rubble that was illegally excavated during the construction of the Marwani mosque in 1999.

Barkay said the seal highlights
 “the administrative activity which took place upon the Temple Mount during those times.”
“The dating of the seal corresponds to the historical period of the Jebusites and the conquest of Jerusalem by King David, as well as the construction of the Temple and the royal official compound by his son, King Solomon,”
said Barkay.
 “What makes this discovery particularly significant is that it originated from upon the Temple Mount itself.”
The Temple Mount Sifting Project, which operates under Bar-Ilan University and is supported financially by the City of David Foundation, has also uncovered hundreds of pottery shards dating back to the 10th century BCE, including a rare arrowhead made of bronze.
“Since the Temple Mount has never been excavated, the ancient artifacts retrieved in the Sifting Project provide valuable and previously inaccessible information,”
 Barkay said.
 “The many categories of finds are among the largest and most varied ever found in Jerusalem.”

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