Islam, homosexuals, and Donald Trump On February 19, 2016, as reported by Jeremy Diamond of CNN. Donald Trump told a funny story about Muslims; it had pretty much the same quality as other funny stories he has told on the campaign trail, i.e., it really wasn't very funny and its appeal was primarily to the uneducated. However, this humorous vignette now takes on unexpected significance. I won't keep you in suspense. Here is Trump's story, for your edification, exactly as reported at the CNN website: . "Speaking at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, Trump reiterated his claim that the U.S. should "go much further" than waterboarding suspected terrorists, telling the story of Gen. John Pershing in the Philippines, who Trump said captured 50 Muslim prisoners a century ago and dipped 50 bullets in blood." . "And he lined up the 50 people and they shot 49 of those 50 people, and he said to the 50th, you go back to your people and you tell them what happened -- and in 25 years there wasn't a problem," Trump said to the audience, which grew quiet as he told the story." . That was four months ago. . . An interesting thing happened in the early AM hours of June 12. A Muslim of Afghan extraction named Omar Mir Seddique Mateen went to a night club in Orlando, Florida, and opened fire with a semi-automatic assault rifle and a Glock handgun and mowed down 103 patrons of "Pulse," as the establishment is called, all or nearly all of them homosexuals. . Two different tallies of the dead and wounded are current, one which includes all the dead including the shooter, the other only counting the murdered victims. The final number is 49 or 50 dead, depending on how you count, with 53 wounded or injured. . You might want to compare these numbers with the figures in the funny story Trump told in February inasmuch as they are identical, 49 and 50. . The gunman's death was confirmed at exactly 5: 53 AM after SWAT officers entered the building when a wall was breached by their armored vehicle and began shooting. . Exactly what to make of these coincidences is up to you to decide for yourself but this certainly deserves attention if for no other reason than the numbers cannot be wished away. At a minimum this is very creepy. But wait, this gets even more creepy. . If you are curious and start to dig into the story there are still more coincidences. For example, what about the number "25"? After all, Trump's funny story mentioned 25 years as a benchmark. There is no obvious 25 in the story of the Pulse nightclub massacre but reports about the event frequently tell us that the number of dead exceeds the total for the previous worst mass killings of homosexuals. . There is plenty of information about that crime available on the Web, something that took place in New Orleans on June 24, 1973, at the UpStairs Lounge, also a homosexual bar. In that mass killing 32 individuals died after the lounge was set on fire in an arson attack by a homosexual who had been a patron, Rodger Dale Nunez. At least Nunez is the most likely suspect. Police were never able to find conclusive evidence to convict him but he had motive -he had been kicked out a short time before the fire- and he was placed nearby by several witnesses at the time in question. Those deaths may have given him a motive for suicide in 1974. . Where this gets interesting is that the UpStairs Lounge, that day, was being used by the New Orleans homosexual Metropolitan Community Church As the Wikipedia article on the fire reports, the MCC "held services inside the club" and "after the service, the club hosted free beer and dinner for 125 patrons. . This fact suggests a question about the Metropolitan Community Church of Orlando. Is there any kind of connection? About this, you can decide. Perhaps this is only curious but for your information Joy Metropolitan Community Church, the only one in Orlando, is located in the same neighborhood as the Pulse nightclub. Each is roughly equidistant from Lake Lancaster (which is within Orlando proper), the church to the East of the lake, the nightclub somewhat to the West. Maps show both places within or next to the South Division neighborhood. Each is only a few blocks from the lake. . What most separates the two institutions is demography, not geography. About 90% of the homosexuals at the Pulse nightclub were Hispanics, half of Puerto Rican ancestry; however the Hispanic population of South Division is less than 5%. Not sure what to make of this, but for your information. . Where this gets more interesting is that Joy MCC organized a vigil for the shooting victims; while information currently available isn't entirely clear, this seems to have been an official event which the mayor attended on Monday evening, outdoors at the city center. On Sunday evening there was another event, inside the church building, with standing room only, at which Troy Perry, the founder of the national Metropolitan Community Church, spoke by way of a teleconference call. Perry is quite old now and retired from his leadership post in 2005. But he wanted to address the group as he had done in 1973 for the MCC members who died in the bar fire when he was able to fly into New Orleans for that occasion. . What was odd was that a minister of Joy MCC made sure to read a "prayer of Muhammad's," apparently from the Koran -as reported in the Washington Post for June 13, 2016. The killer, of course, went to lengths to make sure that everyone in the world knew that he had been inspired by Islam. About which the evidence is overwhelming -all of it known to the White House within a few hours of the attack. . There were, of course, three 911 calls that Omar Mateen made during lulls in the shooting while he was inside the nightclub. During these calls he made it clear that he was inspired by the Islamic State and its leader, to whom he pledged allegiance. This is not a misprint; Mateen did not pledge loyalty to the Christian State or the Buddhist State or any other organization except Daesh, aka, the Islamic State, a Muslim association. . Mateen also visited Saudi Arabia in 2011 and 2012 in order to take part in the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. This is, in case some people have difficulty with the concept, a well known Muslim ritual. . Amaq News Agency, an online organization which is owned by Daesh, affirmed Mateen's claim by saying that the attack against homosexuals in Florida was the responsibility of "an Islamic State fighter". Another Islamic State group, radio station al-Bayan, added that Mateen was a "soldier of the caliphate." The Islamic State also produced a video lionizing the murderer. . It seems that Mateen was associated with The Husseini Islamic Center, an institution found in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando. Worth knowing about this organization is that not long before the mass killings, apparently just a few days, Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar spoke there and as the headline at EarthWatch21 put it: Muslim Imam in Orlando called for death to gays before night club attack At the time of this writing a video about the visit had received 52, 617 views. . There was also a report provided by WFTV 9; this said: Gays Must Die Says Speaker At Orlando Mosque . All reports agree that Sekaleshfar told his listeners that the Koran is very clear that homosexuals should be killed and that since their sin is heinous before God it would be an act of mercy to cause them to cease sinning by ending their lives. . A British news analysis show told its audience that the sheikh insisted that Muslims must kill homosexuals if they have the opportunity. However it has not been possible to confirm this account. Indeed, the Florida press said that the sheikh was careful to parse his words, adding that Muslim teaching does not apply in the United States which does not observe Shariah law. . Regardless, it seems that the sheikh got his point across. All Muslims know that their first allegiance is to their religion and if local law does not agree with Koran-inspired Shariah law, whenever the opportunity exists Shariah should be enforced. . It also turns out that Mateen was a student of an online Muslim "school" called the Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary. This is the work of Marcus Robertson a zealous Muslim cleric of some kind. Robertson lives in England. He had been investigated by British law enforcement agencies several times but no charges were ever brought despite the fact that he had espoused ideas associated with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American al-Qaeda leader who had inspired Major Nidal Hasan, the Muslim psychiatrist who killed 13 service personnel and wounded 30 others at Ft. Hood, Texas. . Not only all this, but people who knew Mateen from work in Florida have said that he frequently told them that he supported Hezbollah as well as the Islamic State. Some people have attempted to use this information to try and discredit Mateen's Muslim bona fides inasmuch as these two groups are currently in conflict with each other as a side effect of the civil war in Syria, but that point is rather weak inasmuch as the two groups have co-operated in the past and both are anti-homosexual and anti-Semitic (Judeophobic), which, of course, were favorite targets of Mateen's hatred all along. We also do not know if Mateen was all that concerned about Mid East religious politics; he seems to have been motivated primarily by what we would call social issues as they played out in his local environment. . All this and -incredibly- numbers of homosexuals are now blaming Christians for the mass murders of homosexuals. There are several reports to this effect such as a completely ludicrous screed at Religion & Politics blog, but the story by columnist Michael Brown in the June 14 issue of the Christian Post can be taken as representative. The logic is that Christians preach hate of homosexuals and therefore any and all acts of violence against themselves must necessarily be caused by Christians. . There are several things wrong with this line of (half-baked) thought: . * For instance, and Mr. Brown is a classic example, many Christians these days are running for the exits. They want nothing to do with the Bible's strong condemnations of sodomy and use every stratagem possible to deny these condemnations, mostly by the evasion that Jesus taught love and therefore we should love everyone on principle including homosexuals. . Did Jesus condemn homosexuals to Hell in Matthew 11? Did the Apostle Paul condemn them to death (as required by Roman law of his time) as stated forcefully in the first chapter of Romans? Many Christians simply refuse to acknowledge these major passages in the New Testament. Almost none are aware that no less than 30 passages in the Bible call sodomy a horrible sin beyond forgiveness unless it totally ceases; what you usually hear are comments that there may be a "few" verses, maybe 4 or 5. Christian ignorance of the testimony of the Bible is staggering, in fact. And anyone who has attended an Evangelical church in the past few years can tell you exactly this. There are exceptions but that is what they are, exceptions. . * Psychological research on the subject of homosexuality is increasingly clear to the effect that homosexuality is a grievous psychopathology. A few names of researchers of this issue, starting with the late Dr. Charles Socarides, include Neil Whitehead, Joseph Nicolosi, Stanton Jones, Dr. Judith Reisman, Dr. Paul Cameron, O.R. Adams, Claude Crepault, Kathleen Melonakos, Mark Yarhouse, and still others. But their findings are seldom (almost never) reported in the mainstream media. However, this does not mean that this research does not exist. And the fact is that by just about all relevant measures, extraordinary rates of substance abuse, off-the-charts rates of homosexual vs. homosexual violence for both sexes, very high rates of pedophilia, susceptibility to a host of "lifestyle" illnesses (like so-called "gay bowel disease" that results from anal sex), psychological maladjustment disorders, and sociopathological behaviors such as in-your-face obnoxiousness, there isn't any real question that homosexuality is a mental illness. Given these facts what are people supposed to do? Shut up about it because of considerations of political correctness? . * Critics of Christians who blame them for Muslim violence are ridiculously ignorant of the substance of Islam itself. In countries where there are no Christians at all (under 1%) as is the case in places like Yemen and Saudi Arabia, anti-homosexual laws are the most severe on Earth with the punishment demanded by the Koran strictly enforced: Death. In more "liberal" societies like Egypt the penalty is more along the lines of imprisonment for periods of 20 years or more. Which is to say that Muslims do not need the least coaching from Christians about what to do about homosexuals: Kill them. Most Christians that I have ever known, which is a large number, take the opposite view, in fact, and seek to win homosexuals to Christ peacefully without coercion. It is widely assumed that if homosexuals are converted they will naturally abandon their sexual behavior and cease to have pathological sexual interests. . A minority view is that homosexuals need to completely abandon homosexuality through whatever means they find necessary before anyone should consider accepting them in their church. This also requires genuine repentance on the part of homosexuals and major effort on their part to repair the damages caused by their homosexual behavior. This does not make this minority view wrong, it simply makes it minority -for now. At one time it was the majority view and these people believe it will become majority opinion again. . . But let us continue with the theme of the bizarre nature of the Omar Mateen story. And there is still more weirdness to discuss. . Also strange was a news item, also from the Washington Post, about the father of the shooter, Mir Seddique. It seems as if the father is not entirely rational -which is only to speak of events before the mass killings. This is a reasonable conclusion to reach after reading information in the Post that Mr. Seddique has maintained a Youtube channel and his "most recent video ...shows him declaring his candidacy for the Afghan presidency." From Florida -for an election that is several years away. . This leads to a final line of inquiry, on the subject of presidents. Do any US presidents figure in the story? Yes, and two presidential candidates. . About Barack Hussein Obama, as one source observed: "In his comments on the atrocity, Obama did call it an act of terror, but he never once mentioned the words Islam, Islamic or Muslim." And isn't it curious that he was quick to label this an act of terror when the victims were all homosexuals yet when Major Nidal Hasan killed and wounded a large number of heterosexual service men and women he insisted over and over that it was a case of 'workplace violence'? . There was one other reaction from the current administration. As reported in the Christian Post for June 13, in a story by Mark Ellis, Obama has "appointed a new liaison to the Muslim-American community who has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood." The Brotherhood, of course, lost power in Egypt for subversive activities that posed a danger to the state. This was just after Hillary Clinton's visit during which she heaped praises on the Brotherhood and passed along heartfelt congratulations from Barack Hussein. . As the article continued, the "Muslim Brotherhood is labeled a terrorist organization by six countries even if this status was denied by the United States when Obama took office. "The official hired by the White House, Zaki Barzinji, 27, is the former president of the Muslim Youth of North America, which is the youth wing of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)..." This group "is a Muslim Brotherhood entity that was labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial." Hamas, of course, is affiliated with the Brotherhood and demands the destruction of the state of Israel. . "Barzinji is also the grandson of a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect, Jamal Barzinji, who died last year...." Jamal had been identified as linked with just about every Muslim Brotherhood associated Muslim group active in the United States; he also donated to various political causes in America. He "was nearly prosecuted, but the Obama Justice Department dropped the planned indictment.” . Other interesting facts you may like to know: . Obama's new appointee "accepted an award on his grandfather’s behalf in 2013 at a mosque in Virginia known for having Al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki as its imam in 2001." . "Before his White House appointment, Barzinji served as the deputy director of intergovernmental affairs for Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe." Interesting about McAuliffe is that he "was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. He is currently under investigation by the FBI" for illegal campaign contributions. . There is a connection to "Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ramadan was allowed into the United States in January 2010 at the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose longtime aide, Huma Abedin, also has extensive personal and family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood." . . You might suppose this has meaning in American politics. However, because of who is breaking this story you can be certain that everything said here will be censored, either de facto or de jure, that lies will be told about me that smear my reputation without any recourse, and even some of my friends will make it clear that they have no spines and will not dare to challenge the power establishment. This is not OK but I will continue anyway -until such time as my efforts contribute to wrecking the Democratic Party and marginalizing the GOP. I have no use for either of our major political parties; I am a political Independent and proud of it. . . There also is a connection, maybe more indirect than otherwise, between Ronald Reagan and the Mateen story. Many Republicans might not like to hear it but Reagan has never been a hero of mine and it is a matter of complete indifference to me whether his reputation is tarnished by news that I report about him. . This starts with a curiosity about Joy Metropolitan Community Church in Orlando. It seems that this group was officially founded -chartered by the state- in 1983. So far the exact date of that occasion has been impossible to find, but some time that year. This was the only year that Reagan visited Orlando during his presidency. About this complete certainty isn't possible but to report the fact that the Orlando Sentinel ran a story about Reagan's March 8 visit of 1983 and when you do a Google search nothing else turns up -at least for a reasonable number of page searches. . Did Reagan meet with any leaders of Joy MCC at that time? It is very unlikely. However, it would not be good idea to be dismissive of the possibility. There is a small literature of Reagan's views in support of homosexuals. One example is provided in a James Duke Mason article in the homosexual newspaper, The Advocate, for June 5, 2014. Mason, a self-identified "progressive Democrat" said that although Reagan was sluggish in responding to the AIDS crisis of that era, he had a number of homosexual friends and generally was friendly toward that crowd, especially those in the motion picture industry. And he never did anything at all as president to stop or even slow homosexual political initiatives; in fact, as his daughter has said, her father was generally well disposed toward homosexuals. And those of us who were alive at the time remember all too well Reagan's eulogy for of actor Rock Hudson, who died from AIDS in 1985. . But perhaps the best easily available source to turn to is an article by Warren Throckmorton that was published in the September 24, 2010, edition of Patheos. It seems that Reagan met secretly with homosexuals even if we do not know how frequently and how often. We know this much because one such meeting has subsequently been publicized, his 1978 get-together with David Mixner and Peter Scott, two "flaming faggots" of the time who were vehemently opposed to the Briggs Initiative in California, aka Proposition 6, then with no worse than a 50-50 chance to be approved by voters and become law. Measure 6 would have prohibited any public school in the state from hiring homosexual teachers and would have allowed schools to fire teachers who advocated homosexuality in their classes. Reagan, while no longer governor, was widely respected in the state and it has been generally concluded that his public opposition, arm in arm with Jimmy Carter, was responsible for he measure's defeat. . Reagan's secret meeting with Mixner (a very close friend of William Clinton and his wife Hillary) and Peter Scott was, by existing accounts, what pushed him over the line into overt opposition to 6. Which is published fact and a fact that absolutely no conservatives that I have ever heard of even admit, let along criticize. In case you might like to know. But there is more. . Reagan also had meetings with Troy Perry, the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, although no-one is sure how many meetings there were. After all, it is the nature of secret meetings that others do not learn about them except under special circumstances. However, in Perry's case there is as close to documented proof as anyone is likely to find. . This concerns events at the time of the official founding of the MCC, which took place on March 7, 1971. As page 30 of a 1974 book by Ronald Enroth and Gerald Johnson, The Gay Church, recounted, on that day then-governor Reagan sent Troy Perry a letter of congratulations for starting his homosexual "church." That is, Reagan was giving his 'seal of approval' to an ersatz church that teaches that Jesus, who condemned homosexuality, was a homosexual. Perry was disappointed that the governor did not attend in person, giving the impression that he already knew him, but then adding that he would be meeting with him on June 25. Also at that meeting would be Evelyn Hooker, very influential in persuading the American Psychiatric Association to reclassify homosexuality as less than a mental illness the year before. It took a number of years before the fraudulent nature of Hooker's research was finally exposed but by then, of course, it was too late. What was said at the conclave involving Reagan and Troy Perry is not known at this time, and it may not have been secret inasmuch as Hooker was also present, but it does establish the fact that Reagan was friendly with not only movieland homosexuals but those who represented homosexual religion, a religion that is the exact opposite of the faith of the millions of evangelical voters who elected him to the presidency. . To the best of my knowledge, despite the fact that Enroth and Johnson's book, published by a quality Christian company, Eerdmans, had to have been widely known, not one conservative of consequence criticized Reagan for his overt support of homosexuals. The high profile role of Joy MCC after the mass killings at Pulse nightclub in Orlando was expedited, many years ago, but the kindness of Ronald Reagan to Troy Perry. As I have said repeatedly over the years, although the Democratic Party is the evil party, the Republican Party is the stupid party. Really stupid, ridiculously stupid. . . This brings us to Donald Trump. . What most characterizes Trump is how poorly informed he is about any issues that deal with religion -any religion. He is utterly clueless. Which has never been excusable in the past -McCain was equally clueless, Romney was clueless except insofar as he understands Mormon doctrine. George W. Bush spoke 'Evangelize' and didn't seem to understand any other form of spiritual language. As for the Democrats, the situation has been hopeless since the time of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Hillary's husband seemed to comprehend some of what religion is all about but, to be kind, that much was precious little. To put it in academic terms, he managed not to flunk Religion 101 in college but that was his outer limit. As for Barack Hussein, it is difficult to imagine a worse mess. He understands absolutely nothing. He doesn't even grasp the basics of Islam, the one faith tradition about which he 'knows' (put the word in 2 point type) a little about. The problem has been his 'education' in Subud, a type of shamanistic version of Sufism known in Indonesia and virtually nowhere else even though there are a handful of believers in the US. This is a religion akin to Theosophy or, vaguely, the Baha'i Faith, but one that is mixed in with mystical mumbo jumbo and a dose of more orthodox Islam, but not all that much, which in accepting most religions on Earth as more-or-less valid in their own imperfect ways, understands just about nothing of substance, hence imagining that maybe 2/3rds of core Muslim beliefs simply do not exist. Hence Obama can present Muhammad's religion as almost anything he wants it to be to suit his political needs. . Trump is even worse, not because he believes in a bizarre theology but because he doesn't know what theology is, what religion is either, and -which became painfully obvious some months ago- has never studied anything at all about any religion. None of which stops him from having as many opinions on religious subjects as he desires. . Trump doesn't seem to have taken any religion seriously -ever. And he is now the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States ? . Hence he is oblivious to even the most basic difficulties in choosing what political positions to take, certainly considering the fact that maybe half of the votes he needs to win the general election must come from religious-minded voters. To cite one example, while his opposition to Islam fits quite well with Evangelical values, that he joins this to enthusiastic support for the e ntire homosexual agenda is a world class contradiction guaranteed to anger or dismay, say, 50 million conservative voters. That is, because of his monumental ignorance he is tone deaf to possibly all such questions where religion and politics intersect. But where on the political Right are there responsible critics who can make the kinds of points that need to be made -that needed to be made long before Trump began to run away with the field and win one primary election after another, demolishing his opponents piecemeal? There isn't anyone like that in the entire Republican Party. This may not matter all that much among Democrats, many of whom are de facto Atheists or no better than nominal religious believers, but it matters greatly on the Right. However, nearly all GOP leadership for all factions of the party is resolutely secular and uneducated to any kind of faith tradition except, in cases, their own religion. . But if that is all you know you can see the problem. Either you will interpret all religions, at least at their best, as inferior versions of your own religion, as good even if not as good as your faith, OR as totally bad, misguided, worthless, and malignant. Hence all sorts of absurdities like anti-Muslim zealots who attack Sikhs, who are not Muslims, as if they were, simply because they wear turbans. More germane are politicians who refuse to make themselves informed about Islam and insist, over and over, that Muhammad's religion is essentially peaceful and otherwise little different than Christianity. That is all they know, after all. They are incapable of making even elementary distinctions and their knowledge base about religion is approximately zero. . On the Left the situation is no better -it is merely based on a different mythology. Basically this love and flowers worldview is a latter-day manifestation of secularized Theosophy of the period from the late 19th century until the 1920s. It is a fairly tale. . It is also pre-Freudian, with no psychological depth, and it is pre-Darwinian, with no understanding of such phenomena as predation and its effects, not just animal predation but attacks of one culture upon another, and sometimes ideological predation as one set of ideas seeks to overwhelm another. All of this is war - wars of ideas and wars of values. What there is precious little of is "peace, love, and understanding" borne along by noble souls who have the values of Franciscan or Buddhist monks. Which is to say that, yes, there are monks in history, and even eras when national populations sought peace above all else, but these periods never last. They end and are replaced by fierce competition -which is the norm for most of the long chapters of human history. . In so many words, some religions are more adaptive than others, some better provisioned with useful ideas, some are far more realistic, and some are more "Protestant" in Weber's sense, more conducive to something we would call progress. But even here caution in making judgements is called for. Some perfectly good religions are effectively destroyed by others -the ancient religion of Mesopotamia, for instance, Isisism in Egypt and the Mediterranean, Druidism in the British Isles, and Zoroastrianism which, while it still is with us and sometimes finds new life in the ideas of creative individuals, has been reduced to a small fraction of what it once was. The Left totally ignores all of this history as if none of it mattered, as if the story of the deaths of religions tell us nothing. . The Left, when it comes to religion, is approximately as ignorant as the Right. Its knowledge of the facts of the history of religions is pure mythology, on the order of the kinds of mythological systems that gave us the story arcs we are familiar with from the each testament of the Bible. There are truths in such mythological constructions, but: (1) you are in no position to make use of those truths unless you are convincingly aware that these are systems of myths, and (2) there are large areas of tradition that are downright false to the facts that need to be recognized for what they are. . The Religious Left thinks it has all the answers, that the Right is hopelessly benighted, and that 'liberal' values are unarguable, hence opposition should be shut up or drowned out in opprobrium. Actually, however, the worldview of the Left is just as, shall we say, out to lunch. And it can never not be out to lunch as long as it draws its inspiration from simple-minded ultra idealists like Karen Armstrong who seek to reduce all faiths to a lovely mush which is founded on fundamental dishonesty. For he fact is that the differences between religions matter just as much as the similarities. Can any fact about religion be more obvious? . I mean, if a choice must be made between the anti-scientific evolution views of the Right vs the anti-sociobiology anti-evolution views of the (feminist inspired) Left, I would choose the science and the sociobiology every time. In religion as in politics my philosophy is Radical Centrist in nature and what use are all orthodoxies that no longer make sense in the 21st century? Some very ancient orthodoxies do stand the test of time, however, and these deserve to be cherished for the treasures they are. . All of which, it is certain, sails completely over the head of Donald Trump. Not only him, of course, but he is poised to become the nominee of the Republican Party. Therefore he is everyone's problem, . And the situation of the Democratic Party is even worse. . This does not say that Trump is wrong about all issues. On the contrary he is right about a number of matters that count the most. He is right, for instance, that Islam is anti-homosexual, anti-woman, and anti-Jewish. But Trump is right for all the wrong reasons. And there is a very large dilemma involved in the issue of Islam: That religion is right to be opposed to homosexuality even if Muslims have no idea why they are right on this issue. But, to say the least, the way they go about in their opposition is reprehensible in the extreme and unacceptable to civilized human beings. . Trump has said: "We need to tell the truth about radical Islam and we need to do it now." Clearly this kind of outspokenness has done much to win him his status as the presumptive nominee of the GOP, for the party leadership consists, for the most part, of "soft" politically correct wimps -not as bad as Democrats but substantively little different. Millions of Americans are sick and tired of being lied to about Islam and Mr. Trump is the beneficiary of this public outrage. . "We need to tell the truth also when how radical Islam is coming to our shores," he added, as intrinsic to the multitudes of immigrants from Muslim countries bringing it with them. This is the simple truth. But is Mr. Trump prepared to deal with the uproar his policies are sure to set in motion? How this might be possible for someone who is so poorly prepared is a question that can only be answered in the negative. He has no idea what the implications of his policies could lead to in terms of events in the real world. What is needed to succeed is a general of ideas; Trump is no better than a corporal in the intellectual realm, and that is also the truth. . If you see innuendo here, you got the meaning, exactly. . Neil Stevens, in an article posted at Red State on June 13, 2016, has said it best of anyone so far: . "Donald Trump is as clueless on Islamic terror as Hillary Clinton." And this is only the beginning of the necessary critique. . Here is what Hillary said on November 19, 2015: "Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism." As Stevens put it: "To claim that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, is fantasy." . For example, there are about 120 jihad verses in the Koran, depending on how you count. Of this number about 50 teach the virtues of inner struggle, of working out one's ideas, and so forth. However, the other 70 verses are the exact opposite and preach extreme violence including crucifixion of prisoners, enslavement of captives, and forceful conversion of people at the point of the sword. The worst case of this policy was the thousand years of jihad against India, from roughly 1000 AD until the mid 20th century, indeed, up to the carnage and horrific property damage at Mumbai (Bombay) in November of 2008. In this period of time an estimated 70 million Hindus and Buddhists were slaughtered, another 70 or 80 million enslaved, and literally thousands of temples destroyed -or confiscated to become mosques. Which does not count the destruction of probably the leading institution of higher education in the world at the time, the famed Buddhist school, Nalanda University, and its vast library. Several hundred peaceful Buddhist monks were burned to death during this atrocity. . To be sure, MINOs, Muslims In Name Only, are usually little different than anyone else morally. The problem arises when they actually believe what the Koran teaches and what Islam stands for more generally. Some figures say that of all religious believers on earth, Muslims are the least well informed about their professed religion than anyone else. But what happens when they do become informed -as seems to be happening more and more, everywhere? The mass killings at a homosexual nightclub in Orlando give you one example. Maybe you can recall others. . . Billy Rojas (continued, Part 2, following) -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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[RC] Part # 1 Islam, homosexuals, and Donald Trump
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Fri, 17 Jun 2016 21:51:29 -0700
