Democracy in Libya: New election law drafted

“At the time of the end the king of the South will engage him in battle, and the king of the North will storm out against him with chariots and cavalry and a great fleet of ships. He will invade many countries and sweep through them like a flood.
He will also invade the Beautiful Land. Many countries will fall, but Edom, Moab and the leaders of Ammon will be delivered from his hand.
He will extend his power over many countries; Egypt will not escape.
He will gain control of the treasures of gold and silver and all the riches of Egypt, with the Libyans and Cushites in submission. Daniel 11:40-43

On January 1, 2012, a draft of a new electoral law for Libya was published online in Arabic. Isobel Coleman of that notorious antichrist organization, the Council on Foreign Relations--whose members include Rick Warren--offers some of the details of the new law in a post on the CFR blog, January 4, 2012:

The electoral laws will govern the election of a national constituent assembly that will replace the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC). The assembly will subsequently appoint a prime minister, form a commission to write a constitution, hold a constitutional referendum, write a new electoral law, and hold general elections to elect a permanent government.

Just fifteen pages, the electoral law is very specific on some points and uncomfortably vague on others. It makes no provisions for the formation of political parties, which were previously illegal. It also leaves unanswered the pressing question of how the country will be divided into voting districts. The law simply states, “Dividing the country into voting districts is one of the goals of organizing the elections.” It also acknowledges that population and geography should be considered when the election committee issues a decision on this. However when this issue is decided, some groups are going to be unhappy. The NTC itself struggled to balance the demands of different cities and groups in forming the current interim government. Wary of being left out of the new power structure, various tribal groups and militias continue to refuse to disarm and disband...

...Where the electoral law is specific, it raises other issues. Women are allocated 10 percent of the 200 seats in the national assembly, but this small quota has outraged human rights groups who feel that it neither reflects the extent of women’s participation in the revolution, nor the number of capable female candidates. The law also denotes twenty categories of people that are excluded from running from public office, largely with the intent to exlude people who profited from the previous regime or who were associated with Qaddafi’s family either in politics, business, or academia. Some clauses seem to target a very small number of individuals, such as the clause prohibiting, “anyone who opposed the previous regime from outside the country and then negotiated with them to take up a leading position in the state apparatus.” Others, like the clause that exludes, “anyone who was not supportive of the February 17 revolution from its beginning,” are vague enough that they could be applied widely. The law has further upset some Libyans because it stipulates that Libyans with dual nationalities must relinquish their other nationality before running in the elections. Resentment of those who left by those who stayed has plagued Afghan politics in the past decade – it looks like an issue that will fester in Libya too.

During the next two weeks, Libyans can submit their comments and suggestions for amending the law through the electoral commission’s website (the commission has also set up a Facebook page). The commission will review comments and publish a final draft of the electoral law on January 23.

It will come as no surprise to this blogger if elections in Libya produce yet another Islamist government, as has been the case in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Calgary's Muslim mayor persecutes Christians, while allowing the Occupy protesters to break the law

According to Ezra Levant in the Calgary Sun, December 31, 2011:

Calgary's Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi, has been held up as a symbol of the city's tolerance. Which is ironic, given his own anti-Christian bigotry in return.

Last week, Nenshi ordered city police, backed up with a ridiculously large contingent of private security, to arrest a Christian pastor and five of his congregants who had the temerity to lead a Christmas service in the public atrium of Calgary's City Hall.

Artur Pawlowski, lead pastor of Calgary's Street Church, had foolishly taken the mayor at his word when he described city hall as the city's "living room," open to all.

What Pawlowski didn't understand is that Nenshi didn't mean Christians. Nenshi meant his own co-religionists — no, not Muslims, but the leftist activists who had comprised the Occupy Calgary protests for two months with Nenshi's blessing.

Nenshi permitted that two-month trespass in a public park, claiming the "Charter" prevented him from evicting the socialists, communists, anarchists and petty criminals who inhabited downtown Calgary's Olympic Plaza...

...Here's how Nenshi defended turning a blind eye to law breaking: "It's funny, the number of people who have talked to me in the last couple of days who have said ‘the Occupy Calgary people need to get off Olympic Plaza so that all citizens can have rights to their front lawn.' And I say, OK, so all citizens except the ones you don't like should have a right to the front lawn. Because all means all in my opinion."

All means all.

Unless they're Christians having a peaceful, drug-free, sex-free celebration of Christmas in the people's "living room." Then Nenshi sends in boys with the billy clubs. For a pastor singing Christmas carols and reading Bible passages.

This isn't the first time Nenshi — or the city of Calgary — has harassed Pawlowski or his Street Church. Over the past six years, Pawlowski has literally been to court more than 70 times fighting against a series of tickets, charges and other fabricated penalties cooked up by City Hall — none of which was applied to Nenshi's favourites in the Occupy movement.

He has been charged by the City of Calgary for such horrific crimes as serving food and drink without proper permits.

But Pawlowski's mission is to bring meals to the homeless who are turned away from official shelters because they are still abusing drugs or alcohol.

Occupy didn't have permits for their food, either. But because Pawlowski does so in the name of Christian charity, Nenshi targeted him.

Don't take Pawlowski's word for it. Judge after judge has condemned the city's behaviour. One trial judge said the city bylaw officers engaged in "abusive conduct."

This year, an appeal judge said the city's bullying of Pawlowski came "precariously close to being excessive and an abuse of power."

For a few weeks, Nenshi's policy of anything goes on public property was a reprieve for Pawlowski. While Occupy Calgary was allowed to break the laws, Pawlowski was allowed to minister to the homeless, too. But now that it's cold and Occupy Calgary has gone back to their parents' basements, Pawlowski's brief enjoyment of his real Charter rights — freedom of speech; freedom of religion; freedom of assembly — has been curtailed...

...Nenshi is a left-wing mayor. That's not new — Calgary's last four mayors have been Liberal, as are most of its city councillors. He's a minority politician in Alberta — that's hardly new either, in the province that gave us everyone from the Famous Five suffragettes to Canada's first Hindu and Muslim MPs.

What is new is that the Muslim mayor thinks religious tolerance is a one-way street — a point he made again brutally this Christmas.

Identificational repentance hits a new low as U.S. and Swiss Amish go to Israel to apologize for their silence during the Holocaust

Here's more evidence that you can't be a satirist anymore. To quote Winston Churchill out of context, "Here, surely, is the world's record in the domain of the ridiculous and the contemptible..."

A particularly ludicrous example of what I addressed in my posts Identificational Repentance and Grovelling Christianity was reported by Jonah Mandel in the Jerusalem Post on November 28, 2010:

Representatives of the Amish community from the United States and Switzerland paid a visit to the Western Wall on Saturday night, where they asked the Jewish people’s forgiveness for their group’s silence during the Nazi extermination of Jews in the Holocaust.

Part of what made the visit special was that the Amish, a sect of the Mennonite Church that largely rejects modern technology, do not normally use contemporary forms of transportation such as the aircraft on which they made the journey to the Holy Land. It is likely that this delegation does not represent the Amish at large, rather their faction of the larger church.

But according to an announcement issued by the office of Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, with whom the group met, the Amish delegates saw great importance in coming to Israel and expressing their contrition, as well as declaring their unreserved support of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

The delegation members stressed that they were neither seeking any kind of gesture from the Jewish people nor looking to proselytize – only to support Israel for the simple reason that in the past they hadn’t.

Rabinovitch was presented with various tokens at a ceremony in the Hasmonean chamber, including a parchment with a request for forgiveness in the name of the entire Amish community, along with a commitment that from now on, it would loudly voice its support of the Jewish people, especially in the wake of the expressions of hatred by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his extensions.

The delegation left Israel on Sunday.

I suppose the lives of millions of Jews in Europe could have been saved in World War II if only the Amish had spoken up for them. Just how many Amish--especially in the United States--were aware of what was happening to the Jews under Hitler? I suspect they were barely aware there was a war going on. As far as I know, the Inuit (or, to use a label now out of fashion, "Eskimos") of the Canadian Arctic also didn't speak up for the Jews during World War II, so maybe they should now go to Israel to issue an apology (which would actually be a refreshing change, since in the last 20 years, the Inuit have been successful at demanding--and getting--apologies for wrongs that were never done to them; but that's a subject that may be addressed in a future post).

Identificational repentance strikes again: University of Manitoba apologizes for sins it didn't commit

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Romans 1:22

Anyone who has experience dealing with university bureaucracies knows that people in high positions in academia are usually spineless wimps. An egregious example is University of Manitoba President David Bernard, who has apologized to Indian students for abuses they suffered in Indian residential schools--even though the university had nothing to do with the residential schools. Jonathan Kay of the Canadian newspaper National Post offered an excellent commentary on October 27, 2011 (published as an editorial titled U Manitoba's guilty conscience in the October 28 print edition):

Sometimes, we hyper-polite Canadians just can’t resist playing to stereotype — like the one that says we’re always apologizing, even for things that aren’t our fault. Witness the University of Manitoba, whose President, David Barnard, has formally apologized to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for his institution’s role in Canada’s residential school system.

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, this “is believed to be the first time a Canadian university has apologized for having a role in that dark chapter in the country’s history.” That shouldn’t surprise us — because Canadian universities didn’t have any “role” to apologize for: This country’s post-secondary institutions neither funded nor operated Indian residential schools. Those roles were filled by the government and by churches.

Nevertheless, “we [the university community] have educated the people who became clergy and teachers and politicians and became involved in the [residential-school system],” Mr. Barnard told the media this week. And then, in his formal statement on Thursday, he added: “Our institution failed to recognize or challenge the forced assimilation of Aboriginal peoples and the subsequent loss of their language, culture and traditions. That was a grave mistake. It is our responsibility. We are sorry.”

Mr. Barnard’s gesture takes political correctness and White guilt into the realm of farce. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad studied at the St. Mary’s group of teaching hospitals in London, England — yet we are unaware of that institution’s president apologizing for this year’s brutal crackdown against Syrian dissidents. There is not a large university in the world whose graduates do not include criminals and bigots. Are they all expected to apologize for the misdeeds of their students? What comes next for U Manitoba, we wonder? Will Mr. Barnard apologize to the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the Manhattan Project contributions of University of Manitoba alumnus Louis Alexander Slotin (1910-1946)?

Many aspects of the residential-school system were indeed appalling: the forced separation of child from parent, episodes of brutal corporal punishment and sex abuse, untreated diseases. Yet many graduates of residential schools never had these experiences, and speak fondly of their time there — or at least acknowledge the good intentions of most instructors, and the decent education they received. These latter aspects of residential schools have become taboo to discuss: The official story now has become that the entire system was a sort of concentration camp staffed by cackling Gestapo. As a result, institutions such as the University of Manitoba have been encouraged to view themselves, ludicrously, as Canada’s answer to IG Farben.

When pressed for details about what role the university had in residential schools, Mr. Barnard was vague. The university president couldn’t even tell reporters for certain whether any current U Manitoba professor had ever taught any student who was involved in any way with a residential school. “We’re focused on moving forward,” he said.

But he’s not moving forward: The act of apologizing for something done by neither Mr. Barnard, nor by any of his colleagues, nor even by the university itself, is inherently backward-looking. It’s worse than backward-looking, in fact: The President is actively fetishizing the past, looking for guilt where none fairly exists.

What’s worse, these apologies never really please anybody — they just invite more complaints and demands.

Four years ago, for instance, an open letter of apology appeared in Quebec’s francophone newspapers, signed by the Archbishop of Quebec City, Marc Cardinal Ouellet. “I recognize that the narrow attitudes of certain Catholics, prior to 1960, favoured anti-Semitism, racism, indifference toward First Nations and discrimination against women and homosexuals,” he declared. “I also recognize that abuses of power and cover-ups have, for many, tarnished the image of the clergy … Youngsters were subject to sexual aggression by priests and religious figures, causing great injury and trauma which have broken their lives. These scandals have shaken popular confidence toward religious authorities and we understand this.”

Perhaps the Archbishop thought this would please the Catholic Church’s critics. Instead, as George Jonas noted at the time in these pages, the letter set off what the CBC described as “a storm of criticism from gay groups to women’s organizations,” which considered the apology insincere.

There always is something self-serving and posturing about such generations-late apologies: They purport to increase the moral bona fides of the person offering contrition, but on someone else’s moral dime. “Not being a Catholic, or even religious, it’s certainly not for me to raise questions about anything a leading churchman might say, but it seems to me that expressing contrition for what one didn’t do is an unauthorized claim for a reward to which one isn’t entitled,” Mr. Jonas wrote in 2007. “It’s charging someone else’s account to derive a benefit for oneself. It’s grandchildren sauntering into history’s apothecary to buy a bottle of forgiveness, saying: ‘charge it to our grandfather.’ Sorry, but grandfather may not acknowledge the debt. (Mine certainly wouldn’t.) One can meaningfully apologize only for oneself, whether one is a person, a nation or a generation.”

If Mr. Barnard has done some nasty thing personally, out with it. But since, to our knowledge, he hasn’t, he should keep his all-too-Canadian, all-too-guilty apologies to himself. They do nothing to honour his school, or remedy the past historical wrongs with which his university is only obliquely connected.

Go here to see the transcript of Dr. Bernard's apology, and here for a question and answer session between Dr. Bernard and Kathryn Blaze Carlson of the National Post.
I've already made my position on such things clear in my posts Identificational Repentance and Grovelling Christianity. I recently sent a long-overdue email (which may be the basis of a future post) to certain "journalists" and Canadian government leaders setting the record straight on the Conservative Harper government's 2010 apology for the relocation of Inuit people from Port Harrison, Quebec to Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay, Northwest Territories in the 1950s. Lives were saved, and there was nothing to apologize for, but the Conservative Harper government issued an apology (thereby turning actual heroes into official criminals)--which is the number one reason--of many--why that party has permanently lost my vote.

Democracy in Tunisia and Morocco produces Islamist governments

While much attention has been paid to the recent elections in Egypt, the recent elections in Tunisia and Morocco have gone relatively unnoticed.

As reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation on October 27, 2011:

Tunisia's moderate Islamist Ennahda party has won the country's first democratic elections after the Arab Spring uprisings, officials say.

Official results show Ennahda won more than 41% of the vote, securing 90 seats in the 217-member parliament.

Ennahda has already said it wants to form a new government within a month.

Violent protests broke out in the central town of Sidi Bouzid after the election results were announced, witnesses say.

Reports say police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of people. They were protesting against the cancellation of seats won by the Popular List party in six electoral districts because of "financial irregularities".

The Popular List party, led by a businessman, had won a number of seats in Sidi Bouzid.

The town is the birthplace of the uprising that erupted nine months ago, after a young unemployed man set himself on fire. The uprising led to President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali being thrown out of office.

Reassuring investors

Tunisia's election chief Kamel Jandoubi presented the results of last Sunday's poll at a news conference in Tunis on Thursday night.

We will continue this revolution to realise its aims of a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous... Tunisia is for everyone”

Mr Jandoubi said that the Congress for the Republic (CPR) - the country's biggest secularist party - was the runner-up in the elections with nearly 14%, winning 30 seats in parliament.

The leftist Ettakatol party came third with almost 10%, giving them 21 seats.

Ennahda, which was banned under the former regime, says it has modelled itself on the governing AK party in Turkey, another Muslim-majority country which has remained a secular state.

Party leader Rachid Ghannouchi pledged on Thursday the rights of every Tunisian would be protected by the new authorities.

"We will continue this revolution to realise its aims of a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous, in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone," Mr Ghannouchi told a crowd of supporters, Reuters reports.

Ennahda has sought to reassure secularists and investors, nervous about the prospect of Islamists holding power in one of the Arab world's most liberal countries, by saying it would not ban alcohol, stop tourists wearing bikinis on the beaches or impose Islamic banking.

Foreign tourism is a major source of revenue for Tunisia.

But despite the reassurances, Ennahda's victory is causing concern in some parts of Tunisia, who fear the party could later change their policies, the BBC's Chloe Arnold reports.

Ennahda has put forward its number two, Secretary General Hamadi Jebali, as the next prime minister. Coalition talks with the CPR and Ettakatol parties have already begun.

Mr Jebali, 62, is an engineer by training and a former journalist. He was a co-founder of Ennahda.

The polls were Tunisia's first democratic elections, and followed the fall of President Ben Ali, who was overthrown in January after mass demonstrations. He had been in power for 23 years.

A coalition government has been formed, as reported by The Associated Press on November 22, 2011:

The main winners of Tunisia's elections have announced the shape of the country's interim government ahead of the first meeting of its newly-elected assembly.

On 25 October, Tunisians elected a body to write a new constitution nine months after they overthrew President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in a popular uprising.

As the country that set off the wave of pro-democracy movements that engulfed the Arab region, Tunisia's efforts to build a democracy are being closely watched around the world.

The Islamist Ennahda Party won the most seats and partnered with the liberal Congress for the Republic and the left-of-centre Ettakatol Party to form a ruling coalition and divide up the top posts between them.

Ennahda will take the powerful prime minister's position while veteran rights activist Moncef Marzouki will become the interim president.

Mustapha Ben Jaafar of Ettakatol will head the assembly, which has a year to write the constitution before new elections are held.

The three leaders did not elaborate on who would fill the remaining government posts but said that they would also go to prominent figures of civil society.

A number of ministers from the outgoing transitional government will also appear in the government.

The plan for the new government will be presented on Tuesday to the inaugural meeting of the new council, which will first vote on the new president, who will then appoint the prime minister and ask him to form a government.

The coalition holds a comfortable majority of 139 seats in the 217-member body.

The North African country of 10 million people has been essentially a one-party state in the half-century since it won its independence from France.

A month later, elections were held in Morocco. As reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation on November 27, 2011:

Morocco's moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) has won the most seats in Friday's parliamentary elections, final results confirm.

The interior ministry said the PJD took 107 out of 395 seats, giving it the right to lead a government.

Its likely coalition partner, the nationalist Istiqlal party, came second, with 60 seats.

The poll is part of reforms which King Mohamed VI hopes will defuse protests prompted by the Arab Spring.

"This is a clear victory, but we will need alliances in order to work together," PJD secretary-general Abdelilah Benkirane told the AFP news agency after the official results were announced.

Under a new constitution adopted in July, King Mohamed must now appoint the prime minister from the party which wins the most seats, rather than naming whomever he pleases.

But the king still has the final say on issues of defence, security and religion.

'Victory for democracy'

Morocco's current Prime Minister, Abbas Al Fassi, said on Saturday his Istiqlal party was ready to enter into a coalition with the PJD.

"The PJD's victory is a victory for democracy," he told Reuters.

It comes a month after the moderate Islamist Ennahda party won elections in nearby Tunisia.

The PJD has said it will promote Islamic finance. However, it has avoided focusing on issues such as alcohol and headscarves for women, in a country which attracts large numbers of Western tourists.

Historian and political analyst Maati Monjib told the Associated Press that Moroccans linked Islam and political dignity.

"There is a big problem of dignity in the Arab world and the people see the Islamists as a way of getting out of the sense of subjugation and inferiority towards the West."

'Strong signal'

The Interior Ministry said 45.4% of the electorate had turned out to vote.

About 13.5 million Moroccans are eligible to vote. Although the turnout was an improvement on the 37% who took part in the 2007 election, it was less than the 51.6% in 2002.

The pro-reform February 20 movement, responsible for the protests staged just before the king announced his plans to reform the constitution, had called for a boycott of the vote.

"This [low turnout] sends a strong signal to authorities that Moroccans are not buying the proposed reforms," Najib Chawki, an activist with the movement, told Reuters.

"We will not give up until our demands are met," he added.

See also my previous post on King Mohammed's offer to give up some of his powers. Under Mohammed VI and his predecessor, Hassan II, Morocco has had a reputation for tolerance toward Jews and Christians. Let's hope and pray that this will continue.

Democracy in Egypt may endanger peace with Israel

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Psalms 122:6

For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. Zechariah 2:8

I apologize in advance if I'm guilty of overgeneralizing. However:
The people labelled as neoconservatives tend to be disproportionately Jewish and primarily loyal to the interests of the state of Israel, to the point of championing other countries' involvement in wars that are primarily in the interests of Israel (see, for example, such publications as Commentary and the National Post). The early neocons were disillusioned leftists, Trotskyists who believed in perpetual revolution. As neocons, they support global democratic revolution, and have been the among the most enthusiastic supporters of the so-called "Arab Spring," where dictatorial governments have been uprooted and replaced with democratic elections.

I used to be generally sympathetic with the views of neoconservatives (I often photocopied articles from Commentary) until about 1995 and after, when I stopped equating democracy with freedom. Arno Froese recognized the dangers of democracy, and wrote a book, published in 1997, titled How Democracy Will Elect the Antichrist. The neocons have forgotten or ignored the history of western nations, where government has risen from a Christian worldview, and rights of minorities and dissenters have been protected. In an Islamic society, democracy may very well end up electing Islamist governments, which do not permit dissent or respect the rights of minorities. It doesn't seem to have occurred to neocons that a major reason western governments traditionally have supported Arab dictators was to prevent the existence of Islamist governments (of course, the dictatorial governments supported by western nations tended to operate in accord with the interests of those western nations rather than the interests of their own people, which helped to spur the popularity of Islamist movements). There's a darkly humourous irony in the neocons' support of democracy resulting in governments that are hostile to Israel.

From Egypt comes news that the Muslim Brotherhood, the leading party after three rounds of parliamentary elections, may submit the Camp David Accords--the 1979 peace treaty with Israel signed by the undemocratic regime of President Anwar Sadat--to approval in a referendum. There's always been opposition in Egypt to the Camp David Accords, and it was the lack of democracy that prevented that opposition from making headway. As reported by Jack Khoury of Haaretz, January 1, 2012:

The Muslim Brotherhood movement may bring the fate of Egypt's peace treaty to a referendum, the Islamist factions said on Sunday, adding that there wasn't any chance that the movement will recognize Israel.

Results from Egypt's recent parliamentary vote, which saw considerable gains for Islamist factions such as the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party and the radical Salafi movement's Al-Nour Party, have caused some to question the future of Israel's 1979 peace treaty with its neighbor to the south.

Addressing this issue on Sunday, the deputy chief of the Muslim Brotherhood Rashad al-Bayoumi told London's Al-Hayat newspaper that Egypt may choose to revise its peace treaty with Israel, hinting at the possibility that the pact's future could be determined through a referendum.

Al-Bayoumi emphasized that the Islamist movement would respect all of the international agreements to which Egypt is signatory, adding, however, that each side had the right to review the peace deal, and that the Egyptian people have yet to speak their mind.

"We weren't party to the peace treaty, it was signed away from the Egyptian people and thus the people must have its say," the Muslim Brotherhood official said.

Referring to the issue of recognizing Israel, al-Bayoumi said that the Muslim Brotherhood was not required to recognize Egypt's neighbor to the north, saying that Israel was an "occupying entity and we will not allow anyone of our members to meet with an Israeli."

"I won't allow myself to meet with a criminal and there's no chance that we'll cooperate with Israel," the Egyptian official said.

Last week, the Iranian semi-official Fars news agency quoted top Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei as saying that the future of Israel's peace treaty with Egypt was at the center of a recent and secret round of talks between U.S. officials and members of the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

"The negotiations were completely secret and confidential," ElBaradei told Fars, adding that what the ruling military indicated "said was that the talks were about bilateral and mutual relations, but I believe that Americans wanted to ensure that the deals signed between Egypt and Israel will remain intact if Islamists ascend to power."

Speaking to Egyptian media on the subject last week, new Israeli envoy to Egypt Yaakov Amitai was asked if he was concerned about the political rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.

He replied that he did not wish to get involved in Egypt's internal affairs and needed to study the situation further.

Until now, the Israeli government has not attempted to open official contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Jerusalem official's comments are unusual in light of the Brotherhood's failure to recognize Israel.

However, representatives of the Islamic movement have told American diplomats that the group did not intend to seek the revocation of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

Let us pray that peace between Israel and Egypt will continue, even if it may be temporary. A lasting peace, when Egypt will worship the true God, will come when the Lord returns, as prophesied in Isaiah:

In that day shall there be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the LORD.
And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them.
And the LORD shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the LORD in that day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation; yea, they shall vow a vow unto the LORD, and perform it.
And the LORD shall smite Egypt: he shall smite and heal it: and they shall return even to the LORD, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them.
In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.
In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land:
Whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance. Isaiah 19:19-25

HT: Vox Popoli

Democracy in Egypt may be bad news for Copts

As I stated in my other post on democracy in Egypt:

The people labelled as neoconservatives tend to be disproportionately Jewish and primarily loyal to the interests of the state of Israel...The early neocons were disillusioned leftists, Trotskyists who believed in perpetual revolution. As neocons, they support global democratic revolution, and have been the among the most enthusiastic supporters of the so-called "Arab Spring," where dictatorial governments have been uprooted and replaced with democratic elections...

...The neocons have forgotten or ignored the history of western nations, where government has risen from a Christian worldview, and rights of minorities and dissenters have been protected. In an Islamic society, democracy may very well end up electing Islamist governments, which do not permit dissent or respect the rights of minorities. It doesn't seem to have occurred to neocons that a major reason western governments traditionally have supported Arab dictators was to prevent the existence of Islamist governments (of course, the dictatorial governments supported by western nations tended to operate in accord with the interests of those western nations rather than the interests of their own people, which helped to spur the popularity of Islamist movements).

As reported by Matthew Fisher in the National Post, November 26, 2011:

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - Looking out at the Mediterranean Sea from this ancient port city's dilapidated Corniche, the chaos and political violence of Cairo seems a world away, rather than a two-hour trip by train.

But the Pearl of the Mediterranean, as Alexandria still styles itself, has all of the capital's problems and then some on the eve of the first round of several months of voting for the first parliament since strongman Hosni Mubarak was deposed nine months ago...

...Egypt's always potentially explosive religious fault line between its Muslim majority and its large Coptic Orthodox Christian minority feels more ominous here than elsewhere.

"This used to be the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city in the country, but it has been slowly fading for more than 20 years," said businessman and blogger Mohammad Hanou. "It has become poorer and more conservative. The conservatives are not only Muslims. There are conservative Copts, too. But their differences need a trigger - an event."

One of those flashpoints occurred at a midnight mass marking the beginning of 2011 when a homemade bomb exploded at the front of the al-Qiddissin (Saints) Church. Twenty-three worshippers died and nearly 100 were injured.

That act of violence was followed by a sporadic acts on churches across the country. It is one of the reasons why Copts fret about the potential electoral successes of the Muslim Brotherhood and their more extreme allies, the Salafis, whose Saudi-like puritanical ideas about Islam are popular in Alexandria's slums.

"Many Muslims are tolerant and feel free to elect Christian parliamentarians," said Hany Mikhail Botros, a prominent Copt businessman who was only five metres away from the blast and lost his future daughter-in-law and many close friends in the attack.

Proof of this tolerance, he said, was that many Muslims personally contacted him to express their sorrow after the New Year's bombing.

"I can even say that some Muslims fight more for our rights than we do ourselves," Botros said as he looked up at a wall in the church with photographs of those who died in the bombing.

There was, however, inevitably, a "but" coming as Botros continued his reflections.

"But such turmoil has always existed under the surface here. Kids in some primary schools are actually taught to hate Christians. After this year's revolution such sentiments began to come out more."

Alexandria was once the largest Jewish city in the world, but only a handful of Jews live here today. Whether a similar fate may befall the Copts is a subject that is not much discussed in public but it is at the back of many minds.

"Do we have a Plan B? No," Botros said. "We could live overseas and I have the chance to do that, but I do not see that as a solution. I really love this country and I am not only making a speech."

Religion is such an emotive topic that there has never been a reliable census of how many Muslims and Christians there are in Egypt. Copts claim they number about 15 million and make up about 20 per cent of the population. Many Muslims reckon that the true percentage of Copts is only eight or 10 per cent...

..."If the Islamists gain power it won't be good and not only for us but for all Egyptians," said Father Mina Adel, who leads prayers at al-Qiddissin Church. "This is because some in the Brotherhood and some Salafis do not properly understand the Koran. They want to use religion to abuse people. They oppose freedom.

"When they see a woman uncovered, as Christian woman are, they tell her to cover head when it is none of their business."

Whatever transpired, Adel said that God would protect him. There were also, nevertheless, secular reasons why he was optimistic about the Copts' future.

"Such conservative ideas can still exist in the Egyptian desert," he said. "But we are in an Internet age where we are connected to and part of a global village where information is always available."

"What I think that it will be fragmented poll and that the people in the middle - the large group that is not Islamist or secular - will have control," said Hanou, the businessman and blogger.

"This group is heavily influenced by the Islamists right now, but they could shift. Most of these young people do not want to grow beards or go to the mosque. Their weak point until now is that they are fundamentally religious but they will rebel if somebody tells them how they should live.”

The results of the first round of voting in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, as reported by The Associated Press, December 4, 2011:

Islamists captured more than 60 percent of the vote for party lists in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary elections, according to results released Sunday.

The tallies offer only a partial indication of how the new parliament will look. There are still two more rounds of voting in 18 of the country's 27 provinces over the coming month and runoff elections on Monday and Tuesday to determine almost all of the seats allocated for individuals in the first round. But the grip of the Islamists over the next parliament appears set, particularly considering their popularity in provinces voting in the next rounds.

The High Election Commission said the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party garnered 36.6 percent of the 9.7 million valid ballots cast for party lists. The Nour Party, a more hardline Islamist group, captured 24.4 percent.

The strong Islamist showing worries liberal parties, and even some religious parties, who fear the two groups will work to push a religious agenda. It has also left many of the youthful activists behind the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February feeling that their revolution has been hijacked.

Since Mubarak's ouster, the groups that led the uprising and Islamists have been locked in a fight over the country's new constitution. The new parliament will be tasked, in theory, with selecting a 100-member panel to draft the new constitution. But adding to tensions, the ruling military council that took over from Mubarak has suggested it will choose 80 of those members, and said parliament will have no say in naming a new government...

...The Brotherhood has emerged as the most organized and cohesive political force in these elections. But with no track record of governing, it is not yet clear how they will behave in power. The party has positioned itself as a moderate Islamist party that wants to implement Islamic law without sacrificing personal freedoms, and has said it will not seek an alliance with the more radical Nour party.

The ultraconservative Salafis who dominate the Nour Party are newcomers to the political scene. They had previously frowned upon involvement in politics and shunned elections. They espouse a strict interpretation of Islam similar to that of Saudi Arabia, where the sexes are segregated and women must be veiled and are barred from driving. Its members say laws contradicting religion can't be passed.

Egypt already uses Islamic law, or Shariah, as the basis for legislation. However, laws remain largely secular as Shariah does not cover all aspects of modern life.

If the Muslim Brotherhood chooses not to form an alliance with the Salafis, the liberal Egyptian Bloc - which came in third with 13.4 percent of the votes - could counterbalance hard-line elements...

...The elections, which began Nov. 28, are the first since Mubarak's ouster and the freest and fairest in Egypt's modern history.

Turnout of around 60 percent was the highest in living memory as few participated in the heavily rigged votes under Mubarak.

The ballots are a confusing mix of individual races and party lists, and the Sunday results only reflect the party list performance for less than a third of the 498-seat parliament.

Another liberal list, the Wafd Party, received 7.1 percent, while the moderate Islamist Wasat or Centrist Party took 4.3 percent.

The final shape of the parliament will not be announced before January.

The next step in the complex process, a round of runoffs between more than 100 individual candidates competing in the first round for around 50 seats, is set for Monday and Tuesday.

Not everyone who supported the "Arab Spring" revolution in Egypt is pleased with the way things have gone, if this post from the blog Rantings of a Sandmonkey is any indication.

The latest news from the second day of the third round of voting, as reported by Tom Perry of Reuters on January 4, 2012:

CAIRO, Jan 4 (Reuters) - The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood was edging on Wednesday towards a dominant role in Egypt's first free parliament in decades, but said it would not impose its will over a new constitution and would work with all political rivals on the blueprint.

Egyptians went to the polls for a second day in the final stage of the election for the assembly's lower house, the first free legislative vote since military officers overthrew the monarchy in 1952.

The vote is part of the ruling army council's plan to hand power to civilians before July, ending their turbulent interregnum that began with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February in a popular uprising.

Welcomed then as heroes who helped nudge the unpopular, autocratic leader from office, the generals now face anger over their handling of protests that left 59 dead since mid-November and an economic crisis that is worsening the plight of the poor.

Raids last week on non-government organisations monitoring the vote by police who sought evidence of foreign funding for political parties have incensed rights activists and drawn a rebuke from Egypt's long-time ally the United States.

The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has led after two of the three rounds of voting and the rise of Islamist parties in the poll has prompted Western concern for the future of Egypt's close ties to Washington and peace with Israel.

Founded in 1928, the Brotherhood is Egypt's best organised political force, emerging stronger than others from three decades of autocratic rule under Mubarak. The new parliament will pick a 100-member assembly to write a new constitution.

"The party's winning of the majority in the new parliament does not mean going it alone in writing the constitution without consideration for the rights of other Egyptians, or ignoring the political forces which did not get a majority or failed in the parliamentary elections," said FJP head Mohamed Mursi.

"All political forces and intellectuals in Egypt, regardless of their political and religious allegiances, will take part in writing the constitution," said Mursi, whose comments were published on the Muslim Brotherhood's website on Tuesday.

The more hardline Islamist al-Nour Party has come second in the voting so far. It is a Salafi group promoting a strict interpretation of Islamic law and its success has raised the prospect of a chamber dominated by Islamists.

Some analysts believe, however, that the Muslim Brotherhood could seek to build a coalition with secular groups.

That could ease concerns at home and in the West about the rise of the Islamists in a country whose economy is propped up by tourism.

The staggered lower house election concludes with a run-off vote on Jan. 10 and 11, with final results expected on Jan. 13. Voting for the upper house will be held in January and February.

"MUBARAK HOLD-OVERS"

The election will produce the first Egyptian parliament with popular legitimacy in decades, raising the possibility of friction with the army.

The army has been the focus of the street protests, held by activists who accuse it of seeking to hold on to power and privilege. The generals say they do not want to govern, but some still doubt their intentions.

In an echo of the Mubarak years, four activists were detained on Tuesday for putting up posters critical of the military council, activists and a source in the public prosecutor's office said.

They were detained while hanging posters comparing images of soldiers after the 1973 war with Israel with pictures of troops beating women in Cairo during protests last month, said Amr Ezz, an organiser of the April 6 movement to which the four belonged.

Gamal Eid, a human rights lawyer, said the arrests were part of a trend including raids last week against 17 pro-democracy and human rights groups.

The United States criticised the authorities over the raids, part of what Cairo said was an investigation into foreign funding. The United States said Egypt had failed to resolve the stand-off over the U.S.-backed non-governmental organisations.

"We had been assured by leaders within the Egyptian government that this issue would be resolved ... it is frankly unacceptable to us that that situation has not been returned to normal," a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said.

She said it appeared Egypt's crackdown on pro-democracy NGOs was driven by "Mubarak hold-overs who don't understand how these organisations operate in a democratic society".

July 13, 2013 update: It comes as no surprise to this blogger that Muslim extremists in Egypt are blaming Christians for the recent downfall of the government of President Mohammed Morsi. As reported by Ben Hubbard of The New York Times News Service, July 11, 2013 (updated, July 12, 2013):

The military’s ouster of President Mohammed Morsi has unleashed a new wave of violence by extremist Muslims against Christians whom they blame for having supported the calls to overthrow Morsi, Egypt’s first Islamist elected leader, according to rights activists.

Since Morsi’s ouster July 3, the activists say, a priest has been shot dead in the street, Islamists have painted black X’s on Christian shops to mark them for arson and angry mobs have attacked churches and besieged Christians in their homes. Four Christians were reported slaughtered with knives and machetes in one village last week.

The attacks have hit across the country, in the northern Sinai Peninsula, in a resort town on the Mediterranean coast, in Port Said along the Suez Canal and in isolated villages in upper Egypt...

...Many Christians were alarmed at the victories of Islamists in elections after the 2011 revolution that overthrew Morsi’s autocratic predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. Although Christians by no means represented a majority of the anti-Morsi rallies that preceded Morsi’s downfall, Christians did participate in the campaigns to remove Morsi that so deeply antagonized his supporters.

“They thought Christians played a big role in the protests and in the army’s intervention to topple Morsi, so this is revenge for that,” said Ishaq Ibrahim, who has documented the violence for the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, or EIPR.

Many Islamist leaders blamed Christians and holdovers from the Mubarak era for the mass protests against Morsi that took place on the June 30 anniversary of his swearing-in. Even rank-and-file Islamists maintaining a sit-in in a Cairo suburb calling for Morsi’s return often have spoken spitefully of what they described as Christian collusion.

In some places, Christians were warned not to participate in the anti-Morsi protests. Fliers distributed in the upper Egypt province of Minya, documented by EIPR, warned that “one liter of gas can light up your gold, wood, plumbing, tractor, carpentry shops, buses, cars, houses, churches, schools, agricultural fields and workshops.”

They were signed “people who care for the country.”

After Morsi’s ouster, Islamist mobs in the village of Dagala in that province looted one church, burned a building belonging to another and surrounded Christian homes, shattering their widows with rocks and clubs, EIPR said.

After one Christian man shot at the attackers from his roof, they dragged his wife from the house, beat her up and shot her. She is currently hospitalized, according to EIPR.

“The police came the day after the events, and they didn’t do anything,” Ibrahim said. “People prevented the fire engines from coming in so they couldn’t do anything.”

In the village of Naga Hassan near Luxor, Muslim mobs invaded Christian homes and set them alight while besieging other Christians in their homes. Security forces arrived to evacuate the women but left the men, four of whom were subsequently stabbed and beaten to death, Ibrahim said. One of them, Emile Nessim, was a local organizer for the tamarrod, or “rebellion,” campaign that collected signatures and organized mass protests against Morsi.

Dozens of Christian homes were reported burned in the Naga Hassan attacks, and most of the village’s Christians have fled or are believed to be hiding in the local church.

Seven-year-old girl reported sacrificed in pagan ritual in India

The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: Proverbs 15:8a

And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. Jeremiah 32:25

No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. I Corinthians 10:20 (NIV)

As reported by Agence France-Presse on January 1, 2012:

A seven-year-old Indian girl was murdered in a tribal sacrifice and her liver offered to the gods to improve crop growth, police in the central state of Chhattisgarh said on Sunday.

The body of Lalita Tati was found in October one week after her family reported her missing.

"A seven-year-old girl was sacrificed by two persons superstitiously believing that the act would give a better harvest," Narayan Das, the police chief of Bijapur district, told AFP by telephone.

The two men was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of killing the girl and offering her liver to the gods in a grisly tribal ceremony. Police said the men had confessed to the crime.

The girl was murdered in a jungle district of Chhattisgarh that is a stronghold of rebel Maoists who have tapped into disaffection among local tribal groups...

...Two suspected child sacrifices were reported in Chhattisgarh in 2010, while in the same year the decapitated body of a factory worker was found in a temple in the eastern state of West Bengal.

The victims are often ritually killed by witchdoctors to appease gods, spirits or deities.

75 years ago: The death of J. Gresham Machen

On January 1, 1937, J. Gresham Machen, one of the great scholarly contenders for the Christian faith in the 1920s and 1930s, went to be with the Lord Jesus Christ at the relatively young age of 55. Dr. Machen was Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary from 1914-1929. It was during this period that modernism--the basis of which is the idea that the Bible was mainly of human, rather than divine, origin--became increasingly influential. In 1929 Dr. Machen left Princeton Seminary and founded Westminster Theological Seminary. As modernism increasingly influenced missionary activities of the Northern Presbyterian Church, Dr. Machen founded, in 1933, the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, which he and fellow Bible-believers had a right to do under the rules in place. The NPC leadership, now controlled by modernists, suspended Dr. Machen and seven colleagues--including Carl McIntire--and defrocked Dr. Machen. Francis Schaeffer, in his last book, The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984), commented (pp. 34-35):

Then in the mid 1930s, there occurred an event which I would say marks the turning-point of the century concerning the breakdown of our culture. By 1936 the liberals were so in control of the Northern Presbyterian Church that they were able to defrock Dr. J. Gresham Machen...Machen's defrocking and the resulting division of the Northern Presbyterian Church was front-page news in the secular news media in much of the country...this was rightfully page-one news, for it marked the culmination of the drift of the Protestant churches from 1900-1936. It was this drift which laid the base for the cultural, social, moral, legal, and governmental changes from that time to the present. Without this drift in the denominations, I am convinced that the changes in our society in the last fifty years would have produced very different results from what we have now. When the Reformation churches shifted, the Reformation consensus was under cut. A good case could be made that the news about Machen was the most significant U.S. news in the first half of the twentieth century. It was the culmination of a long trend toward liberalism within the Presbyterian Church and represented the same trend in most other denominations. Even if we were only interested in sociology, this change in the churches and the resulting shift of our culture to a post-Christian consensus is important to understand if we are to grasp what is happening in the United States today. It is interesting to note that there was a span of approximately eighty years from the time when the higher critical methods originated and became widely accepted in Germany to the disintegration of German culture and the rise of totalitarianism under Hitler.

Dr. Machen became the principal figure in the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936. His trial and defrocking had taken a toll on his health, and Mr. Machen took ill and died while visiting Bismarck, North Dakota to fulfill speaking engagements. A number of Dr. Machen's works are still available, including On the Deity of Christ; Christianity and Culture (1912, 1913); The Origin of Paul's Religion (1921); Christianity and Liberalism (1923); What is Faith? (1925); and The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930).

While I disagree with Dr. Machen's Calvinism, I respect him as one of the 20th century's greatest defenders of fundamental Christian doctrine. Those who think that religious liberals are nice people with good intentions should look at the way they treated J. Gresham Machen, whose death so soon after his defrocking does not reflect positively on his inquisitors. It should be kept in mind that not only did Dr. Machen's tormentors differ with him theologically, but they were nowhere near his level in terms of scholarship.

December 30, 2011: A lost day for Samoa and Tokelau

And he changeth the times and the seasons: Daniel 2:21a

And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: Daniel 7:25a

The first passage cited above refers to God, and the second to the Antichrist. I don't believe the item below is a fulfillment of end time prophecy, but it shows how time can be changed, and a whole day on the calendar can be made to disappear, just by passing a law. As reported by Keni Lesa of The Associated Press on December 30, 2011:

APIA, Samoa (AP) — Sirens wailed and fireworks exploded in the skies over Samoa as the tiny South Pacific nation jumped forward in time, crossing westward over the international date line and effectively erasing Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, from the country's calendar.

Samoans who had gathered around the main clock tower in the capital Apia cheered and clapped as the clock struck midnight on Thursday, Dec. 29, instantly transporting the country 24 hours ahead to Saturday, Dec. 31. The switch, also being observed by neighboring Tokelau, is meant to align the islands' time with key trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

The time jump means that Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 in the three-atoll United Nations dependency of Tokelau, will now be the first in the world to ring in the new year, rather than the last.

The moment was greeted with celebrations across Samoa. Fireworks danced across the sky and police, ambulance and fire truck sirens wailed throughout Apia to signal the change. Drivers circled the clock tower blaring their horns, and prayer services were held across the country.

The date line dance comes 119 years after a group of U.S. traders persuaded local Samoan authorities to align their islands' time with nearby U.S.-controlled American Samoa and the U.S. to assist their trading with California.

But the time zone has proved problematic in recent years, putting Samoa and Tokelau nearly a full day behind neighboring Australia and New Zealand, increasingly important trading partners.

In June, the Samoan government passed a law to move Samoa west of the international date line, which separates one calendar day from the next and runs roughly north-to-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Under a government decree, all those scheduled to work on the nonexistent Friday will be given full pay for the missed day of labor.

In addition to the economic advantages, the time jump is also expected to make the everyday rituals of family life a little more pleasant. Like many small Pacific island states, more of Samoa's people live permanently in other countries than on its islands; Around 180,000 Samoans live in New Zealand and 15,000 in Australia. The date line switch means that families split between the island nation and Australia or New Zealand can now celebrate important events such as birthdays at the same time.

"We've got to remember that over 90 percent of our people emigrate to New Zealand and Australia. That's why it is absolutely vital to make this change," Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sailele Malielegaoi told The Associated Press just hours before the country catapulted into the future.

Officials have begun work on changing maps, charts and atlases to reflect Samoa's new date line position. A postage stamp, featuring the phrase "into the future," has also been created to mark the switch.

Although generally embraced by most Samoans, the date change wasn't expected to happen without a few little glitches. Digicel, the most popular mobile phone service provider in Samoa, said the company would have to update its systems immediately after the time jump, leaving phone service dead for about 15 minutes.

"The interruption will only take a few minutes so we can adjust our system," CEO Pepe Fiaailetoa Fruean said. "So I would like to inform all of our customers to have alternative communication means available in case of an emergency."

Being a day behind the rest of the Asia-Pacific region has meant that when it's dawn Sunday in Samoa, it's already dawn Monday in adjacent Tonga and nearly dawn Monday in nearby New Zealand, Australia and increasingly prominent east Asian trade partners such as China.

The original shift to the east side of the line was made in 1892, when Samoa celebrated July 4 twice, giving a nod to Independence Day in the U.S.

The date line drawn by mapmakers is not mandated by any international body. By tradition, it runs roughly through the 180-degree line of longitude, but it zigzags to accommodate the choices of Pacific nations on how to align their calendars.

This item reminded me of a now-departed Canadian time zone called Yukon Standard Time. According to Wikipedia, Yukon Standard Time, which included Canada's Yukon Territory and a small area around Yakutat, Alaska, was nine hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (Coordinated Universal Time), one hour behind Pacific Standard Time. Yukon officially switched to Pacific Time in 1975. In 1983, Alaska switched from four time zones to two, and the Yukon Standard Time Zone officially became known as the Alaska Standard Time Zone. Most of Alaska was in that time zone, with the Aleutian Islands remaining in the Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time Zone, known until 1983 as the Alaska-Hawaii Standard Time Zone.

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. I Thessalonians 5:1

1981 Israeli bombing of Iraqi nuclear reactor caught the U.S. by surprise

On June 7, 1981, Israeli planes bombed a French-made nuclear reactor near Baghdad, killing one French technician. The Israeli government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin believed the $275-million reactor was being used to build bombs for the purpose of attacking Israel, and was near completion. The action was the first air strike against a nuclear plant.

The United States and Arab governments condemned the Israeli raid on June 8, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced on June 9 that Congress would be notified that Israel may have violated its arms agreements with the U.S. by using American-made planes in the attack. Also on June 9, the U.S.S.R., predictably, accused the U.S.A., because she had armed the Israelis, of being an accomplice in the attack. On June 10, the U.S. suspended the shipment of four F-16 fighter bombers to Israel because of Israel's possible violation of her arms agreements.

In the United Nations, Great Britain and France joined Arab and Third World governments on June 15 in censuring Israel for the attack. Britain agreed with a French demand that Israel pay reparations to Iraq, but both Britain and France refused to support an arms embargo against Israel. On June 16, U.S. President Reagan said that it seemed that Israel had violated her arms agreement with the U.S.A., but he stated his confidence that the Israelis might have sincerely believed that their action was defensive. On June 19, the UN Security Council strongly condemned the raid and urged Israel to open her nuclear plants to international inspection, but did not ask for an arms embargo. On June 21, Israel rejected the UN Security Council's condemnation.

On June 24, former Israeli Defense and Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan said that his country had the capacity to produce nuclear weapons and that if the Arabs decided to manufacture them, that Israel could do the same in a short time.

30 years later, files released by the U.S. National Archives show that the Israeli raid caught the United States by surprise. As reported by Duncan Gardham in the London Daily Telegraph on December 30, 2011:

The United States had no warning of the attack on the Osirak reactor ordered by Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister, in June 1981 amid fears that Saddam Hussein was trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Files released by the National Archives show that Britain's ambassador to Washington, Sir Nicholas Henderson, was with US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger as the news came in.

"Weinberger says that he thinks Begin must have taken leave of his senses. He is much disturbed by the Israeli reaction and possible consequences," Sir Nicholas cabled London.

Britain's ambassador in Baghdad, Sir Stephen Egerton, disclosed that the Iraqis had been just as surprised when the Israeli F15 fighters appeared in their skies.

"The diplomatic corps had a ringside view of the belated ack-ack and missile reactions to the raid when we were gathered for the Italian national day reception on the Bund [waterside]," he wrote.

"The raiders had gone but the fireworks were spectacular."

Scottish college principal and his wife claim they were sacked for being white Christians

So far, these are just allegations, but stay tuned for further developments. As reported by Murray Wardrop of the London Daily Telegraph on December 30, 2011:

A college which aims to promote multiculturalism has been thrust into a race row amid allegations that its principal and his wife were sacked for being white Christians.

Professor Malory Nye, 47, claims he was dismissed from his job at the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education in Dundee, Scotland, because its hierarchy viewed his race and religion as a threat to its Muslim values.

His wife Isabel Campbell-Nye, 42, alleges she was also forced out of her position as head of the college’s English language centre because she brought in too many students who were not Muslims or Arabs.

The independent college, sponsored by the Dubai royal family, advertises itself as a research-led institution “that promotes a greater understanding of different religions and cultures in a multicultural context, for the benefit of the wider community”.

However, the couple allege that its claims of multiculturalism were a charade and that Prof Nye was dismissed to make way for a Muslim replacement.

They are taking the college to an employment tribunal claiming racial and religious discrimination, and unfair dismissal.

Mrs Campbell-Nye is also claiming sex discrimination on the grounds that she was allegedly suspended and later dismissed because she is married to Prof Nye.

Prof Nye and his wife began working at the college eight and four years ago respectively and were so happy there that they chose to marry on the campus last year.

However, they believe they fell out of favour with leaders at the college, whose patron is Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the Deputy Ruler of Dubai, over fears they were pushing it in a more cosmopolitan direction.

They allege that Abubaker Abubaker, the director of operations, and Mirza al-Sayegh, chairman of its board of directors and private secretary to the Sheikh, decided to force them out because they were British, white and Christian.

Prof Nye said: “It is clear to me that there is collusion between these two individuals that I should be removed from my position on the basis that I am not an Arab and not a Muslim and that the person who has the role of principal should be Arab and/or Muslim.

“Multiculturalism and respect for cultural and religious differences are, I had thought, core values of the college.

“However, I believe that such inclusive multiculturalism no longer fits the particular type of multicultural vision of certain managers and the chairman, that is accepting of different cultures, so long as the majority of students are Muslims and/or Arabs and the ethos is distinctly Islamic.

“My face and lack of Muslim faith no longer fit.”

He said his suspension also came just days after he changed the college’s name from its former title: Al-Maktoum Institute for Arabic and Islamic studies.

The couple, from Perth, were frogmarched off the college grounds in June and suspended and have not been allowed to return since.

They claim they were given no reason for their suspensions and were dismissed in November despite no evidence of any wrongdoing.

The couple have also lodged grievances against the Labour peer Lord Elder, Chancellor of the college and a close friend of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for his handling of what they describe as a "sham" disciplinary process.

Mrs Campbell-Nye claims Mr Abubaker also sought to remove her because she had attracted too many non-Muslim, European and Asian students to study English at the college.

“Some are from Arab and other Muslim backgrounds. However, a substantial number are from other parts of the world and other cultures.

“I believe Mr Abubaker does not feel happy with us recruiting students from these backgrounds as it does not fit the particular multicultural vision he has for English language.

“The only times Mr Abubaker has encouraged me to bring in students to English language are when they are Arabs or Muslims.

“I believe that Mr Abubaker’s discrimination against me, because I am not Muslim, I am not Arab, and I am also a woman – and because I have brought a number of non Muslim/non-Arab students to the college – is a significant reason for my suspension.”

Despite a waiting list to get on its English language courses, the college abruptly closed the department last month, leaving its two remaining tutors redundant at Christmas.

The independent college, which operates as a charity in partnership with the University of Aberdeen, advertises in its prospectus that “multiculturalism is at the centre of our vision and structure”.

“Our multicultural ethos is visibly translated and implemented in our day-to-day operation. Our staff and students come from diverse national, cultural and religious backgrounds including Muslims and non-Muslims,” it says.

A spokesman for the college said: “We can confirm that we have been notified that Employment Tribunal proceedings have been raised in the name of Professor Malory Nye and his wife, Isabel Campbell-Nye.

"The College, an independent, not-for-profit charity, places diversity, religious pluralism and multiculturalism firmly at the core of its Higher Education programmes – and its day-to-day activities," the spokesman said.

“The Al-Maktoum College will vigorously defend its reputation as a centre of excellence within the higher education sector and the good name it has won over the last ten years here in Dundee, nationally and internationally.

“Professor Nye was dismissed from his post as Principal at the College following a period of suspension on full pay and an inquiry conducted by the College Chancellor.

“Contingency plans were put in place to ensure the continued smooth running of the College.

“We are in consultation with our team of legal advisers and, as a result, we are not in a position to discuss the matter further at this stage.”

"Peace on Earth?" Not at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:10-14

As reported by Mark Weiss of the London Daily Telegraph on December 28, 2011:

The annual Christmas cleanup at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity turned into a mass brawl on Wednesday as rival clergy from the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations attacked each other with broom sticks.

Club- wielding Palestinian police stormed into the church, the traditional birthplace of Christ, to break up the fist fight which involved about 100 priests and monks.

The 6th Century holy site is jointly administered by the Latin, Orthodox and Armenian churches, with each fiercely guarding their turf against possible encroachment from the rival sects.

Bethlehem police Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled al-Tamimi said order was quickly restored and such scuffles between the rival clergy occur every year. "No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God," he explained.

Every year the different denominations co-operate in the annual Christmas cleaning operation which occurs between the Latin Christmas and early January, when the Orthodox sects celebrate Christmas.

Tension and scuffles between rival clergy are also common at Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is also jointly administered by the Latin, Orthodox and Armenian churches.

The Palestinian Authority in Bethlehem, and Israel, which controls Jerusalem's Old City, adopted the delicate status quo in operation since the British mandate, under which no changes, however minor, can be made without the approval of all three denominations.

The result has been that the Church of the Nativity has fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair.

Last month, after years of arguments, the sects finally reached agreement to replace the church's leaking roof. The renovations, planned for next year, will mark the first major repairs in 150 years.

Blood Foundation's religious tourism trivializes religious differences

Let's go Sufi now,
Everybody's learnin' how,
Come on and safari with me...
(to the tune of Surfin' Safari--with apologies to the Beach Boys)

According to secular journalist Gwynne Dyer's column of July 4, 2011:

Gandhi, born a Hindu, once said: “I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew.” Most people will never achieve such enlightenment (or spout such pious tripe, if you are of a less reverent turn of mind). But such thinking certainly creates an opening for innovative programmes like “Muslim for a Month.”

No, really. There is an organisation that invites people of other religions or none to come to Istanbul and live as Muslims for a month. Well, not a month, exactly: the 9-day “Explorations” programme costs $900 and the 21-day “Ruminations” programme costs $1890.

“We like to think that “Muslim for a Month” facilitates more understanding of a religion which gets a lot of bad press,” explained Ben Bowler, who lives in Thailand and runs similar “religious immersion tours” in Buddhism for the same organisation. “There’s a huge difference in the public perception of Buddhism, for example, and Islam – Islam is thorny, while Buddhism is warm and fuzzy.”

People who think Buddhism is warm and fuzzy would probably benefit from Bowler’s “Monk for a Month” programme in Thailand. People who think that Islam is a religion of hatred and terrorism would likewise benefit from the “Muslim for a Month” programme. Indeed, if all that’s going on here is a simple download of information and perspective, you could argue that every religion should be doing it.

Much of the human race lives in places where two or more major religions co-exist – Buddhists and Muslims in Thailand; Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in India; Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews in South Africa. Not to mention countries where up to half the population are non-believers (like Britain and Korea). A crash course in your neighbours’ religious beliefs ought to be part of the school curriculum. In some places, it already is.

But there is still something disturbing about the very idea of religious tourism. Immersing yourself in the prayers and rituals of a religion EVEN THOUGH YOU THINK ITS GOD IS FALSE smacks of condescension at best, blasphemy at worst. And although a sense of politeness prevents most people from saying it loudly in public, religious people generally believe that the gods of all religions but their own are indeed false.

Non-believers go even further. As Richard Dawkins, the world’s leading advocate of atheism, once put it: “We are all atheists about most of the gods that people have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Fine. That’s a perfectly respectable position to hold. But if that’s what you think, then pretending to pray to Allah as a “cultural experience” is downright disrespectful.

The people who are organising “Muslim for a Month” have the best of intentions. The Blood Foundation is a Thailand-based enterprise whose goal is “to promote the ideal of the sister/brotherhood of all humanity. We operate cultural exchange programs that build bridges of understanding between diverse peoples through the means of shared, authentic experience.”

According to the Blood Foundation, the “Muslim for a Month” programme aims “to foster a spirit of good will and increased mutual understanding between Muslims and the west. It is not the purpose of the program to bring converts to the Islamic faith but rather to strive towards a greater sense of unity among people.”

I believe that that is truly their goal. I also very much like the Sufi tradition of Islam, one of the most attractive forms of religious expression that I have ever encountered, and it is the Sufis who are providing the facilities and the teachers for the “Muslim for a Month” programme in Turkey. But it still doesn’t feel right.

Here’s the thing. Almost all of the “modern” religions that have arisen in the past 2,500 years (and Judaism, which is much older) have sacred texts that are held by the believers to be divinely revealed truth. They are not negotiable or mutually compatible, like the old pagan beliefs were. To believe in any of the modern gods requires the faithful to reject all the others as false.

If Muslim beliefs are right, then Christian beliefs are wrong, and vice versa. If the Sikhs are right, then the Baha’i are wrong, and vice versa. If the Buddhists are right, then the Jews are wrong, and so on ad nauseam.

Why stop there? If the Mormons are right, then all the other Christians are horribly, catastrophically wrong. If any of the other Christian sects (or any of the non-Christian faiths) is right, then Mormon beliefs are downright ridiculous. If the Shia are right, then the Sunnis are wrong, and vice versa. So in a world where something like 90 percent of the population is still religious (though much less in the developed countries), what is one to do?

We minimise conflict by simply not talking about the huge, irreconcilable differences in our religious convictions. (The non-religious play the same game: they rarely challenge the beliefs of the believers either.) It’s not an attractive behaviour, and it doesn’t always avert conflict, but most of the time it works. On most of the planet, we are no longer at each other’s throats about religion.

The world does not need “Muslim (or Sikh, or Christian) for a Month.” Let sleeping dogs lie.

Here's what the Blood Foundation says about itself:

About Blood Foundation

Blood Foundation is a small NGO based in northern Thailand near the Thai-Burma border. We are a group of volunteers from different nations committed to serving the various people of this region through a series of education, health and income-generation projects...

What we Believe

We believe in a universal spiritual heritage shared by all people which we hold to be the foundation of the human family. As with any family this carries an obligation and duty of care towards the less fortunate members. We believe there is much of value in all our great spiritual and philosophic traditions and we encourage the ongoing search for the Universal in human experience. We celebrate the diversity of our cultures and marvel at the absolute uniqueness of each individual and still we see that the greater truth is that which unites us, - our common humanity, the mystery of our origin, the search for meaning and the love of family.

What we Advocate

We advocate that alongside the globalisation of markets, economies and world culture we must strive for the globalisation of justice, fairness and ideals based on the expansion of our philosophic frameworks and the enlargement of our religious perspectives. While we are bound to each other through shared biology, economics and environment we also share a simple human desire for peace, prosperity and purpose. Blood Foundation advocates for greater expression of this unity as we join with the people of good faith everywhere in calling for respect of human dignity, freedom from oppression and justice for the poor. We proclaim that as human beings we are in fact spiritually related to one another and so promote the high ethical ideals that come with being members of a common family. We are inclined to look after our own immediate family because we place such a high value on blood relations, - the idea is to make the circle bigger. It's a high ideal but we believe it's worth striving for and we invite you to join with us in making it real.

What we Do

Currently working on the Thai-Burmese border in northern Thailand, we have a number of education and income-generation projects directly benefiting Burmese refugees, hill tribes and Thai people. These humanitarian efforts are supported by commercial projects that remain in line with our overall philosophy such as Monk for a Month and Flow.

From the Monk for a Month home page:

Monk for a Month offers you an authentic Thai Buddhist
experience and a journey of a lifetime.

Live at the temple
Study with the monks
Follow the ancient precepts
Practice meditation and chanting

Men and women are invited to formally receive the eight precepts and for men staying two weeks or longer there is the chance to be ordained as a novice monk at the discretion of your preceptor.

And from the Muslim for a Month home page:

Muslim for a Month is a Blood Foundation cultural exchange program run in partnership with Islamic scholars and peace activists in Istanbul Turkey.

Blood Foundation is a social enterprise and NGO dedicated to promoting positive intercultural experiences.

We operate the successful Monk for a Month temple stay program in northern Thailand’s Fang Valley, offering guests an immersion experience into Buddhism and Thai culture as well as a unique opportunity for personal spiritual progression.

In a similar vein the Muslim for a Month program offers an inner experience of the Islamic faith with the focus being on the Sufi path and the universal spiritual teachings of Mevlana Rumi.

PROGRAMS
The word ‘month’ in the name of these programs is used with poetic license – typical length of stay is 10 days

We are launching Muslim for a Month by offering the 10 day program and the ability for group bookings. The 10 day program consists of a broad introduction to Islam, Sufism, Rumi, and Turkish culture and a deep exploration of Sufi mysticism and a more thorough immersion into the life and works of Rumi.

I generally agree with Mr. Dyer's position, although I take a less benign view of the Blood Foundation's sincerity, especially with the prices they charge for their programs. The Blood Foundation programs have the effect of trivializing religious beliefs, practices--and differences. Adopting religious beliefs and practices is not a matter of taking on the trappings for the duration of a workshop. When I was drawn to trust in Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord, I didn't do so "for a month," but for the rest of my life and into eternity.

As for the Blood Foundation's beliefs in "a universal spiritual heritage shared by all people" and "that as human beings we are in fact spiritually related to one another," the only such commonality taught in the Bible is a unity in sin, the need for a saviour, and God's provision of salvation through the shedding of the blood of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Romans 3:23

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. John 1:29

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Acts 4:12

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. Acts 17:29-31
Let's pray that those involved with the Blood Foundation will come to know the salvation that comes only through the blood of the Lamb.

I expect the Blood Foundation's programs to become increasingly popular and to expand to embrace other religions. The emphases on mysticism and experience are the very sort of thing to appeal to the Emerging Church crowd. It will come as no surprise to this blogger to see promotion of the Blood Foundation programs from those involved with Emerging "Christianity."

Rare 2nd century coins shed light on Jewish rebellion against Roman rule

Another old item about an old event--as reported by Associated Press on April 18, 2003:

JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists excavating caves near the Dead Sea have found nine rare silver coins believed to date back to a failed Jewish rebellion against the Romans in the second century.

The coins add another layer to the story of the families Shimon Bar Kochba led into hiding in the caves of the Judean Desert--what turned out to be the end of the second Jewish uprising against the Romans, which resulted in their exile. Archaeological finds relating to the three-year rebellion are rare.

About 2,000 coins from the rebellion are known to exist, and this is only the second time archaeologists have found such coins on a dig, said Hanan Eshel, who led the digs and is the head of the Jewish Studies and Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University.

Of particular rarity is the largest Jewish coin ever issued, a half-ounce silver coin known as the Petra Drachma.

One side of the coin shows Jerusalem's second Jewish temple, destroyed by the Romans during the first Jewish rebellion in the year 70. The other side shows another important Jewish symbol--the image of four plants, known as the four species, used during ceremonies for the festival of Sukkot.

"Bar Kochba never minted his own coins, so what we have here is a Roman coin with the temple and the four species stamped over the portrait of the Roman emperor," Eshel said.

Historical records tell little about the rebellion or its leader.

"Neither the Jews or the Romans considered the rebellion to be a success, so very little was written about it," Eshel said. "That is why archaeological finds are so important."

Archeologists from Bar Ilan and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Center for Cave Research have been investigating caves near the Ein Gedi oasis on the shore of the Dead Sea.

With the collapse of the rebellion that broke out in the year 132, many Jews fled to the caves in the hope of avoiding the advancing Roman legions.

The nine coins were found in an otherwise empty cave, hidden under a large rock.

"It appears the people first hid their money before fleeing to caves farther in," Eshel said, adding that the money was a significant enough sum to buy a house but was abandoned because it was useless in the barren desert.

The coins will be displayed to the public at Jerusalem's Israel Museum.

Rare find in Israeli caves confirms the Jews' return from exile in Babylon

Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,
Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem. Ezra 1:1-3 (also II Chronicles 36:22-23)

An old item about some old items--as reported by Gavin Rabinowitz of Associated Press on February 20, 2004:

JERUSALEM - Israeli archaeologists excavating caves near the Dead Sea discovered jewelry, a makeup kit and a small mirror - 2,500-year-old fashion accessories for women.

The trove apparently belonged to Jews who returned from exile in Babylon in the 6th century B.C., said Tsvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

"This find is very rare. Both for the richness of the find and for that period, it is almost unheard of," Tsuk said on Friday.

Using metal detectors, archeologists found the treasures under a stone-like accumulation of sediment thrown up by a nearby spring. They included a necklace made of 130 beads of semiprecious stones and gold; a scarab; an agate medallion of Babylonian origin; and a silver pendant with an engraved crescent moon and pomegranates.

What appears to be a makeup kit contained an alabaster bowl for powders, a stick to apply the cosmetics and a bronze mirror.

They also found a pagan stamp showing a Babylonian priest bowing to the moon.

"These finds confirm the (biblical) accounts of Jews returning from exile in Babylon," Tsuk said.

When the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Kingdom of Judah in 597 B.C., he sent many Jews into exile in Babylon. These Jews and their descendants were later allowed to return by the Persian monarch Cyrus in 538 B.C.

Tsuk said the find shows that there was a wealthy and flourishing community of returnees living in the area. "These are not the belongings of a simple person," he said.

The archaeologists were part of a joint team from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. They have been excavating caves near the Dead Sea for the last three years.