Anti-Christian Persecution / Perseguição Anti-Cristã (8) : Argentina Indymedia (( i ))

PERSEGUIÇÃO ANTI-CRISTÃ NOS EUA E NO MUNDO

Arquivo completo compactado [dossie.zip]: http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/textos/dossie.zip - em http://www.olavodecarvalho.org

Arquivo completo (RTF) 1.7 M: http://argentina.indymedia.org/uploads/2006/01/dossie-perseguicao-anti-crista.rtf

Continuação:

Christians charged for revealing crackdown
China says they gave 'intelligence to overseas organizations'
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37571
Posted: March 13, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Three Christians will appear in a Chinese court Monday for revealing details of China's crackdown on unsanctioned churches.
Liu Fenngang, Xu Yonghai and Zhang Shengqi have been charged with "providing intelligence to overseas organizations" and will faced charges in in the Zhejiang provincial capital of Hangzhou, reported Voice of the Martyrs
Police detained Liu in October while he was researching a crackdown on Christian groups in Hangzhou's Xiaoshan district.
Xu and Zhang were active members of Liu's house church, said VOM. Authorities detained Xu, a psychiatrist, in Beijing last November. Zhang, an Internet writer, was arrested in Jilin province the same month.
The Hangzhou court only recently gave the men official notification of the charges. VOM sources said a verdict likely will be announced days, or possibly weeks, after the hearing.
"The world is watching," said VOM spokesman Todd Nettleton. "Will these Christian men be given a fair and open trial? Is there any justice in China for those who refuse to register their religious activities with the government? These men revealed no state secrets. Their only crime is telling the world how China's communist government treats Christians."
A report last month by the evangelical magazine Christianity Today said more than 50 Chinese Christians, including three prominent Protestant leaders, have been arrested in a new crackdown that followed the release of a video and book in the United States documenting the massive growth of the unregistered, or "underground" church.
China has more than 15 million Christians in government-sanctioned churches but as many as 80 million in unregistered congregations branded by the communist regime as "illegal cults," though estimates vary widely.
In January, police arrested three prominent Protestant leaders from Henan province, Qiao Chunling, 41, Deborah Xu Yongling, 58, and Zeng Guangbo, 35. Guangbo escaped two days after his arrest and remains in hiding, CT said.
The Chinese government considers all Protestant churches outside the official government-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement to be subversive. The official churches are restricted, to varying degrees around the country, in their doctrine and practice. Catholics also are restricted to a government-controlled church, which is not allowed to recognize the authority of the pope.
As WorldNetDaily reported, a video recently was smuggled out of China documenting the destruction of an unregistered church in Zhejiang Province, according to VOM.
In November, Chinese officials closed 125 places of worship, affected 3,000 Christians
Catholic school rejects Christian group

Students consider faith-based leadership requirement 'discriminatory'
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37524
Posted: March 11, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A private Catholic law school's Student Bar Association has rejected two Christian groups on campus because it considers a requirement that leadership be Christian "discriminatory."
The Spokane, Wash., Jesuit school's SBA won't recognize the local chapter of the Christian Legal Society and last fall it also rejected the Christian Pro-Life Caucus, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, a group promoting religious liberty on campuses.
FIRE says Gonzaga University's president, the Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, has not intervened on behalf of either group despite the law school's promise to be a "welcoming environment for students of all religious backgrounds or secular moral traditions."
"Gonzaga owes its very existence to the constitutionally guaranteed right to organize around its religious identity, but it is allowing the SBA to deny these same fundamental rights to its students," said Greg Lukianoff, FIRE's director of legal and public advocacy.
Christian Legal Society leaders said the university's vice president for student affairs, Sue Weitz, assured the group in an e-mail message it had "university recognition." But the group argues this is not the same as SBA recognition, which would have conferred a set of important benefits, including university funding.
Even the one benefit conferred by "university recognition" was lost in February, according to CLS leaders, when the group's SBA account was closed.
The CLS said it was informed the SBA no longer would manage the funds of "unrecognized" clubs.
The Christian Pro-Life Law Caucus had similar difficulties last fall, said FIRE, when SBA leaders ruled the Christian leadership requirement was improperly "discriminatory."
That determination was made despite the advice of the law school's dean, Daniel Morrissey, professor David DeWolf and university counsel Mike Casey, who determined the requirement was permissible.
In a letter last November, FIRE asked Spitzer to overrule the SBA's decision.
"The great irony here is that by denying the caucus the right to be led by Christians, the SBA is engaging in not preventing religious discrimination," FIRE said. "The school of law's SBA both shows contempt for basic freedoms any public university would have to recognize under the Constitution of the United States and exhibits fundamental intolerance towards Catholic doctrine itself."
Gonzaga issued a statement claiming "the administration is not willing to force the SBA to restrict the promise of participation to all students in SBA-sponsored activities."
That policy differs from the leadership requirements of other Catholic schools, such as Boston College and Notre Dame, which have officially recognized CLS chapters.
"If the SBA were truly opposed to discrimination, it would welcome a wide variety of religious and political groups and let students choose which ones to be part of," said FIRE's Lukianoff. "If students find no groups that suit them, they should be free to start their own organizations without being subject to intrusive SBA interference with their beliefs."
FIRE said last October it convinced the university to reverse a decision to censor a student flier as "hate speech" because it contained the word "hate."
The said such misunderstandings of religious liberty are commonly held by students and officials on campuses across the nation, citing its Religious Liberty on Campus Survey.

A cover-up of biblical proportions
Judge puts cloth over plaque of Ten Commandments during murder trial
Posted: March 11, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37525
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A copy of the Ten Commandments hanging in a North Carolina courtroom has been covered up after the attorneys for an admitted killer on trial claimed the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," might sway jurors against their client.
Andre Edwards is on trial for killing a young mother, Ginger Hayes, and has admitted to the crime, reported WTVD-TV in Durham, N.C. His lawyers convinced Judge Clinton Sumner to put a beige cloth over a plaque of the Decalogue that hangs in the courtroom. According to the report, the attorneys argued the prohibition against killing might prejudice the jurors toward giving Edwards the death penalty.
Since the judge's decision, hundreds of people have protested the action.
"To me, it's offensive," Charles Dudley, pastor of Nashville Church of God, told the station. "To me, it is as if saying that what God set down no longer stands."
Edwards allegedly raped and murdered Hayes before leaving her infant son to die in scorching 90-degree heat, WTVD reported.
Linda Hart is collecting hundreds of signatures on a petition against the judge's decision.
"Why should we give up our rights for him to have all the rights? Why should that young girl that got killed her rights, nobody thinks about her. She's not here to speak for herself," Hart said.
Besides circulating the petition, which will be delivered to the judge, Christians have planned to stage a protest outside the courthouse in Nash County where the trial is taking place.

Catholic professor punished for views
College removes man from classes after he expresses religious beliefs
Posted: February 5, 2004
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36964
A college professor in Ohio has been punished for refusing to hide his religious identity from his students.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, officials from Lakeland Community College removed Dr. James Tuttle from his philosophy classes and threatened him with dismissal because he made statements on his syllabi and in class that disclosed his traditional Catholic religious faith and how that shaped his personal philosophy.
"Asking a philosophy professor to divorce his deepest philosophic views from his teaching is both outrageous and absurd," said Greg Lukianoff, director of legal and public advocacy for FIRE. "To say that a philosophy professor cannot discuss religious ideas is to render him incapable of meaningful discussion of some of the greatest minds in the history of his field. Feminists are not forced to veil their feminism, and Catholic philosophers should be free to be Catholic philosophers."
FIRE says last March, Tuttle was the target of a student complaint that contended he mentioned his Catholic beliefs too often. The student suggested the professor undergo "counseling for tolerance."
In an effort to address this issue, Tuttle added "disclaimers" to the syllabi of two of his classes saying that the professor was "a committed Catholic Christian philosopher and theologian," thereby hoping to inform students in advance about his perspective. The statement also encouraged any students who felt uncomfortable with Tuttle's views or methods to feel free to talk to him outside of class.
On April 21, the college's Dean James L. Brown wrote a letter to Tuttle, saying he was "more bothered by [Tuttle's] disclaimer than by anything I read in [the student]'s complaint." Brown suggested Tuttle "would be happier in a sectarian classroom."
Besides reducing Tuttle's class load, Brown subjected him to classroom monitoring by a fellow professor.
In December, FIRE says, Tuttle was given the last pick of classes for the upcoming semester with a selection of courses that the group says administrators knew he did not wish to teach.
FIRE, a nonprofit educational foundation, has gone to bat for Tuttle by contacting Morris W. Beverage, the college's president, on his behalf. The organization now is asking supporters to contact the college to express their views on the treatment of the professor.

Teacher told: Ditch the Star of David
Officials say small piece of jewelry could provoke Muslim students
Posted: February 6, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A teacher in Norway has been told to stop wearing the Star of David he normally hangs around his neck because it might provoke the many Muslim students at the school where he works.
According to a report in the Aftenposten newspaper of Oslo, officials from the Kristiansand Adult Education Center, a government institution, told Inge Telhaug he could no longer wear the 0.6-inch-wide piece of jewelry.
"I can't accept this. It is a small star, 16 millimeters, that I have around my neck, usually under a T-shirt. I see it as my right to wear it," Telhaug told Norwegian Broadcasting.
Although Telhaug is not Jewish, he said he sees the Star of David as "the oldest religious symbol we have in our culture, because without Judaism there would be no Christianity."
Telhaugh, who teaches immigrants Norwegian language and culture, said the restriction violates his free-speech rights.
Kjell Gislefoss, principal of the school, was especially concerned about the symbol offending Palestinian immigrants at the school.
"The Star of David would be a symbol for one side in what is perhaps the world's most inflamed conflict at the moment. Many have a traumatic past that they have escaped and then we feel that if they are going to learn Norwegian then they can't sit and at the same time be reminded of the things they have traveled from," Gislefoss said, according to the Aftenposten report.
Telhaugh has hired an attorney to help him fight the restriction.
The head of the Education Association in Kristiansand, Heidi Hauge Uldal, called the school's decision "unacceptable," saying her group did not want to go the way of France and forbid all religious symbols in schools.

Suspension for 'anti-gay' opinion upheld
Teacher's letters-to-editor 'poisoned' classroom environment
Posted: February 5, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36939
A teacher suspended because he wrote published letters critical of homosexual behavior was properly punished with a one-month suspension, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Chris Kempling of Quesnel, British Columbia, was found guilty of unbecoming conduct by the B.C. College of Teachers. The panel asserted his letters to the editor, a research paper and other correspondence contained "discriminatory and derogatory statements against homosexuals."
Teacher Chris Kempling (Vancouver Sun)
Though none of the statements in question were made in class, the panel said the writings indicated the veteran teacher's attitude could poison the class environment.
One Kempling letter cited by the panel said: "Gay people are seriously at risk, not because of heterosexual attitudes but because of their sexual behaviour, and I challenge the gay community to show some real evidence that they are trying to protect their own community members by making attempts to promote monogamous, long-lasting relationships to combat sexual addictions."
Justice Ronald Holmes of the B.C. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday Kempling's comments were discriminatory and could reasonably cause disruption to the school system.
In a letter to supporters yesterday, Kempling said, "It is a black day for religious freedom in Canada."
According to Kempling, Holmes implied homosexual students would be unwilling to speak to him in his role as a school counselor, asserting the published comments reduced his credibility as a teacher in the eyes of students and the public.
"There was no evidence presented that this was true," Kempling said. "No evidence of a disrupted school environment was found. There were no complaints from students, parents or my supervisors."
He noted all of his former administrators wrote letters stating his public comments had no discernible impact on the operation of the school.
According to its rules, the teacher's panel does not need to find direct evidence of a poisoned school environment to determine that a member is guilty of conduct unbecoming. The panel said, "It is sufficient that an inference can be drawn as to the reasonable and probable consequences of the discriminatory comments of a teacher."
The teachers said they were disturbed by Kempling's statements that homosexual relationships are unstable, 'gay' sex poses health risks and many religions consider homosexuality immoral.
In his letter yesterday, Kempling pointed out three former students interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at the University of British Columbia said they were not even aware that there was a controversy at that time.
He insists Justice Holmes ignored evidence that homosexual students received impartial service from him.
"In fact, a prominent homosexual interviewed by college investigators offered no opinion that what I had written publicly was upsetting to homosexual people," Kempling said.
He argued that the fact he was appointed to be chair of the Community Health Council by the Minister of Health during this period showed his credibility as a teacher and community leader were not impaired.
The post is the highest non-elected appointment in his city, with responsibility for over 500 employees and a $22 million budget.
Kempling said the ruling "means that teachers who happen to be Christians or who belong to other religions proscribing homosexuality may not comment publicly on this issue."
"It means that disciplinary bodies do not need to provide any evidence of impairment or harm at a professional's workplace if they exercise their right to free speech in their off-the-job capacity," he said. "Inference of harm is sufficient to remove a teacher from his job. It is a serious blow to freedom of speech and freedom of religion."
Kempling said he will appeal the decision to the B.C. Court of Appeal, although the four-year battle has been tough on him and his family.
"But I am determined to see this through," he said. "I am a Christian first and a teacher second, and I will not compromise my faith or keep silent about what I believe."
Kempling appealed to the B.C. Supreme Court on the grounds that the decision violates Canadian Charter of Rights protections of freedom of expression and religion.
He argued no professional regulatory body had ever punished members for off-site conduct that had no demonstrable impact on their work.
Kempling insists a one-month suspension was particularly harsh since teachers convicted of threats, assault, theft and flashing have received only letters of reprimand.

State snubs Christian teen ranch
Stops referring troubled youth to facility due to religious teaching
Posted: January 30, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
The state of Michigan has stopped referring troubled teens to a Christian residential program because of the religious teaching to which the young people are exposed.
According to a statement from the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal group assisting the organization, Teen Ranch has "an extremely low recidivism rate." The nonprofit organization helps teens recover from abuse, abandonment and delinquency.
ADF says in November, the Michigan Family Independence Agency decided to stop referring young people to Teen Ranch because of "vague allegations of teens being exposed to unwanted religious instruction."
The religious-liberty group sent the agency a demand letter last week saying the state opens itself up to legal action if it doesn't reverse the decision.
"This state action hurts Teen Ranch, but the most serious harm is to the abused and hurting youth who have been denied the love and hope that Teen Ranch offers," said Gary McCaleb, senior counsel with Alliance Defense Fund, saying "the agency misread state law: Michigan statute prohibits direct state funding of specific religious activities, but there is no prohibition of religious activities themselves."
Added McCaleb: "The agency's refusal to place residents at Teen Ranch violates a multitude of constitutional principles. The key question is whether the government may single out a religious program in the course of distributing government funds to serve its valid, secular public interests and discriminate against it. Under statutory and well-settled case law, the answer is 'no.'"
ADF was involved in a similar case where a faith-based halfway house was approved for government referrals as long as a secular option was also available to offenders.
"No one forces (teens) to go to Teen Ranch, as opposed to another organization," Mick Koster, a spokesman for the facility, told Family News in Focus. "We're very clear about who we are before they even get there."
Koster added that kids are allowed to opt out of religious activities if they choose.
Family News reports since the state's decision, Teen Ranch, which has provided foster-care services for 37 years, has seen its census numbers cut by two-thirds and been forced to lay off 35 employees.
The organization is willing to file a federal lawsuit if the state does not change its policy.

Christian soldier, Muslim soldier
Michelle Malkin (archive)
October 1, 2003 | Print | Send
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20031001.shtml
There's something terribly wrong when an American soldier overseas can't receive Scriptures in the mail, but a Muslim chaplain can preach freely among al Qaeda and Taliban enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.
This is a story of two soldiers, one Christian, one Muslim. It's a cautionary tale that suggests how religious double standards and politically driven hypersensitivity threaten not only our troops, but us all.
Six months ago, Jack Moody tried to send his son, Daniel, a care package containing a Bible study and other Christian religious materials. Daniel is a 21-year-old Army National Guardsman serving in the Middle East. He had written home requesting spiritual support while he risked his life abroad. The literature his dad packed included Christian comic books. But when Daniel's dad approached the post office in the family's hometown of Lenoir, North Carolina, he was told he would not be allowed to send the items.
According to U.S.P.S. postal bulletin 22097, section E2, Moody was forbidden from sending "any matter containing religious materials contrary to Islamic faith or depicting nude or seminude persons, pornographic or sexual items, or non-authorized political materials." The postal clerk informed Moody that the Christian contents of the package might be considered offensive to some Muslims overseas. The policy was initiated during the first Gulf War.
"My son is in the military, and he's overseas fighting to free this country from tyranny, and to protect our rights and our freedoms, and here our government has a rule on the books that's limited his freedom. I just couldn't believe it," Moody told the Voice of America news service.
Even more unbelievable was the apathetic reaction of Moody's elected representatives. According to John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, a staunch defender of religious liberty, Sen. Elizabeth Dole's staff brushed Moody off. So did Dan Gurley, GOP Congressman Cass Ballenger's chief of staff. According to Moody, Ballenger refused to get involved, insisting that the matter should be left to the courts.
And there's where Moody's case -- which is included in the devastating new book "Persecution," best-selling author David Limbaugh's searing indictment of anti-Christian intolerance -- remains today. The Rutherford Institute filed suit against the U.S. Postmaster General in defense of Moody's rights to freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, and equal protection under the law. The group's motion for summary judgment is pending.
Whitehead explains: "The First Amendment prohibits our government from establishing a religion by favoring one over another. By stating that no material can be mailed if it is contrary to the Islamic religion, the U.S. Post Office has clearly shown deference to Islam above all other religions -- and this definitely violates our Constitution."
Contrast Daniel Moody's treatment with that of Capt. James Yee. The Muslim convert, who studied in terror-sponsoring Syria and attended an Islamic cultural center run by the terror-friendly Saudi government, was given free rein by the U.S. Army to administer to the souls of al Qaeda and Taliban enemies at Guantanamo Bay.
Yee brought the detainees prayer beads and religious books, facilitated prayer services, and assisted them with Muslim food preparation. And he received lavish, fawning profiles in the "diversity-" and "tolerance-" obsessed mainstream press. Now, he has been charged with sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. Treason charges may be added. Yee exploited our bent-over-backwards solicitude toward Muslims in the military by allegedly using his access to smuggle out diagrams of the detainees' cells and lists of the names of the detainees and their interrogators. More than half of the armed forces' Muslim chaplains were trained by a terror-linked, Saudi-subsidized institute while military leaders blindly sung the praises of multiculturalism.
Islamist Fifth Columnists are benefiting from the very guarantees of religious freedom being denied to devout Christian soldiers such as Daniel Moody who are risking their lives for the War on Terror overseas. This dangerous deference to radical Islam -- rooted in a cowardly fear of offending -- is not only a threat to our soldiers' constitutionally protected rights, but to our national security.
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

The 'Offensiveness' of Christianity
David Limbaugh
Friday, Dec. 5, 2003
It amazes me that people can still, with a straight face, deny that Christians are the subjects of systematic discrimination in this country. Every time I turn around there's more evidence.
Since my book "Persecution" was released I've seen enough additional examples to give me a good start on a sequel not that I've decided to write one at this point. But I continue to encounter liberals who pooh pooh the idea that it is even possible to discriminate against a majority group.
No matter how much proof you show them, they wave their hands dismissively and say, "Those are just loony examples of kooks out there that certainly aren't representative of any widespread discrimination." Well, if that's the case, why do we keep seeing these cases in the news?
Of course, it's not the case. There is an intrinsic bias in our popular culture against Christianity, and it's getting worse. The only thing that isn't clear to me is whether the liberal secularists who deny it are oblivious to the discrimination or are being deceitful. I actually think there is some of both.
Remember, there are numerous aspects to this phenomenon. It's not just the scrubbing away of Christian symbols and expression from the public square, including public property, public schools, universities, efforts to muzzle Christian officials, the anti-Christian litmus test applicable to presidential appointees and anti-Christian discrimination in zoning regulations.
No, it's not just about "separation of church and state," because the bias has now infected the private sector as well such as dress codes prohibiting the wearing of Christian jewelry, and the anti-Christian bias among the liberal media, Hollywood, and the cultural elite including their profane, anti-Christian art.
Besides, if it were a matter of separating church and state, secularists wouldn't be twisting the government's arm to endorse anti-Christian values, from "comprehensive" sex education to pornography to homosexuality to New Ageism to Secular Humanism to the values of other major religions.
And let's just dispense with this lie that the secularists are motivated by a desire to promote religious freedom and tolerance. Their constant barrages against Christian religious freedom and Christianity itself dispel that myth outright. Just one day this week I ran across three more examples and I wasn't even looking.
The first involves the Meriden Public Library in Meriden, Conn., which banned five paintings of Jesus Christ, not because they were blasphemous or disrespectful, and not even because of ludicrously exaggerated concerns over church/state interaction.
The images were disallowed under a policy that prohibits "inappropriate" and "offensive" fare. That's right: Jesus is offensive. Library officials were concerned that children might be disturbed by these images. What kind of mindset is it that sees offensiveness in portraits of the One who embodies pure love, and wholly ignores the egregious intolerance of those who want to ban them?
You can't simply brush this off as a silly little incident. It represents an increasingly common attitude in the culture that Christianity, on its face, is offensive. That's a completely different proposition from saying that government shouldn't endorse religion.
In the second example, the Supreme Court is about to hear a case concerning Northwest College in Kirkland, Wash., denying student Joshua Davey a $3,000 scholarship because he wanted to use it for the study of divinity. Thankfully the Bush administration is not infected with the anti-Christian virus. U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson pointed out that the denial of the scholarship shows a government bias against religion (the Christian religion).
This isn't an isolated example. I document a similar case in my book, involving Michael Nash, whose academic scholarship was originally denied by Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Ky., when he declared that he would be majoring in philosophy and religion.
The third example involves Islamic indoctrination in California public schools a subject also addressed in my book. Seventh-grade history students at Royal Oak Intermediate School in Covina, Calif., didn't just learn about Islam. They practiced the religion, by fasting to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The school clearly endorsed the religion: The teacher enticed students to participate by offering extra credit.
It's one thing for Christians to argue that they should rejoice in their persecution that's even biblical. But it's an entirely different matter for us to stand by idly as our culture, of which we are supposed to be the majority component, institutionalizes the notion that our Savior is anathema. When is enough going to be enough? When are complacent Christians going to fight back?
COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
David Limbaugh can be reached at doclim@charter.net.

General Muzzled After Describing War on Terror as Battle With Satan
NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, Oct. 17, 2003
WASHINGTON A top general has said he will tone down his rhetoric after being criticized for casting the war on terror as a religious battle, Pentagon officials said today.
But Defense Department lawyers, public affairs officials and others were meeting today to try to figure out whether that would be enough to calm the storm of criticism surrounding Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, who has said the counterterror war is a battle with Satan.
His comments came in speeches, some made in uniform, at evangelical Christian churches.
Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary for intelligence, has said he will curtail his speechmaking, officials said. But he has not been put forward by the Pentagon to make a public statement, a development officials said they might try to orchestrate later today.
Boykin said of a 1993 battle with a Muslim militia leader in Somalia: "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."
He did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday he had not seen Boykin's comments, but he praised the three-star general as "an officer that has an outstanding record in the United States armed forces."
Despite repeated questions at a Pentagon press conference, Rumsfeld declined to condemn Boykin's statements or to say whether he would take any action.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had spoken in uniform at prayer breakfasts, adding he did not think Boykin broke any military rules by giving talks at churches.
"There is a very wide gray area on what the rules permit," Myers said. "At first blush, it doesn't look like any rules were broken."
But Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., said that if media reports accurately quoted Boykin, the general's comments were deplorable.
A Muslim group called for Boykin to be reassigned from his job, which includes overseeing the hunt for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, Iraq's deposed President Saddam Hussein and other Muslim figures.
"Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policy-making position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America's motives and intentions," said Nihad Awad, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Awad's statement noted that a verse in the Quran says Muslims believe in the same God as Jews and Christians.
Boykin's church speeches, first reported by NBC News and the Los Angeles Times, cast the war on terrorism as a religious battle between Christians and the forces of evil.
Appearing in dress uniform before a religious group in Oregon in June, Boykin said Islamic extremists hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan."
Rumsfeld on Thursday repeated the Bush administration's position that the war on terrorism is not a war against Islam but against people "who have tried to hijack a religion."
The defense secretary said he could not prevent military officials from making controversial statements.
© 2003 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Appeals panel: Decalogue unconstitutional
Court rules 10 Commandments unlawful even when displayed with other docs
Posted: December 18, 2003
7:00 p.m. Eastern
©2003WorldNetDaily.com
By a 2-1 vote, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld a lower-court ruling that said three Kentucky counties could not display the 10 Commandments in public buildings, even when the Decalogue is accompanied by other historical documents.
Liberty Counsel, the civil-liberties defense organization representing the counties in the action, reports the case involves two courthouses in Pulaski and McCreary counties which displayed the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and other historical documents and Harlan County, where the school board created a similar display. The Harlan exhibit includes a limited public forum where the community can post additional historical documents.
The displays began with the Ten Commandments alone. They later were changed to include some historical documents with excerpted religious quotes. The displays then were altered to include other historical documents in their entirety.
Because the displays originated with only the religious document, however, Judges Eric Clay and Julia Smith Gibbons agreed they were unconstitutional. They contend the original religious purpose was not altered by later adding historical documents.
Senior Judge James Ryan dissented, Liberty Counsel said, stating court precedent established that displays could be altered to include a broader education purpose even if the original purpose was solely religious. He also argued the displays were constitutional, and he criticized the court for not taking seriously the school exhibit, which allows the community to post any historical document.
Mat Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, said in a statement, "To rule that government may not modify its actions to include an educational purpose is nonsensical. Due to the bizarre aspect of this ruling, we believe the full panel of judges will rehear this matter. This case is far from over, and we believe that in the end, justice will prevail and these displays will be upheld. The past cannot dictate the future."
Liberty Counsel will ask the entire panel of 6th Circuit judges to rehear the case.
Symposium: The Muslim Persecution of Christians
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 10, 2003
Thewidespreadpersecution of Christians is an increasingphenomenon in the Islamic world. Aside from its obvious tragic and horrifying ingredients, what is the significance and meaning of this persecution? Why is it almost never mentioned in the Western media? How is it connected to the conflict between the West and militant Islam? Why should America be concerned?
To discuss these and other issues with Frontpage Symposium today, Frontpage Magazine welcomes Bat Ye’or, the author of three major books on dhimmis, jihad, and dhimmitude (http://www.dhimmitude.org and http://www.dhimmi.org). On May 1, 1997-- after the publication ofThe Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. from Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996) -- she testified ata Hearing of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairson 'Religious Persecution in the Middle East' ("An Historical Overview of the Persecution of Christians under Islam. PAST IS PROLOGUE: The Challenge of Islamism Today"). Her latest study is Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide (2002); see “Eurabia: The Road to Munich.” National Review Online, October 9, 2002; "European Fears of the Gathering Jihad." FPM, Feb. 21 2003; Paul Marshall, a Senior Fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. He is the author and editor of twenty books, including Religious Freedom in the World: A Global Survey, and the best-selling Their Blood Cries Out. His latest books are Islam at the Crossroads(2002)and God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics (2002); Habib Malik, who holds a doctorate in modern European intellectual history from Harvard and currently teaches history and cultural studies at the Lebanese American University in Lebanon.He has published a book on the early reception of Kierkegaard's thought and another book entitled Between Damascus and Jerusalem: Lebanon and Middle East Peace.He has also written widely in both English and Arabic on the Christians of Lebanon and the Middle East, on human rights in the region, and on Islam's relations with non-Muslim minority communities native to Muslim-majority countries; and Walid Phares, Professor of Middle East Studies and Religious Conflict at Florida Atlantic University and a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is an analyst with MSNBC and a board member of the Human Rights Coalition in the Muslim World. He testified to the US Senate on the "Christians in the Middle East: The policies of Ethnic Cleansing," (1997) and conducts congressional briefings on "Jihad and Human rights, " (1998-2003).
Interlocutor: Welcome to Frontpage Symposium ladies and gentlemen. Let’s begin with the question that will build a foundation to this discussion: how widespread is the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world?
Marshall: Very widespread, thereare few Muslim countries where it does not occur.
It takes four forms. First. there are direct, violentattacks by extremists on Christian communities. These occur in Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Phillipines, Nigeria, Indonesia (the list is not exhaustive). In most of these cases the Government is either unable or unwilling to stop the attacks.
Second, there is civil war and communal violence where the Christian community has resisted the spread of radical varieties of Islam. Since the National Islamic Front (formerly the Muslim Brotherhood) took power in Sudan in the late 1980's two million people have been killed, mostly Christians and animists. In Nigeria some 11,000 people have been killed in the last three years over the introduction of Islamic sharia law. There is a similar death tollin eastern Indonesia, whereparamilitary militant organizations such as Laskar Jihad, allied to international terrorists, have slaughtered local populations.
Third, there is widespread discrimination against Christians in Muslim countries. They are frequently at a disadvantage in marriage, custody and inheritance cases, are forced to subsidize Islam through taxes, are severly restricted in building and repairing churches, and are often excluded from government positions. This happens inmost Muslim countries. In some cases, as in Pakistan or Iran or Nigeria, the testimony of a Christian counts less in a court case.
Fourthly, blasphemy and apostasy laws disproportionately target minorities.
In Saudi Arabia, Christianity is entirely forbidden.
Bat Ye'or: The persecution is difficult to assess for several reasons. (1) The situation is not the same in all the Muslim countries, there are more dramatic cases in countries that apply the shariah, like Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, etc.-- or acknowledge, like Egypt, that the shariah is the source of jurisdiction. Sometimes the government is more liberal, but the population is intolerant and harass the Christians. (2) The Christians themselves are reluctant to speak either because, as dhimmis, they are not conscious of being discriminated against, since it is the only condition they have known for centuries (dhimmitude); or because they fear Muslim reprisals.(3) The Western media and Western governments usually overlook the discrimination against Christians to avoid irritating Muslim governments, but also to protect Christians from more attacks, since they were often massacred by Muslim mobs under the pretext that they were protected by the infidels.
Phares: Let's refine our definitions. First we're addressing the cases of persecution of Christians in the Muslim world, which specifically means the countries with either a Muslim majority or under an Islamist regime. So, we are addressing all cases where Christian communities or individuals are under any form of suppression as a result of their identification as non-Muslims -and in this case as "Christians"- by regimes or organizations within the confines of these above countries. Second, there are two types of persecution of Christians in the countries with Muslim majority or regimes. One is religious persecution of Christians per se, which would be the most severe, the other is political oppression of Christian communities.
Both types are against Human Rights and should be sanctioned by international law. a) Religious persecution was obviously practiced in Afghanistan, but is now institutionalized in Saudi Arabia for example, where by law you cannot be Christian to start with, nor convert to the Christian faith. Following the Wahabi teachings, Islamists around the Muslim world have conducted a variety of documented aggressions against Christians (and other Muslims as well) such as in: Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. b) Community persecution is a wide spread phenomenon. It takes the shape of ethnic oppression, examples: Lebanon, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, etc. but also Egypt and Indonesia. In sum, the suppression of Christians in the Muslim world is an international problem.
Malik: In very few spots throughout the Islamic world where Christians live in Muslim-majority states do we find them enjoying an equal status with their Muslim counterparts. They are more often than not reduced to second-class status, or dhimmi status. In the Arab world, for example, the only place where native Christians have managed for centuries to avoid the dhimmi humiliation is in Lebanon. But even here matters have been deteriorating since the war in the country, which began in 1975 and since Syrian occupation and Islamist resurgence. All other Middle Eastern Christian communities (Copts, Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, etc.) are quintessential dhimmis. So if dhimmitude represents a recipe for slow and gradual liquidation of the targeted community, then this is the most subtle and most insidious form of persecution and it is quite widespread.
Interlocutor: Is Muslim persecution of Christians something new or the continuation of an old pattern and Islamic tradition?
Marshall: There has nearly always been discrimination, and often violence, but we are now seeing an upsurge of persecution in the Islamic world.
Bat Ye'or: It is certainly not new. Jews and Christians ('People of the Book') in Muslim countries shared a same destiny: that of dhimmis, - native populations conquered and subjected to the laws of jihad. Islamic laws regulating their status were the same, whereas other native populations like the Zoroastrians in Persia were more discriminated against. The oppression of Christians started from the beginning of the Muslim conquest of their lands. It is attested in the narratives before these rules became codified in laws from the 8th century. It covers all aspect of life and imposes vilification and insecurity. It has often included slavery, deportations, forced conversions and mass killings, although Christians like Jews are 'protected' by Islamic law providing their submit to their inferior and humiliating status. Those rules are inscribed in the shariah, and with the re-Islamization of the Muslim state, the traditional thirteen-century-old pattern is being reactivated, after its suppression by the European colonization of Muslim countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. Christians are persecuted also because they are secularists and oppose the return of the shariah.
Phares: First let's understand that there is a battle over this History. While many Muslim historians and a number of sympathetic historians in the West affirm that persecution has never (or almost never) existed, most Middle East Christian Historians and a growing number of Muslim humanist intellectuals affirm clearly that this oppression has existed since the 7th century. But facts from the history of the Middle East are difficult to deny. One, there is a whole debate about the real attitude of the theology of Islam towards the infidels (or Kafir).
The answer varies between moderates and radicals. It will remain a debate in the realm of theology and linguistics till a reform occurs. On the other hand, historical accounts of persecution are undeniable. Since the establishment of the Dhimmi status as of the 7th century AD/CE the Caliphate and the various other Islamic states have discriminated against Christians and Jews. Other powers -including Christians- throughout history have been discriminatory as well but later on, future generations have admitted this behavior. The problem nowadays lies in the fact that most mainstream historians of Islamic Politics still deny the past -and worse the present-existence of these discriminations.
Malik: Ever since the earliest Islamic conquests dating back to the 7th century AD when Invading Muslim armies overran neighboring communities, many of them Christian, there has been systematic persecution of Christians. Setting aside the anecdotes of tolerance that adorn so much of the specialized (and romanticized) literature on Islamic history, the real story is a sordid one of the systematic reduction of vanquished peoples and members of other religions to second-class status at best - mainly reserved for Christians and Jews - and physical elimination at worst. So this is quite an old story indeed.
Interlocutor: Is there an ingredient within Islam itself that makes it an oppressor of other religions? Is it possible for Islam to be tolerant of a religion like Christianity?
Marshall: Dhimmi status has led to continuing discrimination against Christians into the modern age, and in the last century, Christian rebellion against Dhimmi status has led to mass murder.
Apostasy and blasphemy laws have often required that any Muslim who wants to change his religion, or any Christian who talks to them about Christianity, be executed.
Bat Ye'or: The Qur'an and the hadiths, the sacred Scriptures for the Muslims, make the jihad and the domination of Islam over all other religions, mandatory. Muslims invokes some verses which call for tolerance and pluralism. However according to the classical views of Muslim jurists and theologians, these verses have been abrogated by later ones that are more intransigent. In relation to Christianity and to Judaism, Muslim doctrine preaches that all the biblical persons from Adam, including Jesus, were Muslim prophets who preaches Islam. Hence, the theological conflict goes to the very heart of the three religions. Islam does not recognise the link between Christianity and Judaism, since Jesus is considered to be a Muslim. Moreover, according to some hadith, at the end of time the Muslim Jesus will return and destroy Christianity.
Phares: All religions make a distinction between believers and non-believers. The issue is about the "treatment" of the others not their theological identification. That the texts of Islam divide humanity in two groups is not the question at hands. It is about the stipulations in the text that prescribes a legal and political behavior vis-a-vis the infidels, and particularly Christians. As most experts in Islamic politics have concluded, you can find verses that allows collective punitive action against them as well as verses that calls for special treatment. The ingredient you're looking for would be the use of these collective action texts from the 7th century, by political forces in modern times, to promote oppression of Christians nowadays. Any religion can be used for oppression and any religion can be used with tolerance. The Jihadists of the 21th century -in the absence of a historical reformation- are using those references from the texts to perpetuate the state of mind of the original conquests and Caliphate in the present context of international relations.
Malik: Malik: The Koran contains verses about members of other religions, specifically the People of the Book (Christians and Jews), that lend themselves to adverse interpretations possibly leading to violence. As the undisputed very words of Allah (God), there is little room to ameliorate some of the more outspokenly violent verses. Schools of interpretation within the broad Islamic traditions have often differed on the emphases and nuances and on when and how to apply an extreme antagonistic interpretation to any particular verse. Regarding Christianity, for instance, the problem of shirk arises - i.e. the accusation that Christians associate two other figures with the one supreme deity to produce the Trinity. This is condemned in the Koran as a form of idolatry. It is difficult to see how Islam can peacefully coexist with a religion like Christianity that is perceived as idolatrous in its essence.
Interlocutor: Why do you think the persecution of Christians by Muslims in Arab countries is almost never spoken about in the Western media?
Marshall: It's not only Arab countries, but in non-Arab Muslim countries as well. It's hard to cover--it often happens in remoter areas too far from the bars and receptions where journalists and diplomats like to hang out. The question of persecution of anybody outside the west gets little coverage anyway. But beyond these general reasons, I think journalists are often unsympathetic to third world Christians, assuming they are going to be little Jerry Falwells. They also tend not to take religion seriously and so don't examine it closely: they assume it's 'economic' or 'political' or 'ethnic' or whatever is the flavor du jour in American social science thinking.
Finally, there is little knowledge of history, hence an attitude that sees Christians in these countries as foreigners, American offshoots, imperialist transplants and the like, often in stark ignorance of the fact that Christian communities in most of these countries are far older than the Muslim communities I had an international correspondent ask me what Christians were doing in Egypt "don't they know it's a Muslim country." I had to explain that the Egyptian church dates from about the year 54, and that the Bible says Jesus grew up there.
Bat Ye'or: The Western media is obsessed by the Palestinian problem and prefers to ignore most of the other dramatic situations in the Muslim world. This is a deliberated policy. We didn't hear too much of the horrors perpetrated by Saddam Hussein and his sons against the Iraqi people before the destruction of his regime. The media contributes to project a falsified picture of the Muslim world by focusing only on Israel. Criticizing Muslim countries might involve many dangers, both physical and professional. There is also an ignorance on this subject, deliberately maintained. In recent articles, I have examined the European Union's policy with the Mediterranean Arab world over the past 30 years, leading to a future "Eurabia", that is the spreading of a culture of dhimmitude.
Phares: There is a myriad of reasons. One is ignorance. Western media has an educated membership but little knowledge of the oppression of minorities in general and Christians in particular in the Muslim world. It has even skipped the struggle of humanist, liberal and democratic individuals and forces from Morocco to Afghanistan. Who should you blame? Obviously those in charge of the education, i.e, university scholars. Which brings us to the second reason. As of the 1970s a flow of funding coming from the oil producing regimes in the Arab and Muslim world -mostly authoritarian ones- sunk on Western campuses, paralysing the process of information and education. These regimes blocked the circulation of knowledge as a way to avoid an international investigation of human rights and religious freedom in these countries. The direct result was that an army of scholars in the West participated directly in hiding the truth of persecutions, not only against Christians, but also against enlightened Muslim intellectuals.
Malik: For nearly 30 years now I have been writing and speaking out and trying hard to awaken Western sensitivities to the plight of Middle Eastern Christians, specifically those of Lebanon, the Sudan, and the Copts, but with very little by way of concrete results. The reasons, I think, have to do with a number of related factors. Europe, which traditionally was intimately involved in the affairs of the Near and Middle East, is no longer the influential player it used to be historically. Also, the general secularizing trend in the West has lessened the sensitivity there to questions pertaining to the persecution of specific religious groups in the Islamic world. Moreover, oil and other strategic interests compel policy makers in the West, particularly in Washington, to overlook such violations so as not to displease or embarrass their Arab friends. Israel’s bittersweet experience in 1982 in Lebanon also has caused the Israelis to distance themselves from Lebanon’s Christians and look to an accommodation with Damascus. All these factors have come together to make it difficult for such issues as Muslim persecution of Christians to hit the headlines and stir sympathetic sentiments.
Interlocutor: Well, the Muslim persecution of Christians is clearly a widespread and horrifying phenomenon. Can anything even close be said in reverse? Please tell me, where in our modern world do Christians persecute Muslims for their faith? Where are Muslims persecuted and live in fear because Christians are trying to force the New Testament on them? And what does the answer to this question mean?
Malik: Frankly, I can’t think of a situation around the world today where Christians are actively persecuting Muslims. Perhaps an argument can be made about the misbehavior of the Serbs towards Balkan Muslims in the 1990s, or the Russians towards the Chechens, but this sort of thing has been widely condemned by the international community including other Christians. Crusading against the Muslim “infidels” is no longer part of the worldview of Christians, and in fact never was since it was Christendom (essentially a political entity), not Christianity, that perpetrated such abuses in the past. Christian theocracies are not in evidence any more.
The combination of church and state violates Christ’s insistence that what is Caesar’s should be left to Caesar and what is God’s to God, i.e. separation of the two realms. Besides, in the case of the Serbs or Russians, the issues were mostly political and nationalistic, not religious. That is to say no one was trying to forcefully convert Muslims to Christianity by forcing the New Testament upon them. Forcing the Islamic shari’a on Christians, however, is happening all the time in places like Sudan, Nigeria, the southern Philippines, Sabah Island in Indonesia, and elsewhere. If Christians in the modern world have largely desisted from such practices, the same unfortunately cannot be said about Muslims.
Marshall: There are no examples that I know ofof Christians actually "trying to force the New Testament" in any explicit way, but there are examples where Christians have targeted Muslims as Muslims. When Milosevic ruled Serbia he (a former communist apparatchik) wrapped himself in the cloak of Orthodox as a means of whipping up a religious Serbian national identity against Muslims. He succeeded and thousands of Bosnian Muslims were killed because they were Muslims.
In Russia, the war in Chechnya is often portrayed by officials as a war of Christianity against Islam, or Wahhabism and Russia's brutal conduct of that war is often seen by Muslims as oppression by Christians.
There is discrimination against Greece's Muslim minority, largely used as a bargaining chip by Greece to get parallel concessions from Turkey in its treatment of its Christian minority. Muslims have also suffered discrimination in the Philippines.
So Christian persecution of Muslims does exist, but sporadically. There is no parallel to the widespread pattern in the Muslim world.
Bat Ye'or:Muslims are not persecuted by Christians for their faith, but there are bloody political conflicts like inex-Yugoslavia and in Chechnya. This is the legacy ofa past, when for centuries Muslims were filling their harems, their troops, and their civil administration with Islamized Christianchildren abducted in the Balkans, particularly Serbia,and the Caucasian region. In Western Europe, where millions of Muslims have legally emigrated in the last 30 years, they enjoy the same rights asothers. European politicians have welcomed this immigration, vaunted the superiority of the Islamic civilization over their own,andthe greatness of its religion.European glorification of Islam is such thatconversions to Islam from Christianity abound. What does this mean?The European Union hopes to keep its good relations with the Muslim countries at any cost --for economic and political reasons and for fear of terrorism.In a wider perspective, one can say thatWestern states have secular institutions which impose equality of rights,of gender and civil liberties, whileMuslim countries often have the shariah law which rejectsequality between men and women, and betweenMuslimsand non-Muslims -- and link religion with politics.
Phares: Many Muslim and a number of Western scholars nowadays raise the issue of past persecutions of Muslims at the hands of Christian powers as an equivalent to the oppression by today's Islamist regimes and organizations of Christian communities. This comparison is academically inaccurate. For in comparative methods you either compare in diachronic, that is the same institution or culture over time, or synchronic, i.e. two institutions or cultures at one time. That is not the case. Indeed, Crusaders and Spanish inquisition persecuted Muslims in Palestine and Spain. That should be compared to the global persecution of Christians under the Caliphate from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans. Such comparison is sound and should be analyzed.
In recent, Islamist scholars identify the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo as an example of contemporary Christian persecution of Muslims, assuming that the Milosevitch regime was "Christian." The latter regime was not claiming "Christian" identity in the same way the regimes in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and others were either claiming or referencing to religious law, in their suppression of Christians in their midst. Although all repressions are reprehensible and must be stopped, there is no such thing as "Christian-based" persecution of Muslims as a doctrine nowadays. Muslim ethnic communities are in uprising against Governments in several countries where Christians form a majority. But to be academically correct, on the other hand, there are many cases nowadays where Christians are persecuted on the basis of religion (i.e Sharia), in addition to ethnic oppression. As for the numbers, statistics are clear: Roughly more than a 120 million Christians live under various forms of oppression versus 15 million Muslims enduring political suppression.
Interlocutor: In light of these realities, it appears that there truly is a War of Civilizations taking place, does it not?
Malik: I’m always struck by a fascinating phrase in Samuel Huntington’s famous book: Islam’s “Bloody Borders.” I do have serious reservations about the Huntington thesis of civilizational clashes, but when it comes to Islam’s bloody borders I have to pause and reflect. It appears that wherever Islam meets non-Islam there is blood being spilled: Kashmir, Mindanao, Chechnya, the Balkans, Sudan, Nigeria, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and many other places of contact. Is the blood Huntington talks about purely the result of anti-Muslim conspiracies from the outside directed at the Muslim world? Part of it may be that. But I suspect a deeper analysis will reveal serious problems Islam as a creed has with the different other, the inhabitant of the House or Abode of Islam, also referred to by Muslims as the abode of war and confusion. There is today a war taking place between the radical Islamists a la Bin Laden who have hijacked Islam and intimidated any voices of moderation on the one hand, and the rest of the civilized world on the other. You can’t really call this a clash of civilizations; it is more like a war between civilization at large and barbarism or piracy (we call it terrorism). Muslims are often as much the victims of this barbarism as non-Muslims.
Marshall: I would not say a "war of civilizations." The world is too varied. I think Huntington's phrase'a clash of civilizations' (which he wants to avoid becoming a war) is more accurate.We have a 'clash,' €˜tension,'thathas erupted into war or lower level violence in several places, which may get more widespread.
Bat Ye'or: It has always been there, although it is politicallyincorrect to say it. It is a fight of ideas, of ideologies, with many Muslims on the Western side. It encompasses the character of the society: secular, openand modernist, or religious and jihadist;equality of gender;universal human rights,civil and political freedoms; independance of the judiciary; due process replacing individual retribution; respect for pluralism, political and moral accountability, self-criticism. And in international relations, the confrontation between the jihad ideology and the legitimacy of sovereign non-Muslim states.Because of an unofficial censorshipwithpolitical-correctnesscriteria, the West is notprepared for this ideological war whose basic components involving the very nature of human rights have been obfuscated.
Phares: I have authored back in 1979 three books dealing with the "Clash of Civilizations."Two were about a "fault line," that is Lebanon and one was about the worldwide encounter of Civilizations. This book, "al-Taadudiya al-Hadariya fil aalam" (Civilizational Pluralism in the World) was out 14 years before the famous article by Professor Samuel Huntington in Foreign Affairs in 1993. In that essay, I argued that Civilizations collide and co-exist as states do. They have international relations and internal affairs. I proposed a categorization of their membership etc. And one of my findings was that wars between Civilizations are as frequent as wars between nation-states. There were two problems with my book. One was time: It was under the Cold War and no one paid attention to that theory. Two was language" It was in Arabic, therefore not bale to make it through the international press. In a sum, yes, there is a clash of civilization taking place. It is so obvious and clear, at least in the mind of one party: The Jihadists. The latter have declared that war, are conducting it and think in its terms. However, clashes of civilizations is not always in a form of military war, and doesn't have to engulf all civilizations, nor does it mobilize the entirety of a particular civilization. The Jihadists are waging a war of Civilizations even if