Its time for Christians to wake up.
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Its time for Christians to wake up.
This isn't just America being assaulted..
Italian police: Muslim migrants threw Christians overboard
By Hada Messia and Livia Borghese, CNN
Updated 12:57 PM ET, Thu April 16, 2015
Rome (CNN)Muslims who were among migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy in a boat this week threw 12 fellow passengers overboard -- killing them -- because the 12 were Christians, Italian police said Thursday.
Italian authorities have arrested 15 people on suspicion of murdering the Christians at sea, police in Palermo, Sicily, said.
The original group of 105 people left Libya on Tuesday in a rubber boat. Sometime during the trip north across the Mediterranean Sea, the alleged assailants -- Muslims from the Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal -- threw the 12 overboard, police said.
The boat was intercepted by an Italian navy vessel, which transferred the passengers to a Panamanian-flagged ship. That ship docked in Palermo on Wednesday, after which the arrests were made, police said.
Italian police arrest migrants alleged to have thrown Christians overboard
Police have 48 hours to validate arrests of 15 people over alleged Muslim attack on Nigerian and Ghanian Christians on board boat that left Libya on Tuesday
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome and agencies
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Police in Sicily have arrested 15 people for allegedly throwing 12 migrants overboard during what appeared to be a Muslim assault against Christians on the high seas amid Italy’s migration crisis.
Palermo police said in a statement on Thursday that they learned of the incident while interviewing tearful survivors from Nigeria and Ghana who arrived in Palermo on Wednesday morning after being rescued at sea.
The survivors said they had boarded a rubber boat with 105 passengers aboard on Tuesday on the Libyan coast. During the crossing, the migrants from Nigeria and Ghana, believed to be Christians, were allegedly threatened with being abandoned at sea by some 15 other passengers from Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Guinea-Bissau.
The statement said the motive was that the victims “professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim,” the Associated Press reported.
Maurizio Scalia, the prosecutor in the case, will have another 48 hours to validate the arrests.
Asked about the reports of religious prejudice having played a role in the deaths, one expert who has worked in the field for eight years said he had never heard of such an incident in the past, even though most migrant boats usually carry people from different religious backgrounds and nationalities.
Flavio di Giacomo of the International Organisation for Migration, said fights on migrant boats have occurred in the past – with some including people being killed – but were exceedingly rare and were sometimes the result of a “battle for survival”.
Last July, he said, a fight broke out between passengers on a migrant ship, some of whom were in the hull of the boat and wanted to get on deck. Passengers above deck did not want to disturb the equilibrium of the boat and a fight ensued, with “some victims”.
There are differences in how certain nationalities are treated by smugglers, Di Giacomo said. He noted that Libyan smugglers often viewed sub-Saharan Africans as “less valuable” than other passengers and they were often forced into the hulls of boats making the trip to Italy from Libya.
“That’s the most dangerous part of the boat,” he said. Syrians were, however, allowed spots on the deck and could purchase lifejackets, a luxury that was not always offered to sub-Saharan Africans.
Right in my backyard...
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At a public school no less! What happened to vaunted "separation of church and state"?
School’s Hijab Event Sparks Outrage; Principal Apologizes For ‘Covered Girl Challenge’
April 17, 2015
A student-led event an Ohio high school in which students would wear hijabs for a day has been cancelled after news of the event outraged parents.
Mason High School Principal Mindy McCarty-Stewart apologized and announced the April 23 “Covered Girl Challenge” would no longer take place, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported Friday.
The backlash began when anti-extremist website JihadWatch.org posted an email from school officials earlier in the week that seemingly backed the Muslim Student Association’s event, which the email said was intended to celebrate diversity, the newspaper reported.
“When is a Cross-Wearer’s Challenge day at Mason High? When is a Yarmulke Wearer’s Challenge day at Mason High? Or is it only Islam that gets this treatment?” said Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org, The Blaze reported.
Ms. McCarty-Stewart said the email, which was sent to parents, shouldn’t have been sent by the school since it was a non-sanctioned event.
“This communication should not have come from our Student Activities Department because this was a student-led initiative, rather than a school-sponsored activity,” the principal said in an statement, the newspaper reported. “We will put procedures into place in the future that ensure that any communication from a school email is for a school-sponsored event, and not merely supported by a student-run group.”
Bump
Marine court-martialed for refusing to remove Bible verse "No weapon formed against me shall prosper"
By Todd Starnes
FoxNews.com
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Monifa Sterling (Courtesy Liberty Institute)
A United States Marine was convicted at a court-martial for refusing to remove a Bible verse on her computer – a verse of Scripture the military determined “could easily be seen as contrary to good order and discipline.”
The plight of Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling seems unbelievable – a member of the Armed Forces criminally prosecuted for displaying a slightly altered passage of Scripture from the Old Testament: “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.”
Sterling, who represented herself at trial, was convicted February 1, 2014 in a court-martial at Camp Lejune, North Carolina after she refused to obey orders from a staff sergeant to remove the Bible verses from her desk.
She was found guilty of failing to go to her appointed place of duty, disrespect toward a superior commissioned officer, and four specifications of disobeying the lawful order of a noncommissioned officer.
As it now stands – Sterling is unemployed and looking for work. It’s a process made harder because of the bad conduct discharge from the military. Hopefully Liberty Institute will be able to restore this Christian Marine’s good name and expunge the charge.The Christian Marine was given a bad conduct discharge and a reduction in rank from lance corporal to private.
Both lower court and the appellate court ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not apply to her case because displaying a Bible verse does not constitute religious exercise.
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However, a religious liberty law firm and a high-powered, former U.S. solicitor general have taken up her case and have filed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
“If the government can order a Marine not to display a Bible verse, they could try and order her not to get a religious tattoo, or go to church on Sunday,” said Liberty Institute attorney Michael Berry. “Restricting a Marine’s free exercise of religion is blatantly unconstitutional.”
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Sterling wised up and finally got legal counsel. Now representing her are the Liberty Institute along with former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, also a law professor at Georgetown University.
Clement most recently won a Supreme Court victory on behalf of Hobby Lobby against the Affordable Care Act.
Liberty Institute and Clement plan to argue that the appellate court should have applied the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Sterling’s case – protecting her right to post Bible verses as a form of religious exercise.
According to the appellate court’s decision, they were not convinced “that displaying religious text at a shared government workstation would be protected even in a civilian federal workplace.”
They also considered the fact that Sterling’s desk was shared by other Marines.
“The implication is clear – the junior Marine sharing the desk and the other Marines coming to the desk for assistance would be exposed to biblical quotations in the military workplace,” the court declared. “It is not hard to imagine the divisive impact to good order and discipline that may result when a service member is compelled to work at a government desk festooned with religious quotations.”
Festooned with religious quotations?
Attorney Berry points out that other Marines were allowed to decorate their desks. However, the lower courts refused to allow that evidence to be admitted. And at the time of the incident – Sterling was not sharing a desk.
“This was a conflict between her and her supervisor,” he told me. “Her supervisor clearly said she did not like the tone of the Bible verses.”
Berry said the supervisor cursed at Sterling and ordered her to immediately remove the verses. She refused the order. The following day, she discovered the verses had been removed and thrown in the trash.
“Adding insult to injury, the government charged her with the crime of failing to obey a direct order because she did not remove the Bible verse,” Berry said.
According to court documents, the military maintains the “verbiage” – “No weapon formed against me shall prosper” could “easily been seen as contrary to good order and discipline.”
“Maintaining discipline and morale in the military work center could very well require that the work center remain relatively free of divisive or contentious issues such as personal beliefs, religion, politics, etc.”
Liberty Institute attorney Hiram Sasser told me it was outrageous “that such a small strip of paper could so frighten a drill sergeant.”
“This is a very scary time when you are not allowed to have a very small printed Bible verse in your own personal workspace because it might offend other Marines,” Sasser told me. “Our Marines are trained to deal with some of the most hostile people on the planet. I don’t think they are afraid of tiny words on a tiny piece of paper.”
The Bible verse incident happened in May 2013. A few months later she was accused of failing to wear an appropriate uniform because of a medical condition.
Berry told me he believes the military was trumping up the charge sheet “to make it look that things were worse than they were.”
As it now stands – Sterling is unemployed and looking for work. It’s a process made harder because of the bad conduct discharge from the military.
Hopefully Liberty Institute will be able to restore this Christian Marine’s good name and expunge the charge.
Anything less could jeopardize the standing of every person of faith serving in the Armed Forces. Should that happen – God help us all.
I just saw this a little bit ago.
Simply ridiculous. :mad:
The day Christians were martyred on American soil
By Todd Starnes
Published October 02, 2015 FoxNews.com
Life or death was determined by the answer to a single question: are you a Christian?
That was the question asked by an anti-Christian gunman who stormed into a classroom at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College.
Eyewitnesses say the shooter targeted Christians.Kortney Moore was inside the classroom. She told the Roseburg News-Review that the shooter ordered students to get on the ground -- and then told them to stand up and state their religion.
“And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,” Stacy Boylan said in a televised report. “And then he shot and killed them.”
His 18-year-old daughter was struck in the back by a bullet – that traveled down her spine. She survived. Miss Moore, too, survived.
Davis Jaques, publisher of the Roseburg Beacon News, said he received a text message from a student who said she was inside the classroom.
“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christians,” the message read. “If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no or didn’t answer, they were shot in the leg.”
Christians were martyred for their faith -- on American soil -- a fact mostly ignored by most of the Mainstream Media and the White House.
The New York Times only mentioned that the gunman inquired about people’s “religions” and one cable television news channel opined that the shooter’s motive was unclear.
President Obama’s behavior in the aftermath of the massacre was quite frankly unpresidential. Instead of calling for religious tolerance -- he delivered an unhinged tirade on gun control.
“Somebody somewhere will comment and say Obama politicized this issue,” the president said. “Well, this is something we should politicize.”
But I reckon it’s politically incorrect to address the persecution of Christians.
That could explain why the White House has expressed less than passionate outrage over the near-genocide of Christians in the Middle East. And that could also explain why his administration has failed to secure the release of an American pastor being tortured in an Iranian jail.
These days “lambs being led to the slaughter” is not exactly a politically correct narrative.
Franklin Graham eloquently memorialized the fallen on his Facebook page and reminded us that Christians are being persecuted around the world.
“The bold souls at Umpqua Community College who stood up to say they were followers of Jesus Christ were heinously gunned down with no mercy,” Graham wrote. “Jesus said, ‘If they hate you, remember they hated me before they hated you.’”
I cannot even begin to imagine the courage it took for our fellow believers to take a stand -- knowing that to do so -- would require the ultimate sacrifice.
But their families can take comfort in knowing that after they took their last breath on Earth, they took their first breath in Heaven.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is "God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values." Follow Todd on Twitter@ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.
NASA Bans The Word 'Jesus'
February 8, 2016
The name of Jesus is not welcome in the Johnson Space Center newsletter, according to a complaint filed on behalf of a group of Christians who work for NASA.
The JSC Praise & Worship Club was directed by NASA attorneys to refrain from using the name ‘Jesus’ in club announcements that appeared in a Space Center newsletter.
“It was shocking to all of us and very frustrating,” NASA engineer Sophia Smith told me. “NASA has a long history of respecting religious speech. Why wouldn’t they allow us to put the name Jesus in the announcement about our club?”
Liberty Institute, one of the nation’s largest religious liberty law firms, threatened to file a federal lawsuit unless NASA apologizes and stops censoring the name ‘Jesus’.
The JSC Today newsletter is distributed electronically and includes a number of Space Center events – from salsa dancing lessons to soccer camp.
NASA issued a statement late Monday – that did not refute Liberty Institute’s charge.
“NASA does not prohibit the use of any specific religious names in employee newsletters or other internal communications. The agency allows a host of employee-led civic, professional, religious and other organizations to meet on NASA property on employee’s own time. Consistent with federal law, NASA attempts to balance employee’s rights to freely exercise religious beliefs with its obligation to ensure there is no government endorsement of religion. We believe in and encourage open and diverse dialogue among our employees and across the agency.”
Since 2001, employees had gathered during their lunch hour to pray and sing and read the Bible. There had been no censorship issues until last year.
Liberty Institute attorney Jeremy Dys told me the club had placed an announcement in the Space Center’s newsletter – announcing the theme of their meeting, “Jesus is our life.”
Following is the complete posting that appeared in the May 28, 2015 edition of JSC Today:
Join with the praise and worship band “Allied with the Lord” for a refreshing set of spring praise and worship songs on Thursday, June 4, from 11:15 a.m. to noon in Building 57, Room 106. (The theme for this session will be “Jesus is our life!”) Prayer partners will be available for anyone who has need. All JSC civil servants and contractors are welcome.
“Soon after that, the legal department called the organizers and told them they could not use the name Jesus in their announcements,” Dys told me. “They said, no Jesus.”
The club’s leadership was told that “NASA would be censoring all future club announcements that featured the name, ‘Jesus’,” Liberty Institute alleged in its complaint letter.
NASA’s legal department explained that including the name ‘Jesus’ within the club’s announcement made that announcement “sectarian” or “denominational.”
They also alleged such announcements would cause NASA to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Dys said the club organizers offered to provide a disclaimer, notifying readers that the announcement was private speech and was not endorsed by NASA or any other government agency. However, that offer was rejected as “insufficient.”
“The club members knew right away that NASA was censoring them and they were not comfortable with that,” Dys told me.
And so began a long process to resolve the matter.
“The bottom line is that NASA should not be censoring this club just because they use the name ‘Jesus’ in an employee advertisement,” Dys told me. “That is blatant religious discrimination.”
And NASA’s behavior is quite frankly baffling.
On Christmas Eve, 1968 – the crew of Apollo 8 read the Creation story as they orbited the moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders took turns reading from the Book of Genesis.
NASA defended the astronauts after atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair filed a federal lawsuit. The Supreme Court dismissed the suit due to lack of jurisdiction.
And astronaut Buzz Aldrin received communion on the lunar surface during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission.
“NASA should continue its tradition of protecting the great religious expression of its employees,” Dys told me.
I’m not quite sure why NASA is getting all worked up over a group of scientists and engineers who want to worship Jesus.
If they can worship the Almighty in Outer Space, they ought to be able to worship Him back on Earth.
After all, He is the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
Ah Jesus CHRIST!
Pew's own data shows U.S. on-track for Muslim majority population by 2050
March 23, 2016
By Sierra Rayne
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Back in December, the Pew Research Center released an updated study of their Muslim population projections for the United States.
Pew has provided three primary estimates of the Muslim proportion of the U.S. population. In 2007, it was 0.4%, increasing to 0.9% in 2014. The 2015 update was 1.0%.
According to the updated study in question, Pew projected that despite the Muslim proportion of the American population increasing by 2.5 fold from 0.4% to 1.0% in just 8 years between 2007 and 2015, the Muslim proportion would only increase further by 2.1 fold up to 2.1% by the year 2050 (i.e., over the next 35 years). This goes along with a prediction by Pew back in early 2011 that the U.S. Muslim population would only reach 1.7% of the general population by 2030.
This should sound bizarre, and when Pew's own data are plotted, it looks even more absurd.
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Perhaps the exponential rate of growth over the past eight years will suddenly tail off and effectively end within the next decade. Then again, perhaps not.
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And, in reality, nobody knows the actual number of Muslims in the U.S., since we are analyzing just limited polling data, rather than verified census data – all because “the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect data on religious affiliation in its demographic surveys or decennial census. Public Law 94-521 prohibits us from asking a question on religious affiliation on a mandatory basis.”
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Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...#ixzz43mGpBVNq
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Sikh US Army captain wins right to wear religious beard and turban in uniform
Reuters
01 Apr 2016 at 16:23 ET
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Image of a Sikh man (Shutterstock)
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A Sikh U.S. Army captain has been granted a long-term religious accommodation to wear a beard, turban and uncut hair in uniform, a decision supporters hailed on Friday as a landmark that could help other religious Sikhs to serve in the military.
Captain Simratpal Singh received the accommodation in a memorandum from Assistant Army Secretary Debra Wada dated March 30. The memo spelled out certain limitations and said the Army was working to develop uniform standards for soldiers who receive such waivers.
The accommodation for Singh is the first for an active-duty Sikh soldier since the Pentagon took steps two years ago to give individual troops greater latitude to wear turbans, head scarfs, yarmulke and tattoos as part of their religion.
The Pentagon’s move sought to make it easier for Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Wiccans and others to follow the tenets of their faith while serving in the U.S. military. But advocacy groups say the process remains difficult.
The accommodation for Singh, a West Point graduate and Army Ranger, was granted only after he sued to prevent the service from requiring him to undergo extensive testing to ensure that his beard and hair did not interfere with his helmet or gas mask.
Even as his court case was pending, Singh passed a routine gas mask test with his unit. In barring the extensive testing, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said it made little sense since 100,000 soldiers had been allowed beards for medical reasons.
Advocates say Singh is the first active duty Sikh soldier to be permitted to begin wearing a turban, long hair and beard even though he had previously served without them. Singh followed Army grooming standards when he entered the military academy at West Point but regretted it and sought an accommodation last year.
“My faith … is an integral part of who I am. I am thankful that I no longer have to make the choice between faith and service to our nation,” Singh said in a statement issued by the Sikh Coalition.
Amandeep Sidhu, one of Singh’s attorneys with McDermott Will & Emery, called the Army decision “a step in the right direction” but added “we are not satisfied with the U.S. military’s arduous, piecemeal approach to this issue, which forces all observant Sikhs to seek individual religious accommodations.”
Singh’s legal team also filed a federal lawsuit this week on behalf of three other Sikh service members seeking a religious accommodation.
(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and David Gregorio)
I used to work for a Sikh company. Frankly, I have zero issues with Sikhs. They were all very solid dudes. I'm sure you get some shitbags but I never saw it among those I worked with.
Having them wear a Turban...shrug, they should figure out a uniform appropriate one.
What you said Mal.
I'm good with the Sikhs.
They are historically not fans of the Muzzies and if they want to help us kill them, the least we can do is let them do it with their beards and turbans. :D
Umm... I don't know why this is news anyway? I think I remember Sikhs in the US military in the distant past wearing turbans and beards..... It's only been since WWII that beards became a no-go in the military (except the Navy, who has always allowed their CPOs up to Master Chief wear bears, except in special duty assignments like where I worked).