“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” So wrote Vladimir Lenin. The Communist Revolution which he engineered did seem to pack many decades of change into a relatively short time. The old tsarist order was quickly overthrown, and, almost overnight, Russia was transformed from a Christian country to an … Read more
“Within five years,” said former French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, “the situation could become irreversible.” He was referring to the rising tide of violence resulting from Muslim immigration. His comment was from an interview that took place almost two years ago. If Collomb’s calculations are correct, France only has a few years “to avoid the … Read more
Considering how much emphasis modern churchmen put on trust, it’s worth noting that the Bible does not have much to say about trusting others. Of course, the Bible tells us to trust in God, but there is no corresponding command to trust our fellow men. Of the six references to “trust” in the RSV Reader’s … Read more
Here’s a recent news item that caught my eye: Ayaan Hirsi Ali was scheduled to present a paper on radical Islamic terror at the National Security Council before being blocked by H.R. Mc Master and his recently appointed Senior Director of Counter-Terrorism, Mustafa Javed Ali. Mustafa Javed Ali is now the senior director of counter-terrorism? … Read more
I recently wrote a piece about the civilizational struggle with Islam. In response, a reader asked for some specific practical ways that Catholics could resist Islam. I replied with a short list of steps Church leaders could take: Break off dialogue with Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as ISNA and ICNA. Stop lending them legitimacy. Stop … Read more
In a speech delivered to the Annual MAS-ICNA (Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America) Convention in December 2015, Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), urged Muslim Americans to take up the cause of Black Lives Matter. “Black Lives Matter is our matter,” he said; “Black Lives … Read more
If you’re expecting American Muslim leaders to join in efforts to reverse the legalization of same-sex “marriage,” don’t hold your breath. Undoubtedly, we will hear some obligatory statements of disappointment and disapproval, but it’s unlikely to go beyond that. It’s no secret that Islam is no friend to the gay lifestyle. The issue of gay … Read more
The bombing of a Russian passenger jet over the Sinai was most probably the end result of a stealth jihad operation. That might seem like a strange way of putting it, because we usually think of stealth jihad as something that radical Muslims do to subvert non-Muslim societies. Yet, unless there were already a stealth … Read more
“Not every conspiracy is a theory.” So said an ad campaign introducing a new TV series a number of years ago. I don’t remember what the series was about, but I do remember the tag line. I take it for granted that there are real conspirators afoot in the world who do not have the … Read more
One of the great advantages we have over our ancestors is hindsight. With a clearer picture of the past, we can avoid making the same mistakes they made. But what if we’re not allowed to use our hindsight? What if we’re forced to pretend that what happened in the past bears no relation to what … Read more
During the financial crisis of 2008, one of the pressing questions of the day had to do with whether or not various giant corporations—AIG, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, GM, and others—were too big to fail. The consensus among policymakers at the time was that these companies had to be bailed out by the government, or else … Read more
In the summer of 2012, Michele Bachmann and four other House members sent a letter to the Inspector-Generals of key government agencies asking them to open an investigation into possible Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. The letter to the Department of State specifically raised concerns over Huma Abedin, then-Deputy Chief of Staff and … Read more
I am sometimes criticized for focusing too much on the Islamic threat to the West and not paying enough attention to the more immediate threat from the political left. One of the reasons I concentrate on the former is that the threat from the left is more obvious and is widely covered by numerous columnists … Read more
U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, who just took up his post, has received a rude reception. And understandably so. In 1992, McFaul was the representative in Russia of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S. government-funded agency whose mission is to promote democracy abroad. The NDI has been tied to color-coded or … Read more
Last February, Bernard Lewis, the famous historian of the Middle East, warned that if elections were held early after the Arab spring, “It can only lead to one direction, as it did in [Weimar] Germany, for example,” an allusion to Hitler’s 1933 takeover after gaining a plurality in elections. In this case, Lewis meant not … Read more
BREAKING NEWS: Egypt’s embattled president Hosni Mubarak has stepped down, and Cairo is rejoicing. I wonder what this will mean for Egypt’s Christian population, especially if the Muslim Brotherhood gains in power.
John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, routinely uses the phrase “Taliban Catholicism” to describe “an exaggerated allergy to anything that smacks of secularism, liberalization, or corruption by modernity — an angry form of the faith that knows only how to excoriate and condemn.” Allen says it’s become part of the “standard stump … Read more