Book Review: Jesus, Jews and Jihad

Author: Marvin Yakos, PhD
Publisher: Xulon Press
Title: Jesus, Jews and Jihad
Genre: Nonfiction

“Open rebuke is better than love carefully concealed.”
Proverbs 27.5

Of foremost concern, this book is not intended to offend or condemn anyone, especially Arabs or Muslims.

“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:17)

We strive only to present truth and are eternally grateful for the precious freedom we have in America to be able to scrutinize the ideologies that assail us. We realize that there are many Muslims who do not agree with the barbaric killing perpetrated in the name of Allah and his prophet Muhammed. We wish to acknowledge the fact that not all Muslims completely adhere to the radical fundamental dogmas of the Qur’an and Hadith, but have a wide range of beliefs. There are Muslims that do not strive to terrorize or kill anyone.

We do, however, openly rebuke and attack spiritual bondage, ignorance, arrogance, persecution, terrorism, murder and lies.

With that disclaimer, buckle your seatbelt and prepare to be shocked by Marvin Yakos’ exposure of radical Islamic ideology. Few people really know much about that ideology. Our leadership and media emphasize that “Islam is a religion of peace.” To some, perhaps. But the radical Islamists who commit acts of terror believe that they are well within the parameters of their religion, and Yakos exposes the doctrine that they are following. Jesus, Jews and Jihad covers such topics as the 12th Imam, a key part of the apocalyptic vision of many Muslims, including Ahmadinejad, the current leader of Iran who is so busily building nuclear weapons. Other key topics are the significance of a small sect called the Sufis, and the five pillars and five articles are covered in clear, easy to understand language.

Jesus, Jews and Jihad is a wonderful primer with everything that people should know about Islam. The book lists facts, and the book is actually very light on conclusions because Yakos lets the facts speak for him. Aside from the information about Islam, the book contains many topic by topic comparisons of Islam to Christianity. Yakos details key differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and the threats presented by each. While the media would have us believe that women enjoy privileged status in Islam, Yakos lists the verses in the Qur’an that are used to keep them subjugated, and compares them to Ephesians 5:25 and Colossians 3:19. He also gently, but firmly, disposes of the feel-good concept that we are all worshiping the same God.

“The major difference between the Bible and the Qu’ran is the doctrine of the Incarnation. The entire balance and conflict lie in the divinity of Jesus Christ. The Qur’an vehemently denies that Jesus is God.”

Yakos is a Christian, and while the book frequently compares the doctrines of Christianity and Islam, this is still a good book for non-Christians to read - they will likely find it as enlightening about Christianity as it is about Islam. Marvin Yakos has studied Islam for twenty years, and this book distills those studies down to a beginner/intermediate course in radical Islamic ideology. I rate this book a four out of five, and recommend it to anyone who wishes to have a better understanding of who we are fighting.

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Laura Curtis is a web developer in New Orleans.

1993 WTC Bombing Anniversary Today

A few bloggers have noted this anniversary today - I had actually received notice if it due to my subscription to The Daily Perspective from Newspaper Archive.

“The blast, apparently caused by a car bomb, shook the 110-story towers with earthquake-like power, collapsing several floors in the underground garage and tearing a hole in the ceiling of an adjoining subway. It ripped a cavity in the basement 1,000 square feet and three floors deep,” an article in The Post Standard read on February 27, 1993.

The Daily Perspective is usually interesting and often serves as easy blog fodder if you’re short on content - go check it out!

Martial Law Now Easier - Way to go, Governor Blanco!

It is a truism on the left that the federal response to Katrina was sorely lacking. However, Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) has basically been given a free pass on her contribution to that problem. She waffled, stalled, and worried about her image and holding on to her power instead of the welfare of the people who put her in office.

The Feds, having received all the of the blame in spite of having very little control over the situation have quietly made sure that it’ll never happen again. They’ve slipped a provision into the last defense bill that few noticed.

The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president’s use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights. The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.”

Thanks, Governor Blanco!

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Oh Noes!

Oh noes! Christianity has been debunked! They have DNA!!1!eleventy!!! The bones of Jesus have been located, along with those of his wife and children. Guess we should have taken Dan Brown a bit more seriously, huh? Or not. Bryan at Hot Air points out that this doesn’t pass even the most rudimentary logic test. As The Anchoress points out, this is explained by the fact that it’s nearly Easter. The weeks just before Easter are, of course, the time of year when the ritual attack on Christianity is performed by unbelievers trying to justify themselves, or something like that. Boneheads… Hey, here’s a brilliant idea - let’s all take to the streets with placards about beheading those who insult Christianity and talk about how we suffer due to Christophobia. Yeah. That’s gonna happen.

Well, I didn’t watch , but I read that Gore won the Oscar for his global warming truther movie. It must have been his night - one of his few public appearances lately where the Gore Effect has not been noted. But lest anyone think that an Oscar lends any kind of credibility, I’d like to remind you of two things… one, the voters are actors. And two, this is just one more propaganda piece in a long line of scary global climate change propaganda pieces. It’s your typical two minute decade scare. (We’ve always been at war with Eastasia!) Global warming… previously known as global cooling… previously known as global warming… previously known as global cooling - just in the last 112 years. Pre-Google they could get away with it. Now there is no excuse for falling for this nonsense. However, the news is not all bad. Gore, or at least the Gore Effect, is evidently bringing people back to Christ. Just goes to show you God can use anything.

Powerline honors Sam Ryskind. Click through to see the cartoon.

Ryskind doesn’t just draw; he writes, too, and along with this cartoon, he speculates about what would happen if Congress decided to support al Qaeda:

One day the U.S. Congress may change allegiance and support al-Qaeda instead of the sons and daughters of their own constituents… . They will denounce the terrorist leadership as incompetent. Condemn the insurgency for atrocities befitting Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Seek ways of cutting off funds for the failed jihad and prevent terrorist networks from eavesdropping on suspected American agents. And mock the rank and file as dupes who wasted their lives for a Paradise that doesn’t exist. Not only would it undermine Islamic terrorists everywhere, it would free our troops from bearing the burden of such supporters.

Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark.

Bookmark Ryskind’s Fresh Meat page to keep up with his latest, it’s wonderful. And he has a great global warming cartoon and post here. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? Ryskind does.

As much as I enjoy smacking Democrats upside the head, there are many, many occasions where a Republican earns the same treatment. Trent “damn tired of porkbusters” Lott has passed his Katrina angst onto State Farm, which had no legal obligation to pay up, and evidently only did so because he’s a Senator. What amounted to a bribe did them no good, because now he’s gone after the whole industry. If I were a stockholder in an insurance company, as millions of 401k holding Americans are, I’d be “damn tired” of his playing socialist politics with the free market. Take your high blood pressure medication before you read the whole story at Wizbang.

Some jokes are not safe for work, especially pipe bombs. h/t to Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog for this story:

Two workers at Tufts-New England Medical Center allegedly planted a fake pipe bomb in an office the same day that Boston was panicked by a Cartoon Network marketing ploy. The stunt sparked a 45-minute evacuation of the first floor of one building and other offices nearby, including an on-site day-care center but no patient-care areas, Brooke Tyson Hynes, vice president of public affairs and communications at Tufts-NEMC, said today.

Coming soon - another look at the Saddleback Body Count. Mark Kelly, the News and Editorial Director of Saddleback Church, emailed me. I rather suspect he emailed every blogger who posted on this issue, because the first email I received was generic. In the second email (after I replied) he claimed to subscribe to this lowly blog via Bloglines. Interesting… well, at least I know that’s one reader who didn’t get here surfing for porn. (And yet, in spite of the fact that Mark likes this blog enough to subscribe to it, I didn’t make the Christian blogger list. What’s up with that, Mark? ) Because of his response, I’m going to re-address the topic of whether Rick Warren was fairly accused of padding his enrollment numbers. I used to be on staff at a large church - obviously not as large as Saddleback, but the enrollment was in the thousands - and I’ve also worked at a company which grew very large, very fast (AOL, back in the early nineties). So I have a basic knowledge of the inner workings of organizations like Saddleback, and that certainly influences my opinions. I’m perfectly willing to admit that I might have been unfair or lacked skepticism where it might have been due - when it is appropriate to do so. Consequently I’m taking my time with the new post to make sure I express what I really mean, so don’t look for it before the end of the week.

Fear and Faith

I was treated for post traumatic stress disorder many years ago. When I read an excerpt of this poem in a Tom Clancy novel, it resonated with me. (This is the excerpt from the book - I can’t find an English translation of the entire thing either online or on paper.)

Fear by Ilya Selvinskiy.

So you think you know the real meaning of fear?
Yeah, you think you do know, but I doubt it.
When you sit in a shelter with bombs falling all over.
And the houses around you are burning like torches.
I agree that you experience horror and fright
For such moments are dreadful, for as long as they last,
But the all-clear sounds–then it’s okay—
You take a deep breath, the stress has passed by.
But real fear is a stone deep down in your chest.
You hear me? A stone. That’s what it is, nothing more.

Selvinskiy understands fear. Those last two lines say it all. Although there are plenty of ways to cope with fear - for example, I have a protective husband, a commercial grade alarm system and sleep with a loaded Glock within arms’ reach - the only real antidote to fear is faith in a sovereign God. As years go on and I learn more about the God who has held me in the palm of His hand for my entire life, I am less and less ruled by fear. We’re starting a new sermon series at church on Hebrews, so there will be several posts a week on that for a while, with a particular emphasis on the effect of faith on fear.

The Heartrending Kaleidoscope of War

Many anti-war people wrongly conclude that those of us who support it are somehow unconscious of the consequences of war. That is as wrong as those of us who are for the war who believe that everyone against it is far left and unpatriotic. To be fair, a portion of the anti-war crowd is undeniably far left - not just anti-American but pro-communist. One of the main organizers of anti-war rallies is ANSWER, a well known communist front group. Don’t take my word for that, take David Corn’s.

The truth, as it so often happens, is in between. There are a lot of Americans who genuinely believe a)the Iraq war was wrong to begin with and/or b)it is already lost so we need to just surrender and get it over with. They might not phrase it exactly that way, especially b) but that’s the bottom line as I see it. (I would argue that those people have been misled by a media with goals other than disseminating objective facts.) And again, to be fair, some on the far right have not been especially thoughtful in their support for the war, beyond the desire to “go kick some Ay-rab *ss!” which is not at all helpful, and not people with whom I wish to be associated.

Well, as this must-read post from Villainous company states, for those of us still capable of rational thought, it comes down to a choice: The Heartrending Kaleidoscope of War. On this choice balances the future of our nation, and the consequences will affect generations to come.

Here’s an excerpt:

How many times has it happened to you? You sit at your computer and suddenly, in your Inbox appears one of those slideshows, set to music. The war, in moving pictures.

Moving, in more ways than one. For more often than not before that moving slideshow is over, you find yourself in tears again. The old familiar stinging sensation starting up behind your eyeballs, and then the hot liquid coursing down your cheeks. And there is really nothing you can do anymore because the response has become automatic now. Three years of war have left you like one of Pavlov’s dogs: the mere sight of one of those prize-winning photos is enough to induce a predictable sensation.

And so, more often than not, you close the file hurriedly and open a spreadsheet, or grab your calculator. Because you can’t afford to get choked up during working hours. Not again.

I often wonder how the war will seem, in retrospect. Once it is over, should that blessed day ever arrive, how will it come back to us in memory? I often think it will seem much like one of those slideshows; that we won’t recall entire episodes, but only snapshots frozen in time. Will our memories be distorted, selective? They can’t help but be, I fear. That is partly why I get up and write every morning. In our imperfect way, we are grappling to understand history before it is finished. It is only that some of us want to declare the victor before the final quarter has ended:

“Are you on the road, or in the ditch?” Back when I covered labor negotiations 30 years ago, that was the question reporters would ask to get a sense of how contract talks were going. The phrase came back to me last weekend as I listened to a series of relentlessly negative presentations at a conference here on America’s relations with the Muslim world.

We are in the ditch in the Middle East. As bad as you think it is watching TV, it’s worse. It’s not just Iraq, but the whole pattern of America’s dealings with the Arab world. People aren’t just angry at America — they’ve been that way to varying degrees since I first came here 27 years ago. What’s worse is that they’re giving up on us — on our ability to make good decisions, to solve problems, to play the role of honest broker.

My, my. How on earth could anyone get the impression America lacks the ability to prevail, or the good will to be an ‘honest broker’? Could it be articles like this, Mr. Ignatius’ offering from last week, optimistically titled: Expect the worst in Iraq:

Somehow, four years on, the debate about Iraq is still animated by wishful thinking. The White House talks as if a surge of 20,000 troops is going to stop a civil war. Democrats argue that when America withdraws its troops, Iraqis will finally take responsibility for their own security. But we all need to face the likelihood that this story isn’t going to have a happy ending.

Oddly, the thought that relentlessly broadcasting our inability to win the war doesn’t exactly encourage fearful Iraqis trying to decide whether to back militias or support an illogical foreign nation that can’t achieve consensus, keep intelligence information secret, or fulfill serious foreign policy commitments never seems to occur to really smart men like David Ignatius. But this is completely understandable. They’re too busy telling the world how short-sighted the administration is.

Read it all.

PC vs. Mac

Another view of the PC - Mac wars - enjoy these videos:

I love my PC. We always build our own so we get exactly what we want - nothing proprietary anymore like the old Packard Bells, and we can replace/upgrade parts at will. My PC may not be as pretty as a Mac, but the insides more than make up for it.

h/t Reformed Chicks

Global Warming Consensus: It’s No Big Deal

Over 17,000 scientists have reached a consensus about global warming. They say it’s no big deal. [Update: More info on the 17,000 scientists here. The petition is disputed. It's just as much hype as the global warming reporting.]

Do I care about consensus? No. Science should be based on facts, not groupthink. (At one point there was consensus that the world was flat, remember.) But this is one consensus the media is not going to talk about, so it’s worth pointing out.

When a dog urinates on a fire hydrant, we don’t arrest him. He’s just being a dog. And when journalists write scaremongering hysterical climate change stories, they’re just doing what they’ve been doing for over a hundred years. All we need to do is wait it out, without letting these imbeciles and the sheep who follow them wreck the economy, and before long they’ll start up with the global cooling again.

Doesn’t anybody else get the feeling that we’re stuck in the Matrix on this issue? Some information that will help you break free is here.

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