Fort Hood Islamic Terrorist continues to receive US Army pay, despite having killed or injured 45

Awaiting Trial, Maj. Nidal Hasan Paid $278,000
By SCOTT FRIEDMAN
NBCDFW.com
updated 5/20/2013 11:16:42 PM ET
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51947575
The Department of Defense confirms to NBC 5 Investigates that accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan has now been paid more than $278,000 since the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting that left 13 dead 32 injured. The Army said under the Military Code of Justice, Hasan’s salary cannot be suspended unless he is proven guilty.

If Hasan had been a civilian defense department employee, NBC 5 Investigates has learned, the Army could have suspended his pay after just seven days.

Personnel rules for most civilian government workers allow for "indefinite suspensions" in cases "when the agency has reasonable cause to believe that the employee has committed a crime for which a sentence of imprisonment may be imposed."

Meanwhile, more than three years later soldiers wounded in the mass shooting are fighting to receive the same pay and medical benefits given to those wounded in combat.

Retired Army Spc. Logan Burnett, a reservist who, in 2009, was soon to be deployed to Iraq, was shot three times when a gunman opened fire inside the Army Deployment Center.

“I honestly thought I was going to die in that building,” said Burnett. “Just blood everywhere and then the thought of -- that's my blood everywhere.”

Burnett nearly died. He's had more than a dozen surgeries since the shooting, and says post-traumatic stress still keeps him up at night.

Burnett is now fighting a new battle; only this one is against the U.S. Army.

The Army has not classified the wounds of the Ft. Hood victims as “combat related” and declines to label the shooting a “terrorist attack”,

The “combat related” designation is an important one, for without it Burnett and other shooting victims are not given combat-related pay, they are not eligible for Purple Heart retirement or medical benefits given to other soldiers wounded either at war or during the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon.

As a result, Burnett, his wife Torey, and the families of other Fort Hood victims miss out on thousands of dollars of potential benefits and pay every year.

To Burnett the shooting felt like combat.

“You take three rounds and lose five good friends and watch seven other people get killed in front of you. Do you have another term that we can classify that as?” asked Burnett.

The Army has categorized the shooting as a case of “workplace violence.”

“Sickens me. Absolutely sickens me. Workplace violence? I don't even know if I have the words to say,” said Burnett.

"They don't need to be treated like this. They don't need to sit and fight every day for this benefit or that,” said Torey Burnett.

As that fight continues, Burnett was stunned to see a letter detailing the more $278,000 Hasan has been paid since his arrest. NBC 5 Investigates received the letter from the Department of Defense in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

"There have been times when my wife and I cannot afford groceries. We cannot afford gas in our car,” Burnett said. “Literally, times where we ate Ramen noodles for weeks on end. This [that Hasan is still earning a paycheck] makes me sick to my stomach,” said Burnett.

Burnett isn’t alone in his outrage.

“We're giving the defendant in this case every benefit of the doubt. But yet we're not giving the benefits to the victims,” said Rep. Thomas Rooney (R) Florida Rooney, a former prosecutor at Fort Hood, recently signed a bi-partisan letter urging defense secretary Chuck Hagel to "...reclassify the victims' deaths and injuries as 'combat related'..."

The letter said the current situation has "...resulted in an embarrassing lack of care and treatment for the victims and their families."

“What happened here is not a case of workplace violence. What happened here was an attack on our military by a terrorist element specifically targeting our military, which just so happened to be in the United States of America,” said Rooney.

[Continue reading full article here]

Obama's Government promotes Radical Islam as being the true "Moderates"

U.S. Gov't: Radical Muslims Approved, Moderates Shunned
Counterterrorism trainers are told that U.S. Brotherhood groups' are not tied to terrorism. Yet the federal gov't has proved they are.
By Ryan Maurohttp://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/us-govt-radical-muslims-approved-moderates-shunned

Hassan Shibly, Nihad Awad, Zair Shakir, Kifah Mustafa and Siraj Wahhaj (clock-wise from left). All are radical Islamists who have been associated with CAIR.

Shockingly, the advisory committee that likely influenced these guidelines includes numerous individuals affiliated with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

The document says it is a list of “tips for federal, state and local government and law enforcement officials organizing CVE [Countering Violent Extremism], cultural awareness, counter-radicalization, or counterterrorism training.” It was produced by the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in cooperation with the National Counterterrorism Center.

The DHS suggestions in the document include:

"Don’t use training premised on theories with little or no evidence to support them. Examples (from the report “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace”) of unsubstantiated theories include:

a. Many mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties.

b. Mainstream Muslim organizations are fronts for Islamic political organizations whose true desire is to establish Sharia law in America. Muslim Americans are using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law."

The “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace” report cited depicts concerns about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood as the fabrications of anti-Muslim bigots. Moreover, it defends the Brotherhood, saying it is a moderate group that wouldn’t use front groups in America.

The Federal Government Itself Provides Evidence to the Contrary

In reality, solid evidence exists to the contrary – evidence ironically from the federal government’s own determinations as well as documents from the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood itself including a 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood explanatory memorandum that explicitly states: “[O]ur work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

The Brotherhood memorandum lists “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The list includes “mainstream” Muslim-American groups—the very same groups which appear to have influenced these very same Department of Homeland Security guidelines (see below).

Specifically, the federal government designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) as unindicted co-conspirators in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. Federal prosecutors labeled these three mainstream groups as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities in 2007. In 2009, the designations were upheld by District Court Judge Solis because of “ample” evidence linking them to Hamas.

The Clarion Project has broken numerous stories about other Islamist groups doing exactly what the DHS dismisses in the current training document as “unsubstantiated theories.”

For example, a Pennsylvania-based group, Sankore Institute of Islamic-African Studies International (SIIASI), tells Muslims to engage in "litigation jihad" to advance Sharia law in America.

A California-based group, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), which issues authoritative fatwas, or religious declarations, said in a 2007 Arabic paper presented at one of its conferences it recommends that Muslims become judges and use deception to implement sharia law to the best of their ability. To call their rulings unsettling would be a gross understatement.

These are important facts but the DHS guidelines would leave law enforcement personnel ignorant of them.

[CONTINUE READING FULL ARTICLE HERE] 

"Some Day Street" - An Alcoholic's story

This is an Alcoholic's story. The author is unknown. I have edited it and made one or two alterations to make it scan better. It certainly tells it like it is.

Some Day Street
Some Day Street is a one way street that leads to the Gates of Hell;
It's littered with broken bottles; it reeks with a stale wine smell.
It's the street of human derelict, the place of forgotten Men,
Who stagger and sway along the way, and are never seen again.

Some Day Street is a sunless Street, where the days and nights are one;
And each tomorrow brings pain and sorrow, till life of Man is done.
It's a fearful Street, a hidden Street, that lives in each drunken brain;
That screams and cries, and tries and tries to find some day again.

Some Day Street is a lonely Street; it's always dark and drear,
Where the eyes of men are dull and tired and forever filled with fear.
There's not a smile on that cruel mile, but death in every block:
And the Devil smiles and the Devil beguiles the souls he has in Hock.

Some Day Street is a Hellish Street; it's full of broken dreams.
It smells of broken bodies, and laughs at their drunken screams.
It's a timeless Street, a faceless Street; its Men are faceless too;
There they stay, till they’re laid away, in a box six foot by two.

Some Day Street is a lonely Street, it claims, it maims, it slays.
Men toss and turn, and sob and yearn for the memories of other days.
The days before they hit the Street, when life was good and new,
When each day and night was clean and bright, in a world where dreams come true.

Some Day Street is a jealous Street that takes its victims breath;
Each step you make, each drink you take, lead you on to Death.
It's a dim-lit Street, a lying Street, that fools each seeking heart;
It shades each one and when it's done, it tears each one apart.

Some Day Street is a One-Way Street that lets few people go.
I've lived on Some Day Street myself and that is how I know.
The Wino, the Dinoh, the Hypo, the Big Shot and the Bum,
The Mackaroo too, I've swilled their wine and run.

I know the lying garish lights, I know the Hellish dreams,
I know the Alley and the Dives and Jails, I know the cries and screams.
I know the filth of Some Day Street, I know the cry of shame,
because I came from Some Day Street, with all its Hell and Pain.

I've found a way to live each day and not go back again;
Found a way to carry on, and leave behind the pain.
Friends who live on Some Day Street said that there was a way,
To leave the Hell of Some Day Street and that was through AA.

I've not been back to Some Day Street, in weeks, in months, in years.
I fear the Hellish Street no more, its blackouts and its fears.
Those Friends of mine showed me a path that I gladly trod.
Out of the depths of Some Day Street, on to the path of God.
Anonymous

"King of Kings" narrated by Rev Colin

One of the tracks on Rev Colin's meditation CD "In Praise of Him" which contains 33 tracks of meditations as well as this bonus track, all of which are available to download from iTunes, Amazon & CD Baby. 

Rod Williams sings "A Fencer From the Outback"

Australian Country singer Rod Williams is known as "Australia's Country Music Gentleman" and this song gives you a good idea of why. His voice is easy to listen to as he sings real country ballads. Check him out on Youtube, and download his songs from iTunes.

Flawed White House Guidelines on Terror Training

Jihad experts decry White House terror training guidelines
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/20/jihad-experts-decry-white-house-terror-training-guidelines/#ixzz2Tw0RrW9D
2:19 AM 05/20/2013

Neil Munro
White House Correspondent
Experts on Islam and terrorism are decrying the Department of Homeland Security’s recently revealed anti-terrorism training guidelines, which pressure cops to ignore Islamic beliefs when investigating terror crimes.

The Boston bombings demonstrated the impact of such training, Andrew McCarthy, a former New York prosecutor, told The Daily Caller.

“The Boston Marathon was bombed by a jihadist who had been investigated by the FBI … [and was confirmed in 2011 to be] an Islamist, which would have been hard not to do since he does not appear to have made any secret of it,” said McCarthy, who persuaded a New York jury in 1995 to convict “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman for his use of Islamic teaching to spur jihad attacks, including the 1993 attack against the Twin Towers.

But before the bombing, “the FBI closed its file [on Tamerlan Tsarnaev] because it found this did not constitute ‘derogatory information,’” McCarthy said.

McCarthy and other security experts, and even members of the American Islamic community, indicate that a culture of excessive concern for the sensibilities of Muslims supremacists is preventing law enforcement agencies from pursuing jihadists.

The 2011 guidelines unveiled Thursday by The Daily Caller are part of this pattern of deferring to Islamist chauvinism. (Related: Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists)

Under the federal guidelines, “agents are admonished to discount the possibility that an Islamist’s constitutionally protected abhorrence of the United States might possibly lead to violence,” McCarthy told TheDC.

Even if FBI officials had learned about Tsarnaev’s 2012 trip to a part of southern Russia that is embroiled in a jihadi war, they would not have restarted their 2011 investigation, a government official told the Washington Post in April.

“The FBI investigation into the individual in question had been closed six months prior to his departure from the United States and more than a year before his return. …Since there was no derogatory information, there was no reason to suggest that additional action was warranted,” the official said in April.

On his six-month trip, starting in January 2012, Tsarnaev visited several militant Islamic leaders and mosques in Dagestan, where jihadis are fighting the Russian government, according to several U.S. and Russian media sources.

“The fiasco regarding Boston is a prime example” of how bad training degrades security, said Robert Spencer, an authority on Islamic doctrine who is heavily criticized by Islamic groups in the United States. He noted that even though FBI agents had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the FBI was unable to identify Tsarnaev in crowd photographs taken before and after the bomb strike.

After the attack, FBI officials also did not ask the main mosque in Boston for help in identifying the suspects, said Nichole Mossalam, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Boston.

“We were the ones who reached out to them … on Friday” once the picture were released, Mossalam told TheDC.

Because of the guidelines, it would be “a ‘profiling’ scandal to show the pictures at the mosque just because it was a bombing with … no other evidence of connection to Muslims,” he said.

The guidelines, titled “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Training Do’s and Don’ts,” don’t merely promote respect for free expression but actively promote extremist views by telling officials to sideline experts who “venture too deep into the weeds of [Islamic] religious doctrines and history. … [T]hese topics are not necessary in order to understand the [Muslim] community.”

The DHS also actively discourages engagement with moderate Muslims. “Don’t use trainers … who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’ … [or who] equate radical thought [or] religious expressions … with criminal activity,” say the training guidelines.

The guidelines also advise cops, “Don’t use a trainer or training that has received repeated external negative feedback … don’t use training that treats the American Muslim community as a problem rather than as a partner … don’t use training that relies on fear [for example, by citing convictions that show] mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties.”

The training guidelines go so far as to urge federal officials to rely on a political report by the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), a Los Angeles, California-based Islamic advocacy group with extensive ties to jihadists and Islamist groups, including the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.

[CONTINUE READING THE FULL ARTICLE HERE]

Rod Williams sings "Holdin' the White Line"

Rod Williams, 'Australia's Country Music Gentleman' sings his great new song on this video. Why not share it with all of your friends by pointing them to it on Youtube, and then buy the download it from Amazon.

A Hymn for Pentecost: "The Spirit's Fire"

This Sunday is Pentecost and so I'm sharing this Pentecost Hymn with you today. Please feel free to share it with your church and your friends. If you use it in your worship service then please acknowledge its use to CCLI in the usual way.

The Spirit’s Fire  7676
TUNE: Cara

A mighty wind around us,
Is rushing through this place;
God ‘s Spirit full surrounds us,
Defeating time and space.

The Spirit’s fire consuming,
We burn with faith’s desire;
God’s mighty pow’r upon us,
We blaze with holy fire.

Christ calls on us to serve Him,
To witness to His love;
To love and serve our neighbour,
And praise our God above.

Let’s all proclaim His message,
And be His hands and feet;
When we serve Christ our Saviour,
Our lives are made complete.
© 2011 : Colin Gordon-Farleigh

What God says about Marriage

In attempting to redefine marriage the UK Coalition Government is being expressly defiant towards God, as though they know best and God should learn to do what they tell Him rather than doing what He tells them. How arrogant can you get!

If marriage is redefined to incorporate same-sex unions then it weakens the whole institution of marriage as laid down in Scripture, and at the same time it devalues it. This is a time to be telling your political leaders that they should leave things as they are. The electorate are, by and large, extremely angered by the proposals, and this anger will be reflected in the Ballot Box ultimately if this ill-thought out attempt at winning a few extra votes is carried through.

We must remember that God is sovereign, not man. The answer will lie in prayer. The following passage of Scripture says it all:

Matthew Chapter 19: verses 3-5
Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” (4) And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, (5) and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’?

Coalition in UK Determined to Destroy the Sanctity of Marriage by Redefining it

Marriage Devastation 

Here in the UK, the House of Commons may be on the verge of devastating marriage by 'redefining it' - a move that would have huge consequences for future generations and change the shape of society.

Now is the time to speak and to pray. In God's grace the Bill could still be defeated.

Next Monday and Tuesday will see the critical Report Stage and Third Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. If voted through it is expected to go to the House of Lords in early June. We face a crucial six weeks.

Please contact your MP (even if you have done so before) urging them to vote no next week and / or to back a referendum on marriage. When MPs hear from their constituents it can make a real difference. If this issue will affect how you vote at the next general election, please say so (especially if it means you won't vote for them).

Here are some points you can use in urging them to vote against the Bill:

• Referendum: People have never been given the opportunity to vote on this. It has big social and constitutional consequences yet it wasn't in any of the major parties' manifestos or the coalition agreement and the consultation was a sham. MPs should back a referendum if there is to be any possibility of change in this area. 

• Deafness: The Government has ignored the many concerns raised by MPs during the Second Reading and Committee stages of the Bill, failing to introduce appropriate amendments or abandon the Bill.

• Hostility: This Bill would destroy a common understanding of marriage and set up two rival understandings of marriage. It's the beginning of hostility rather than the end because people will be penalised despite the protections that the Government claims. 

• Honesty: This Bill pretends that homosexual and heterosexual relationships are the same when they are not. The problems with trying to define consummation and adultery for same sex couples in the Bill demonstrate this.

• Children: This Bill breaks the link with children (not all married couples have children but all children have a biological mother and father - marriage reflects this reality). God's pattern for marriage and family is the best for adults, children and society.

• Unpopular: A recent ComRes poll shows that this policy is unpopular. Amongst those eligible to vote in this month's local elections, it made: 
• 23% of people less likely to vote Conservative; only 7% of people more likely 
• 17% of people less likely to vote Labour; only 6% of people more likely 
• 23% of people less likely to vote Liberal Democrat; only 4% of people more likely

North Yorkshire Moors Railway : Fabulous!

     

     Last week we spent the week on vacation enjoying the fabulous scenery of North Yorkshire and the National Park and Moors. I'm old enough to have travelled regularly on steam trains in my youth, and I was delighted when we discovered the North Yorkshire Moors Railway went past the Cottage where we were staying. Not only that, but last weekend was a Steam Gala, and so there were trains going by regularly throughout the day, and the sound of the whistle quickly became a notable part of our lives.
     Levisham Station, which featured in one of the Harry Potter movies and also in 'Brideshead Revisited', was a five-minute walk away, and we spent several hours enjoying the hustle and bustle of a busy 1912-design railway station during the course of the week.

We stayed in a beautiful detached cottage on the edge of the Forest which was aptly named 'The Hideaway'.  Why not check it out for yourself by going to this website.

The flaw in American Policy under the Obama Administration

Last year Act for America put out a series of emails describing the purge of any references to radical Islam in federal government counter-terrorism materials.

This didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of a conscious and deliberate policy decision at the highest levels of the Obama administration.

Please view the short video below, put out by our friends at EMET.

We now know that Russian authorities wire tapped a phone call between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, in which they discussed “jihad.” This phone call was part of the reason the Russians alerted the FBI about Tsarnaev.

Had John Brennan, now our CIA director, listened in on this phone call, he almost certainly would have dismissed any concerns about Tsarnaev.

Why? Because Brennan has stated publicly he believes the notion that “jihad” is connected to terrorism is false. Brennan believes “jihad” is a “holy tenet” of Islam, because he claims it refers only to personal improvement.

Or what our friend Dr. Walid Phares calls “Islamic yoga.”

This administration refuses to acknowledge any jihadist ideology behind Islamic terrorism. The short video below is a must-see in this regard.

We can only speculate what might have happened when the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev if our counterterrorism strategy included identifying jihadist ideology as a prime motivator of jihadist attacks.

But since the FBI can’t consider jihadist ideology when it does such investigations, it’s no wonder it dropped its investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

'Hymn for Today': "He Is Always With Me"

For my choice of the 'Hymn for Today' I am sharing one of the hymns that I have entered for the Hymn-writing Competition. This hymn was recorded by the Tallahassee-based Charlotte Kerce on her album "He is Always With Me."  The album is available from the Sheer Joy Music online store or the tracks can be individually downloaded from iTunes, Amazon and CD Baby. I hope you enjoy singing it. Please feel free to share it as much as you wish, but please report its use in Church Services or School Assemblies to CCLI in the usual way. The lyrics are by Colin Gordon-Farleigh and the music is by Greg Scheer.

He Is Always With Me
TUNE: God’s Spirit

I can feel God's Spirit
stirring in my soul;
I can feel him moving
since Jesus made me whole.
I can feel God's Spirit
stirring in my soul;
since Jesus made me whole.
He is always with me,
each moment of the day;
He is always with me,
and He's teaching me the way.
He is always, always with me.
He is always with me.

He will lead and help me
follow Christ, the Way;
help me in my witness,
and guide me when I pray.
He will lead and help me
follow Christ, the Way;
and guide me when I pray.
He is always with me . . .

I will be a witness,
I will serve my Lord;
I will promise always
to live life by His Word.
I will be a witness,
I will serve my Lord;
to live life by His Word.
He is always with me . . .
© 2007 :  Colin Gordon-Farleigh

A new 'Hymn for Today' : "Heaven's Dawn Breaks"

Heaven’s Dawn Breaks  87 87

TUNE: Brocklesby

Hear the sound of angel’s singing,

Filling up the skies with song;

Now from earth the saints are winging,

Joining with the heav’nly throng.

For the dawn of heav’n is breaking,

Jesus, Saviour, now has come;

He’s returned to earth in glory,

Sound the trumpet, beat the drum!

In a moment, in a twinkling,

He will harvest all that’s sown;

See the brightest dawn a’breaking,

Jesus calls out to His own.

Praising, praising, Christ the Saviour,

He is King and Lord of all;

Join the throng of angels singing,

Heav’n’s dawn breaks, now heed the call.

© 2011 :  Colin Gordon-Farleigh 

Boston Terror Suspects attended Mosque with Radical Ties

Mosque that Boston suspects attended has radical ties

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/boston-mosque-radicals/2101411/

Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 6:06 a.m. EDT April 24, 2013

Terror suspects, fugitives and radical speakers have passed through the Cambridge mosque that the Tsarnaev brothers are known to have visited.

  (Photo: Shakil Adil, AP)

Story Highlights

Cambridge mosque was founded in 1982 by students at MIT, Harvard and other Boston-area schools. Affiliated with Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors call an "overt arm" of Muslim Brotherhood. More than half of the $15.5 million used to found the Boston mosque came from Saudi sources

BOSTON — The mosque attended by the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon double bombing has been associated with other terrorism suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism.

Several people who attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., have been investigated for Islamic terrorism, including a conviction of the mosque's first president, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, in connection with an assassination plot against a Saudi prince.

Its sister mosque in Boston, known as the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, has invited guests who have defended terrorism suspects. A former trustee appears in a series of videos in which he advocates treating gays as criminals, says husbands should sometimes beat their wives and calls on Allah (God) to kill Zionists and Jews, according to Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group that has investigated the mosques.

The head of the group is among critics who say the two mosques teach a brand of Islamic thought that encourages grievances against the West, distrust of law enforcement and opposition to Western forms of government, dress and social values.

"We don't know where these boys were radicalized, but this mosque has a curriculum that radicalizes people. Other people have been radicalized there," said the head of the group, Charles Jacobs.

Yusufi Vali, executive director at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, insists his mosque does not spread radical ideology and cannot be blamed for the acts of a few worshipers.

"If there were really any worry about us being extreme," Vali said, U.S. law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and Departments of Justice and Homeland Security would not partner with the Muslim American Society and the Boston mosque in conducting monthly meetings that have been ongoing for four years, he said, in an apparent reference to U.S. government outreach programs in the Muslim community.

The Cambridge and Boston mosques, separated by the Charles River, are owned by the same entity but managed individually. The imam of the Cambridge mosque, Sheik Basyouny Nehela, is on the board of directors of the Boston mosque.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, attended the Cambridge mosque for services and are accused of setting two bombs that killed three people and injured at least 264 others at the April 15 Boston Marathon.

The FBI has not indicated that either mosque was involved in any criminal activity, but mosque attendees and officials have been implicated in terrorist activity:

• Alamoudi, who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque's president, was sentenced to 23 years in federal court in Alexandria, Va., in 2004 for his role as a facilitator in what federal prosecutors called a Libyan assassination plot against then-crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Abdullah is now the Saudi king.


Aafia Siddiqui is shown after her graduation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Photo: AP)

• Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at the Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans for a chemical attack in New York City. She tried to grab a rifle while in detention and shot at military officers and FBI agents, for which she was convicted in New York in 2010 and is serving an 86-year sentence.


The 2009 booking photo of Tarek Mehanna, of Sudbury, Mass. (Photo: Sudbury Police Department via AP)

• Tarek Mehanna, who worshiped at the Cambridge mosque, was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda. Mehanna had traveled to Yemen to seek terrorist training and plotted to use automatic weapons to shoot up a mall in the Boston suburbs, federal investigators in Boston alleged.

• Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston Abdul-Badi Abousamra, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna's co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.

• Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

What both mosques have in common is an affiliation with the Muslim American Society, an organization founded in 1993 that describes itself as an American Islamic revival movement. It has also been described by federal prosecutors in court as the "overt arm" of the Muslim Brotherhood, which calls for Islamic law and is the parent organization of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Critics say the Muslim American Society promotes a fraught relationship with the United States, expressed in part by the pattern discussed by Americans for Progress and Tolerance in which adherents are made to feel cut off from their home country and to identify with a global Islamist political community rather than with America.

Zhudi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said the radical teachings often follow a theme of recitation of grievances that Islam has with the West, advocacy against U.S. foreign policy and terrorism prosecutions, and efforts "to evangelize Islam in order to improve Western society that is secularized," he says.

Jasser, a veteran of the U.S. Navy and author of the 2012 book A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot Fights to Save His Faith, says the teachings make some followers feel "like their national identity is completely absent and hollow, and that vacuum can be filled by (radical) Islamic ideology, which is supremacist and looks upon the West as evil."

The Cambridge mosque was founded in 1982 by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and several other Boston-area schools, according to a profile by the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Its members founded the sister mosque in Boston in 2009.

The leadership of the two mosques is intertwined, and the ideology they teach is the same, Jacobs said. Ilya Feoktistov, director of research at Americans for Peace and Tolerance, said much of the money to create the Boston mosque came not from local Muslims but from foreign sources.

More than half of the $15.5 million used to found the Boston mosque came from Saudi sources, Feoktistov said, who cites financial documents that Jacobs' group obtained when the mosque sued it for defamation. The lawsuit was later dropped.

Vali said that the vast majority of total donors were in the United States and that "no donations were accepted if the donor wanted to have any decision-making influence (even if benign)."

Vali characterized Americans for Peace and Tolerance and its founder, Jacobs, as anti-Muslim activists who spread "lies and half-truths in order to attack and marginalize much of the local Muslim community and many of its institutions."

"It's the new McCarthyism in full swing," he said.

Sheik Basyouny Nehela, the imam of the Cambridge mosque, which is located across the Charles River from Boston, is on the board of directors for the Muslim American Society of Boston, which runs the Boston mosque. The Tsarnaevs attended the Cambridge mosque.

A statement issued by the Cambridge mosque said the Tsarnaev brothers were "occasional visitors." The mosque's office manager, Nichole Mossalam, said neither brother expressed radical views. "They never exhibited any violent sentiments or behaviors. Otherwise, they would have been reported," Mossalam said.

The Cambridge mosque said Tsarnaev, 26, who died Thursday night in a shootout with police, "disagreed with the moderate American-Islamic theology" of the mosque. Tsarnaev challenged an imam who said in his sermon that it was appropriate to celebrate U.S. national holidays and was told to stop such outbursts, the mosque said in a statement.

Talal Eid, a Muslim chaplain at Brandeis University, said focusing on individual radicals that prayed in a building is unfair.

"In 2011, the two brothers were right under the nose of the FBI and they didn't find anything," Eid said, who never met the Tsarnaevs. "How do you want me as an imam to know enough to tell them they are not welcome here? How can I figure out those people have that kind of criminal intent?"

The Muslim American Society says on its website that it is independent of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, early Brotherhood literature is considered "the foundational texts for the intellectual component for Islamic work in America," the website states.

Jacobs says claims of moderate Islam do not square with the mosque's classic jihadi texts in its library and its hosting of radical speakers.

Jacobs said Ahmed Mansour, his co-director at Americans for Peace and Tolerance, found writings by Syed Qutb, the former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and other jihadi texts at the Cambridge mosque's library when Mansour went there in 2003. Qutb pioneered the radical violent ideology espoused by al-Qaeda.

Yusuf al Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader who espouses radical views in videos collected by Jacobs' group, was listed as a trustee on the Cambridge mosque's IRS filings until 2000, and on the mosque's website until 2003, when he addressed congregants via recorded video message to raise money for the Boston mosque, according to a screenshot of the announcement that Feoktistov provided.

Vali said Qaradawi was listed as an honorary trustee years ago only because his scholarship and high esteem in Muslim circles would help with fundraising.

Yasir Qadhi, who lectured at the Boston mosque in April 2009, has advocated replacing U.S. democracy with Islamic rule and called Christians "filthy" polytheists whose "life and prosperity … holds no value in the state of Jihad," according to a video obtained by Jacobs' group.

Vali said Qadhi was a guest of a non-profit organization that was renting space at the Boston mosque and has changed his views since that video was made.

Jacobs and others say it is not only renters who express sympathetic views for terrorists. Leaders of the Boston and Cambridge mosques, and invited guests, have advocated on behalf of convicted terrorists, urging followers to seek their release or lenient sentences.

Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, sometimes a spokesman for the Boston mosque, used Siddiqui's case to speak against the USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed under the George W. Bush administration. "After they're done with (Siddiqui), they are going to come to your door if they feel like it," he said, according to a video obtained by Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

Anwar Kazmi, a member of the Cambridge mosque's board of trustees, called for leniency for Mehanna and Siddiqui at a Boston rally in February 2012, in a video posted to YouTube. He characterized Siddiqui's 86-year sentence as excessive.

In an interview with USA TODAY, Kazmi insisted that the Cambridge mosque is moderate and condemns the marathon bombings. On Monday, the mosque e-mailed members to caution them that the FBI may question them and that they may want to seek representation.

"This kind of violence, terrorism, it's just completely contrary to the spirit of Islam," Kasmi said. "The words in the Quran say if anybody kills even a single human being without just cause, it's as if you've killed all of humanity." 

Susan Marrs sings "Listen to the Rain" & "Colours" : 2 songs by Colin Gordon-Farleigh and Greg Scheer

A new 'Hymn for Today' : "Let's Stand Together"

Here is my worship song for today. I hope that you enjoy singing it! Please feel free to share it as much as you want, but, as usual, please report its use to CCLI if you use it in your worship services.

Let’s Stand Together  5555 & Refrain
TUNE: Together

Let’s stand together,
Let’s all praise the Lord;
And let’s join in worship
Of the Living Word!
Oh, let’s stand together!
Let’s all praise the Lord.
And let’s join in worship
Of the Living Word!
Let’s stand together!
Let’s stand together
Let’s stand together,
And let’s all praise the Lord!

Let’s praise together,
Let’s all praise the Lord;
And praise Him forever,
The true Living Word!
Oh, let’s praise together!
Let’s all praise the Lord.
And praise Him forever,
The true Living Word!
Let’s stand together!
Let’s stand together
Let’s stand together,
And let’s all praise the Lord!
 © 2007 : Colin Gordon-Farleigh

What a beautiful photograph!

Incandescent morning Photo by Kiredjian Joris
Thank you Kiredjian for this wonderful photograph, which demonstrates that you have soul as well as skill.

Psalm 55 Verse 22

Islamic Fundamentalism is an Evil in Your Midst.

Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away
But willful blindness remains the order of the day.
By Andrew C. McCarthy

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346145/jihad-will-not-be-wished-away

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

‘Outlook: Islam.” So reads the personal webpage of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who ravaged Boston this week, along with his now-deceased brother and fellow jihadist, Tamerlan — namesake of a 14th-century Muslim warrior whose campaigns through Asia Minor are legendary for their brutalization of non-Muslims.

Brutalizing our own non-Muslim country has been the principal objective of jihadists for the last 20 years. This week marks a new and chilling chapter: the introduction on our shores of the tactics the self-styled mujahideen have used to great, gory effect for the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At a point in the race timed to achieve maximum carnage, the Tsarnaev brothers bombed the Boston Marathon with improvised explosive devices. IEDs are small but potent homemade bombs — crude explosives and unforgiving shrapnel encased in easily portable pressure cookers. The bombs are simple to make. They won’t kill thousands or even hundreds of people like hijacked planes or heavy chemical explosives will. But that’s not the objective. The goal is to instill terror into the flow of everyday life. IEDs are made for “soft” targets. They are easily camouflaged amid the traffic, the everyday debris, and the eight-year-old boys frolicking as they wait for Dad to cross the finish line.

Willful blindness remains the order of the day, as it has since the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. It is freely conceded that, when the identities and thus the motivation of the Marathon terrorists were not known, it would have been irresponsible to dismiss any radical ideology as, potentially, the instigator. But in our politically correct, up-is-down culture, to suggest “Outlook: Islam” was unthinkable. So the most likely scenario — namely, that jihadists who have been at war with us for two decades had, yet again, attacked innocent civilians — became the least likely scenario in the minds of media pundits. Instead, they brazenly prayed (to Gaia, I’m sure) for white conservative culprits with Tea Party hats and Rush 24/7 subscriptions. As our Kevin D. Williamson quipped, the “literal Caucasians” they got were not quite what they had in mind.

To listen to the commentary was to assume that the jihad’s nimble post-9/11 shift from heavy bombs and airliner missiles to IEDs had never happened. Prior to 2009, much agitprop was made over the thousands of American troops killed and maimed by IEDs in Iraq — they signified, the Left told us, that George Bush had brought al-Qaeda to previously jihad-free Baghdad. So did IEDs at the Marathon mean the same jihad had now come to Boston? Perish the thought. Surely the Marathon bombing was the work of either the right-wing extremists Janet Napolitano has been warning us about since 2009, or those notoriously violent Catholics and Evangelicals that today’s Army equates with Hamas and Hezbollah.

But no: It was in fact the jihad that stubbornly refuses to be wished away. It will have to be defeated. It was never a molehill we were exaggerating into Mohammed’s mountain. After 1,400 years of aggression, we can safely say it is not anytime soon going to evolve into the ballyhooed “internal struggle for personal betterment” — not for the tens of millions of Muslims for whom Islamic supremacism is, quite simply, Islam.

So will we be roused to meet the challenge? Doesn’t seem like it. On Friday morning, the damning and utterly predictable details began pouring in the second the jihadists were identified — “Outlook: Islam”; a YouTube playlist called “Terrorists” that included the ditty, “I will dedicate my life to jihad”; a wife who abruptly converted to Islam and began dressing in what a neighbor called “the Islamic style”; an apparent reverence for the notorious sharia jurist Sheikh Feiz Mohammed. Yet the media commentary, even if it grudgingly mentions these things, internalizes none of them. “How shocking it is,” we’ve repeatedly heard, “that the brothers Tsarnaev want to mass-murder Americans. After all, they’re Chechen Muslims, and the Chechens’ beef is with the Russians, not us.”

Good grief. It is the Uighurs all over again. You’ll recall the Uighurs — they were a group of Turkic-speaking jihadists from the Xinjiang region of China, detained at Guantanamo Bay because they trained in Afghanistan with an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization (the East Turkistan Islamic Movement). At least some of them fought against American forces. Nevertheless, we released them. Stroking its bloated chin, our government rationalized that they could not be enemy combatants because they weren’t our enemies — their beef was really with China, right? After all, Islam is a Religion of Peace and we’re very nice people, so why should we assume they might have a problem with us?

We are in a war driven by ideology. “Violent extremism,” which is the label the government and the commentariat prefer to put on our enemies, is not an ideology — it is the brutality that radical ideologies yield. Our enemies’ ideology is Islamic supremacism. To challenge and defeat an ideological movement, you have to understand and confront their vision of the world. Imposing your own assumptions and biases will not do. Islamic supremacists do not see a world of Westphalian nation-states. They do not distinguish between Russia and America the way they distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims. Their ideology frames matters as Dar al-Islam versus Dar al-Harb: the realm of Islam in a fight to the death against the realm of war — which is everyone and everyplace else.

The fact that you think this is nuts, or that I’m nuts for saying it out loud, has nothing to do with whether they believe it. They do — and they don’t care, even a little, what you think.

You do not defeat an ideology by hoping it will change or disappear. You have to challenge it, to make it defend its baleful tenets in the light of day. You cannot protect yourself from its violent outbursts absent understanding its teaching, reluctantly accepting that its teaching will inevitably lead some Muslims to strike out savagely, and committing to a pro-active, intelligence-based counterterrorism strategy — one that scraps political correctness and ferrets out the jihadists before they strike.

Asked about his “outlook,” Dzhokhar Tsarnaev offered a pregnant response, “Islam,” that raises more questions than it answers. There are all kinds of Islam, including the supremacist kind that is far more widely held than we’re comfortable acknowledging. Until we get beyond that discomfort, until we are prepared to ask, “What Islam?” — and until we are prepared to treat Islamic supremacism as the pariah it should be — Boston’s hellish week will remain our recurring nightmare.