Entries from June 2008 ↓

Shi’ite Muslims believe in the practice of “temporary marriage” (mut`ah), in which a man can tell a woman he marries her, constituting a valid Muslim wedding, have sex with her, and then say he divorces her, constituting a valid Muslim divorce. It is the legalist’s dream, a way of having one-night stands or indulging in prostitution (a “dowry” is required) while still considering oneself righteous. A Muslim group, the MahdiUniteMuslims (MUM), is pushing the practice as the ultimate mosque-growth technique, the way Islam will ultimately convert America. Timothy Furnish reports on the history of mut’ah and quotes from a mosque-growth advocate:

For the past few weeks MUM — which is dedicated to uniting the Islamic world through belief in the Mahdi, the “rightly-guided one” of Islamic traditions who will create a global caliphate — has hosted a discussion about mut`ah, Shi`i temporary marriage, the “secret weapon that will convert the West to Islam in the later days before the advent of Imam al Mahdi” . . . .

And since “the craze about sex today is through the roof” (hard to argue there), mut`ah is not just man-made but “a divine plan,” for “when non-Muslim men learn that they can honorably have more women,” they “will flock to Shi`ah Islam. Sorry for the expression but Allah made women the bait” . . . . “When so many non-Muslim men come to Shi`ah Islam this will cause non-Muslim women to come to Shi`ah Islam too because an honorable and equitable polygynous mut`ah is better than being unmarried or just having flings with bad men, right?” Bottom-line: “This will cause a chain reaction of conversion to Islam from all corners. Even Sunnis will come to Shi`ah Islam because they want women.” In conclusion, this future editor of the Muslim Maxim pleads, “please do not hate mut`ah anymore. There is a reason for it. It is the secret weapon of the last days to bring the world to Shi`ah Islam.”

Can there be any doubt but that he is right? It would offer the religion people in our culture is yearning for, one that is BOTH permissive AND legalistic, allowing a person to be BOTH sinful AND self-righteous. Think of the felt needs this would tap into! We will soon be entering the age of the mega-mosque.

James Kushiner, editor of Touchstone, gives a succinct refutation of that strange assumption that tolerance requires relativism:

I can tolerate Muslims, Jews, Buddhists well enough, and expect them to tolerate Christiants, when at the same time I believe Jesus, and no one else, is the only Name whereby a man can be saved. We disagree greatly with the other religions, but we can tolerate them. If they were all the same, there would be nothing we would have to tolerate, nothing to put up with.

Are any of you “Doctor Who” fans? That is to say, Whovians? I would just like to say that David Tennant has to be the best Doctor since Tom Baker. Yes, he is too young, but he projects a persona that is both madcap and enigmatic. Also, the writing for that series has really gotten good. This last two-part episode about the Library had to be one of the most remarkable plots I have seen on TV, with layer upon layer of metafiction, time paradox, virtual reality, epistemology, and puzzle upon puzzle, all resolved in stunning fashion. Watch for this one in re-reruns, and if you haven’t seen the show since you were a little kid, give it a try again. (And if any of you watched them, this thread is open to a discussion of the Library episodes.)

Mollie Ziegler, at her new blog, reports receiving this notice from Todd Wilken:

Everyone:

In case you haven’t heard…

Issues, Etc. will re-debut this Monday, June 30, 3:05pm CST.

The show will be LIVE and on demand from 3:05-5:00 at www.issuesetc.org.

The second hour will also be LIVE on AM 1320 in St. Louis.

You’ll be able to subscribe to the Issues, Etc. podcast via iTunes. There will be a direct subscription link at our website. You can also listen on-demand at the website.

Issues, Etc.’s LIVE call-in number is (877)623-MYIE (877-623-6943).

The 24-hour Issues, Etc. Listener Comment Line is (618)223-8384.

The Office line is (618)223-8385.

You can support Issues, Etc. at our website, or by check: Lutheran Public Radio, PO box 1046, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693.

By the way, you can shorten “San Juan Capistrano” to “SJC”

To make it easy for you, I will give you THIS LINK, by which you can listen to the show at 4:05 ET, 3:05 CST, 2:05 MT, and 1:05 PT. Bookmark it, listen daily, subscribe to the podcast, and see what all of the fuss has been about.

William J. Bennett & Seth Leibsohn on Barack Obama on National Review Online:

Barack Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton and NARAL on the issue of life. As a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, a law that would have protected babies if they survived an attempted abortion and were delivered alive. When a similar bill was proposed in the United States Senate, it passed unanimously and even the National Abortion Rights Action League issued a statement saying they did not oppose the law.

Look. I was intrigued by Obama in the early days of the campaign, as a survey of this blog will show. I would like someone who can unify the nation, heal the divide between right and left, etc., etc. But could some of you Obamacons show me ONE example of how he would do this, or even ONE example of how he deviates from the leftwing of the Democratic party.

It is said that a candidate’s views on abortion don’t matter all that much, since there is little that a president can do about it. That’s just not true. George Bush has done a great deal for the pro-life cause, ushering in the partial-birth abortion ban and successfully working to get it upheld by the Supreme Court and standing firm in limiting the cannibalization of unborn children for their stem cells. Not to mention appointing good Supreme Court and lower level judges.

What case can possibly be made for a pro-lifer to support Obama? I really want to know.

Washington, D. C., passed laws virtually banning the possession of firearms, even in the home. Those laws did nothing to prevent our nation’s capital from being one of the most violent and crime-ridden cities in the country. Arguably, those laws helped make it so. But the Supreme Court has struck down those laws, going further to affirm that the Second Amendment applies not just to a collective right embodied in militias but that it affirms the right of individuals to possess firearms. Glad or sad?

My student Nathan Martin writes about some Christians who have made it big in the secular music world. But it doesn’t matter. They are still bad! So vacuous is their music, he writes, striking two with one blow, they might as well become CCM artists. The pop music scene in general is full of posing and convention at the expense of substance. Read Nathan’s critique and his call for Christians especially to do better. If you know of exceptions, either in the pop or the CCM realm, I’d like to hear of them.

More evidence that secularism is becoming an actual religion, complete with the weird parts, from those too-sophisticated-for-Christiantity Europeans: Many Dutch prepare for 2012 apocalypse - UPI.com.

Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse.
The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in the impending end of civilization, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, most tied the 2012 date to the end of the Mayan calendar, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.

De Volkskrant said many of those interviewed are stocking up on emergency supplies, including life rafts and other equipment.

The Mayan calendar ends in our 2012! So the world must end on that year! I wonder how those Mayans are supposed to have known that fact. And why all of these progressive descendants of Calvinists now put their trust in Mayan carvings.

Tickletext usefully explained that his–or her (we still don’t know that)–handle came from Parson Tickletext, a character in Henry Fielding’s satirical novel “Shamela.” I’m glad to learn that at least one of my readers is a fan of 18th century novels (are there others?), which is almost as good as being a fan of John Milton and George Herbert. That means I can blog about “Tristram Shandy”!

Tickletext, in return, asked Michael the Little Boot, our resident atheist (every village needs one), about HIS nickname. Longtime commenter Organshoes finally appended the name “Susan” to her moniker, clearing up the mystery of HER gender. We have tODD, which is self-explanatory, but what accounts for his website, Cockahoop? Some of us, like me, just use our names, but I know some of you, like Carl Vehse, use names that are not really your names.

As a break from some of the heated though light-bringing discussion on this blog, would any of you be so kind as to explain the source of your secret online identity?

Nearly half of the states are turning down federal funding for abstinence education, turning away millions of dollars. In this article on the subject, it appears that the reason is not that these programs are ineffective in reducing teenage sexual activity. It’s that many officials just disagree with the concept that sex outside of marriage is wrong. The programs, said one official, are just “too strict.”

I would say, however, that I see a weakness in the programs. They reportedly focus on the social, psychological, and health benefits of abstaining from sex until you are married. But the main reasons against extra-marital sex are not pragmatic but MORAL. I’m sure that avoiding the M-word is out of fear of seeming religious and thus becoming ineligible for federal funding.

But morality, in itself, is not necessarily religious at all. (Christianity is not some moral code but the means of finding forgiveness for violating the universal moral code.) We need to teach children, as well as adults, to think in the moral dimension. If we avoid that and instead just re-enforce the materialistic pragmatism that destroyed our moral consciousness in the first place, of course we will not have moral behavior.

HT: David Halbrook

Some folks in India are presenting Barack Obama with an idol–notice how even believers in these gods call them that–of a deity that the presidential candidate apparently uses as a good luck charm. From Obama to get Hanuman idol-India-The Times of India:

With Democrat senator Barack Obama busy in the run-up to the US presidential polls, a group of well-wishers in the capital have decided to send him a symbol of his lucky charm, Lord Hanuman, to help him emerge victorious.

Obama’s representative Carolyn Sauvage-Mar on Tuesday received a gold-plated two-feet-high idol which she will pass it on to the Obama after it is sanctified.

The idol is being presented to Obama as he is reported to be a Lord Hanuman devotee and carries with him a locket of the monkey god along with other good luck charms.

An hour-long prayer meeting to sanctify the idol was earlier organised at Sankat Mochan Dham and by Congress leader Brijmohan Bhama, Balmiki Samaj and the temple’s priests.

“Obama has deep faith in Lord Hanuman and that is why we are presenting an idol of Hanuman to him,” said Bhama.

See also this. OK, he’s not a Muslim, so is he a Hindu? I suspect he is just one of those polytheists that make up the new American majority, as documented in the Pew Survey.

I do understand that Obama can’t be held responsible for what some fans of his in India ascribe to him, but surely, as the Christian he claims to be, he should draw the line at idolatry, shouldn’t he?

One of the reason the detainees at Guantanamo are not getting convicted and punished en masse (as would be the case if the current administration is as bad as its critics say it is), is that the accused terrorists are getting such excellent military defense attorneys who are staunchly defending their rights.

The New York Times has an article on the subject, focusing on a young JAG officer named Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler.

He is no natural agitator. At 37, he is in some ways deeply conventional. Married to the first girl he ever dated in high school, he is a self-described born-again Christian and conservative who has “never voted for a Democrat.” Tom Fleener, a former Guantánamo military defense lawyer, described Commander Kuebler, saying, “Take the average conservative guy in the street and multiply that by a million.” . . .

“It is a powerful way to be a witness for Christ,” he said, “by demonstrating your capacity to not judge the way everybody else is judging and to serve unconditionally.”

Commander Kuebler has been pulling out all the stops in defending his Guantanamo client, to the point of infuriating the prosecutors with his delaying tactics and his playing the media. Though now evidence has arisen that maybe his client is innocent after all.

I appreciate the way the NY Times, no less, brought out both his conservatism (protection of individual rights, after all, is a conservative ideal) and, especially, his Christianity. Since the proper work of a defense attorney is to be an advocate for the accused, isn’t this a good example of Christian vocation?

HT: Frank Sonnek