Franklin Graham: Islam Is Not Faith of America
Ahead of the National Day of Prayer, Franklin Graham expressed dismay at how Islam is receiving preferential treatment by the Obama administration.
The evangelist, who was recently disinvited from a Pentagon prayer event over past comments he made about Islam, pointed to the violence against Muslim women.
“It’s just horrific,” Graham said to Newsmax.TV this week. “If you just take women alone … I just don’t understand why the president would be giving Islam a pass.”
Graham wants the president to speak up for women and minorities living in Muslim countries instead of one-sidedly praising Islam.
As a result of Graham speaking up for oppressed women and minorities himself, the army disinvited him from its Pentagon National Day of Prayer event. An army spokesman said Graham’s remarks about Islam were inappropriate and contradicted the military’s inclusive message.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Graham called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.” Then in an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown in December 2009, he said:
“True Islam cannot be practiced in this country. You can’t beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they’ve committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries.”
In an interview with The Christian Post last week, a former devout Muslim-turned-women’s activist confirmed Graham’s criticisms of Islam. Sabatina James, who is the granddaughter of a mullah and used to read the Quran in Arabic every day, pointed to verse 34 in the fourth Surah (chapter) in the Quran that said if your wife is not obedient then you are allowed to beat her.
Her bestselling book, My Fight for Faith and Freedom, details the gross mistreatment of women in her homeland of Pakistan. As a convert to Christianity, she has endured nine years of continuous death threats. James currently lives under police protection in Germany and has moved 16 times since 2001.
“Is there a different Quran? No they are teaching the same Quran where it is written 'beat your wife if she is not obedient.' They are teaching the same Quran where it is written 'the Christians and Jewish people are evil.' It is written in the Surah Al-Maidah. It is written there 'don’t take Jewish and Christian people as your friend.' That is what you are taught in the Quran schools,” James told The Christian Post.
James said she “can’t imagine” Graham not getting upset if he read or heard those passages.
“We are living in a democracy and everybody can say his opinion,” she stated.
She also defended Graham and said he, like others, are criticizing Islam, not saying they hate Muslims.
“Make the difference between sin and sinner,” she said.
In the interview with Newsmax this week, Graham again stated that he “certainly” loves Muslims.
However, he added, “that (Islam) is not the faith of this country. And that is not the religion that built this nation. The people of the Christian faith and the Jewish faith are the ones who built America, and it is not Islam.”
Graham said the rescinding of his invitation to speak at the Pentagon this week was like “a slap at all evangelical Christians.”
During a recent visit to Billy Graham’s home in North Carolina, President Obama told Franklin that he did not know about the Pentagon incident until two days before the visit. The younger Graham said in the interview with Newsmax that he believes the president, but he also believes that people in the White House knew about the situation and gave the green light to disinvite him.
“This whole secularization [in the government] has come in, creeping in, and it’s getting more and more and more,” the evangelical leader warned.
Graham [did] speak at the National Day of Prayer event at the Capitol on Thursday. –Christian Post
Atheists Lose Suit Against 'God' in Presidential Oath
A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged prayers and religious elements in presidential inaugurations, including President Obama's in 2009.
The claims made by atheists regarding the 2009 inaugural ceremony are moot, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded, and the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the 2013 and 2017 inaugurations.
The plaintiffs were led by atheist Michael Newdow who tried to keep the "so help me God" phrase along with the invocation and benediction prayers (led by Revs. Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery) out of Obama's inaugural ceremony.
Newdow, who lost similar challenges twice before, filed suit before the 2009 inauguration. A federal district court, however, rejected the complaint days before the ceremony, ruling that plaintiffs lacked standing. Newdow appealed.
They argued that the religious elements were violations of the First and Fifth Amendments, and in particular the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
References to "God' by Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., and the invitation of ministers to pray "might have misled the uninformed to think the imprimatur of the state had been placed on the invocation of the Almighty and contributed to a social stigma against them as atheists," the atheists maintained.
D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown said Friday it was too late to act on Obama's inauguration.
"Whether the 2009 ceremony’s incorporation of the religious oath and prayers was constitutional may be an important question to plaintiffs, but it is not a live controversy that can avail itself of the judicial powers of the federal courts," Brown wrote in the opinion.
"It is therefore moot."
The judges also ruled against the atheists' attempt to block prayer and religious elements from being included in future presidential inauguration ceremonies.
It is really up to the President or the President-elect to choose what to include in an inaugural ceremony, and any other participants, such as the chief justice or clergymen, are "powerless" in that respect, Brown wrote.
Thus, issuing an injunction to prevent the defendants – including the Chief Justice Roberts, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and the Presidential Inaugural Committee – from implementing the future President's inaugural plan would be "folly," Brown noted.
The plaintiffs conceded that the President cannot be denied the prerogative of making a religious reference because doing so would abrogate his First Amendment rights.
"For sure, if it were otherwise, George Washington could not have begun the tradition by appending 'So help me God' to his own oath; Lincoln could not have offered a war-weary nation 'malice toward none' and 'charity for all [] with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right'; Kennedy could not have told us 'that here on earth God’s work' must be our own," Brown wrote.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Brett Kavanaugh said the words "so help me God" in the presidential oath are not proselytizing or otherwise exploitative and use of the phrase is deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition.
Prayers, Kavanaugh added, are also deeply rooted in American history and tradition and the ones said at the 2009 inauguration were also not proselytizing. Though the prayers contained a reference to Jesus, the Establishment Clause does not ban any and all sectarian references in prayers at public ceremonies, he wrote. Moreover, the sectarian references in the 2009 inaugural prayers were limited in number.
Though in agreement with the judgment, Kavanaugh wrote in his opinion that the plaintiffs did have standing to raise an Establishment Clause challenge to the religious elements in presidential inauguration ceremonies. But he rejected the plaintiffs' claims on the merits, concluding that the longstanding practices do not violate the Establishment Clause as it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in previous cases. –Christian Post
Catholics Fight Move To Deny Schooling To Children Of Lesbians, Gays
Progressive Catholic groups vented outrage Friday over the decision of a Roman Catholic school in Massachusetts to rescind the admission of an 8-year-old student because his parents are lesbians.
"The idea that a child might be punished because he does not live with his two biologic parents is antithetical to notions of Christian charity and Catholic social justice," said Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats, in a statement Friday.
Other liberal Catholic and gay groups issued similar statements Friday, responding to news reports this week that a child accepted to St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham, Massachusetts, for the fall was told he couldn't enroll after the school learned that his parents are gay.
In addition to pressuring the Massachusetts school to reverse its decision and accept the student, progressive Catholic activists are attempting to do something much more dramatic: get the Archdiocese of Boston, which includes the Hingham school, to set a precedent for how the American church treats students with gay parents.
In March, the Archdiocese of Denver, Colorado, supported a decision by a Catholic school in Boulder to block two students with gay parents from re-enrolling.
While the Denver archbishop who backed that decision, Charles J. Chaput, may be the most outspokenly conservative bishop in the nation, progressive Catholics think they can get more moderate Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley to speak against Catholic schools rejecting students over their parents' sexual orientation.
"I'm very disappointed in Chaput's actions, but he has a history of politicizing issues," said Chris Korzen, executive director of the progressive Catholics United, which has asked O'Malley to intervene in the Hingham case and to allow the child to attend St. Paul.
"Cardinal O'Malley understands that there's a place to assert church teachings but that it doesn't make sense to discriminate against a child because of his parents' background," Korzen said.
Korzen and other left-leaning Catholics said they were concerned that the Hingham school was following the example of the Denver Archdiocese in the Boulder case.
"While the relationship between the events in Boulder and Hingham [is] not known, Catholic Democrats is concerned that a narrative will develop that legitimizes the exclusion of children of same sex parents from Catholic schools," the group Catholic Democrats, which is based in Boston, said Friday.
Conservative Catholic groups, meanwhile, have been mostly silent on the matter. "I don't really have a strong opinion on this one," said Deal Hudson, a prominent conservative Catholic activist, in an e-mail on Friday. "It's a matter of the individual bishop's discretion."
O'Malley has not publicly weighed in on the case, but the Boston Archdiocese said Thursday that the Hingham school was not acting in compliance with archdiocesan policy.
"The archdiocese does not prohibit children of same-sex parents from attending Catholic schools," said Mary Grassa O'Neill, the archdiocese's secretary for education and superintendent of Catholic schools. "We will work in the coming weeks to develop a policy to eliminate any misunderstandings in the future."
O'Neill said that the Boston Archdiocese met with one of the child's parents on Thursday and that it has offered to help enroll him in another Catholic school in the archdiocese.
The parents of the St. Paul student have insisted on anonymity for them and their son in press reports of the situation.
The Catholic Schools Foundation, a Boston-based group whose board is chaired by O'Malley, said Thursday that it would not support schools that discriminated against students based on their parents' sexual orientation.`
"[N]o school that promotes an exclusionary admissions policy or practice will be considered for support," said the foundation's executive director, Michael Reardon, in a Thursday letter to school administrators. "We believe a policy or practice that denies admissions to students in such a manner as occurred at St. Paul's is at odds with our values as a foundation, the intentions of our donors, and ultimately with Gospel teaching."
Calls to St. Paul Elementary School and church on Friday night were not returned. –CNN U.S.
Ahead of the National Day of Prayer, Franklin Graham expressed dismay at how Islam is receiving preferential treatment by the Obama administration.
The evangelist, who was recently disinvited from a Pentagon prayer event over past comments he made about Islam, pointed to the violence against Muslim women.
“It’s just horrific,” Graham said to Newsmax.TV this week. “If you just take women alone … I just don’t understand why the president would be giving Islam a pass.”
Graham wants the president to speak up for women and minorities living in Muslim countries instead of one-sidedly praising Islam.
As a result of Graham speaking up for oppressed women and minorities himself, the army disinvited him from its Pentagon National Day of Prayer event. An army spokesman said Graham’s remarks about Islam were inappropriate and contradicted the military’s inclusive message.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Graham called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.” Then in an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown in December 2009, he said:
“True Islam cannot be practiced in this country. You can’t beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they’ve committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries.”
In an interview with The Christian Post last week, a former devout Muslim-turned-women’s activist confirmed Graham’s criticisms of Islam. Sabatina James, who is the granddaughter of a mullah and used to read the Quran in Arabic every day, pointed to verse 34 in the fourth Surah (chapter) in the Quran that said if your wife is not obedient then you are allowed to beat her.
Her bestselling book, My Fight for Faith and Freedom, details the gross mistreatment of women in her homeland of Pakistan. As a convert to Christianity, she has endured nine years of continuous death threats. James currently lives under police protection in Germany and has moved 16 times since 2001.
“Is there a different Quran? No they are teaching the same Quran where it is written 'beat your wife if she is not obedient.' They are teaching the same Quran where it is written 'the Christians and Jewish people are evil.' It is written in the Surah Al-Maidah. It is written there 'don’t take Jewish and Christian people as your friend.' That is what you are taught in the Quran schools,” James told The Christian Post.
James said she “can’t imagine” Graham not getting upset if he read or heard those passages.
“We are living in a democracy and everybody can say his opinion,” she stated.
She also defended Graham and said he, like others, are criticizing Islam, not saying they hate Muslims.
“Make the difference between sin and sinner,” she said.
In the interview with Newsmax this week, Graham again stated that he “certainly” loves Muslims.
However, he added, “that (Islam) is not the faith of this country. And that is not the religion that built this nation. The people of the Christian faith and the Jewish faith are the ones who built America, and it is not Islam.”
Graham said the rescinding of his invitation to speak at the Pentagon this week was like “a slap at all evangelical Christians.”
During a recent visit to Billy Graham’s home in North Carolina, President Obama told Franklin that he did not know about the Pentagon incident until two days before the visit. The younger Graham said in the interview with Newsmax that he believes the president, but he also believes that people in the White House knew about the situation and gave the green light to disinvite him.
“This whole secularization [in the government] has come in, creeping in, and it’s getting more and more and more,” the evangelical leader warned.
Graham [did] speak at the National Day of Prayer event at the Capitol on Thursday. –Christian Post
<><><>*<><><>
Atheists Lose Suit Against 'God' in Presidential Oath
A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged prayers and religious elements in presidential inaugurations, including President Obama's in 2009.
The claims made by atheists regarding the 2009 inaugural ceremony are moot, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded, and the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the 2013 and 2017 inaugurations.
The plaintiffs were led by atheist Michael Newdow who tried to keep the "so help me God" phrase along with the invocation and benediction prayers (led by Revs. Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery) out of Obama's inaugural ceremony.
Newdow, who lost similar challenges twice before, filed suit before the 2009 inauguration. A federal district court, however, rejected the complaint days before the ceremony, ruling that plaintiffs lacked standing. Newdow appealed.
They argued that the religious elements were violations of the First and Fifth Amendments, and in particular the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
References to "God' by Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., and the invitation of ministers to pray "might have misled the uninformed to think the imprimatur of the state had been placed on the invocation of the Almighty and contributed to a social stigma against them as atheists," the atheists maintained.
D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown said Friday it was too late to act on Obama's inauguration.
"Whether the 2009 ceremony’s incorporation of the religious oath and prayers was constitutional may be an important question to plaintiffs, but it is not a live controversy that can avail itself of the judicial powers of the federal courts," Brown wrote in the opinion.
"It is therefore moot."
The judges also ruled against the atheists' attempt to block prayer and religious elements from being included in future presidential inauguration ceremonies.
It is really up to the President or the President-elect to choose what to include in an inaugural ceremony, and any other participants, such as the chief justice or clergymen, are "powerless" in that respect, Brown wrote.
Thus, issuing an injunction to prevent the defendants – including the Chief Justice Roberts, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and the Presidential Inaugural Committee – from implementing the future President's inaugural plan would be "folly," Brown noted.
The plaintiffs conceded that the President cannot be denied the prerogative of making a religious reference because doing so would abrogate his First Amendment rights.
"For sure, if it were otherwise, George Washington could not have begun the tradition by appending 'So help me God' to his own oath; Lincoln could not have offered a war-weary nation 'malice toward none' and 'charity for all [] with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right'; Kennedy could not have told us 'that here on earth God’s work' must be our own," Brown wrote.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Brett Kavanaugh said the words "so help me God" in the presidential oath are not proselytizing or otherwise exploitative and use of the phrase is deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition.
Prayers, Kavanaugh added, are also deeply rooted in American history and tradition and the ones said at the 2009 inauguration were also not proselytizing. Though the prayers contained a reference to Jesus, the Establishment Clause does not ban any and all sectarian references in prayers at public ceremonies, he wrote. Moreover, the sectarian references in the 2009 inaugural prayers were limited in number.
Though in agreement with the judgment, Kavanaugh wrote in his opinion that the plaintiffs did have standing to raise an Establishment Clause challenge to the religious elements in presidential inauguration ceremonies. But he rejected the plaintiffs' claims on the merits, concluding that the longstanding practices do not violate the Establishment Clause as it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in previous cases. –Christian Post
<><><>*<><><>
Catholics Fight Move To Deny Schooling To Children Of Lesbians, Gays
Progressive Catholic groups vented outrage Friday over the decision of a Roman Catholic school in Massachusetts to rescind the admission of an 8-year-old student because his parents are lesbians.
"The idea that a child might be punished because he does not live with his two biologic parents is antithetical to notions of Christian charity and Catholic social justice," said Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats, in a statement Friday.
Other liberal Catholic and gay groups issued similar statements Friday, responding to news reports this week that a child accepted to St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham, Massachusetts, for the fall was told he couldn't enroll after the school learned that his parents are gay.
In addition to pressuring the Massachusetts school to reverse its decision and accept the student, progressive Catholic activists are attempting to do something much more dramatic: get the Archdiocese of Boston, which includes the Hingham school, to set a precedent for how the American church treats students with gay parents.
In March, the Archdiocese of Denver, Colorado, supported a decision by a Catholic school in Boulder to block two students with gay parents from re-enrolling.
While the Denver archbishop who backed that decision, Charles J. Chaput, may be the most outspokenly conservative bishop in the nation, progressive Catholics think they can get more moderate Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley to speak against Catholic schools rejecting students over their parents' sexual orientation.
"I'm very disappointed in Chaput's actions, but he has a history of politicizing issues," said Chris Korzen, executive director of the progressive Catholics United, which has asked O'Malley to intervene in the Hingham case and to allow the child to attend St. Paul.
"Cardinal O'Malley understands that there's a place to assert church teachings but that it doesn't make sense to discriminate against a child because of his parents' background," Korzen said.
Korzen and other left-leaning Catholics said they were concerned that the Hingham school was following the example of the Denver Archdiocese in the Boulder case.
"While the relationship between the events in Boulder and Hingham [is] not known, Catholic Democrats is concerned that a narrative will develop that legitimizes the exclusion of children of same sex parents from Catholic schools," the group Catholic Democrats, which is based in Boston, said Friday.
Conservative Catholic groups, meanwhile, have been mostly silent on the matter. "I don't really have a strong opinion on this one," said Deal Hudson, a prominent conservative Catholic activist, in an e-mail on Friday. "It's a matter of the individual bishop's discretion."
O'Malley has not publicly weighed in on the case, but the Boston Archdiocese said Thursday that the Hingham school was not acting in compliance with archdiocesan policy.
"The archdiocese does not prohibit children of same-sex parents from attending Catholic schools," said Mary Grassa O'Neill, the archdiocese's secretary for education and superintendent of Catholic schools. "We will work in the coming weeks to develop a policy to eliminate any misunderstandings in the future."
O'Neill said that the Boston Archdiocese met with one of the child's parents on Thursday and that it has offered to help enroll him in another Catholic school in the archdiocese.
The parents of the St. Paul student have insisted on anonymity for them and their son in press reports of the situation.
The Catholic Schools Foundation, a Boston-based group whose board is chaired by O'Malley, said Thursday that it would not support schools that discriminated against students based on their parents' sexual orientation.`
"[N]o school that promotes an exclusionary admissions policy or practice will be considered for support," said the foundation's executive director, Michael Reardon, in a Thursday letter to school administrators. "We believe a policy or practice that denies admissions to students in such a manner as occurred at St. Paul's is at odds with our values as a foundation, the intentions of our donors, and ultimately with Gospel teaching."
Calls to St. Paul Elementary School and church on Friday night were not returned. –CNN U.S.
UN-AMERICANS FIGHT FRANKLIN GRAHAM !
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of wine has Mikey Weinstein been drinking?
As an anti-Christian Jewish supremacist and as the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, he's doing all he can to create an anti-Jewish backlash and help bring about the predicted endtime Holocaust of Jews that'll be worse than Hitler's.
Neither Falwell, Hagee nor any other Christian initiated this prediction. But Weinstein's ancient Hebrew prophets did.
In the 13th and 14th chapters of his Old Testament book, Zechariah predicted that after Israel's rebirth ALL nations will eventually be against Israel and that TWO-THIRDS of all Jews will be killed!
Malachi revealed the reasons: "Judah hath dealt treacherously" and "the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this."
Haven't evangelicals generally been the best friends of Israel and persons perceived to be Jewish? Then please explain the hate-filled back-stabbing by David Letterman (and Sandra Bernhard, Kathy Griffin, Bill Maher etc.) against followers of Jesus such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.
Weinstein wouldn't dare assert that citizens on government property don't have freedom of speech or press freedom or freedom to assemble or to petition the government.
But God-hater Weinstein maliciously wants to eliminate from government property the "free exercise" of religion - especially by evangelicals - a freedom found in the same First Amendment. Significantly, this freedom was purposely listed FIRST by America's founders!
And Weinstein wouldn't try to foist "separation of church and state" on strongly-Jewish Israel, but he does try to foist this non-Constitution-mentioned phrase on strongly-Christian America.
In light of Weinstein's Jewish protectionism and violently anti-Christian obsession, Christians in these endtimes should be reminded of Jesus' warning in Mark 13:9 (see also Luke 21:12) that "in the synagogues ye shall be beaten."
Maybe it's time for some modern Paul Reveres to saddle up and shout "The Yiddish are Coming!"
PS - Some, like Weinstein, are so treacherously anti-Christian they will even join hands at times with enemies, including Muslims, in order to silence evangelicals. It was Weinstein, BTW, who put pressure on the Pentagon to dis-invite Franklin Graham from speaking there on the National Day of Prayer!
PPS - Weinstein is an echo of the anti-Christian, anti-American Hollywood which for a century has dangled every known vice before young people. We seriously wonder how soon the lethal worldwide "flood of filth" (global harming!) that Hollywood has created will engulf and destroy itself and help to bring to power the endtime Antichrist (a.k.a. the Man of Sin and the Wicked One)!
[discovered the above on the internet!]