Egypt A Complete Disaster

I've been following the news coming out of Egypt on my blog ever since Mubarak was thrown out of power 2 years during the Arab Spring. I expected, as many conservative writers did, that Egypt would be taken over by hardlined religious Muslims and that Egypt would become like Iran where freedom is practically non-existent. News out of Egypt continues to be on that same troubling path.


World Net Daily (Feb 7, 2013):  'Insulting Quran' Charges Snares 2 More Children

An Egyptian court is forcing two Coptic Christian boys, ages 10 and 9, to stand trial for “insulting the Quran,”

The two boys will stand trial in Beni Suef, the same town where a woman and her seven children were convicted and sentenced in December to 15 years for converting to Christianity.

In Egypt, children are now going to jail for insulting Islam or for converting to Christianity.


Telegraph (Feb 2, 2013):  Cairo Horrified By Pictures Showing Police Beating Naked Man

Television pictures showing a middle-aged man lying stripped naked and being beaten by police before being hurled into their van rocked Egypt yesterday, the latest gruesome twist in the country's descent into public disorder.

Stories of police brutality against protestors and people disagreeing with Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood are all over the place. Rapes, beatings, threats against family. There's no low that the government doesn't seem willing to stoop to in order to try and silence opposition to its rule.


Telegraph (Feb 5, 2013):  Ahmadinejad Visits Egypt, Signaling Realignment

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic three-day trip to Egypt, the first in three decades by an Iranian leader, started pleasantly enough on Tuesday. 

Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, greeted Mr. Ahmadinejad with a broad smile during a red-carpet ceremony at a Cairo airport. The two talked about the crisis in Syria and how to improve the relationship between their own countries, which has been in a deep freeze since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

For the first time in three decades, Iran's leader has visited Egypt and been welcomed by Egypt's government. Iran is the terrorist capital of the Middle East and one of the worst countries when it comes to repressing its people and freedom. The fact that Egypt is now buddying up with Iran is not at all a surprise.


Reuters  (Feb 17, 2013):  Alcohol Sale To Be Banned In Egypt's New Suburbs

Two years after the Egyptian revolution that ousted an authoritarian regime, liberals are increasingly concerned that the ruling Islamists are out to curb personal freedoms and build a society in their own image.

Alcohol, prohibited by most Islamic scholars, is one area where the new authorities are introducing controversial change.

Nabil Abbas, the vice president of the New Urban Communities Authorities (NUCA), told Reuters on Sunday that the government would no longer issue licences for the sale of alcohol in new residential settlements on the outskirts of Cairo, Alexandria and other big cities.

Egyptians opposed to the country's Islamist leaders condemned the move as an infringement on personal freedoms.

Freedoms that most people in the world take for granted are being blocked and made illegal in Egypt under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Alcohol is just one prime example. The government is out of control, taking over and dominating the country in every way it can, making hardlined Islam the only law. Christian families that have lived in Egypt since Bible times are fleeing for their lives. The economy, which was heavily dependent on tourism, has taken a dive because people are no longer visiting Egypt out of fear.

This result in Egypt should make us all seriously wonder about how truthful and/or accurate the mainstream media actually is, because they saw the Arab Spring as being a wonderful revolution of freedom, democracy and civil rights. Instead it's turning Egypt into Iran, like the non-mainstream media knew it would. So if CNN and the BBC got this so horribly wrong. What else are their so called experts getting wrong in the news they report?...

Arab Spring Backfires In Egypt

Democracy in flames: protesters in Alexandria ransack the offices of President Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement

The "Arab Spring" in 2011 swept across the Arab part of the world and resulted in the overthrowing of a number of long standing dictators and powerful families that ruled Middle Eastern countries. The western media praised this uprising as a democratic revolution, and the US government widely supported the large-scale demonstrations and even militia groups that went to war with their governments in areas where a more peaceful resolution did not happen (ie. Syria, which is still locked in deadly violent civil war). The media praised the revolts against long standing governments as a new modern democratic wave, one that would pull these countries into the direction of freedom, civil rights, accountable government, and overall social progress. Egypt was the biggest and most notable country where these protests against a long-standing dictatorship rose up.

However, while the mainstream media was falling all over itself praising the wave of government toppling protests across the Middle East, many conservative writers were warning that this was looking all to familiar to what happened in Iran decades ago. Iran turned into a theocratic nightmare where extremist Islamists took over from a generally moderate leadership in massive social protests that the United States supported under President Jimmy Carter. Iran has been one of the most repressive and backwards Middle Eastern countries ever since. Instead of freedom, government accountability, civil rights and social progress, Iran stepped farther and farther back into heavy-handed government repression of the general populace. Iran traded bad and suppressive leadership for evil and cruel leadership. It traded generally stable dictators for radical terrorists. The same thing happened in the Gaza Strip when democratic protests broke out years ago there, also supported by the Western Media and many governments. The result? The terrorist organization Hamas won elections and slaughtered all opposition and has ruled with an iron fist ever since.

But that wouldn't happen THIS time, the mainstream media assured everyone. Egypt was going to be the beacon of new Middle Eastern freedom, a new wave of liberty and modernity... The former government was thrown out and protestors celebrated in the streets! Democratic elections were held all across the country and for the first time in decades, political parties other than the ruling dictator had a real chance of winning! Signs indicated before the elections that the Muslim Brotherhood, a large group of Islamic opposition to the former President of Egypt and heavily suppressed under his rule, would become the bulk of the new Egyptian government. Again, conservative writers warned that this was starting to look more and more like Iran, Lebanon and Gaza. But the media told everyone in the west that this was not the case, that the Muslim Brotherhood was these days a much more moderate, secular and progressive group, not at all similar to the hardlined religious leaders that had taken over Iran decades before. Anyone who's done any research into the Muslim Brotherhood and that was not blinded by starry-eyed dreams would know that this was mostly garbage. The Muslim Brotherhood very clearly wants the return of a powerful Muslim Caliphate like what existed centuries ago throughout the Middle East when Islamic government reigned supreme. The Muslim Brotherhood also has ties to Hamas, Al Qaida and other well known Islamic terrorist groups. Only the progress of time would tell which side in this debate was actually right.

So far, things do not look good.

The Muslim Brotherhood won the elections quite handily, easily taking the majority of the national vote. Minority groups such as the Coptic Christians and secularists barely made any splash at all, despite the mainstream media claiming that the Arab Spring was largely secular (non-religious) in nature and intent. President Morsi, of The Muslim Brotherhood, has recently been a beacon of terror, repression, religious intolerance, and government domination over its citizenry. Minorities such as the Coptic Christians have been fleeing Egypt in record numbers. Morsi recently passed government legislation that effectively makes him and whatever he does untouchable by the new law and justice systems of Egypt.

[Daily Beast (Dec 3, 2012)]:  Egypt To President Morsi: No Dictators Allowed

On Nov. 22, as Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Egypt’s first post-revolution president, Mohamed Morsi, issued a decree exempting all of his decisions from legal challenge. The move was a stunning power grab that quickly earned him the nickname “Egypt’s new pharaoh”—a title once bestowed upon his defunct predecessor. Hundreds of thousands of disbelieving Egyptians flooded city streets from Alexandria to Aswan with a familiar cry: “The people want the fall of the regime!” Tahrir Square came alive once again with tents and bullhorns and a howl so loud—so impassioned—that it was dubbed the “19th Day” of last year’s revolution. Angry female protesters returned in masses to Tahrir, resilient after months of deteriorating security that included repeated incidents of harassment and sexual assault.

Because of this and the severely deteriorating conditions of safety and law in Egypt under the new government, many people have once again returned to the streets in mass protest of the new government that they just elected into power with a huge democratic majority. Why? Because the promises made are evaporating in almost every single direction. Protesters are saying that at best, absolutely nothing has changed since President Mubarak was ousted. The reality, however, is that freedom and safety has significantly decreased and government repression of the masses has greatly increased. An example of how the government is running things in Egypt now can be summed up in a few very recent news reports.

[Daily Mail (Dec 1, 2012)]: Muslim Brotherhood 'Paying Gangs To Go Out And Rape Women And Beat Men Protesting In Egypt'

Egypt's ruling party is paying gangs of thugs to sexually assault women protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Square against President Mohamed Morsi, activists said.
They also said the Muslim Brotherhood is paying gangs to beat up men who are taking part in the latest round of protests, which followed a decree by President Morsi to give himself sweeping new powers.

[The Blaze ()]: Mob of 300 Reportedly Strips, Assaults 3 Women Near Mosque In Tahrir Square

... it is difficult to ignore the overwhelming number of sexual assaults reported not by lone criminals, but by frantic mobs.  The vicious attack on U.S. journalist Lara Logan during the advent of the so-called “Arab Spring” nearly two years ago has only been followed by a further deterioration of the rights of women and minorities under Muslim Brotherhood leadership, it seems.

[Telegraph (Nov 29, 2012)]: Egyptians Want Democracy, But Is Their Country Turning Into Iran?

Islam and democracy are not natural bedfellows, and Mr Morsi’s insistence, particularly in his meetings with Western politicians, that he has no desire to become Egypt’s “new pharoah” and is fully committed to upholding the country’s new democratic principles, does not square with his recent pronouncements. These assurances have been undermined by Mr Morsi’s blatant power grab, in which he announced that, in future, all presidential decrees will be immune from legal challenge.
The timing of this declaration is troubling, as the country is engaged in drawing up a new constitution which, in normal circumstances, would require the approval of the establishment. By placing himself above the judiciary, Mr Morsi has awarded himself the power to sanction the new constitution irrespective of any objections secularists may raise.

A similar pattern of behaviour was evident in Iran following the overthrow of the Shah, when Ayatollah Khomeini, the founding father of Islamic Republic, succeeded in imposing a new constitution on the Iranian people which was based more on the will of God than the rule of law. At a stroke, the pro-democracy aspirations of ordinary Iranians were crushed by the creation of an Islamic theocracy. As Khomeini himself warned secularists when the new constitution was drawn up: “Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God, and a revolt against God is blasphemy.”

Essentially, President Morsi's government has made itself immune to any challenges to its power and authority. It gets the final say in everything, no matter what the democratic parliament says. Since people have returned to the streets to protest this, the government has sent in gangs of violent attackers to rape women and beat men in the streets to shut them up and terrify them into silence. On top of all this, Morsi's government is now rushing through Egypt's new constitution which reads like a large scale religious fatwa, based mostly on Islamic Sharia Law and NOT in any way conducive to western principles of liberty, freedom, civil rights, or anything else that the western world has appreciated for the past few centuries and more.

Egypt is very quickly becoming another Iran, exactly as conservative pundits and writers warned from the very beginning. The signs were strongly there from the start. Maybe now the governments and mainstream media will finally wake up to the monster they've gleefully and blindly supported.

[Reuters (Dec 6, 2012)]: Egypt Demonstrators Reject Mursi Call For Dialogue

Thousands of supporters and opponents of Mursi had fought well into Thursday's early hours, using rocks, petrol bombs and guns. Officials said 350 were wounded in the violence. Six of the dead were Mursi supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood said.

Innocence of Muslims?

The riots in the Muslim world in the past couple of weeks, besides being tragic for the damage and harm they've caused, have been a very interesting peek into social, psychological, and political study.

I do a LOT of current events reading, and I do a LOT of study usually before I end up writing any of my blog posts, in order to make sure I get the facts right. I have always believed that you cannot have a solid position on something unless you've actually taken the time to study it. If you have not studied something, then making any sort of claim about it is akin to a blind man trying to explain the colours of a rainbow. Political issues are rife with such blind "prophets" telling other people what to believe and why, but the true test of accuracy is not found in belief, but rather, in hard facts and actual truth.

Attack On US Embassy Pre-Planned

Muslims have been rioting across the globe since September 11 when a group of Muslims (evidence strongly suggests that these were mostly militia terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda) attacked the US embassy in Libya, killing 4 people and injuring dozens others. One of the people killed was the US ambassador to the region. The attack included the use of mortars and rocket propelled grenades and many witnesses and high ranking officials within and around the area have made it very clear that the bulk of the people involved in the attack were linked to terrorist groups. What's unsettling is that evidence also strongly suggests that the US government had plenty of warning in advance that this attack was coming. This entire incident was a pre-planned terrorist attack purposely intended to coincide with the September 11 date of the World Trade Center terrorist attack in the USA that killed 3000 people in September 11 2001.

I had a person respond to a previous blog post I made about this stuff telling me that the attack in Libya and the riots had nothing at all to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks. Sorry, that's definitely wrong. The attacks were well planned in advance and purposely carried out on September 11.

USA Today: Deadly Embassy Attacks Were Days In The Making

Days of planning and online promotion by hard-line Islamist leaders helped whip up the mobs that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and launched a deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya that killed an ambassador and three others.

 Anderson Cooper, CNN: US Warned of Threats

Libyan officials say they warned the U.S. about the growing extremist presence three days before the U.S. Consulate attack that killed four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. CNN's Arwa Damon reports.

 Libyan President: No Doubt Attack Planned

Libya President Mohamed Yousef El-Magariaf said Sunday that 50 arrests have been made in connection with last week's "preplanned" attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

CBN News: Preplanned Attack Or Spontaneous Riot?

The president of Libya said he believes al Qaeda is responsible for the deadly attack at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

The USA has from the beginning officially stated that this was a random riot instigated by a film trailer that insulted Islam, however a huge bulk of evidence that has been piling up since the original attacks on September 11 have made it pretty clear that this was all planned well in advance of September 11 by terrorists. In fact, the personal journal of the US Ambassador to Libya even makes it clear that he was getting very concerned with the recent increases in threats and was asking for more security because he feared something might be coming in connection to September 11. Currently, the US government still says it believes the attacks were spontaneous but at the same time it has said that clearly this was a terrorist attack, and they're still investigating.

Not All Muslims Riot, But All The Riots ARE Muslim

Since September 11 2012 when the attack in Libya took place, Muslims all over the world have been rioting and protesting in connection to a film trailer called "Innocence of Muslims" that insults Islam. Some people out there have been saying that the riots have nothing to do with Islam, or Muslims, and that to label these rioters as such is wrong because it paints a bad (politically incorrect picture) of what's really going on.

But here's the thing. ALL of these attacks, riots, and protests, are being carried out by Muslims and they are doing it because of a video on YouTube that insulted Islam. They're not rioting because of taxes, high gas prices, not having the latest iPhone, or because Britney Spears is a new judge on the talent TV show "X Factor"... They're rioting over a movie that insulted Islam. Islam is the key, the factor, the core of this whole mess.

Is it all Islam? All Muslims? Absolutely not! Islam is the second largest religion in the world (a close second to Christianity). There are literally billions of Muslims across the globe and only a miniscule minority are the ones rioting. But it cannot be forgotten that the ONLY people rioting about all this ARE Muslims. It's all about the insult to Islam. That's the cause, the trigger, the reason. Not the religion itself, but the insult to that religion. That means that the riots are religiously motivated and the religion is Islam.

If this were just a small localized thing you could brush it off and say that it was a bunch of hyper sensitive bad apples in one area. But it's NOT just one little area. It's world wide!

Wikipedia: Protests Against "Innocence of Muslims"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(UPDATE: I originally wrote the rough draft of this article late September 24. The Wikipedia page listing the summary information that I partly used for the following lists of riot locations and casualties has since been removed by a Muslim Wikipedia group as it obviously looked bad for them. Thankfully, I had a feeling something like this might happen, so I screen grabbed the website yesterday before this change took place.)

The Wikipedia group that has modified the article:

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Islam, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Islam-related articles on Wikipedia.

Here's the original Screen Capture, before the information was removed (September 24). The webpage was saved in an internet archive format. I made a screenshot of that saved page this morning so I could post it here for you all to see. The summary box on the right hand side has since been removed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The above link to a Wikipedia page has been tracking the incidents around the world. It does not list all of them, but it's a good place to start so you can see just how widespread and violent this whole explosion has been.

These are the places where violent protests and full fledged riots of Muslims have broken out since September 11.

Libya
Yemen
Tunisia
Sudan
Egypt
India
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Lebanon
Israel

France
Germany
Belgium
United Kingdom
Denmark
Greece
Australia

And the list continues to grow every few days.

79 deaths, 687 injuries, and thousands of arrests.

Folks, this is NO minor incident. This is a global crises. A world wide violent uprising and it's been going strong for two weeks. Greece was just added to the list a couple of days ago. The US has closed its embassies in many Muslim countries to try and protect its citizens that are working there.

In most places these violent attacks have been small, consisting of fifty to a few hundred rioters. People have been injured, killed, and have destroyed buildings and cars. The harm and damage has been substantial, far worse than other riots in recent years that have taken place in western countries over the economy (as in Europe) or the riot in Vancouver Canada because the Vancouver Canucks hockey team lost against the Boston Bruins in the NHL hockey playoffs a couple years ago. This is much bigger and much uglier because people are being killed and it's happening all over the world at the same time.

This does NOT represent all of Islam, not by a long shot. But it DOES represent SOME of the people that follow it as their religion and belief system. The whole upheaval is because of an insult to Islam, and these are Muslim people (Muslim people only) committing the mass violence and crimes on behalf of their religion. There is NO getting around that fact. That this has happened in so many countries and so many cities should be a wake up call to anyone that thinks "Islam is the religion of peace". It's got a nasty violent underbelly that though a minority, still packs a heck of a bloody punch (or sword), and it's global.

Offend Islam, Cause Riots And Violence

YouTube: Egypt And Libya Riot Over US Film

"... It [the video] was produced by a real-estate developer from California who put its trailer on YouTube, something that very few people saw before a preacher from Florida, Terry Jones, started promoting it. The same preacher who's burning of a Koran last year triggered riots in Afghanistan. This latest film obviously caught fire with Islamists, with people in the part of the world where they don't just let things like that go, as they didn't with the caricatures of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005. That triggered a lot of riots, as we remember. Also as they didn't let go with a number of other incidents."

A couple weeks ago, on September 11 (the anniversary of the horrible Muslim extremist terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York that killed over 3000 people), Muslims across the globe showed their solidarity to combat terrorism by rioting and attacking US embassies, injuring many, ruining property, and even killing a US ambassador inside one of those embassies (in Libya). The entire eruption is being blamed on a short little video online that insults Islam, though the video has actually been around since 2009.

Islam's response to insult is drastically different from the response of Christians. Christians will say how offended they are about something, but won't riot and physically attack people over it. Because of this, we get all kinds of blatant over the top crude and truely horrible insults against Christianity, God and Jesus Christ constantly. By and large, we get upset, but don't attack. We turn the other cheek. In fact, if we DO make much of a fuss about such things, we're told to shut up because it's all a matter of "free speech". Blasphemy is protected under "Free Speech" and the courts will side against the offended Christians on that basis. So we get absolutely heinous blasphemies all over the place, even in museums and universities and it's all labeled "art" and "free speech".

For example, I read a while back about a big name university (sorry, I forget which one and don't have the link) in the United States banning a small Christian group from showing Passion of The Christ on campus, meanwhile, that same university a few months later put on a production of "F***ing for Jesus", a play ridiculing and insulting Christianity, God, and especially Jesus. "F***ing for Jesus" is art protected by free speech...The list of examples likes this is endless and disgusting. But Christians, even if we make a bit of a fuss (noise) about something, are told to shut up.

Islam, on the other hand, goes into a violent rage whenever the religion is insulted, even a little. Muslims riot, protest, damage property, attack and kill people, threaten death on the blaspheming infidels, and pretty much go mad with exacting retribution. Don't get me wrong, this is by far a minority. For every 1 Muslim in the world that reacts violently to perceived insult, there are hundreds more that respond peacefully (if at all) much like Christians do. A classic example of this is if a Bible is burned by someone in a show of hatred towards the Bible or Christianity, Christians go, "That's not very nice. Now back to our lives we go." When the Koran gets burned you get riots, violence, injuries and death in the streets of Muslim nations. Death to the infidel!

Appeasement And Double Standard

What's shocking is how the Western World is responding to this sort of over reaction. Property is damaged, people are injured and even killed, and the media and government goes, "The violence is the fault of the people who insulted Islam, not the Muslims and their religion of peace..."

Everyone is blaming an anti-Islam short video for the latest rash of violence, but the truth is that there's always something. Cartoonists who make a joke about anything related to Islam get death threats, their houses are fire bombed, their families threatened, and some even flee for their lives. And that's in Western countries! In some Muslim countries if you dared say anything bad about Islam, there's a good chance you'll end up dead. Heck, just being a Christian in many of these countries is qualification for being attacked, raped or killed (your family included). Yet the bulk of the blame always seems to be pointed at the person "igniting" the flare up, the person who somehow insulted Islam, and not the people actually committing the atrocious crimes.

You know how I mentioned that Christianity has to take insult and blasphemy as "free speech" and not make a big deal out of it? Islam seems to get the opposite treatment. The White House actually told YouTube and Google to take the offending anti-Islam video down. That's right! The US government is actively trying to block content that might offend Muslims online... Government law enforcement officials even hunted down the makers of the movie to intimidate and "re-educate" them so that they won't produce such things again. Politicians are apologizing for the video's existence and saying how terrible it is that someone would make such a thing. Meanwhile, Muslims riot for justice and vengeance... Even more shocking is that Hollywood, the bastion of "freedom of speech" excuses for content that ridicules Christianity on a VERY regular basis, is in agreement with the government and mainstream media! Block the content! Stop the insults to Islam!... Talk about being monumentally hypocritical!

Conservative commentators have been talking about all this and through interviews with "people in the know" and from the words that Muslims across the world are saying every day, it's becoming clear that such angry violent responses are done with the full intention of making it illegal to insult Islam on a global scale. The idea is to scare and terrorize the world into submission. It's a coordinated strategy, and it's working.

Christians get "F***ing for Jesus" and told to shut up when we complain about it. Islam gets protection from insult under the law... That's right! Many Western countries have adopted or have been slowly adopting (or currently calling for the adoption of) laws that block free speech with regards to Islam, making it illegal to insult the religion or Muslims in any way. Even just the perception of insult or offense will get you in trouble with the law. It's been pushed forward under the banner of respect for religion, culture and people, and it trumps freedom of expression and free speech, just like how homosexuality trumps freedom of religion (or Christianity anyways) and free speech.

Maybe Muslims have their strategy right. Maybe it takes violence to stop people from insulting your religion of choice... No, probably not. If it was Christians behaving this childishly and violently, it would be the Christians that get squashed by the law, not the people insulting them in the first place. It really wouldn't matter what we do. Somehow Christianity is absolutely free game and Islam is off limits, and both stances are protected under law.

Secularism Saves, Religion Destroys?

There's a common falsehood that is popular among many atheists and secular speakers out there that secularism is the answer to a harmonious civilization whereas religion inevitably leads to extremism, holy wars, murder and oppression (even hatred) in the name of god and kingdom. Such thinking is entirely inaccurate, as are other beliefs that tend to go along with such an idea.

Secularism is by no means any better than mainstream (or otherwise) religious or spiritual belief systems that exist throughout the world. Somehow these atheists and secularists have gotten it in their heads that secularism and atheism are NOT belief systems akin or comparable to religion. This is absurd because secularism and atheism are very much belief systems that shape an individual's life and viewpoint of the universe, the world, mankind, and the individual within it all. So to pretend that there's a gross difference between secularism and religion is to wear very thick blinders. Both are philosophical ideologies at their core and how they effect a person stems directly from that foundation. Secularism is humanism, a "religion" based on the idea that naturalism is all there is and mankind is an accident of nature and little more than a highly evolved animal. Secularism also wishes to eliminate religion from places of education, public discussion, government (and other authority), even entertainment. For a group that loves to preach about tolerance and diversity, they are actually quite intolerant to ideas that do not jive with their own.

Much is said these days in secular circles about religious extremism. The biggest culprit of religiously motivated or inspired terrorism is found within certain sects of Islam, and this has been true for more than two decades now. However non-religious (or vaguely spiritual) people see this and pin the terrorist (or ticking time bomb) on ALL organized religion. They'll point to historic tragedies such as the Crusades and the Inquisition, both taking place during cultures heavily dominated and invested in either Roman Catholic Christianity or Islam. Clearly religion and belief in god is a great inspiration of horror and evil in the world, right? And so non-religion, such as secular atheism or humanism, must then be the salvation of mankind and the end of human on human violence!... Such a belief or statement could not be more wrong.

The problem of extremism or ideologically motivated violence is by no means restricted to religion. It broaches all kinds of belief systems, all stripes of political bents and ALL viewpoints. Christians can easily understand this because we understand that the broken human condition that causes all of this is sin, which permeates and infects EVERYONE no matter who they are. Sin is like a poison. Left unchecked, it is catastrophically destructive and cruel. Secularism and atheism do not even believe in the existence of sin, believing that morality is in large part a social construct and little else. So who is better prepared to address the corrupted human soul? The ones who reject the existence of both soul and sin, or the ones that know it for what it is?

Is secularism the answer to moderating and regulating religion to prevent catastrophic violence between human beings? No. At best it's no better than religion in this matter. However, it might actually be even worse, because it holds no solid moral foundation or absolute truth. The atheist likes to point to tragedies in history connected (loosely or closely) to religion, things like the Crusades and Inquisition. In the secularist mindset, theocracy (government and power held by organized religion) is inherently corrupt or easily corrupted, mere steps from extremist evil. Yes, those particular horrors of history were awful, but religion is by no means the only factor for such occurrences. Neither is theocracies, or political conservatism. Most wars are not religiously inspired or motivated, merely using religion as an excuse for the real reasons for the war, such as greed and power.

Secularism and atheism have a human death count in the multiple hundreds of millions in just the last 100 years alone. The crusades and inquisitions were centuries ago and killed far fewer people on the whole. The inquisitions for instance may have killed a few thousand in all. Secular communism, however, is a very modern social and governmental construct, and it's slaughtered hundreds of millions in far shorter a time period than all religions combined for all of history. Stalin and communist Russia, communist China, and Germany's Hitler and the Nazis in World War 2 were all heavily influenced and inspired by humanism, secularism and naturalistic Darwinism (evolution). In this way you could almost say that communism is the secular version of a theocracy. Germany was the breadbasket of Darwinist thought and evolution inspired eugenics were the heart and soul of much of the Nazi mentality. They rounded up Jews, people of colour, and the physically and mentally disabled for death because they were considered inferior humans, a detriment to the betterment of more highly evolved mankind. These people were relegated to a sub-human status, and murdered and brutalized because of it. Communist Russia and China killed hundreds of millions in the name of preserving their government control and destroying all opposition and alternate belief systems, especially against Christianity. These were and are heavily atheistic and secular driven belief systems and mentalities that dominate in these large scale modern death camps. Secularism and atheism is in no way harmony and innocence. It's hands are as bloody or worse than mankind's biggest and longest lasting religions, and it's happening today right along side Islamic terrorism. The only difference is that it's institutionalized and government sanctioned. The only difference is that all this genocide is done in the name of man and at the cost and eradication of freedom (freedom that Christianity has been a strong supporter and creator of the world over).


The Real Problem

The problem is not religion, or even politics. The problem is mankind's heart in general. The problem is our eagerness and easily corruptible fallen sinful nature. Secularism and atheism don't even have a "higher power" to answer to or provide them direction, instruction, correction or meaning. To them, we're evolved animals, a cosmic accident of chemistry and physics.

True Christianity is based upon salvation, mercy, love, repentance, and compassion. Jesus Christ came and died on the cross when the Jews wanted him to rise up and become a holy warrior king and save them from the Romans. He refused. He came to save our lost souls, to show us a better way, to lead us back to God through love and mercy. The value of a human life and compassionate love are two monumental core tenets in Christianity. Yes, Christians or people who have claimed to be Christian or do things in the name of God have done terrible things in the past and even the present. But so have secularists, humanists, atheists and Darwinists. Examples of this are the Columbine school shooting in the USA (the two young men considered themselves to be cleansing society of religion and being an instrument of natural selection, one even wore a shirt that said exactly that as he shot his fellow classmates dead) and the murder spree a couple years ago in Norway where an avowed evolutionist shot dead 100 teenagers and government workers in the name of attacking Islam and the tolerance of it. The problem is NOT religion. The problem is strong over the top ideology combined with a lack of loving merciful compassion and the heartfelt knowledge that every life is exquisitely valuable.

Secularism is not salvation for the ills of society. It could be better described as oblivious unintended suicide. To eliminate the God given value of human life, of the soul, and to reduce us all to cosmic accidents and lucky-to-have evolved and survived animals in an entirely cold and callous universe is to beg for the de-humanization of all mankind. Human history both ancient and modern paints us a large scale picture of the evil and cruelty that mankind is capable of. Atheism and humanist secularism are at best no better than religions when it comes to these large scale sins. It's because the problem is not religion, or God, or faith, holy scripture, or even politics. The problem is mankind's ability to twist and warp any and all ideologies and philosophies into dark and destructive tendencies for fortune, fame and power. The problem is sin, something we are all guilty of to one extent or another.

Thankfully there's a means of redemption, forgiveness and salvation found through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are all His and He loves each and every one of us. That's a heck of a lot more positive and inspiring than, "We're stuff that stars burped out and that chemistry and physics accidentally patched together into complex animals." In Christianity there's a true possible solution. There's an understanding of the existence and potential of evil and wrong in all of us. Compassion, love, and deeply valuing all human life is the only cure. Those principles go hand in hand with salvation through Jesus Christ.


UPDATE

Added links to a few articles giving more detail and information on the topic.

Whitewashing Darwinism's Ongoing Moral Legacy  (EvolutionNews, Darwinism's influence taboo to discuss)

Slouching Toward Columbine: Darwin’s Tree of Death  (http://blog.beliefnet.com)

James J. Lee, Hostage-taker and Darwinist  (EvolutionNews, Discovery Channel shooting in Maryland, plus a summary of other similar incidents)

From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany  (Amazon.com)