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Editor:
Note well that Trump does NOT put the KSA and its Gulf stooges on the ban list, but they’re the ones ramming Islamic law down people’s throats the hardest. As for me, I don’t care what people do behind their closed doors, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else or involve children in their fancies. If you want to fuck a duck, go ahead… as long as it’s OK with the duck. Reflect well on this… Evangelicals want to criminalise abortion and all other sorts of things that they don’t like. It seems to me that Evangelicals and Islamists are brothers under the skin. Mike Pence is a fanatical Evangelical who tossed a woman in prison for a miscarriage. He’s no different from these Gulf State yahoos. Pray for Trump’s health… for the alternative is Pence… a truly feral and evil man, an American Wahhabist if there ever was such…
Yes… there are “Christians” who resemble the Wahhabis… and they’re “nice” and “sincere” and “moral”. Excuse me, I need to find a corner to be sick in…
BMD
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A relative said that the authorities arrested a South African man and his Ukrainian fiancée in Abu Dhabi after a doctor discovered that the woman was pregnant. They arrested Emlyn Culverwell, 29, and Irina Nogai, 27 for unlawful sex outside of marriage. The arrests came after Nogai, who was suffering from stomach cramps, went to Medeor Medical Centre in Yas Mall in Abu Dhabi, where a doctor told her she was pregnant. Having sex outside of marriage is illegal in the UAE, and those convicted of it can face long jail sentences. Reportedly, the couple was in detention since 29 January, but details of their arrests are just emerging.
Police arrested Culverwell and Nogai at the hospital for not being able to provide marriage certificates. They took them first to the Yas Police Station, and then later brought them to al-Wathba Prison. However, they didn’t yet charge them because the authorities are still investigating the child’s paternity, how long the couple was sexually active, and are testing Nogai’s HIV status. The couple became engaged just two days before their arrest, on 27 January. Culverwell worked in the UAE for the past five years as a water rescue operative at Yas Waterworld. He started dating Nogai, who worked as an administration officer, in mid-2014.
The South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation said that it couldn’t help the couple because it is an issue with domestic UAE law, according to News24, and suggested that they seek legal help. Times Live reported that legal representation for Culverwell and Nogai could cost up to 118‚000 South African rands ($8‚000) per person. Culverwell’s mother, Linda, said that Nogai was still in the early stages of her pregnancy, and suggested that the cramps could be a sign of a miscarriage. She pleaded for their release, saying, “The only thing they did wrong was fall in love”. Linda described her son as a health fanatic who didn’t smoke, take drugs, or drink alcohol. She told News24 that her family is “trying to get messages to the two to say we love them and they shouldn’t be worried”. Linda said that since the couple’s arrest, family members and friends have been unable to contact them. She said that the only people who can visit the couple are family members who share the same last name, and relatives are currently calculating the costs of making a trip to Abu Dhabi with lawyers.
According to Herald Live, since their arrest, a Christian Church in Yas Island in the UAE offered to marry the couple for a lofty price, but a judge refused to allow it. Nogai is guilty of Zina, the Islamic legal term referring to unlawful sexual intercourse, which the UAE has criminalised. The UAE authorities either deport women and couples found guilty of Zina or imprison them in the country for at least a year. They imprison hundreds of women each year for the crime, including pregnant women and rape victims.
8 March 2017
Daily Mail
Voices from Russia 
It’s Time to Start Calling Evangelicals What They Are: The American Taliban
Tags: american evangelicals, Christian, Christian ethics, Christianity, ethic, ethical orientation, ethics, Evangelical, Evangelicalism, evangelicals, extremism, Fundamentalist Christianity, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamism, Islamist, moral, Moral Majority, moral stance, morality, morals, political commentary, politics, Radicals, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Taliban, United States, USA
Religion has no place in the public school. As a member of a “minority” faith (Russian Orthodox Christianity), I wouldn’t want our kids contaminated with Evangelical goo. We have a secular state… let’s keep it that way.
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Editor:
The following is prime read n’ heed… it needs no commentary from me.
BMD
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The Council For National Policy is a Conservative Think Tank, made up of a Who’s Who of prominent conservatives… Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Reince Priebus, Tim LaHaye, Bobby Jindal, John McCain… the list goes on… This article, published by the Washington Post, but reported elsewhere, lays out the group’s plan to “restore education in America”, by bringing God into classrooms.
I have said for years and years, the Christian Right is really seeking to establish a theocracy in the USA… at least regionally, throughout the Deep South. This latest effort by the so-called Council for National Policy lays further proof to that claim. The Constitution does NOT support this effort… in spite of what many “Christian” leaders say. The First Amendment of the Constitution strictly prohibits any Establishment of Religion. This Amendment also guarantees Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. This “Separation of Church and State” has two intentions:
However, this fact won’t stop many Southern Christians, who feel it is their duty… as Christians… to make the USA “a godly nation” in their eyes. Moreover, they’ll cite the numerous biblical passages in which God exhorts all nations to be faithful to him and condemns those nations who aren’t, as the basis for this duty… that they feel is their right. I grew up in this world, so I know what I’m talking about. As a kid, during the 1970’s, I attended churches in Atlanta with my devout grandmother. I heard Jerry Falwell speak numerous times at First Baptist on Peachtree. A fiery minister in Smyrna indoctrinated me into the Evangelical way of thinking. I studied my “King James” Bible. I feverishly read Ernest Angley’s book about the “end times” that depicted Christians being boiled alive by the Antichrist. I loved The Omen movies, wholly believing they portended something real. Trust me. I’ve been there. Fortunately, I had the sense to give it up. By age 15, at the peak of my adolescent sexual curiosity, I realised that any religion that demanded giving up my basic humanity was nuts.
Of course, not all Christian Evangelicals share this extreme view. Nevertheless, the extremists always give themselves away with their trademark refrain, “I’ll pray for you”, as if you’re possessed by demons and in need of an exorcism. They seem completely unaware of how this statement makes them appear; that they alone understand “truth”, that everyone else is “ungodly” and in need of “redemption”, as they see it; by being “born again,” and baptised, and accepting their world view. This self-righteous arrogant presumption is at the root of all religious extremism. Evangelicals in churches and state houses across the country support laws and political systems that brutalize and imprison MILLIONS of African-Americans, that deny equal rights and protections to LGBT people and tacitly support violence toward them, and seek to deny women the right to govern their own bodies, often with threats or outright acts of physical violence. They seem hell-bent on ejecting science from education and replacing it with their own creationist ideas.
In doing these things, Evangelicals are advocating a religious extremism that is no different from Muslim extremism, which projects religious authority over all people in their domain, which limits the rights of women, controls and limits education, and enforces strict adherence to a moral code, which naturally rejects and punishes all forms of “decadence”, including “deviant sexuality”, science, reason, and any questioning of authority. Christian fundamentalists, if given the power, will do the same things.
Evangelical Christians in the USA condemn Muslim extremism as a threat to the country and their way of life, while clearly endorsing their own form of extreme religious authoritarianism. This form of religion establishes a tribally divisive “us” versus “them” mentality, which places “our” rights and prerogatives above the needs of any other group. Moreover, they use it repeatedly as the basis for denying other people’s rights… particularly, their freedom to choose and even their right to exist. It’s worth pointing out that in the South religion buttressed this tribal mentality to force a separation between whites and blacks, who they see/saw as inferior. White suburban Christian thinking has this tribalism as a deeply embedded dynamic. They accept it without question. I shouldn’t have to point out that, in the end, this isn’t Christian at all.
Religious extremism is religious extremism. Using words like “righteousness” or “faith” or “Christ-given mission”, and hiding behind ideas like “tradition” and “heritage” and “family values” won’t cover up this fact. It’s up to every freedom-loving person, who prefers freedom of choice, freedom of worship, who cares about protecting women’s rights and equality for all, and advancing reason and scientific knowledge, to be aware and oppose it. I don’t suggest that Evangelicals should give up their faith. However, I strongly suggest they shouldn’t trample on other people’s religious beliefs or insist that people should conform themselves with the Evangelical worldview.
If Evangelicals hate tyranny, they should be very wary of becoming tyrants. Nevertheless, Evangelicals will never see themselves as tyrants, because their faith commands them to be “missionaries for Christ”. This mandate engages them in a zero-sum game to convert the country, indeed the whole world, to their faith. Moreover, over the decades they’ve increasingly reached for more and more political power to achieve this goal. This is exactly what ISIS proposes, by trying to establish a global Muslim caliphate. The goal of religious extremists, regardless of faith, is always the same… Dominion.
Evangelicals are the American Taliban. To many, that seems a garish and inconceivable statement. The entire purpose of this article is to point out that religious extremism also exists in America as it does in other parts of the world, and not just radical Muslims are extreme, it’s also radical Christians… and that religious extremism can start with something as simple as, “I’ll pray for you”.
24 February 2017
J C Weatherby
Church and State
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2017/03/its-time-to-start-calling-evangelicals-what-they-are-the-american-taliban/