May, 19
2016
Apologetics, In the News

About Barack Obama’s Bathroom Edict

Hanegraaff, Hank-Barack Obama’s Bathroom Edict

May 17, 2016

I was thinking today of President Barack Obama’s bathroom edict. Do you remember John F. Kennedy envisioned a man on the moon? Obama envisions a man in a woman’s bathroom.

Think about the paradoxes, in our crumbling post-Christian culture, we’re steeped in a naturalistic worldview; therefore, on one hand, children are told that human beings are mere molecules in motion. In other words, there is no room for a subjective first person point of view. Yet, in an ironic twist, children are now to walk lockstep in the belief that they are not determined gender wise by objective biology but by an individual first person subjective conscious feeling regarding gender. Think about it? It is a mind warp.

Today I was reading an article by David French titled “President Obama’s Transgender Proclamation is Far Broader and More Dangerous than You Think.” He’s absolutely right. French points out that on May 9th Vanita Gupta , head of the Civil Rights Division of Justice, said,

Here are the Facts. Transgender men are men—they live, work, and study as men. Transgender women are women—they live, work and study as women.

In other words, according to the Department of Justice, it is a simple fact that a man can have a menstrual cycle, and a woman can have a penis, and that men can get pregnant.

Then 3 days ago, May 13 the administration threatened

Every single public school in America with the loss of federal funds unless it adopts the administration’s point of view that gender is defined not by biology but instead by personal preference.

French makes a number of points. First of which is that

Teaching biology and human physiology will be hate speech unless it’s modified to conform to the new transgender “facts.” Teachers will have to take great pains to note that chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormonal systems, and any other physical marker of sex is irrelevant to this thing called “gender,” which, “factually,” is a mere state of mind.

At least according to this narrative! Secondly,

Any statements of dissent — from teachers or students — will be treated as both “anti-science” and “discriminatory.”

In other words, it’s against science and it’s discrimination.

The argument that a “girl” with a penis remains a boy will be treated exactly the same as an argument that blacks are inferior to whites or Arabs inferior to Jews.

Third point is,

Public schools will now be even further opposed, doctrinally and legally, to orthodox Christianity.

Children are going to be taught, not only that their churches are factually wrong in their assessment and gender but they’re actually bigoted and hateful, kind of like White Supremacist.

Because the Administration’s edict is tied to funding not even civil disobedience can block the enforcement.

Unless schools can declare their full and complete independence from federal funding, they will continue to face escalating pressure from the federal government to use their classrooms to transform American culture and values.

Think about a remark on May 9th of Attorney General Loretta Lynch. She

Very deliberately compared the DOJ’s aggressive actions to guarantee male access to women’s restrooms (and vice versa) to the fight against Jim Crow. These words were an unmistakable declaration of political war against people of orthodox faith.

When she uttered those words she didn’t just grotesquely exaggerate the plight of the transgender, she minimized the reality the memory of past discrimination.

No one understands this subject in my view as well as Joe Dallas, who has an incredible article, “The Transsexual Dilemma” He points out

Traditionally, if a man felt like a woman yet inhabited a male body, his feelings, not his body, were viewed as the problem. They were considered something to be resisted, modified if possible, and contrary to what was. Currently, what one is is being determined by what one feels—an ominous trend when one considers its implications. It is, in essence, an attempt to define reality by desire, knowledge by intuition.

Then Joe talks about a counseling session with a person named Kim.

“I know I’m a man because I feel like one!” Kim screamed at me as our session continued, leaving me stunned that an intelligent, educated woman subordinated a verifiable truth—her born, inalterable state—to subjective (though strongly held) perceptions.

The only way in which we ultimately change culture is by changing the hearts of people. So many people look at the Presidential race that we have going on right now and I heard one key evangelical voice say that now we have a choice of the lesser of evils and therefore we shouldn’t vote in this election. We should abstain from voting. The truth of the matter is the Presidential candidates reflect our culture. That’s the reality. They always will. We should still be involved in voting because our vote is going to have enormous implications for the years that lie before us as yet.

We have to ultimately recognize our responsibility as Christians to be able to give cogent, clear, concise, and compelling answers to the questions that the culture is asking. We need to learn how to reach rather than repel.

When Christians do not understand how to think clearly about these issues they lose by default. The bathroom edict narrative, as I pointed out, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The minute you start thinking about it you see the ironic twist. You see the self-stultifying statements. The problem is the narrative is repeated over and over with such dogmatism that unless you can respond with gentleness and with respect but clearly the thought is that there is no cogent response on the other side of the ledger.

So we as Christians must learn discernment skills and must take seriously our responsibility to train our children in such a way that they themselves can think. They need to learn discernment skills.

—Hank Hanegraaff

(Adapted from the 5/17/2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast)

May 19th, 2016 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Mar, 10
2016
Apologetics

Discerning Truth from Fiction about Violent Intolerant Islam and “Peaceful” Muslims

Spencer, Robert-Islam Intolerant to Jews Christian non Muslims

On the March 1, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast, Hank Hanegraaff interviewed Robert Spencer director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) as well as The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran. The following are some highlights from their discussion.

Hank Hanegraaff: It’s great to once again have this opportunity to speak to the nation, indeed to people from around the world about a crucial subject. We are in the midst of a clash of civilizations and someone who knows about this subject as anyone on the planet has joined me. His name is Robert Spencer. He’s the director of Jihad Watch, it is program the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is also the author of fourteen books, catch it, fourteen books on Islam and jihad. He’s led seminars on Islam and Jihad for the FBI and many other very significant groups. Robert Spencer is a man who is willing to stand for truth no matter what the cost. That’s precisely what you have been doing. You’re standing for truth no matter the cost. If you at what happened historically, you know better than just about anybody Robert, what has in history, you can go back to the seventh-century poetess who Muhammad himself murdered for a poetic slight, all the way to what happened with Theo van Gough the Dutch filmmaker murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri for artistically objecting to the subjugation of women. This is not child’s play.

Robert Spencer: No, it’s not. I know what’s at stake, but the thing is that—you know the signers of the Declaration of Independence, they said at the end of the document that to the great cause that they were delineating in the document, they were pledging their lives, fortunes, and their sacred honor, and I think that if we do not have people now who are willing to defend the freedoms that we enjoy in Judeo-Christian Western Civilization, and that are derived ultimately from Judaism and Christianity, from the Old Testament and the New Testament, that if we are not. If we don’t have people willing to defend with their lives those things, then we will certainly lose them. So, it’s imperative to take a stand. It’s not as if any of us have immortality anyway, I am willing to dedicate my life to this because it has to be done, and needs to be done, and I’m in a  position to do it, so that’s really there’s to it.

Hank: You should be admired for what you’re doing. You know I mentioned at the open, Robert, the common refrain that’s reverberated throughout the West—Islam is not our enemy—those were precise words spoken by Hillary Clinton right after the Paris terrorist attacks. What do you make of those words?

Robert: Well, it depends on what one means by it. I mean she’s probably conflating Islam and Muslims as most people do, when actually there needs to be a distinction drawn between the two. Certainly Muslims believe in Islam, but how much any particular person of any religions believes in the religion in a real sense, or lives out the teachings of the religion? That varies widely and of course we know that there are many Christians who bear the name of Christian, would say they are Christians, but they don’t live in any Christian manner. There are many Christians who don’t even know what it would be to be living in a Christian manner because they don’t study the Scriptures. They’re not aware of the teachings of Jesus Christ, and yet they would still call themselves Christians. Then, of course, there are Christians who are very observant and devout, and knowledgeable. It’s a spectrum. It’s the same thing in Islam. So, Hillary Clinton is probably concerned that we say that all Muslims are not our enemy and that’s obviously true. All Muslims are not our enemy.

But is Islam our enemy? Well, Islam teaches, the Qur’an teaches that it is the responsibility of a leader to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law, and deny them basic rights as part of that subjugation.  So, is Islam the enemy of all non-Muslims? Well, the Qur’an would say yes. The Qur’an says Muhammad is the apostle of Allah and those who follow him are merciful to one another but ruthless to the unbeliever. That’s sounds to me as if Islam is at war with the unbelievers. When the Qur’an says to fight against even the people of the Book, which is the Qur’an’s designation primarily for Jews and Christians, and says they must fight against the people of the Book until the people of the Book pay the jizya, which is a special tax, with willing submission and feel themselves subdued, they’re saying that Muslims have to fight against Jews and Christians until they conquer them, and make them submit to Islamic hegemony, which would indicate here again that Islam is at war with non-Muslims. That doesn’t mean every Muslim is pursuing the war but we would be naïve and would be rejecting simple reality, if we would pretend that these teachings are not in the Qur’an and that Muslims are not taking them seriously. Unfortunately, many Muslims are.

Hank: That is, I think, a very charitable collegial answer. But, I want to ask you about Barack Obama, who said that “throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.” Now, he says that and he prefaces his remarks by saying that he’s “a student of history,” he says I know this.

Robert: It’s just not historically true. It’s become a very common historical myth., as a matter of fact. I cannot understand why Obama would repeat it. There’s just no basis for it. Most of the time, people who say that Islam has created societies that were beacons of tolerance and pluralism, they point to al-Andalus, Muslim Spain in the Middle Ages, and they say that Jews and Christians lived in Muslim Spain in peace and were able to practice their religion and they interacted frequently with the Muslims, and it was a wonderful proto-multiculturalist paradise. Now, unfortunately, anybody who looks into the reality of Muslim Spain, looks at contemporary documents—I’ve discussed this in another book that I wrote years ago called Onward Muslim Soldiers, and there’s a new book about it called The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise—the fact is that the Jews and Christians lived a very precarious existence in Muslim Spain. They were tolerated to be sure but only in so far as they accepted and observed the restrictions, humiliating and discriminatory regulations, that mandated their second class status. In so far as they obeyed and abided by those restrictions then they were able to live in peace, but if they were to actually ask for equal rights, or to say that they ought to have equal rights, then that was out the window. So the idea that Islam has ever been tolerant in a real sense of non-Muslims is historically false. There actually is no Islamic society today, there’s no majority Muslim country today, and there has never been in history any majority Muslim country that ever granted full equal rights to Jews, Christians or other non-Muslims. That’s never been so in history that Jews Christians or other non-Muslims have ever enjoyed full equality of rights with Muslims in an Islamic society. It’s never happened and it’s not happening now.

Hank: We’ll be taking a few calls during the broadcast. In fact, we’ll go right to Christy in Saint Louis, Missouri. You’re on with Robert Spencer. Hi, Christy!

Christy: Hi, Hank. I feel like my question was somewhat answered just now. I work with several people who claim, you know, to be practicing Islam but they’re peaceful—peaceful Islam. You know, my question: Is that even considered true Islam? Wouldn’t that be the equivalent to a Christian saying, “I’m not concerned with winning souls, but I’m a Christian,” you know? So, I mean, peaceful Islam is there really even such a thing, or is that’s just something that, you know, they say?

Robert: Christy, the thing is this: The Qur’an and all the sects of Islam, and the example of Muhammad, they’re all unanimous. There is no form of Islam other than arguably the Ahmadiyyas, who are about 1.8% of Muslims worldwide and are persecuted as heretics in Pakistan because they are peaceful. There’s no other sect or school of Islamic law that doesn’t teach that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers.  It’s a universal teaching. It’s not like some tiny minority of extremists that devised this twisted version of Islam and all the rest of it is peaceful. That’s a media myth. It’s not the case. Now, that being said, what are your co-workers all about? Well, there’s no telling really. They could really believe that Islam is peaceful and that they should be peaceful people as Muslims, because they might not know, or they could be deceiving you and others because the Qur’an allows for deception of unbelievers, if one considers oneself to be under pressure. So, there’s really no way to tell. They could know better and be lying because that’s allowed, or they could simply not know better and think that this is really the real thing.

Complicating this is the fact that if you’re Muslim you have to pray in Arabic. You have read the Qur’an in Arabic. Most Muslims today are not native Arabic speakers. The largest Islamic country is Indonesia. That’s not an Arab country. The second largest Muslim population in the world is India, not an Arab country. The fact is that when Muslims today are not Arabs, they still have to pray in Arabic, so they are just most of the time reciting syllables that they do not understand the meaning of when they are praying and reading the Qur’an. So, it’s entirely possible that your co-workers don’t even know the teachings of Islam and still consider themselves to be devout and observant because they pray their prayers five times a day without necessarily knowing what they mean. It sounds absurd, but it’s a fact. I was speaking with a Pakistani Muslim a few years ago, and he says to me in all seriousness—when I tell the story people think it’s a joke—but he was quite serious, he said I’m very proud of my religion, and I’ve memorized almost all the Qur’an, and one day I’m going to get one of those translations and find out what it means.

To request your copies of Robert Spencer’s The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) and The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran, click here.

(Interview taken from the March 1, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast.)

March 10th, 2016 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Mar, 03
2016
Apologetics

Islam, Political Correctness, and Death to Infidels

Hanegraaff, Hank-Robert Spencer_Islam, Political Correctness2

On the March 1, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast, Hank Hanegraaff interviewed Robert Spencer director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) as well as The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran. The following are some highlights from their discussion.

Hank Hanegraaff: I should note that Islam is the only religious system in the history of the human race with a socio-political structure of law that mandates violence against the infidel, and that graphic, global reality makes Islam a religious ideology espousing terrorism as a permanent policy not just a temporary expedient. Such is the historical reality from the seventh century Median massacres to the twenty-first century Manhattan massacre and so much more. Thus the portrait of millions of peaceful and tolerant Muslims must not obscure the very real depiction of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion. The current narrative is that to “tell it like it is” is tantamount to radicalizing Muslims and, therefore, exacerbating hostilities that might will otherwise lie dormant. As such, a common refrain reverberates throughout the West, “Islam is not our enemy.” In fact, those were precisely the words that Hillary Clinton used in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks just last November. Barack Obama went even further. He noted that in concert with Muslims worldwide, he shares common principles, principles of justice, progress, tolerance, and dignity of all human beings. Not only that, but according to Obama, throughout history Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

Joining me on the broadcast today to discuss all this and more is Robert Spencer. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) as well as The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran. Robert is the director of Jihad Watch. He is also the author of fourteen books on Islam. He has led seminars on Islam for the FBI, for the Joint Terrorism Task Force, for the United States Central Command and other intelligence and military groups, and I am just delighted to have you on the broadcast.

Robert Spencer: Thanks so much Hank great to be here.

Hank: I just heard today that you have been banned from Britain, whatever for?

Robert: I was banned from Britain for the crime of saying that Islam is a religion that has a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers. In other words, I was banned from Britain for telling an obvious truth that the British government would rather not be told.

Hank: How do you fight the current narrative?

Robert: I just tell the truth, Hank. It’s very easy the job that I have. I sometimes think it must be very hard for the people who oppose me because they’re constantly having to devise ways to lie and spin the narrative whereas all I have to do is say what’s happening. What I do is when things happen like the various jihad terror attacks or the Islamic State doing various things that it has become notorious for doing, what I do is show at Jihad Watch, my web site or in my various books, that these things are all based upon various teachings of the Qur’an and Islam. Quoting the Qur’an, quoting the teachings of Muhammad and so on, you know I didn’t make up the quotes, and so it’s very easy to simply set it all out and then people can make the judgments that they’re going to make. But, in any case, I find it mystifying actually to tell you the truth that people think that what I do is hateful or bigoted, or something or other, because I’m usually just quoting their material. If there’s any hatred and bigotry, it’s in the Islamic sources.

Hank: The word that’s appended to you and many others like you who would speak the truth about Islam is that you are Islamophobic.

Robert: Yes. You know, Hank, if you think about it, that’s never a word we heard when we were young men; certainly, never a word that I heard all through my childhood, high school, college. It’s a new coinage. The idea of it is to intimidate people into that there’s something wrong with resisting jihad terrorism. It’s really an insidious coinage because of that. It makes people think that when jihad terror attacks happen, that there’s something going on with non-Muslims, that it must be our fault in some way. So, nobody every challenges the Jihadis to deal with the problems within—nobody every challenges the Muslims community that is in the larger sense to deal with the problems within the Qur’an and Sunnah, with the material in the Islamic texts and teachings, that Jihadis use to justify violence and to make recruits among peaceful Muslims.

Hank: A senior member of al-Qaeda called on you to convert. Is it convert or else?

Robert: Oh, yes! Oh yes! Well, see Muhammad the prophet of Islam taught that when you meet unbelievers you fist invite them to accept Islam. If they refuse that, then you invite them to submit to the hegemony of the Muslims, which would mean that you accept various humiliating discriminatory regulations in return for a so-called covenant of protection. If you refuse both of those then the Muslims will have to fight you. So, the idea is conversion or subjugation or war. Adam Gadahn, who was a convert to Islam from California, made a video. He came to be high up in al-Qaeda, he was killed later in an American airstrike, but he made a video that was introduced by Ayman al-Zawahiri—who is of course now the head of al-Qaeda but was then the number two man—and in that video Gadahn invited me by name to convert to Islam. I was pleased that he noticed my work, but of course I had declined. Now, the difficulty there is what that means is that he now is saying that Muslims can legitimately kill me because I’ve been invited to accept Islam, I’ve refused, and so now my life has been forfeited.

Hank: What do you make, Robert, of the boycott by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for your refusal to adhere to their dogma of Islam as a religion of peace?

Robert: Well, you know it’s kind of dispiriting, in a sense, Hank. The church is above all people—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox—they should be aware of the history of the relations between Christianity and Islam. They should be aware of that fact that Islamic doctrine that mandated jihad against Christians in the Middle Ages, and really from the seventh-century, the very beginning of Islam, these teachings have not changed, they’ve not been reformed, they’ve not been rejected, they’ve certainty not been forgotten. Now with Islam resurgent all around the world, and Christians persecuted, they have a responsibility to educate their people about the nature of Islam, about the challenges that the West faces, and that the free world faces, and that Christianity in general faces from the Jihadis. Instead, they are systematically silencing voices that speak out about this, and working to make sure that the truth about Islam and jihad does not reach their people. For example, I was speaking at a Lutheran conference last summer in Dallas. I was the keynote speaker, speaking about Muslim persecution of Christians and why is it happening, what it is based upon in Islamic teachings, and so on. I was told once I got there that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops actually, they usually send a representative every year to this Lutheran conference, but this year they found out I was the keynote speaker, they pulled out. I think, you know, what terrible crime am I exactly guilty of? Well, I’m guilty of pointing out that the Qur’an and the example of Muhammad actually do contain things that the Jihadis use to incite violence, and that is so unpopular nowadays, such an unwelcomed thing that they would rather I be silenced, boycotted , etc.

To request your copies of Robert Spencer’s The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) and The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran, click here.

(Interview taken from the March 1, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast.)

March 3rd, 2016 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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