Posted on 12/02/2009 8:29:50 AM PST by B-Chan
Pamela Geller in Human Events, 1 December 2009:
The vise is tightening further on Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who converted to Christianity from Islam and then fled to Florida from her Ohio home in fear for her life. Now she is in foster care in Ohio, in imminent danger of being returned to her family, and the Ohio authorities, at the command of the Barys’ lawyer, continue to isolate her.No, Ms. Geller, everyone has not gone mad. What we are seeing here is the inevitable finale to the founding fathers' attempt at creating a secular republic.Rifqa Bary has been in Ohio for well over a month and still there is no “approved visitation” list of friends who are allowed to see her. How can this be? How can it be that friends who request a visit, and whom Rifqa requests to visit, are repeatedly told that “there is no approved visitation list”? Is it not the very mission by objective of children’s services to protect the health and welfare of a child? Why has this one child in particular been denied visits from friends?
Rifqa has also been deprived of access to the phone and Internet. She has also been denied “pastoral guidance.” Convicts, murderers, rapists, and pedophiles all have access to “pastoral guidance.” Rifqa’s close friend and fellow ex-Muslim, Christian pastor Jamal Jivanjee, explains: “If you are incarcerated in an American prison today, you have the right to have a visit from a Pastor. Rifqa Bary does not have this most basic right that most criminals have today.” Is that how powerful and influential Islamic supremacists have become in the state of Ohio -- that one young girl is starved of spiritual nourishment so as not to insult Islam?
Jivanjee experienced this firsthand when he was in Columbus and learned that Rifqa wanted to see him. Jivanjee notes that this young girl is under unique pressure: “Unlike most girls her age, Rifqa wonders how long she’ll be in a safe home, or how long before the Ohio court system extradites her back to her parents custody that she fled from out of fear for her life. Many expect that she’ll be taken back to Sri Lanka immediately if that is the case. Because of Rifqa’s apostasy from Islam and conversion to Christianity, a woman’s prison, forced marriage, or even a death sentence await her back in her native land.” Yet despite her obvious need for encouragement and support, Rifqa was denied the opportunity to see Jivanjee. “It seems,” he said, “that Ohio has effectively put her into solitary confinement.”
Jivanjee asks the basic questions that every American should be asking: “How can this be good for Rifqa? On what grounds can they keep her from the most basic of privileges that are afforded to common criminals? Why has Rifqa Bary been in Ohio for almost one month, and they have still yet to approve a visitor’s list for her? Is this not an outrage?”
Has everyone gone mad?
Madness my be defined as an obstinate refusal to accept reality. In that sense, the United States Constitution—specifically, its First Amendment—is an act of supreme madness. Thanks to that constitutional requirement, the government of the United States must be and is officially neutral towards religion. The reality, however, is that no nation founded upon a religiously neutral form of government can long survive.
We of the West cannot face the truth, and the truth is that people of different faiths cannot live side by side in peace. In every society, one religion, one culture, must and will eventually become dominant. Christian government was once established in all of the countries of Europe and each of the American States, but over the centuries these established Christian governments have each been replaced by a secular government — and these officially secular governments have fostered a culture of secularism among the majority of the people. (The last Western state to have an official State religion in the sense I mean here was Franco's Spain -- and you've all been brainwashed into thinking of him as a villain instead of the hero that he was.)
Although most Americans and Europeans are nominally Christians, the truth is that most Americans and Europeans believe that individual liberty, not obedience to Jesus Christ, is the ultimate good. "Freedom above all things" is our motto; Christianity is still practiced, as long as it doesn't interfere with our "right" to do whatever we want as long as nobody else gets hurt (or nobody gets caught).
Our Islamic immigrants, however, still believe that submission to God is the greatest good, and their faith — however heretical — is now rushing in to fill the void we created when we abandoned God to worship Reason and Liberty.
Europe and America could still be saved. The various constitutions could be amended making Christianity the official State religion in each nation. Laws prohibiting the practice or advancement of any other faith could be written. Those of other faiths could be stripped of their citizenship and deported, or made subject to brutal taxes and penalties.
But we won't do any of those things. Our precious "freedom" means more to us than our nation does. We'd rather let the Muslims colonize us and expand rather than admit that the whole Enlightenment fantasy of a secular society just doesn't work. We'd rather fill the void in our lives with More Stuff and More Fun than admit that Reason and Liberty are the gods that have failed.
And therefore in the end we will have neither liberty nor reason, nor indeed our nation. Our sons and daughters will not have the luxury of ignoring Islam that we now enjoy. They will instead be given three choices: convert to Islam, live as slaves, or die fighting. (Most will convert -- "go along to get along" is the American Way.) And they'll be limited to those choices because we the people decided that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
We Americans, and our European cousins, are about to find out the hard way the consequences of worshiping Reason and Liberty instead of casting our crowns before the throne of the God That Is.
See you at Covadonga!
bump to mark and muse upon
I appreciate your consideration of my views. Thank you.
In the past, it was usually and widely assumed that the subjects would be of the same faith as the ruler, and that nonconformity in matters of religion meant sedition. Yet the history of the Jews (Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, etc) showed that one can be an obstinate religious minority and yet a good subject to the King.
Thomas More assumed that people smuggling Protestant translations of the Bible into London were seditious, and prosecuted them to the full extent of the law during that window of opportunity when More was Chancellor but Henry the Monster was still formally Catholic. (Do I have that timeline right?)
Yet he didn't prosecute his son-in-law Roper. I'm thinking it's because there was no seditious action on the part of Roper. Yet, it's not clear to me how that distinction would have been made--- though I think there is a distinction--- but how does one determine the difference between nonconformist religious fellowship and conspiracy?
Was More right or wrong?
Was Isabella right or wrong? How about a whole line of Tsars?
Was John Courtney Murray right? Or Samuel Huntington?
How about Caiaphas?
It kinda goes beyond my conceptual framework.
Wow, sounds like the same thing we criticize Muslims for.
Don't forget that as you carry out this agenda, not only Christianity needs to be dominant, but one of the sects within Christianity. Pick the Protestants or the Catholics to rule, and persecute the others. You don't know history well if you think that a Christian religious state under one of the sects will live in peace with those of the other sects.
The basic problem is that when you make a state religious you mix politics with the religion. This has never resulted a situation where rights are protected. In fact, the results are disastrous whenever you elevate any concept above liberty, such as Stalin's communism, Hitler's nationalism or the Holy Roman Empire's catholicism.
Thanks to that constitutional requirement, the government of the United States must be and is officially neutral towards religion.
But that's not the issue here. If the government was being neutral to religion here it would let any clergyman of any persuasion visit her. What we see here is not the neutrality that the Constitution requires. What we see here is hostility towards religion, which is a violation of the Constitution.
Let them have their religion. But don’t give them an inch of breathing room. No burkas, no hijabs in license photos, no honor killings, and no terrorism.
Life is the standard of all value. Freedom is man's greatest concept. It is the only concept that buttresses the value/reality of life. It is up to us to identify individuals who are anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-life.
Ohio’s children services are the worst IMHO. The kids have zero rights and the social workers go out of their way with their power as is obivious in this case.
Two unsupported and unsupportable claims of value.
The state they envisioned would be both free from religious supremacists (historically the RCC) and free from the European concept of a divine right to rule (kings anointed by God): There should be no state affiliated church.
That Christianity would be the dominant belief was never a question to them but they were quite familiar with both church sponsored rulers and the plight of Jews in historic Europe.
The idea was freedom OF religion, not freedom OR religion, and not freedom FROM religion.
Today's problems are testament to man's ability to screw up a good thing, "modern man's" inability to grasp simple truths, and the (possibly inevitable) rise of cults. Cults that promote non-religion to it's own religiosity and/or totally disagree with the concept of tolerance and freedom to choose. Those cults are intrinsically un-American and they have a mission; they seek to remake the founder's 18th century words into a tool that can only be used to thwart their original intent.
Right, I think. His dispute with "son Roper" was genuine, but apolitical; in other words, Roper was never a threat to the Crown. After all, Roper's own father was Henry's chief justice — yet the elder Roper never moved against his son on the King's behalf. I think St. Thomas More would have prosecuted anyone whom he had believed capable of genuine treason against Henry VIII.
Was Isabella right or wrong?
Right.
How about a whole line of Tsars?
Right in intention, I think, though often wrong in practice. This is not an area of history with which I am overly familiar; if you'd care to educate me, I'd appreciate it.
Was John Courtney Murray right?
I think his heart was in the right place, but I also think he was the product of a time in which the current threat to civilization posed by religious tolerance could scarely have been imagined. As a Catholic, I believe that the Church is teaching truth in Dignitatis humanæ, yet even this greatest product of Murray's life and work only says the obvious: that no one can licitly be forced to confess or practice the Catholic faith. (This is nothing new; Charlemagne himself discovered its truth vis a vis the Saxons.) I still think the Church-State relationship as specified by concordat is the correct approach.
Or Samuel Huntington?
He was right about a lot of things. We now have Davos Man in the White House.
How about Caiaphas?
He was a hypocrite. Fortunately, he and the other Jews of his day were forgiven of their deeds by our Lord Himself (Luke 23:34), which is why anyone who holds the Jewish people in any way responsible for the death of the Lord is committing a sin.
Please don't take me for a Dominionist. I'm a Catholic; I have no desire for a theocracy (that's more of a Calvinist thing.) As an American, I'd like nothing more than to live in peace with everyone. But real life just doesn't work that way, and if we don't figure that out on our own soon, we are going to learn it the hard way.
A state with no state affiliated ("established") church is a secular state.
Therefore we must choose: religious freedom, or Islam and all its works and pomps.
But were it not for the disestablishment of churches, there could not have been much Catholic settlement in the new federal union. My ancestors might have stayed in Rheinpfalz. So it's a no-go, as far as my antecedents are concerned.
It's true we can't coexist with practicing Muslims. Nobody can, it seeems. The more practicing on their part, the less coexisting.
Thanks for your reply. Isn't freedom great?
Thanks for posting. Interesting article.
Freedom is great, but it is not the greatest of all.
:) life. What other concept dovetails/buttresses individual life.
Life isn’t the greatest good, either. Love of God and fellowman are more important than either life or liberty.
?%#*^&!
Thank god for life...your life, my life, all life.
Enjoy your freedom. Watch out for anti-truth individuals who will enslave you with a lie, anti-freedom individuals who will enslave you by stealing your time of life or personal property and anti-life individuals who will kill you.
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