Free Republic

Satan, it would seem, does not act in an arbitrary manner to tempt us. Rather, he is more of a master hunter who carefully sets traps, or a skilled fisherman who, having studied our behavior chooses just the bait he thinks most effective. He’s calculating, and clever.Sadly most of us, by comparison, are far less calculating and clever in seeking to avoid temptation and sin. We seem more often to engage in the wishful thinking that no trouble will befall us, and our strategy seems to live more with dumb luck. Would that we were as ingenious in holiness as...

THERE were renewed calls for the deportation of Abu Hamza al-Masri yesterday after he said that Allah had destroyed the shuttle because it was a “trinity of evil” against Islam. The militant cleric said that God had destroyed the Columbia because it was carrying American Christians, an Indian-born Hindu and an Israeli Jew. He added that the craft’s explosion was a message from God because the first Israeli in space, Ilan Ramon, a former fighter pilot, was killed over an area of Texas called Palestine. The former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in North London came under fierce criticism from...