Darwish's Speech Canceled

Nonie Darwish, the executive director of Former Muslims and author of Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law was supposed to be the guest speaker at Columbia and Princeton. However, both events were canceled due to pressure from Muslim groups on campus. Darwish is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, scholar of Islam, and founder of Arabs For Israel. Darwish has been speaking out against the Muslim ever since her father, an Egyptian Lieutenant General was killed in an Israeli Raid.

Nonie is outspoken on how the Muslim culture is threatening lives throughout America. Arab Society president Sami Yabroudi and former president Sarah Mousa issued a joint statement, claiming: “Nonie Darwish is to Arabs and Muslims what Ku Klux Klan members, skinheads and neo-Nazis are to other minorities, and we decided that the role of her talk in the logical, intellectual discourse espoused by Princeton University needed to be questioned.” To compare a courageous woman standing up for human rights for Muslim women and ex-Muslims with the KKK or neo-Nazis is wrong! Taking away the opportunity for the students at Columbia and Princeton University to hear the true threats that the Muslim culture brings to America is also wrong!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyuKN-7o6VQ
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34558

Fort Hood Shootings

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, a tragedy occurred. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major, psychiatrist, and American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent shot and killed 13 people while wounding 31. Hasan was shot and incapacitated by civilian police officers where he was put on a ventilator until he became conscious on November 9. Hasan is currently under heavy guard and treated in an undisclosed area of Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. He has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and may face additional charges at court-martial.

Due to his Muslim background and Palestinian descent, the Huffington Post reports in an article, “Muslim, Arab Groups Condemn Fort Hood Shooting, Brace For Backlash” that Arab and Muslim political groups have had to brace themselves for a wave of anger and attacks. The director of government relations for the organization Leigh O'Neill states, “But there is a lot of hate out there and hate is hate. It is bipartisan and doesn't have geographic balance. We feel terrible for the victims today. And I wish people will understand when crime is crime and terrorism is terrorism."

Even though the shootings have shown no signs of correlation between Hasan’s religion or Palestinian descent, it is hard for the public to look past. The Muslim religion praises those who kill infidels by proclaiming in the Koran, “If you catch them, slay them.” No religion or group should ever advocate killing of others because they differ in views. Perhaps if the Arab and Muslim political groups need to change their platform if they do not want to deal with such harsh backlashes!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/muslim-arab-groups-condem_n_347777.html

Marriage in D.C.

The debate over same sex marriage has been a hot topic that has heated American minds throughout the decade. The Situation Room on CNN covers the political standoff between the Catholic Charity Groups vs Gay Rights supporters and the DC City Council. In the month of December, the city of Washington D.C. will allow same sex marriage if the bill passes. The Catholic Charity Groups are in an uproar because the bill will force them to sever social service contracts with the city that provides help to over sixty-eight thousand people a year. They would cut contracts because, the bill will force the Catholic Church to allow same sex couples to adopt through them and receive benefits if they work for them. The church argues that they cannot allow this because it goes against their very own fundamentals and teachings. Both the City Council and the Catholic Church do not want each other to separate ways, but the Catholic Church cannot stand behind something that goes against its core beliefs.

I believe the bill should be looked at and rewritten to appease both sides. If same sex marriage is inevitable, then the City Council should allow it in a way that will not take away ones religious rights. The Catholic Charity groups are vital to the D.C. area and the city should do whatever it takes to appease both sides.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J05WusqTmrY

Should Kennedy Receive Communion?

Bishop Thomas Tobin of Province happens to think that Rep. Patrick Kennedy should not be able to participate in one of the Catholics biggest traditions. Tobin questions Kennedy’s Catholic faith due to his support for abortion in America. Rep. Kennedy has responded by saying that Tobin is not allowing him to take community at his church. Tobin proclaims he did write to Kennedy questioning his views on abortion and asking him not to receive communion but has never ordered him or instructed anyone else to not give him communion. Tobin says that Kennedy is held to a higher standard than an ordinary parishioner because of his position as a legislature which allows him to shape abortion laws and policy.

Other bishops and clergyman in the Church have been split on Tobin’s views about Kennedy. Rev. Thomas Reese discusses how the pope has given communion to multiple leaders of countries who support abortion in their country. I believe that Tobin has the right as Kennedy’s Bishop to approach him away from the public eye and help him grow in his faith. It was wrong of the Congressman to publicize Tobin’s views and thoughts.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/23/kennedy.abortion/index.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-kennedy-communion23-2009nov23,0,6964165.story

Speaker Pelosi on "When Life Begins"

The Present Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was interviewed on CBS about her thoughts on when babies should receive human rights. On August 16, 2008 President Obama responded that he cannot completely answer that question because it is “above his pay grade.” Pelosi however, proclaims herself as a “ardent practicing Catholic” and that the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. She then goes on to say that at is a choice for a women to make because “no one can say when life begins.”

It does not take “long study” to discover that the Catholic Church has consistently taught for twenty centuries that abortion is gravely wrong. The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites two of the oldest Christian texts outside of the New Testament, the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, both of which condemn abortion explicitly. For all of us, regardless of our religious or political affiliation, the evil of abortion challenges the fundamental principles upon which our nation was founded. The Declaration of Independence speaks of certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are not three stand-alone rights; each right presumes the one before it, with the right to life as the most basic. Our right to happiness is limited by another’s right to liberty. And our right to liberty is limited by another’s right to life. Nancy Pelosi has done little to find an honest national resolution to the question of abortion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM2VqqNLWxQ

An Eye For An Eye?

On May 31, 2009, Scott Roeder purportedly took the words of the bible literally, “an eye for an eye” when he murdered Dr. Geroge Tiller. Tiller, the former executive director of one of three clinics in the United States who provide late term abortions was shot and killed in his church the morning of May 31st. The article New York Post article, “Abortion Doctor Tiller Gunned Down at Church,” recaps this tragic event and the effects it has had on Tillers family. Tiller’s wife proclaims this heinous action committed by Roeder as “a loss for the city of Wichita and women across America.” The writer described Tiller as a “courageous provider” and a man who was “making a change.”
In 1973 the United States Supreme Court decided in the landmark case Roe v. Wade to make abortion legal in the United States. The Court held that a woman may abort her pregnancy for any reason, up until the "point at which the fetus becomes viable.” This controversial decision has been a heated debate for decades. Christianity will argue that Dr. Tiller has committed murder for years on the babies who he “aborted.” The death of Dr. Tiller is truly a tragic loss for his family. Yet, is it right to call a man who in many people’s eyes committed murder throughout the majority of his life on innocent babies who never had the gift of taking their first breathe. Was he really “courageous” and making a “change”?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/abortion_doctor_tiller_gunned_down_Qvr8I7zphKh8Kf8pnfSTMK

Speaker Pelosi’s “Long Studies”

Just before the Democratic Convention, Nancy Pelosi was asked how she squared her pro-abortion position with her Catholic faith. The Speaker affirmed that she is an ardent, practicing Catholic, and that she has studied this question for a long time. The results of her study are a source of amazement to us, both fellow practicing Catholics, as they are to the bishops of our Church. Apparently Mrs. Pelosi’s research shows her that the Catholic condemnation of abortion is of recent vintage.
The Speaker referred to St. Augustine, and it seems that her long studies have been centered on medieval debates about when an unborn child receives a soul. These philosophical speculations never called into question the fact that abortion is seriously wrong; they concerned the nature of the sin involved. It is intriguing that Mrs. Pelosi appeals to a fourth-century understanding of biology to defend her pro-abortion stance. Secular liberals often deride Christians as simplistic in their approach to science – the condemnation of Galileo, resistance to the theory of evolution, and so on – and yet the Speaker defends her position on abortion by primitive views of science.
It was only with the invention of the microscope that scientists were able to understand what the process of conception entails. Nor can science answer the question of whether a soul exists, much less when an unborn child receives it. What science does demonstrate is that from the moment of conception we are dealing with a developing human with its own unique DNA. It is nonsense, biologically, to argue about when human life begins: it begins when a human sperm and ovum unite and bring into existence a new, unique and unrepeatable human being.
But then Mrs. Pelosi sweeps aside the speculations prompted by her long study: “The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.” There is the great mantra of the pro-abortion movement: “a right to choose”. It is a sentence purposely left unfinished, begging the question, “Choose what?” To deliberately end the life of another human being? It is deeply disturbing that Nancy Pelosi could give the impression on national television that such a position is consistent with Catholic teaching. To make such a claim demonstrates either appalling ignorance or a willful misrepresentation of the facts.
Many Roman Catholic bishops have stated that the Speaker has seriously misrepresented Catholic teaching. To date, Mrs. Pelosi has refused to retract what she said. The bishops should press for a public retraction. Integrity demands nothing less: the debate over abortion will no doubt go on for some time, but Americans on both sides of the debate deserve a dialogue based on fact, not fiction.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13638