Bartholomew's Notes

Last Saturday saw Gen William “Jerry” Boykin discuss a private meeting between “Evangelical leaders” and with Texas governor Rick Perry in June – Right Wing Watch has posted a video:

I was with the governor back on the 21st of June as he talked to a group of evangelical leaders in a private session and said “I’m not doing this for political purposes.” He said, “I’m doing this because I know this is what the Bible calls me [to do?]: ‘If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves in prayer'”, and that’s what the Bible says. And Rick Perry very humbly stood before a group of us and said, “I’m doing this because it’s what God wants us to do. It’s not a political ploy.”

Boykin was speaking at the Gideon Media Arts Conference and Film Festival in North Carolina on the same day as Perry’s “Response” prayer rally in Dallas – Perry announced his candidature a few days later.

It remains unclear which “Evangelical leaders” Perry met with in June, although Boykin is particularly close to the neo-Pentecostal end of the Christian Right: he is part of Rick Joyner’s “Oak Initiative“, and both men belong to a strange “chivalric order”. If Boykin’s date is correct, Perry’s meeting took place on the same day that he attended a fund-raiser in St Louis for Missouri gubernatorial candidate Peter Kinder (this provided a photo-op for the absurd Jim Hoft, who was present).

However, not everyone is convinced that Perry is God’s chosen candidate: writing at WorldNetDaily, Glenn Beck’s “End-Times Prophet” Joel Richardson complains that Perry has links to the Aga Khan, whose moderate Islam is of course a ruse. Meanwhile, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer go even further, denouncing Perry as the “stealth jihad candidate”, albeit that he is “clueless” rather than an willing agent of the Grand Muslim Conspiracy.

UPDATE: Richardson now writes:

For clarity, I never painted Perry as being a “pro-Shariah” candidate. Nor did I attempt to portray “the Aga Khan”, whom Governor Perry is a friend, as some sort of secret radical Muslim. Thus any comments to this effect are simply straw man arguments to which there is no need for me to respond.

Here’s what Richardson wrote on WND:

…cause for deep concern is an apparently close relationship Perry has fostered over the years with a Muslim leader know as “His Highness” Prince Shah Karim Al-Husayni, the Aga Khan IV.

….It should also be mentioned that one of the doctrines espoused by Ismaili Muslims is the doctrine of Taqiyya. In simple terms, the doctrine of Taqiyya allows Muslims to purposefully hide or lie about their true religious beliefs to “unbelievers” or even Muslims of different sects… Of course, while lying in the name of religion may seem like a foreign concept to most, it is the principle of “the ends justify the means” that underscores many aspects of the Islamic approach to win the West.

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