Bartholomew's Notes

The International Civil Liberties Alliance reports:

On 9 July 2012, at the European Parliament in Brussels, writers and representatives of human rights and civil liberties groups from eighteen countries held the first International Conference for Free Speech and Human Rights, sponsored by the International Civil Liberties Alliance.

…The highlights of the conference were the presentation and signing of the 2012 Brussels Declaration, a foundational document to defend freedom of speech, civil liberties and human rights, and the presentation of the Defender of Freedom Award by Canadian humourist Mark Steyn to Lars Hedegaard, founder of the Danish Free Press Society and the International Free Press Society.

The event has received some attention due to the involvement of the English Defence League and representatives from Vlaams Belang and the Dutch Freedom Party. EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) took the opportunity to attempt to call on Richard Howett, a Labour MEP who has previously described the EDL as “racist thugs”. Howett writes:

It’s not often when you find a constituent has knocked on your office door in the European Parliament, that you’re relieved you were out at a meeting – but I was when the caller was the so-called leader of the Far Right English Defence League (EDL), who sickeningly try to call Luton in my constituency their “home.”

The fact he called came in a bizarre twitter message saying “Outside Richard Howitt’s office! Knock Knock,” after I had exposed a clandestine meeting Tommy Robinson was taking part in with neo-fascist MEPs.

This morning I found a copy of the book the meeting was discussing – a publication which calls all mosques “houses of war” –  left in my personal mailbox, together with a handwritten note: “You spineless coward, Love Tommy!”

The event was billed as a “relaunch” of the ICLA, and the participants appear to overlap with the crowd that took part in a “counterjihad leadership summit” in London in September.

The ICLA website has a list of speakers, including a couple of individuals I’ve noted previously: Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a “friend of the EDL” who was inducted into a “chivalric order” by Gen “Jerry” Boykin back in October; and Magdi Allam, an Italian ex-Muslim who was baptised by the Pope in 2008.  I noted Lars Hedegaard’s International Free Press Society here. Other participants included Gavin Boby, although billed for his “Law and Freedom Initiative” rather under the better-known “Mosquebusters” name. Yaxley-Lennon is not himself listed on the site, although he apparently did speak; according to a certain “Kassandra”, writing on a website called New Europe:

looking sweaty and nervous, [he] claimed that Luton was the centre of a plot by the Islamic world to bring Britain under their authority.

The ICLA’s “Brussels Declaration” focuses on the “Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam”, which was adopted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1990. The Cairo Declaration stresses shariah as the basis for human rights, in ways that limit aspects of the UDHR; the ICLA apparently see this document as the key to understanding how Islam, through the OIC, plans to “enforce sharia in the world”. The signers of the ICLA’s “Brussels Declaration” therefore “solemnly require of their governments and civil society” not to involve themselves with any activities involving “known proponents of the Cairo Declaration or societal sharia enforcement” (aside from discussions on “transition of their codification and implementation of human rights to the UNDHR definitions”). Presumably those organisations which fail to meet this “solemn requirement” will get a knock at the door from “Tommy”.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

Staying with WND:

Sources: ‘Friendly Fire’ Cases Actually Are Murder

…”Muslim Mafia” co-author David Gaubatz said on a recent edition of his counterterrorism radio program that because of a Muslim’s first allegiance to Shariah law, they are ill-fitted for the U.S. armed forces.

Gaubatz said a mosque leader in Knoxville, Tenn., reported many Muslims in the military believe that their fellow soldiers are the “enemy.”

“An Islamic leader at a mosque in Knoxville, Tenn., told me that many of the ‘friendly fire’ incidents were actually murders. He advised many Muslims are joining the military for outstanding training and to fight the enemy (their fellow troops),” Gaubatz said.

Gaubatz previously made this claim in 2010, while discussing his involvement with the risible “Mapping Shari’a” project (which I discussed here) at Front Page:

Gaubatz: …On Dec. 14, 2007, I went to an Islamic Center in Knoxville, TN. (yes recorded and evidence obtained). I had an extensive conversation with a long-time member of this mosque. He was also a former Nation of Islam member. This man described to me in detail how some U.S. Muslim soldiers are killing their own troops because, per his words, U.S. Muslims do not want to kill their brothers (the Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan).

FP: Did you provide this information to law enforcement?

Gaubatz: I provided the intelligence to the organization that paid for the research and strongly encouraged this intelligence to be provided to law enforcement immediately. During the Mapping Sharia research project we uncovered numerous pieces of intelligence similar to this.

Note that the “long-time member” of the mosque has now somehow become an “Islamic leader” in the re-telling. And also note that Gaubatz fails to go provide any specific details which would allow us to judge either his source’s credibility or the feasibility of the plot he claims to have related.

To risk stating the obvious: the circumstances of friendly fire deaths are typically subject to intense official and journalistic scrutiny; the idea that Muslim US soldiers could be murdering other US soldiers under the cloak of “friendly fire” yet remain undetected lacks believability, even without the added difficulty of Muslims in Knoxville somehow being in on it and deciding to blab to an anti-Islam polemicist.

The story is of some wider interest due to Gaubatz’s claim to expertise: as a “veteran counter-terrorism investigator” he is involved with Pamela Geller’s “SIOA” organisation, and in 2008 he was championed by Melanie Phillips in the Spectator over his claims to have found the sites of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Gaubatz’s resurrection of the story comes in the wake of a suggestion made by Matt Staver and bogus ex-terrorist Kamal Saleem that the Obama administration is enrolling foreign Muslim students into US military academies as a part of a plot to “dismantle” western civilization.

(H/T Islamophobia Watch)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

From Joe Kovacs at WND:

A former police officer and FBI official who retired due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder claims she saw angels when she first responded to the Pennsylvania crash of hijacked Flight 93 during the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

…”The angels started appearing on the perimeter of the crash site,” Lillie Leonardi said in an interview with Pittsburgh television station WTAE.

“They were dressed as if they were in warrior garb like a Roman centurion, and there were so many of them, you couldn’t see their faces.”

Leonardi has just published a book about her account, titled, “In the Shadow of a Badge: A Spiritual Memoir.”

In a video on her own website, she gives more details of what she saw at the crash site, explaining, “All of a sudden, I kept seeing this flicker of light. You saw all these angels manifest. One in particular, in front, that I knew, it was Michael. He knew I was there to do something. I just didn’t know what it was at that moment. He’s the conduit to God as far as I’m concerned. I’m then the conduit for other people to listen to what has to be said. And then it’s their choice to decide what to do.”

Kovacs is here writing a straight journalistic piece, so he doesn’t include any commentary expressing his own views. However, it should be noted that Kovacs’ position at WND is heavily identified with his writings as a Bible expositor, and so we can infer an implicit endorsement. Here’s his WND author by-line:

Joe Kovacs, author of the brand-new book, “The Divine Secret: The Awesome and Untold Truth About Your Phenomenal Destiny”, as well as the No. 1 best-seller“Shocked by the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You’ve Never Been Told,” is executive news editor for WND.

Kovacs’ books claim to bring to light aspects of Bible teaching that are often overlooked (such as information on “eating and drinking in the eternal kingdom of God” and “special abilities you can have in the kingdom of God”), although the way the book has been spun as the revelation of Biblical “secrets” has upset some of the conservative Christians who have left comments on WND.

It looks that Kovacs has been drawn to Leonardi’s story because the idea of a dramatic supernatural manifestation confirming spiritual reality and the cosmic significance of an American tragedy is just too good to pass up. Thus he’s not put off by her unorthodox claim that the Archangel Michael is “the conduit to God”, and he leaves out a detail included in an AP article from yesterday, that although Leonardi was raised a Catholic she “now practices what she calls ‘spiritualism.'”

But he’s far from being alone in succumbing: Google News results for the past 24 hours bring up hundreds of news-sites using the AP article. The flurry of interest is doubtless related to US Independence Day; Leonardi’s book was in fact self-published last autumn. The book description on Amazon includes an endorsement from a colleague:

 “An outstanding and inspirational story that will provide its’ readers with hope, and renew their faith in God and mankind… through this book the WORLD will benefit from her caring, loving personality. I personally encourage all who believe, and even those that have their doubts, to read Lillie’s story. I could not put the book down until I had read it in its entirety.” – Kenneth T. McCabe Special Agent in Charge – Federal Bureau of Investigation (Retired) Commissioner – Pennsylvania Gaming Commission Board (Retired)

Leonardi’s vision fits a pattern of idiosyncratic fantastical experience; according to her blog:

My affinity for the Archangels and most especially of Michael did not only begin with my religious upbringing. It began when the Archangel started visiting me as a child. Although I was not exactly sure who he was when he manifested, it was definitely love at first sight. In those early years, he was simply known to me as the “blue man.” A name I bestowed upon him because of his lovely cobalt blue aura. In time, Michael revealed himself to me when finally I asked him his name. 

The notion of Leonardi’s story playing any sort of role in national reflection on 9/11 seems to me to be a rather unencouraging prospect.

Although Leonardi “retired due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”, she remained at the FBI for several years following 9/11. In 2009 the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review mentioned that she was on a “leave of absence at her request” during an investigation which involved her.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

A UK evangelist named Christian Forster reports:

On Tuesday this week [12 June] over ninety senior leaders from church, commerce, culture and politics met in St Mary’s Undercroft directly beneath the House of Commons to listen to Jesus in silence for an hour and then to feedback what they felt He was saying to the nation…

After listening together for an hour in silence, two hours of initial responses where taken in Committee Room 16 hosted by Fiona Bruce MP. Sixty or so participants where able to speak briefly on what the Lord had said to them, further written words are being collected and collated so that a word to church and nation can be released.

An “initial summary” follows, including the following:

Our nation and its church have turned away from God and His standards and we are beginning to see and feel the resulting judgement.

The shaking of every part of man’s world-wide economic, social, political and religious systems has begun. It will be a time of great humbling, purification and refining in every aspect of society. Only what is built on the foundations that God requires will be permitted to remain – righteousness, truth and justice.

When the judgement has run its course, God has promised to restore us. This restoration must follow God’s revealed strategies and guidelines and not be led astray again by Man’s initiatives and good ideas.

According to Forster, the event was “issued by the Organising group, a coalition of ministries under the banner ”Together for the Nation’ chaired by the Maranatha Prayer Community.”

The Maranatha Community is a para-church organisation, created in 1981 by Dennis Wrigley (a Methodist layman) and Mgr. Michael Buckley, a Roman Catholic priest. As well as holding religious meetings, it provides briefing for parliamentarians and makes submissions on various topics, and issues (rather dull-looking) leaflets warning about how the UK is in moral crisis. There is a strong emphasis on the supernatural, with members claiming to receive direct messages from God on the need for national repentance. The group’s publications include an article warning of “links between organisations promoting pedophilia and the gay movement”, and it has the support of Melanie Phillips for “warn[ing] against the Islamisation of Britain and Islam’s threat to the church” (in 2009 Wrigley took part in a meeting on the subject with Sam Solomon and Patrick Sookhdeo).

Fiona Bruce (not to be confused with the newsreader of that name) featured in a Financial Times article in 2010 about evangelicals in the Conservative Party. The report included details of an “open primary” for the safe seat of Congleton:

Bruce won comfortably, taking a majority of the 220 votes cast in the first round. But a rumour soon spread that most of her votes had come from members of the New Life church, a local evangelical congregation. Buses were alleged to have ferried 150 Christians from the church.

In truth, according to churchgoers and constituency officials alike, only between 40 and 60 of the people voting were parish regulars, and they made their own way to the meeting. Bruce had addressed the church shortly before the selection – but, then, all candidates had been welcome to do so.

“Together for the Nation”, meanwhile, is also the name of a conference recently organised by the Newfrontiers grouping of neo-Pentecostal churches; David Stroud, husband of former MP Philippa Stroud, is a pastor within this group, as was widely noted in 2010. However, the name is fairly generic and there might not be any direct connection.

Forster’s account does not make clear his own role in the Parliament meeting. Forster is the son of Roger and Faith Forster, two well-established neo-Pentecostal leaders in the UK, and according to his blurb, he “has a prophetic teaching gift with a strong ministry focus on healing and prophetic release and impartation”. Also:

Christen spent time in Pasadena, California taking classes at the Fuller Seminary. Here his teachers included Peter Wagner, John Wimber, Rick Warren and Donald McGavran. While in the U.S, Christen lived with Che Ahn, founder of Harvest International Ministries.

Wagner heads the “New Apostolic Reformation”, which teaches that Christians should seek to take control of seven domains in modern society: “government, business, education, arts and entertainment, family services, media, and the church” (Bruce Wilson has some background here, including links with Sarah Palin). Leaders of the movement (“Apostles”) claim to be empowered by God with spiritual gifts, and rival perspectives on the world are placed within a demonology of malign supernatural forces, to be battled through spiritual warfare.

Forster is also advertising what appears to be a tie-in event, called “United Kingdom Come” and billed as “An Evening of Prophetic Prayer for Parliament and Government”:

This is an unprecedented time for the United Kingdom: financially, politically, structurally, culturally and spiritually the Nation stands at a crossroads.

Over this next month, national elders from Church, State, Culture and Commerce will be waiting on the Lord to hear heaven’s thoughts amongst the clamour of human wisdom. This will form a backdrop to an evening of prayer for the redemption, revival and reformation of these islands, this nation of nations.

Maranatha is among the groups supporting this event, which will be hosted by Christians in Government.

(H/T God and Politics UK)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

A reasonable observation from Alan Noble at Christ and Pop Culture:

Get a bunch of kids together, mock their beliefs, try to ward them away with a pig head on a stick, yell at them, and no matter what religion they are, don’t be surprised if they start throwing trash. That doesn’t in any way justify their action, but it does explain it.

Noble was responding to reports that Muslims had “stoned” Christian evangelists in Dearborn – the source for these is a video created by Tom Trento‘s “United West” outfit:

Ruben Israel returned this year to the Arab Festival and once again incited the festival goers to scream and yell and throw trash… It was picked up by The Blaze, American Vision, American Thinker, FrontPage Magazine, and other, smaller conservative websites.

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have also promoted the story. However:

…The video edits out the part where Ruben Israel explains to a police officer that they have a pig head on a pole because Muslims are “petrified” of pigs and so it “keeps them at bay.” No really. He says that… They also cut out Ruben Israel mocking the crowd for being a “religion of peace.”  And one of the other “preachers” yelling at the kids that all they think about is violence and murder and hate.”

Noble notes that the edited version also leaves out footage of police working to keep order, and adults attending the festival attempting to calm the youths down. I’m surprised that this bad faith spun version of the story has received so much traction – mainstream media had a full account at the time, and Noble notes that even the Blaze had originally reported the incident as “Screaming Anti-Islam Protestors Taunt Muslims with Pig’s Head”.

There is also a claim that media has underplayed the violence Israel and his gang encountered; in particular, Israel alleges that one Muslim attempted to drive his car into the group, with the result that he is “now officially charged with 9 counts of attempted murder” (Walid Shoebat, taking this even further, headlines his own post on the subject as “Dearborn Muslim charged with Nine Counts of Murder”).

Ruben Israel’s “Official Street Preachers” have been around for a while; in 2009 they abused worshippers at a mosque in Tampa while en route to evangelising a Super Bowl event; perhaps the publicity which the stunt received (along with the lesson of Pastor Terry Jones’ rise to fame the following year) encouraged Israel to concentrate his focus more on Muslims. After I wrote about the 2009 incident on this blog, the Preachers were kind enough to feature me on their website, where I am described as a “beer guzzling, left wing LIBERAL”.

Of course, waving a pig’s head around has nothing to do with telling Muslims about Jesus – it is purely an expression of contempt, which is why activists with the English Defence League have done exactly the same thing.

(H/T Islamophobia Watch)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

From the New York Times, February 2010:

When Monica Bledsoe spoke to her younger brother late last May, he seemed his old upbeat self… A week later, her brother, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad [originally Carlos Bledsoe], opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle on a military recruiting center in Little Rock, killing one soldier and wounding another.

…A gentle, happy-go-lucky teenager, he had become a deeply observant Muslim in college, shunning gatherings where alcohol was served. He traveled to Yemen to study Arabic, married a Yemeni woman, was imprisoned and then deported for overstaying his visa. 

…In Mr. Muhammad’s case, the same F.B.I. agent interviewed him twice before the shootings: once while he was in prison in Yemen and then again in Nashville soon after he returned.

While the prosecution case concentrated on the facts of the murder, Bledsoe’s father Melvin called for a more wide-ranging investigation:

What he wants, Mr. Bledsoe says, is to understand how “evildoers” brainwashed his son, as he puts it. And he wants the F.B.I. held accountable for what he considers its negligence in preventing the attack.

“They didn’t pull the trigger, but they allowed this to happen,” Mr. Bledsoe said. “It is owed to the American people to know what happened. If it can happen to my son, it can happen to anyone’s son.”

Melvin Bledsoe has also made public appearances with Daris Long, the father of the soldier murdered by his son, and both men have given evidence at Peter King’s Muslim Radicalization Hearings (here and here).

The case and its aftermath are now the subject of a documentary, Losing Our Sons: An American Tragedy. The film’s website highlights endorsements from various conservative pundits, including Frank Gaffney, Brigitte Gabriel, and Daniel Pipes, and there is a video clip endorsement from Mike Hukabee. However, while this will doubtless help sell the film within conservative circles, it is likely to put anyone else off: Gaffney, Gabriel, and Pipes are known primarily as anti-Islam polemicists, and I’ve noted instances in which each has undermined his or her own credibility by making a statement of supposed fact that could not be supported (here, here, and here; in 2003, Christopher Hitchens described Pipes as a “poor if not useless ally” against Islamic extremism because of his misrepresentations).

An enthusiastic review from Rebecca Bynum at the New English Review has some discouraging background:

Losing Our Sons is the title of a brilliant and moving new documentary produced by A.R. Maezav and Ilya Feokt [sic – should be Ilya Feoktistov] of the Boston-based Americans for Peace and Tolerance led by Charles Jacobs, with financing and support by Andy Miller and the Tennessee Freedom Coalition. 

The TFC held the “world premiere” of the documentary at Maury Davis’s Cornerstone Church in Nashville last month, with Melvin Bledsoe and Daris Long in attendance; this was the location of last November’s anti-Islam “Preserving Freedom” Conference, which the TFC sponsored. In February, the TFC was in the news after arranging for local police to receive problematic training in Islam at an evangelical church in Murfreesboro. As I’ve noted previously, the TFC has close links with the English Defence League, and Miller has met both Tommy Robinson and British Freedom’s Paul Weston (the TFC also has links with the UK Christian Right group Christian Concern).

Background details for Americans for Peace and Tolerance appear in a blurb on the film’s website:

Americans for Peace and Tolerance is headed by Dr. Charles Jacobs, named by the Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders…

The APT board of directors includes Dr. Dennis Hale and Sheikh Dr. Ahmed Mansour. Dr. Mansour is an Al Azhar-educated reformist Islamic scholar who fled his native Egypt after persecution by radical Islamists and imprisonment by Egyptian authorities. He is the spiritual leader of a reformist movement of Islam called the Quranists.

Of the film’s two co-directors, there are oddly no further details about “A. R. Maezav” anywhere. Feoktistov, meanwhile, is the APT’s research director, and he and Jacobs have launched attacks on the Anti-Defamation League for allegedly “allying with Muslim anti-Semites to fight ‘Islamophobia’ and then defaming legitimately concerned citizens”. The ADL responded last month, accusing Jacobs of “McCarthyism”.

Of course,  the biases of the documentary’s creators and supporters do not automatically mean  that the film is no good, and certainly do not mean that we should ignore a wider religious context for Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad’s actions. Indeed, the best way to ensure that the killing is not used for partisan ends is for the subject to receive wide critical attention.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

From the website of “Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative“:

First Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (GCGI) Award for Public Service in the Interests of the Common Good

The first GCGI Award is to be presented to Dr. Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin, Founding President of the World Public Forum, “Dialogue of Civilisations” (WPFDC).

The Award is given in recognition of Dr. Yakunin’s extraordinary and tireless work for peace and justice, and his selfless service in helping to build a better world. He exemplifies the great potential that the Dialogue of Civilisations has to offer towards peaceful co-existence for the common good. He continues to encourage and empower others to discover their own potential for change and to evoke their hidden strengths to bring more goodness into the world.

The award will be presented in Oxford in September. Yakunin runs Russia’s railways, and he is a confidant of Vladimir Putin; reports describe him variously as an “Orthodox Christian Chekist” (a phrase recently used by singer Mikhail Borzykin in a song refering to “the group of KGB officers who came to power in Russia after President Boris Yeltsin resigned in 1999”) and as “the Kremlin’s model Orthodox businessman”. Last November, Yakunin arranged for the Mother of God’s belt to be brought from Mount Athos for a tour of Russia, in order to promote family values (by coincidence, the timing also allowed Putin to strike a religious pose shortly before elections), and in 2010 it was reported from Estonia that “Mayor of Tallinn Edgar Savisaar had secretly attempted to fund his political party and the building of a church in Savisaar’s electoral district in Lasnamäe through the deep pockets of Vladimir Yakunin.”

Yakunin also runs the Center of the National Glory of Russia and the Saint Andrew the First-Called Foundation, and these organisations are named as the “initiators” of the WPF. The organisation holds regular meetings on Rhodes, which brings together international religious leaders and academics. It also hands out awards; ahead of elections in Kazakhstan in 2011, Yakunin personally delivered “The Dialogue of Civilizations International Prize” to Nursultan Nazarbayev, who also hosts large-scale international inter-faith meetings (meanwhile, former Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer is a co-chairman of the WPF and a “consultant” to Nazarbayev). The WPF was co-founded by Nicholas Papanicolaou, who resides in the USA and who has close links with activists in the neo-Pentecostal Christian Right (in particular, with Rick Joyner and Gen “Jerry” Boykin).

GCGI, meanwhile, describes itself as follows:

Founded in 2002 at an international conference in Oxford, the GCGI is the UK’s leading progressive think tank, producing cutting-edge research and innovative policy ideas for a just, democratic and sustainable world.

This leading position will perhaps be news to people at Demos, which is a rather better-known “progressive think tank” in the UK. However, the GCGI does have an impressive advisory council of academics, religious figures, and other individuals (including Yakunin). The founder is a certain Kamran Mofid, who is also involved with the WPF.

“Progressive” is not a word that one would associate with Yakunin; back in January he denounced anti-Putin protestors as having “no connection with democracy”, and in his opening speech at the most recent WPF conference in Rhodes he noted “incompatibility between the neo-liberal interpretation of the system of human rights and the system of human values”, and that “the universal urge to have the ‘freedom’ to say ‘anything and in any form’ has a temporary character and is beginning to fade away”. Inevitably, he particularly rails against “homosexual propaganda” as a “social pollutant”; last summer, Yakunin and his wife (President of the Sanctity of Motherhood Program) joined Don Feder and Larry Jacobs at a World Congress of Families event in Moscow.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

A guest post from Hasan Afzal at Harry’s Place:

After a successful campaign by Harry’s Place readers and others around the web, I am pleased to announce that the Jihadist conference that was suppose to take place on the 8th of July 2012 has been cancelled.

I would like to thank the many people who called the Grand Connaught Rooms (“GCR”) and who copied us into e-mails to their MPs and representatives. I’m also glad the GCR saw sense and did the right thing, even if they rejected our help in the initial stages.

Whilst many will be celebrating, I note with a degree of dejection, that far-right groups, including the English Defence League, had attempted to hijack this campaign. However, this was a victory for ordinary people, who stood firm against hatred and bigotry of all types. Professionals, students, mums, dads all rallied around our call to action, and expressed their concerns to the GCR by email and phone.

There’s a bit of spin here; fear of an EDL turn-out appears to have been the determining factor, not “professionals, students, mums, dads”. Bob Pitt writes at Islamophobia Watch:

…As you can see from the Casuals United screenshot, the explanation given by the venue operator was as follows: “The safety of our staff and guests is our absolute priority at all times. After careful consideration and liaison with the local police force we have taken the decision to cancel the booking.”

I had emailed the Principal Hayley Group [which runs the hotel] myself, urging them to reject calls to cancel the conference, pointing out that the people behind the campaign were extremists like the EDL and Harry’s Place. This morning I received the same email quoted by Casuals United. 

I emailed back saying that I couldn’t understand how a conference organised by an entirely peaceful organisation like the Al Muntada Trust could have compromised the safety of staff and guests at the Grand Connaught Rooms. I received the following explanation: “We cancelled the event due to the risk of public disorder, damage to our property and safety of our staff. This decision was made on Police advice.”

Afzal fails to make the case that the event would be a “Jihadist conference”; adverts for the conference are devoid of militaristic rhetoric, and the tone appears to be devotional. However, Afzal does highlight past quotes from four of the ten advertised speakers that can reasonably be characterised as either Jihadi or inflammatory. Further, one of these four speakers is the notorious Haitham al-Haddad.

Al Muntada may indeed be “entirely peaceful”, and controversial speakers may have positions within their community that are owed to more than just particular distasteful comments they may have made. Nevertheless, it’s perfectly reasonable that those who make inflammatory statements should be called to account for them, and that those who appear to endorse or facilitate such persons should be challenged for doing so. Worries about the EDL may have been well-founded, or they may have been a convenient way for the hotel to extricate itself from a controversy with the minimum of hassle. Either way, the spectre of the EDL does not change the fact that Al Muntada’s association with al-Haddad and others like him is discrediting.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

21 and 22 June saw Rick Joyner at a “Prophetic Conference in Berlin“, on the topic of “God’s Thoughts about Germany and Europe”. Joyner knows a few things about “God’s thoughts”, having last year warned us all that God was about to destroy the west coast of the USA with an earthquake. It should be recalled that Joyner is a major player in the neo-Pentecostal strand of the US Christian Right, with particularly close links to Jim Bakker, Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, and Alan Keyes.

The website for the conference has been put together by someone with English as a second language, but even allowing for that the opening pitch is somewhat strange:

The political landscape of Europe is shaken and about to get transformed. Berlin, Paris and Brussels play a crucial role in the political negotiations. After 70 years anniversary of the Wannsee conference a chapter of nationalism in Germany came to a closure. Now is a kairos time for the land and new things come up. We want to learn to hear God’s voice clearer and to receive guidance and direction in this important and critical time. We expect in this conference that prophetic knowledge, love and transformation for our city and nation are released.

The Wannsee Conference took place in January 1942 and was famously the meeting at which a number of high-ranking Nazis came together to discuss the logistics of the “Final Solution”. The notion that it represents “a chapter of nationalism in Germany” which is only now coming to a close is bizarre and grotesque.

The Berlin Conference was organised by Wolfhard Margies, senior pastor of Gemeinde auf dem Weg (Berlin’s largest church, reportedly), and Andreas Bauer, co-founder (along with his wife) of Jerusalemgemeinde Berlin. There is not much information about either man in English; the blurb says that Margies is on “the board of directors of the biggest association of charismatic churches in Germany which he has launched 25 years ago”, and that he specialises in counselling advice.  I noted his involvement with European Christian Zionism back in 2006. Bauer, meanwhile, runs “a prayer house in Jerusalem/Israel” as well as his church in Berlin.

Joyner’s fellow-speakers in Berlin were Hombre Liggett and Don Franklin. Liggett, according to the blurb (link added),  “is the founder and senior pastor of Church of the Harvest in Dover, OH which belongs to the MorningStar Fellowship of Churches”; MorningStar is Joyner’s neo-Pentecostal grouping. Liggett ran for Congress in 2010 and 2012; despite support from Tea Party groups and an endorsement message from Boykin, he failed to get beyond the primaries.

Franklin, meanwhile, is with Evangelistic Missionaries of Ignited Church in Lakeland. This is the church that in 2010 hosted the Nigerian Pentecostal bishop NE Moses, who had formerly praised followers of Helen Ukpabio for forcibly shutting down a conference on the problem of child-witch stigmatisation. Moses also took part in a ceremony in which Ukpabio was made into an “Apostle”.

Joyner has a particular interest in Germany and in World War Two; he claims to have been friends with the late Col. Eugene  Bird, a former commandant of Spandau prison. According to Joyner,

Bird was… instrumental in helping to lead von Schirach, who was the head of the Hitler youth, Albert Speer, who was supposedly the greatest architect and engineer – they said his genius prolonged the war up to two years – and Rudolf Hess all met the Lord.

One might expect that a US colonel converting three high-ranking Nazis to Christianity would have excited some press attention, or at least been of interest to historians – however, Joyner is the only source for this claim (there’s nothing, for instance, in Gitta Sereny’s famous biography of Speer, despite interviews with Bird and Speer). But that’s just the half of it – Joyner also boasts that he was shown Hitler’s secret burial place (see here at 9 mins 25 secs).

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

More Biblical pseudo-interpretation from WND:

The author of “Covenant: G-d’s Plan for Israel in the Last Days,” a book by Baruch Battlestein published in Italy, cites prophecies by Ezekiel and Moses that pinpoint with precision the date of Israel’s return to the land in May 1948.

The book is actually by Baruch Battelstein (not “Battlestein”), and according to WND he is “a messianic Jew who lived in Israel until moving to the U.S.”

Battelstein’s method is to cross-reference isolated Biblical verses, to which he then ascribes cryptic mathematical significance. His starting point is Ezekiel 4:4-6, in which God instructs Ezekiel to undertake a “sign-act” in interpretation of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem:

Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.

Battelstein explains that this total of 430 days refers to 430 years of punishment, 70 of which were undertaken during the Babylonian exile. This ended with the Edict of Cyrus in 538 BCE, leaving 360 years of further punishment ahead. However, further sinning by Judah multiplied this by seven, in accordance with Leviticus 26:23-24:

And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.

WND continues:

The 360 years needed to be multiplied by seven, for a total of 2,520 years.

Using the 360-day Hebrew calendar, that totals 907,200 days. When converted to the 365-day calendar, the 2,520 years or 907,200 days becomes 2,485 years and five months or 2,485.5 years and months. If you subtract 538 years B.C.E, you get 1,947 years and five months.

Battlestein reminds that there was no year zero.

“Therefore, the year 1,947.5 we call the year 1948.5,”…

This is all very dubious on a number of levels: why does God restore Judah in 538 BCE with 360 years of punishment still to go? And why does the second period of punishment supposedly begin on that date (which it has to do for the dates to work)? If the punishment is exile, then it begins again only 600 years later, in 70 CE. And what is Judah supposed to have done in 538 BCE to warrant the Leviticus multiplication by seven, anyway? There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that God was feeling particularly wrathful in that year – indeed, the opposite is to be inferred, with Cyrus acting as God’s “Messiah” by restoring Judah.

Ezekiel 4: 4-6 is difficult and ambiguous (one reason why prophetic texts endure), and can be interpreted in various ways. Does it even refer to “430 years of punishment”? And why is the “430” figure broken down into 390 and 40? An essay by Carl Gross for the United Bible Societies summarises the problem with reference to the scholarly literature:

In seeking to explain this verse, most interpreters try to retain the balanced structure of the passage. Thus, if the 390 years refer to the “punishment” of the “house of Israel,” the 40 years should also refer to the “punishment” of the “house of Judah”; likewise, if the years refer to the “sin” of the two houses. Some have found it impossible to maintain this linguistic balance. [Moshe] Greenberg (1983, 104-5), for example, can draw meaning out of 390 years of Israel’s “sin,” but not from the 40 years of Judah’s “sin”; similarly he can make sense of 40 years of “punishment” for Judah, but not of 390 years of “punishment” for Israel. There is, of course, another complication, if one accepts the meaning “sin” instead of “punishment.” In that case, the pattern cannot be strictly maintained, because the days of Ezekiel’s suffering cannot refer to anything but “punishment.”

The solution may be that the number 430 parallels the tradition of 430 years in Egypt, and that the “390 years” element refers back from Ezekiel’s time to the building of the First Temple:

[Walther] Zimmerli (1979, 167) suggests that the underlying message of Ezekiel’s numbers is that there will be “a new exodus of Israel after the period spent in exile.”… Familiar with this figure of 430 years of punishment, followed by an exodus, Ezekiel’s audience would be encouraged by the 390 of Ezekiel.

Thus Ezekiel may have been predicting an exile in Babylon of one generation, using the conventional round number “40 years”. This makes better sense: Ezekiel and his listeners were interested in their own time and the near future, not planning for the next 430 years.

Covenant was published by Destiny Image Europe; this is now known as Evangelista Media, after its appropriately-named neo-Pentecostal owner, Pastor Pietro Evangelista. The book appeared in 2005, and is doubtless being promoted now in the wake of Jonathan Cahn’s bestseller The Harbinger. Cahn, as I blogged here, claims that ancient Israel’s futile defiance against enemies sent by God described in Isaiah 9:10 is being literally re-enacted by Obama and other politicians in relation to 9/11.

In both instances, we have a form of Christianity in which the focus is primarily on quote-mining the Bible for esoteric references to current events or modern history. Messianic Jewish figures such as Cahn and Battelstein are also part of a general trend within the US Christian Right to emphasise the “Hebrew Roots” of Christianity. This does not just mean putting Jesus and the New Testament authors in historical context; it includes vicarious identification with Jewish cultural practices, as well as the idea that a Hebrew understanding of the Bible reveals hitherto secret spiritual realities. As well as promoting Cahn and Battelstein, WND editor Joseph Farah is also an enthusiast of a certain Michael Rood.

Dodgy Biblical exegesis is a WND specialism, and its bookstore page hawks numerous “prophecy” paperbacks and DVDs (I looked at items promoted in the wake of the Fukushima disaster here). The site has also run items claiming that the Bible predicts a Muslim anti-Christ and that Jesus named Satan as “Barack Obama”; there have also been bizarre forays into Biblical astrology and Pyramidology.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »