Bartholomew's Notes

The Jerusalem Post reports:

CAPE TOWN – Reaching out to Christian supporters of Israel in Africa, a group of conservative Israeli thinkers and the interim head of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus will take part in the first Jerusalem Summit Africa in Cape Town on Monday, in an effort to garner support for Israel at a time of increasing Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Israel sentiment in the continent.

The meeting is being organised by Bridges for Peace and the International Christian Embassy, two prominent Israel-based Christian Zionist outfits. The executive director of the Jerusalem Summit explains the rationale:

“South Africa is a crucial state for the entire continent and is similar to a swing-state in the US because whatever direction South Africa takes will be taken by the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa as well,” said Dmitry Radyshevsky…

He noted that South African anti-Zionism was not rooted in nationalism and religion but was a remnant of the Soviet era, and the country’s long ties with the Soviet-era bloc.

This is doubtless a reference to Ronnie Kasrils, the prominent Communist South African politician and Jewish anti-Zionist. Of course, best not mention Israel’s ties with apartheid-era South Africa – which saw the Nazi sympathiser John Vorster being feted by Menachim Begin, Israeli officers acting as consultants during the South African invasion in Angola, and armoured cars for police use in the townships being manufacured on a kibbutz, among much else.

…”South Africans need to be informed that the story of the blacks and the story of the Palestinians are totally different, and that the accusations against Israel of racism, colonialism, and apartheid are a big fraud, and are outrageous lies which are reminiscent of Nazi-era propaganda,” he said.

So: if you have critical thoughts about Israel, it’s because you’re either a Communist or a Nazi.

Jerusalem Summit has been featured on this blog before, where I noted its neo-con character. Its first session was in 2003, and featured “Richard Perle, Senator Sam Brownback, Congressman Eliot Engel, Prof. Daniel Pipes, Amb. Alan Keyes, Cal Thomas, Benjamin Netanyahu and Uzi Landau.” It believes that “the entire Palestinian narrative must be discredited and de-legitimized as a historical hoax”, and it wants to organise financial inducements to persuade Palestinians to relocate to other countries. Radyshevsky is a former head of the Michael Cherney Foundation, and Cherney is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Jerusalem Summit (Cherney has been accused of links with the Russian mafia, which his supporters strenuously deny). Radyshevsky is also on the advisory board of the American Center for Democracy, alongside Richard Pearle.

(Hat tip: Christianity Today Weblog)

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From the LA Times:

…Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach and co-founder of the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men, which became huge in the 1990s, has had a devil of a time getting his own apocalyptic campaign off the ground.

It’s called The Road to Jerusalem, and its mission is to convert Jews to Christianity — while there is still time.

“Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times,” he said. “The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one — they’ll want to be a part of that. That’s going to signal Jesus’ return.

Jews and others who don’t accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, “are toast.”

Well, that’s traditional Christian exclusivity for you. I discussed this in relation to Jews recently, as it happens.

(Hat tip: Christianity Today Weblog)

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Agape Press discusses controversy around “sexual orientation therapist” Richard Cohen:

Christian psychotherapist Richard Cohen, board president of the ex-homosexual education and outreach organization known as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), is addressing criticism leveled against certain therapy techniques he uses on clients with homosexual desires.

…Cohen’s methods have raised some questions, however; and he has lately taken sharp criticism over a May 23 appearance on Cable News Network (CNN), in which he demonstrated a technique that involves cuddling a male client in his lap. Another of the unusual therapy techniques depicted involved a client hitting a pillow with a tennis racket while shouting the name of a parent or other individual who elicits painful childhood memories.

…Psychologist Dr. Warren Throckmorton, director of college counseling at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, maintains a blog on sexual identity change therapy and related information for interested individuals. He is not a reparative therapist, but he claims Cohen’s techniques as demonstrated on CNN are bizarre and are not based on solid research…One problem with reparative or change therapy practices, Throckmorton explains, is that “there are very few guidelines for therapists working in this area.” He says he hopes to address that issue with guidelines he has written recently in cooperation with Dr. Mark Yarhouse of Regent University.

Of less controversy, apparently, are Cohen’s alleged links with the far-right League of Polish Families, a detail which Agape declines to mention. I covered this connection a year ago, drawing on a report from Tomek Kitlinski and Pawel Leszkowicz:

“The reason I ask for ten million dollars is because we need to create social organizations to help homosexuals to change. If you want to push legislation, somebody introduce a bill for the healing of homosexuality. That should really screw up homosexual activists.” Richard Cohen called Polish Parliament to reject the bill legalizing same-sex unions. In a country of twenty per cent unemployment and new poverty, Cohen pleaded for ten million dollars to fight homosexuality.

The Promotion of Homosexuality in Social Life and Its Effects for the Human Person, Family and Culture” was the title of Cohen’s presentation in Polish Parliament where he was invited by the League of Polish Families that promotes heterosexism and xenophobia. The leader of the League of Polish Families, Roman Giertych (b. 1971) wants to change the penal code. He introduced a bill to the speaker of parliament to penalize (fine or even imprisonment) those who publically [sic] promote the change of the traditional definition of marriage as union between man and woman.

Cohen reportedly went on to speak on Radio Maryja:

Cohen accused gays of a world conspiracy, likened it to Communism, and exhorted: “I challenge you, Poland, to be a world leader in solving homosexuality!”

Radio Maryja and the League of Polish Families are also notorious for their anti-semitism (see here and here), but that apparently didn’t bother Cohen any more than Cohen bothered them. Indeed, Polish media linked Cohen’s conversion to heterosexuality with his rejection of Judaism:

…Poland’s most influential mass circulation newspaper, Gazeta Ryborcza, posted the Catholic Press Agency story on Cohen’s visit, without commentary: “Richard Cohen himself experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation. The decisive moment was, as he indicated, his meeting of Christ. Cohen who had professed Judaism became a Christian.”

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Ever wondered where the ideas in the Da Vinci Code come from? Egyptian MP Georgette Sobhi gives one view:

Georgette Sobhi, a Coptic member [of Parliament], held up a copy of the book and the Arabic translation and said it contained material which was seriously offensive.

“It’s based on Zionist myths, and it contains insults towards Christ, and it insults the Christian religion and Islam,” she said.

Sobhi was speaking in a parliamentary debate about the book and the film, during which the government declared that both would be banned:

To applause from members of parliament, minister [of culture] Farouk Hosni said: “We ban any book that insults any religion … We will confiscate this book.”

That would be the same Egypt which recently ran an epic TV mini-series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (I noted the same hypocrisy in the case of Lebanon a while ago), and the same Farouk Hosni who in 1998 brought Roger Garaudy to the Cairo Book Fair:

…And Garaudy did not disappoint his hosts. “Under France’s freedom of speech, you can attack President Jacques Chirac or even the Pope. But when you criticize Israel you are lost,” Garaudy told a seminar organised by Egypt’s Ministry of Culture. “This is because media in the West is 95 percent controlled by the Zionists.”

But while Hosni likes to make a stand against French Holocaust denial laws, in his own country he appears zealous enough in his role of censor. In 2000, after being put under pressure by Islamists, he banned a Syrian novel entitled A Banquet of Seaweed on the grounds that it was “disparaging religion”, and in 2001 Al-Ahram reported that

Last week the secular-Islamist debate reached a new pinnacle when Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni appeared on television to confirm and justify the banning of three recent publications of the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (GOCP) said to contain explicitly pornographic passages.

The GOCP is a state-owned publishing house. Hosni defended the state suppressions in terms strongly reminiscent of Mervyn Griffith-Jones at the Lady Chatterley trial:

…The question, to him, concerned neither religion nor politics but simply common decency. “I dare any of the editors,” Hosni challenged, “who support the publication of these novels to give them to their wives.”

But what of Sobhi’s theory of “Zionists” being behind the Da Vinci Code? The novel features a secret “Order” named the “Priory of Sion”, and (as Mark Sanborne points out at World War 4 Report) Brown’s source The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail suggests that the Protocols was actually the secret blueprint for this (non-Jewish) group. Possibly some garbled version of all this has reached Sobhi; in 2003 Matrix Reloaded was accused by local Islamists of “promoting Zionism” – one assumes because it features a city called Zion (the film was eventually banned for being “violent” and containing “religious themes”). On the other hand, though, she may just simply be a conspiracy-minded anti-Semite. Either way, one is not impressed.

Meanwhile, Russian theologian Andrey Kurayev has an alternative theory about the story’s origins and current promotion:

The development around the novel can be described as nothing else than another volley fired in ages-old cold war between the Masons and the Catholic Church. It was a real Masonic structure acting in our world that revealed itself in the advertising campaign around Mr. Brown’s book.

I am not one of those who maintain that all that happens around us is linked with the Masons, but I believe it idiotism to ignore the presence of these closed elite structures in the fabric of society beginning from the 18th century to this day. There are open Masonic editions in which they commend themselves and there are openly existing recruit club such as Rotary Club and Lyons Club.

And now we see the ways in which one of the Masonic main goals is realized, and they do not conceal it.

(Hat tip: Paleojudaica)

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Nigerian evangelicals have an ambitious plan for North Africa, as reported in the Lausanne World Pulse:

Recently the Nigerian evangelical mission movement announced its plan to mobilize fifty thousand Nigerians over the next fifteen years for its Operation Samaria, which seeks to take the gospel through the North African Islamic nations back to Jerusalem.

Aptly tagged Vision 50:15, the project seeks to include the entire North African, Arabian Peninsula until the gospel gets back to where it came from—Jerusalem.

Although the report is recent, the decision was made back in November, and several high-profile US missionary organisations were involved (links in original):

More than one hundred top missions leaders (representing eighty agencies, churches and organizations) who are actively involved in recruiting, training and sending missionaries from Nigeria affirmed this vision during the 3 November 2005 Nigeria Missions Executive Congress. Also at the congress were: Greg Parsons, general director of the US Center for World Missions; Gary Hipp of Mission Moving Mountains, and a member of Interdenominational Foreign Missions Association (IFMA) board; Dan Rabe, executive vice chair of New Tribe Missions; Bill Sunderland of visionSynergy International; and representatives from seven foreign missions serving in Nigeria.

This “Back to Jerusalem” idea is also very popular among some Chinese evangelicals, who believe that they will spread west on a similar mission. Christianity Today noted last year:

The vision to bring the gospel from China along the Silk Road and “back to Jerusalem” originated before 1949.

“Back to Jerusalem” is now a concept adopted by numerous groups, some of which are in China and some of which are abroad. Author Paul Hattaway and several prominent house-church Christians coauthored a 2003 book outlining their controversial goal of sending 100,000 Chinese missionaries to 51 nations.

The Nigerian version, however, is decidedly militant. Back to the World Pulse:

We cannot get back to Jerusalem without:

• Facing the enemy eye to eye. This vision calls for holy confrontation. The nations between Nigeria and Jerusalem are known to have overtly set themselves against the Lord and his anointed.
• Overrunning the enemy territory. We must look into this vision “like a lamb in the midst of wolves.
• Having a readiness to die. This requires a reappraisal of our theology of suffering. This vision will query and question the laid-back theology of ease that has characterized the Nigerian Church over the last few years.

That was pretty much the line taken by the Pentecostal revivalist Reinhard Bonnke, whose aggressive rhetoric was blamed in part for triggering a riot in northern Nigeria in 1991. Christianity Today again:

Rou Jarvis, a Southern Baptist missionary in Lagos, says Bonnke is controversial among many Nigerians. “He’s very confrontational with Islam, and that’s not good. If I’m going to win someone to Christ, I’m not going to tell them first that their faith is wrong.”

Jarvis says when some of his native friends learned that Bonnke was coming to Lagos, they were concerned. “They were afraid that riots would follow,” he says.

One wonders what the effect of 50,000 Nigerian evangelicals on a similar mission across Muslim lands might be…

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Talk to Action has been running a remarkable series of essays by Jonathan Hutson on the new Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game, in which members of the Christian “Tribulation Force” roam a chaotic New York trying to convert non-Christians, or, if that fails, apparently blowing them away. The subject has now had extensive media coverage, including a report in the Los Angeles Times in which a journalist took on the role of Satan in a game against Left Behind Games President Jeffrey Frichner:

The good thing was, however, that as Satan, I of course had the United Nations on my side. As my peacekeeping Hummer and some of my followers rolled down Sixth Avenue, the Christians outflanked me and started firing, immediately taking out several of my nurses.

The apocalypse, I was learning, was a good excuse for Christians to just go nuts and unload a lot of pent-up stuff.

Hutson noted particularly the presence of Mark Carver on the advisory board of Left Behind Games; Carver is the international director of Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven” ministry. Several days after Hutson’s first piece appeared, Carver resigned from his position at the company. A number of conservative Christians are among those angry with the game, and Christian attorney Jack Thompson is lobbying Christian Right leaders to repudiate Tyndale House, which publishes the Left Behind novels:

“My words cannot fully describe what a betrayal this has been by Tyndale,” Mr. Thompson wrote in a letter dated June 9, 2006, that he faxed to Mr. [James] Dobson, “not just to me but to all of the Christian families out there who are trying to protect our kids from the corrosive, violent effects of violent media. A Christian organization has now become one of the mental molesters of minors for money.”

“What is more,” Mr. Thompson continued, “we as a nation are involved in a war on terror, and this game gives radical Islamists two arguments: that we indeed do export pop culture sewage to the rest of the world, and we Christians entertain ourselves with the notion of killing infidels, now in a ‘Christian game’.”

One wonders, though, why Thompson is quite so surprised: the final Left Behind novel, Glorious Appearing, ends in a bloodbath, in which even the horses used by the anti-Christ’s armies get massacred by a wrathful Jesus (as I blogged at the time):

Men and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood…It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin…Even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated.

Left Behind Games was founded in 2001 “for the purpose of developing games based upon the popular Left Behind Series”. Earlier this year it was acquired by Bonanza Gold, Inc., which has now changed its name to that of its subsidiary. Talk to Action links to a SEC document with further details:

On February 7, 2006, Bonanza Gold, Inc. (sometimes the “Registrant” or “Bonanza”), acquired Left Behind Games Inc. as a subsidiary pursuant to a Share Exchange Agreement dated as of January 26, 2005. Left Behind Games Inc. now accounts for all of our operations. Also, pursuant to the Share Exchange Agreement, Troy A. Lyndon, Jeffrey S. Frichner, Thomas H. Axelson, respectively the chief executive officer, president & secretary and chief financial officer of our new subsidiary Left Behind Games Inc., were appointed to our board of directors and named as our chief executive officer, president & secretary and chief financial officer, respectively. Concurrently with Messrs. Lyndon’s, Frichner’s, and Axelson’s appointment as all of our officers, Mr. Robert E. Kistler resigned as our president and treasurer, and Hobart Teneff resigned as our vice president. In addition, Messrs. Kistler, Teneff and Terrence Dunne resigned as our directors.

The new board is profiled on the Left Behind Games website, while a list of shareholders as of Feb 2006 can be seen here. The North County Times dug into Bonanza a bit more back in January:

Founded as a mining company, Bonanza exists on paper but has been inactive since 1996, according to SEC filings. It’s registered at the home of its chief executive, Robert Kistler, who couldn’t be reached for comment this week…Since the merger was announced, shares of Bonanza Gold have quadrupled in over-the-counter trading, rising to $1.10 from 28 cents on Thursday. That price values the company at about $8.1 million.

Further background was provided by Business Wire:

Bonanza Gold, Inc. incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington on April 3, 1961 as Vermillion Gold, Inc. Bonanza was organized primarily for the purpose of exploring for, acquiring and developing mineral properties with a potential for production. Bonanza had been involved in the acquisition and exploration of various mining properties, located in the states of Alaska, Montana and Idaho. Exploration efforts were unsuccessful and none of these mining properties produced any commercial ore. Bonanza abandoned its remaining mining claims and the related development costs in 1996. Consequently, since 1996, Bonanza has been inactive.

That information appears to have come from this somewhat dull 2004 SEC document. One of the directors who resigned from Bonanza, VP Hobart Teneff, is a controversial figure, for reasons explained in an undated story from the Pacific Northwest Inlander:

The president and CEO for Sterling [Mining] is Frank Duval, and Hobart Teneff is a director. They co-founded Pegasus Gold Corp. in 1974, the company that owned and operated the Zortman-Landusky Gold Mines in north-central Montana until its bankruptcy in 1998, a move that left state taxpayers with millions of dollars in cleanup and reclamation costs.

In 1988, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Duval and Teneff with violations of SEC laws during their tenure with Pegasus. The two men consented to an U.S. Court injunction permanently enjoining them from future violations. The Zortman-Landusky mines are the poster children, says [activist Cesar] Hernandez, for failed federal and state regulatory and enforcement efforts to protect both the environment and local communities from irresponsible mining.

But this is a digression…Yet another SEC document explains the current structure of what is now Left Behind Games:

Our ability to develop and market our video game products depends entirely upon our license from the publisher of the Left Behind series. On October 11, 2002, White Beacon secured the license from the publisher of the Left Behind series to use the copyrights and trademarks relating to the Left Behind series to develop video game products. This license has been sublicensed to Left Behind Games in entirety. The license requires Left Behind Games to pay royalties and other fees on an ongoing basis to the publisher of the Left Behind series and to meet certain product development, manufacturing and distribution milestones.

This paragraph is part of a whole list of “Risks Relating to the Video Game Industry”, which include possible future government regulations and an economic slump should there be terrorist attacks in the USA. For some reason, however, “Loss of personnel and market due to Rapture” is not listed as one of the possible business risks.

As for White Beacon:

White Beacon is owned by Troy A. Lyndon, our chief executive officer and Jeffrey S. Frichner, our president.

Also:

Operations expanded beyond our facilities in Ukraine to include three additional offices, in the short term, in Romania.

Romania! Home to Nicolae Carpathia, the anti-Christ of the Left Behind series! Seriously, though, this is a reference to LB Games Ukraine, LLC, a management company in which Lyndon is a majority shareholder (Lyndon also outsources to various other countries)

However, Left Behind Games are now rejecting claims of gratuitous violence and bad taste. Back to the NC Times:

“There’s lots of killing in the Bible,” President Jeffrey Frichner said. “The differentiator between our game and some of the games that focus on killing in the (mainstream gaming) market is that our game doesn’t focus on gratuitous killing.”

Left Behind Games’ spokesperson is Derek Asato, who offered a similar defence to the Washington Times:

“The Bible says you do not have to stand there and let someone kill you,”

This foray into Biblical hermeneutics is a new departure for Asato, who undertakes PR work for a number of software firms (as well as NASA) at the Bohle Company. Lyndon himself ventures that

“Jesus did not say you have to let yourself be a punching bag or murder victim”

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ASSIST takes us to Jericho:

A building housing an Evangelical Christian ministry in Jericho was recently torched by Arab neighbors, apparently Muslims angered over the group’s religious activities in the ancient biblical city.

The Living Bread Church, located in a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of town, was deliberately set on fire in early June by neighbors opposed to the ministry…The fire marked the third time the building has been set ablaze in the past three years. Dunham arrived in Jericho three years ago to start a local church and has seen dozens of Muslims convert to Christianity despite the threats.

Converts to Christianity tend to have a bit of a rough time of it on both sides of the Green Line in Israel/Palestine: I’ve previously noted the persecution of Messianic (i.e. Christian) Jews in various towns within Israel proper. However, the ascendancy of Hamas within the Palestinian Authority has proven particularly alarming for certain Christian groups working in the West Bank and Gaza: the YMCA, which strongly supports Palestinian rights, was recently forced to withdraw from the town of Qalqiliya following Islamist threats and a bookshop belonging to the Palestinian Bible Society was forced to close for several weeks.

The Living Bread International Church appears to be neo-Pentecostal, and claims to be converting Palestinian Muslims to Christianity through supernatural demonstrations. The church’s website annotates some photos thus:

The boy in green had his eyes healed by the Lord in prayer. The father of ten had his incurable eye disease healed immediately by the Lord, after he personally questioned the power of Jesus Christ.

The church is run by Karen Dunham, formerly of Florida. She is described on one religious website as

…a single mum doing a work in the Palestine refugee camps in Jericho and she is the only work there feeding the poor and clothing them, she has gain such respect that she has full support of the Israeli army whom give her aid to pass to the people. She has full access to the senior military personnel and can phone them by cell phone anytime she needs assistance and has any problems at check points.

…She also has a powerful gift to preach. Karen was called up by the Israeli army and has been offered the opportunity to take some believers to the point of the crossing of the Jordan; the actual place where Jesus was baptized and the prophet parted the waters, this is in a military controlled zone and is not open to tourists…

One would think that such apparent closeness with an occupying army might annoy the Palestinian locals; however, another site claims that

Her training and ministry has been so successful that she is loved by both the Israeli army and Arabs [many US evangelical sites cannot bring themselves to use the word “Palestinians” – RB]. She has been asked to work in all 25 camps because of her great success, and she has already made a great impact in the area of people resisting terrorism where she works.

Dunham is not the only neo-Pentecostal missionary working in Jericho. The Jesus Vision, a site that claims that Muslims are converting to Christianity following visions of Jesus (make of it what you will), has the

One of the significant works of God in the Middle East is that of Pastor Terry MacIntosh and his volunteers at the Jesus House of Prayer in Jericho. The spiritual events that continually occur through this bold prayer center resemble another chapter from the Book of Acts.

…Even though Hamas terrorists opposed us over loudspeakers, the Palestinian police restrained them and protected our team with their armed presence. One hundred and forty-four seekers received copies of the “Jesus” film after the event.

The Jesus House of Prayer also helped us to conduct one of our evangelistic outreaches in a large Bedouin tent in the Jericho City of Palms. Pastor Terry also organized a March for Jesus in Jericho—truly a “first”!– with a Jesus parade and Biblical banners.

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(correction added, thanks)

ASSIST Ministries reports:

More than 500 physicians from 26 countries gathered June 1-2 for a conference at the Grand Convention Center, Cebu City, the Philippines, in which medical doctors from around the world presented scientific evidence of divine healing.

…Delegates were delighted hear of a congratulatory message for the conference sent by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines and also from Francisco T. Duque III, M.D., Msc., the country’s Secretary of Health.

Keynote addresses were delivered by the Hon. Antonio Yapha, Jr., M.D., Chairman of the Committee on Health and a member of the Philippines’ House of Representatives, and the Rev. Bishop Romeo Corpuz Sr., President of All Creation Global Network Ministries, Inc.

The conference was organised by the World Christian Doctors Network, which, despite its grandiose title, exists exclusively to promote the ministry of the Korean faith healer Lee Jae-Rock. I’ve discussed Jae-Rock’s dubious claims to supernatural power – as well as his somewhat eccentric theological beliefs, which have led to his expulsion from the Korean Christian Association – several times before on this blog: see here and here.

Jae-Rock has been associated with the Philippines for several years. In 2001 he led a leadership conference, where he received gushing praise from Arroyo:

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo sent her special advisor, Secretary Agelito M. Sarimento with her welcoming address at the opening  ceremony. In a written statement, Arroyo said, “Let me commend your  organization, under the spiritual guidance of Rev. Dr. Lee Jae-Rock, for its continuing commitment in preaching the five-fold gospel to both believers and unbelievers all over the world. In this ever-modernizing environment, we Christians should help share to all peoples of the world our Lord Jesus Christ’s good news.”

However, according to a religious website called The Bereans, some Christians came to believe that they had been “deceived”, and Jae-Rock did not enjoy the endorsement of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches.

Interestingly, this latest conference was also addressed by David Prentice of the Family Research Council, and it was puffed beforehand by the American Family Association’s Agape Press (which has formerly denounced the US neo-Pentecostal grouping known as Every Nation as a “cult”). It is most curious to see such organisations work with a man who – among much else – claims that his spiritual power can be proven by photographs in which he appears with a UFO, and that he has “sinless blood” thanks to a blood transfusion.

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Interfax-Religion reports that cartoons poking fun at the late Khomeini and other Iranian leaders and published in Azerbaijan has provoked a strong response from the Iranian embassy in that country

“On the eve of the anniversary of Imam Khomeini’s death, which is grieved by millions of people across the world, U.S. and Israeli proxies in neighboring Moslem Azerbaijan committed an act of disrespect for Imam Khomeini, the Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and former and current Iranian state figures. The Iranian embassy absolutely condemns such actions,” the embassy said in a statement circulated on Monday.

A poor translation of other parts of the statement can be seen here. Apparently the cartoons were produced in retaliation against an Iranian cartoon that compared ethnic Azeris in Iran to cockroaches – that incident led to rioting, and to the newspaper concerned being banned (the situation of Iranian Azeris can be read about in this interesting article). The report ends on a sinister note:

The embassy thanked the Azeri authorities for acting promptly to prevent a repetition of similar occurrences and said that most Iranians expected the culprits to be punished.

This, of course, is also just months after an Iranian newspaper announced a competition to find the best cartoons that mocked the Holocaust. Last December, MERIA published an academic article on Islam in Azerbaijan, and noted some of the differences with Iran:

One startling point about the shallowness of the Islamic revival in Azerbaijan is that it is probably the only country in the Muslim world where the quota allocated by the government of the Saudi Arabia for a Hajj pilgrimage remains unclaimed. Vacant places are resold to pilgrims from the Chechen Republic and Dagestan. In 1998, the king of Saudi Arabia offered to cover the expenses of 200 Azerbaijani pilgrims. However, there were some ardent atheists among those who accepted and went, and these individuals continued to spread anti-Islamic views after their return…

Another indicator of the unique Azerbaijani view of Islam concerns women’s rights. Nayereh Tohidi, a researcher from California State University, describes the attitude of the average Azeri woman towards veiling. “In June 1992, when a delegation of 22 Islamist women headed by Zehra Mostafavi, daughter of Khomeini, visited Baku, Azerbaijan, wrapped in heavy chadors in the heat of summer, they were met with stares and disdainful reactions everywhere they went. On one occasion, a middle-aged Azeri woman asked, ‘Do not you feel hot under this heavy black garment in this hot summer?’ ‘But the fire in hell is much hotter if one fails to follow Allah’s orders,'” one of the Iranians replied. Baffled by her response the Azeri woman mumbled, “What a cruel God you have! The Allah that I know is much kinder to women.”

Meanwhile, Lebanese supporters of Hizbullah are enraged at a comedian getting a few laughs out of their leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah. Arab American News.com reports:

Thousands of Shi’a Muslims enraged by a TV comedy that mocked the leader of Hizbullah took to the streets of southern Beirut on Thursday night, burning car tires and blocking roads, police and witnesses said…A Hizbullah broadcast said the TV show had “insulted the symbol of the resistance and its leader.”… “This program is part of a campaign aimed at liquidating the resistance,” Hizbullah MP Ali Ammar told reporters during the overnight protests.

Nothing worse than a public figure who can’t take a joke…

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And while I’m on the subject of Christian Zionism, “prophecy expert” Hal Lindsey drops a bombshell at WorldNetDaily:

A 40-minute videotape released last week by an al-Qaida leader living in France exhorted French Muslims to rise up and punish France for what Anas al Liby calls France’s disrespect for Islam.

That would be Sheikh Abu Yahia al-Libi, also known as Mohammed Hassan. Various other news outlets covered the story, but only Hal includes the vital bit of “intelligence” that al-Libi was living in France. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, al-Libi’s whereabouts have in fact been unknown since he escaped from US custody in Afghanistan last year. The video appeared on the internet, and was produced by al-Sahab, al-Qaeda’s propaganda arm. This shadowy organisation was discussed in the Guardian last September, after a video made by one of the July 7 London bombers came to light:

Video editing and copying facilities have been discovered in raids on militant hide-outs in Pakistan, Iraq and several other Middle Eastern countries. Digital technology means an expert can receive images by email that can be used to compile a tape on a laptop computer of broadcast quality. Nobody actually knows where the tape was filmed or made. In its amorphous structure, as much idea as organisation, al-Sahab resembles al-Qaeda itself.

Well, obviously it was made in Paris. Just ask Hal. But other wingers have taken up the baton: at Atlas Shrugs, an outraged Pamela demands:

Why don’t they throw him out?

(She means al-Libi, not Lindsey) But here’s another question: why doesn’t the USA ask for al-Libi to be extradited from France? Could it be…that he doesn’t in fact live there, and Hal jumped to conclusions based on his xenophobia and shoddy journalistic standards? However, one of Pamela’s commentators is a true believer:

You know, these days Hal Lindsey does a lot of good reporting. Like, how is it that a guy with a weekly column broke this story? One would think this would have come out of Al Jazeera and then filtered through the blogs, but no, Hal Lindsey broke it.

But, whenever I link to Hal Lindsey, I never mention him by name, because he is so tainted by all his past predictions and positions.

Hal Lindsey’s “taints” are indeed of scarlet. Everyone knows about his famously duff predictions (The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon etc), but let’s not forget the other sins, such as:

a) His continued support of the bogus “Satanic survivor”, Lauren Stratford, after she had been exposed as a liar and her book withdrawn. Lindsey arranged for Stratford to have an alternative publisher, and launched attacks on the Christian journalists who had exposed her (Stratford eventually decided to reinvent herself as a Jewish Holocaust survivor instead) – see my blog entry here for further details.

b) His attempts to get his readers to invest in firm called Zion Oil & Gas. Lindsey neglected to mention a fact that was exclusively revealed by me – that his cousin was a major shareholder with the company.

And while I’m not the censorious sort, some might wonder how a fundamentalist Christian evangelist justifies no fewer than four marriages.

(Hat tip: LGF Watch)

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