Islam at College

I took this straight from the American Congress for Truth. I didn't write it. But you should read it...

 

Is college using a double standard on 'entanglement' with religion?

By Katherine Kersten

Cultural clashes involving Islam have recently made headlines in Minnesota. At the airport, some Muslim taxi drivers refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol; at Target stores, some Muslim cashiers won't scan pork products. Now there's a new point of friction: Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

Its officials say the college, a public institution, has a strict policy of not promoting religion or favoring one religion over another. "The Constitution prevents us from doing this in any form," says Dianna Cusick, director of legal affairs.

But that seems to depend on your religion.

Where Christianity is concerned, the college goes to great lengths to avoid any hint of what the courts call "entanglement" or support of the church. Yet the college is planning to install facilities for Muslims to use in preparing for daily prayers, an apparent first at a public institution in Minnesota.

Separation of church and state is clearest at the college during the Christmas season. A memo from Cusick and President Phil Davis, dated Nov. 28, 2006, exhorted supervisors to banish any public display of holiday cheer: "As we head into the holiday season ... "all public offices and areas should refrain from displays that may represent to our students, employees or the public that the college is promoting any particular religion." Departments considering sending out holiday cards, the memo added, should avoid cards "that appear to promote any particular religious holiday."

Last year, college authorities caught one rule-breaker red-handed. A coffee cart that sells drinks and snacks played holiday music "tied to Christmas," and "complaints and concerns" were raised, according to a faculty e-mail. College authorities quickly quashed the practice.

They appear to take a very different attitude toward Islam. Welcome and accommodation are the order of the day for the college's more than 500 Muslim students. The college has worked with local Muslim leaders to ensure that these students' prayer needs and concerns are adequately addressed, Davis told me.

Muslim prayer is an increasingly controversial issue. Many Muslim students use restroom sinks to wash their feet before prayer. Other students have complained, and one Muslim student fell and injured herself while lifting her foot out of a sink.

Some local Muslim leaders have advised the college staff that washing is not a required practice for students under the circumstances, according to Davis. Nevertheless, he says, he wants to facilitate it for interested students. "It's like when someone comes to your home, you want to be hospitable," Davis told me. "We have new members in our community coming here; we want to be hospitable."

So the college is making plans to use taxpayer funds to install facilities for ritual foot-washing. Staff members are researching options, and a school official will visit a community college in Illinois to view such facilities while attending a conference nearby. College facilities staff members are expected to present a proposal this spring.

In Davis' view, the foot-washing plan does not constitute promotion or support of religion. "The foot-washing facilities are not about religion, they are about customer service and public safety," he says. He sees no significant difference between using public funds to construct prayer-related facilities for Muslim students and the cafeteria's provision of a fish option for Christian students during Lent.

College officials claim that the restrictions on Christmas displays apply to employees who are state agents, and so are subject to more restrictions, while students are free to express their religious beliefs.

But where the Muslim prayer facilities are concerned, college authorities themselves are consulting with religious leaders, researching other schools, and using taxpayer money to make improvements to facilitate one group's prayer.

Issues surrounding the intersection of church and state and religious accommodation are complex. But the college's treatment of Christianity and Islam seems to reflect a double standard.

It's hard to imagine the college researching and paying for special modifications to the college to facilitate Christian rituals. And the "safety" justification? Imagine if a particularly strict group of Christian students found it necessary to sometimes baptize others in the restroom sinks. Would the school build them a baptism basin because a student hit his head on a sink?

WMD's in Iraq

Cyanide Salt Block Found in Iraq

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

WASHINGTON A 7-pound block of cyanide salt (search) was discovered by U.S.
troops in Baghdad at the end of January, officials confirmed to Fox News.

The potentially lethal compound was located in what was believed to be the
safe house of Abu Musab Zarqawi (search), a poisons specialist described by
some U.S. intelligence officials as having been a key link between deposed
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda (search) terror network.

Cyanides salts are extremely toxic. According to the U.S. Department of
Energy's Ames Laboratory, exposure to even a small amount through contact or
inhalation can cause immediate death.

Zarqawi, believed to have been operating in Iraq before March's invasion,
was still being sought by coalition forces. It was not clear if anyone had
been apprehended in connection with last month's find.

Early last year, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (search) detailed
Zarqawi's significance in an appearance before the U.N. Security Council.

"Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi,
an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda
lieutenants," Powell said.

Zarqawi was described as a poisons expert with strong ties to the former
Iraqi regime and the terrorist groups Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam. A
Palestinian born in Jordan who fought in Afghanistan more than a decade ago,
Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 2000 to oversee terrorist training camps,
Powell told the Security Council.

"One of his specialties at the camp was poisons," Powell said. "When our
coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another
poison and explosives training center."

Zarqawi is believed to have begun establishing terror cells in and around
Baghdad prior to the start of the war last March, and is thought by U.S.
officials to still be in the country.

U.S. officials, who said they were getting new intelligence in the hunt for
Zarqawi, also believe he had been attempting to produce large quantities of
the toxin ricin in northern Iraq. www.foxnews.com

Positive test for terror toxins in Iraq

MSNBC.com finds signs of ricin, botulinum at Islamic militants' camp
Tests like those used by U.N. weapons inspectors gave positive results for
the toxins ricin and botulinum in a training camp linked to al-Qaida.

EXCLUSIVE
By Preston Mendenhall
MSNBC

SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 MSNBC.com tests reveal evidence of the deadly toxins
ricin and botulinum at a laboratory in a remote mountain region of northern
Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training camp by Islamic militants with
ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
is conducting its own tests at the same area, but has not yet released the
results, according to officials in northern Iraq.

MSNBC.COM'S TESTS were conducted over a two-day period at Sargat, an alleged
terrorist training camp a mile from the Iraq-Iran border. The camp, set back
in an isolated valley and surrounded by snowcapped peaks, was home to the
radical Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, which counts among its some
700 followers scores of al-Qaida fighters.
In a Feb. 5 speech to the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell showed a satellite photo of the Sargat camp and described Ansar
al-Islam as "teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other
poisons." U.S. officials have repeated the allegations in recent weeks.
In an operation timed to coincide with the war on Iraq, U.S. special
operations forces have targeted Ansar al-Islam's militants in northern Iraq.
Hundreds of Islamists, including al-Qaida fighters who took refuge in
northern Iraq after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, have been
killed.
Although U.S. officials for months have leveled charges that the Ansar
al-Islam and al-Qaida militants were producing poisons in northern Iraq, it
wasn't until this week that specialist American teams were able to gain
access to the Sargat camp to test for traces of biological and chemical
weapons.
Experts believe the Islamic group was producing the substances in the camp
as both toxins can be created from everyday products and simple procedures.

TERRORISTS TEMPTED BY TOXINS
MSNBC.com's samples of ricin and botulinum, two deadly biological agents,
were taken from the soles of a boot and a shoe recovered from the Sargat
camp. The facility has been flattened by several Tomahawk cruise missiles,
fired as part of the U.S. campaign against Ansar al-Islam.

The thick rubber boot twice tested positive for ricin, a toxin derived from
castor beans. Ingesting a pinch of ricin, which causes shock and respiratory
failure, can kill a human being within 72 hours. There is no cure.
A black running shoe, shredded by the U.S. bombing, tested positive for
botulinum. U.S. officials say terrorists have a particular interest in
botulinum and ricin toxins, which may be delivered through release in food
and water.
Botulism, the illness resulting from botulinum ingestion, is a
muscle-paralyzing disease that can cause a person to stop breathing and die,
according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement officials have seen an increase in
attempts to produce deadly toxins like ricin and botulinum.
In Britain, anti-terrorism authorities in January charged four men with
producing deadly agents after they found traces of ricin in a north London
apartment. More than a dozen arrests have been made in the investigation.

On Thursday, the FBI issued a warning to Americans that deadly agents like
ricin and botulinum could be used to contaminate the nation's water or food
supply.
And in France, police are on alert after recently finding traces of ricin in
flasks in a train station locker in Paris.
The territory of northern Iraq where the traces of ricin were detected is
not under the control of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Baghdad admitted to U.N. weapons inspectors in the 1990s that it had
successfully weaponized ricin, botulinum and anthrax. There is no immediate
evidence that suggests Saddam's regime provided the easily produced toxins
to Ansar al-Islam or al-Qaida.
A test for anthrax at the Sargat camp gave a negative result.

Random Rants

One of the things I like about NOT writing for the Dannevirke News is that I
don't have to try to explain to Kiwi's why they should care about what's
happening, say, anywhere else in the world. You know, I catch a fair amount
of flak from people from other countries about what they call "Planet
America". While I admit that many Americans don't know much about the rest
of the world, that does not justify someone coming here from another country
and being rude. Last time I heard, it wasn't nice to go in someone's house
and be rude. But it seems that if you're an American, you can do no right,
and if you're from anywhere else, you can do no wrong. Sorry, international
folks, but I've met enough of you coming here on a vacation to form an
opinion. Most are great, just basic folks, but others are unforgivably rude.
Even while overseas I was sometimes treated horribly. By supposedly
enlightened, supposedly open-minded island folks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi really pulled a Jane Fonda going to Syria last
week. What she did was directly contradict the official stand of the US
government. The idea, I think, is to try to make the Executive Branch
irrelevant, and to garner votes for next time. What she did was legitimize a
murderous regime... even as political prisoners were being tortured. Did she
address that? No. Even Amnesty International condemns the Syrian regime. But
Pelosi doesn't have a problem with it. Liberals are so bent on revenge for
losing power for so long that the only thing they care about getting that
power back, They can't form a coherent strategy for the war in Iraq. They
continue to insist that Iraq is in chaos and just getting worse (ignoring
the improvements happening every day), and yet, think that the smartest
thing we can do is pull out. Set a timeline. A date to tell the enemy when
they can take over. Some qualify it by saying we'll just 'redeploy'. Pull
back, and come back in just if we have to. Tell me, which is smarter?
Staying around to put out a fire, or pulling out and waiting for it to
overwhelm the country before we come back in. They like to compare Iraq to
Vietnam, assuming that the American public is stupid and short-sighted
enough to just think that means a quagmire that we can't win. But the fact
is that we were winning in Vietnam until the liberal press joined the chorus
of pot-smoking hippies and California lefties to condemn the war, and spread
propoganda that said we were losing, that we couldn't win, and that our
troops over there were nothing but baby killers. The liberals took over the
war, and subverted the will of the country to fight. We pulled out, allowing
a murderous regime to take over. So yes, in that sense, Iraq is, so far, a
great deal like Vietnam. And they'd like it to be more. Now, I'd like to
think that they honestly believe the manure they're shovelling. Because then
they don't stand a chance of getting elected, and at least we don't have the
antichrist number 3 in line for the White House. Better to have an idiot
than the antichrist. But only just.

Hey, all you people out there, I'd like to know what you think about illegal
immigration. Because I just saw something on the news that blew my mind. The
IRS knows that it deals with illegals. What does it say? It says it is not
its job to identify or deal with illegals. All they do is collect money. I
think the idiot they spoke to (and let me just apologize quickly to all the
normal hard working idiots out there. Don't be offended because I grouped
you in with an IRS scuzz) said something about there being no bleeding over
of information between the IRS and Homeland Security. Let me just repeat
this, in case all the IRS agents didn't get it. HOMELAND SECURITY. We are
failing to connect the dots. CONNECT THE DOTS. Sound familiar?? How stupid
and short sighted can a government employee be? That's a great question.
This idiot (again, apologies to all of you hard working honest idiots out
there) doesn't care that he could be dealing with Osama Bin Laden. He just
wants his cut. So the thought here is that greed... the almighty dollar is
still more important than anything else. Even HOMELAND SECURITY. And just in
case you think we don't have to worry about people taking advantage of the
open borders we have to north and south, think on this. Hitler tried to get
Mexico to help him invade the US. And Google "Jafar the Pilot". I'm not a
racist. Hell no. I know that we've let the problem go on for so long that
we're stuck with an estimated twelve million illegals. But can we not at
least use just a pinch of common sense here? Maybe compare notes? I don't
care where an illegal comes from. I don't want them here. I don't want them
to get amnesty. I don't even want their tax money. I want them out! But
since they've hijacked our economy, we have to at least keep track of them.
Know who they are, and keep an eye on their border crossings. Don't like it,
illegal? Get out. Want to stay? Follow the rules.

More next time.

Democrats Demand Inquiry Into How They're Doing So Far

Democrats Demand Inquiry Into How They're Doing So Far

Iraq, Afghanistan, Mister X, Michael Moore, President Nut Job and the Mahdi

I've been out for a while... massive computer problems.

Cheers

________________________________________________________

This is for Mister X, as well as anyone interested in uncensored opinions.
Disclaimer first. Some of this comes from various sources on the internet.
Saving you all the trouble of clicking on links. And I got the idea of
calling President Ahmadinejad President Tom from CNN's Glenn Beck. Seemed
like a good idea.

You know, the internet is nothing but a global bucket that people dump their
info into. I just put up a spam blocker on it to stop the spam bots from
putting links to porno/spyware/viruses in the comments. And I didn't know it
restricts your comment to 300 words. I wouldn't say so much that it
restricts freedom of speech... just encourages brevity. You can say more.
Just break it up in blocks of 300 words. And if you want to have a bit of
fun, throw in the word 'bomb' every once in a while. Wake up the internet
spies.

As for Iran, the fact is, if it didn't have oil, nobody would care about it.
They are killers and thugs fighting and killing and terrorizing because they
can't sell their program honestly. Think the US government is working to
ensure a constant flow of oil from the gulf? You bet. Like it or not, (and I
personally hate it), our economy and our security is dependent on oil, and
it's my government's job to see that we get it. And no, we aren't looking
for an excuse to go to war with Iran. At least not until we're finished with
Iraq. :) Just kidding. The idea, as far as I know, was to install
democracies on either side of Iran, and to let them know that bad behavior
will result in punishment. Also, Iraq did, during the first Gulf War,
demonstrate that it had a chemical weapons program. Refrigerators labeled
"Anthrax" pretty much proved that. And the long line of trucks that ran like
hell from Iraq to Syria in the hours leading up to the invasion makes me
think that there may still have been some. Weapons of mass destructions
don't have to be nukes. And even if Saddam didn't have any WMD, doesn't mean
he wasn't working on them. He was. Everyone knows that. He'd already used
them on the Kurds... his own people. So he was a murderous thug who used
WMD. Better off dead. And now there's chaos over there. Sure. But the man
who really knows what's happening over there says that A) there are also
signs of progress over there... two elections and a constitution aren't bad,
considering there were decades of tyranny under Saddam Hussein, and B), what
they are trying to do over there is comparable to trying to fix an airplane
while it's in the air. And the leftist media here takes joy in reporting
everything that goes wrong. What is essentially an attempt to rewrite a
region (a good idea or not, justified or not) is not something that is going
to happen in a few years. People today don't understand that real change can
take decades. They want instant results and instant gratification. And if
the hard work that they all needed to get done takes longer than a few
weeks, suddenly people don't support it. Losers. And as for Afghanistan,
tell me this. If the government of, Singapore had openly supported a
terrorist group that flew a jetliner packed with people and jet fuel into
Parliament, would New Zealand be justified in invading Singapore? Of course.
Just because a country has a pipeline going through it doesn't mean we
aren't justified in whacking it if it sponsors terrorists who attack our
country. And despite all of the two-bit conspiracy theorists on the
internet, what everyone saw happen really is what happened. The people
responsible for it admitted to it. The government didn't know about it in
advance. That's just nuts. There are as many conspiracy theories out there
as there are IP addys. Show me one piece of hard solid evidence that will
stand up in court. You've quoted some interesting websites, featuring people
who don't, to my mind, have any credibility. It's easy to muckrake and throw
bombs (hello internet spies!)... when you don't allow your accusees (is that
a word?) to answer you. No, my worthy Mister X. I didn't see any effort in
any of those sites to allow anyone to defend themselves. If I'm wrong,
that's okay. Show me, and I'll retract. In the case of the Taliban and Al
Qaeda, they admitted it. They bragged about it. If you are saying that we
went to Afghanistan because of oil and not because of 9/11, it really makes
me think that you will think the worst of US motivation, no matter what
happens. I appreciate your opinions, as well as your communication. Keep it
up. The Dannevirke News may not want to print things that don't fit into the
politically correct goose-stepping Neo-fascism that is today's liberalism,
or that maybe encourage people in a small corner of the world to pull their
collective heads out of the sand (did you think I was going to say something
else? :)..), or maybe they're happy to ban talk that sheds light on one
intolerant, murderous religion while ridiculing and stifling the words of
another (Mister David W can back me up on that) peaceful religion. I don't
know. Small towns can be strange places, and to be blunt, there is that 'big
fish in a small pond' syndrome that can affect people in a bad way. I'm not
saying bigger is better. Just talking about small minds. They are bad. But
Mister X, you have actually taken the time and effort to engage me in
conversation. I respect that, and appreciate it.

So how about the poppy fields in Afghanistan? Resurgent Taliban are counting
on those same poppy fields to fund their spring offensive. I'd say their
convictions have taken a turn. It just gets harder and harder to support
them. And I don't know if Condi has an oil tanker named for her. I don't
obsess over oil, and I don't assume that anyone connected with it is evil.
Hey, you know, one the liberal movement's biggest champs, Michael Moore,
lied about owning Haliburton stock. Yeah. Sorry to break that to you. And
Mister X, if you don't know about M. Moore, you should get to know him. He
hates Bush, big oil (except for himself), and conservatives.

Do you really want to know what Iran has to gain from starting WW3? Nothing.
But Iran the country and the people aren't the ones trying to start it.
President Ahmadenijad... I'll just call him President Tom, to save time,
doesn't care about his country, or its people, or its culture. You have to
understand that his aims are not political. They're religious. He wants to
bring about a certain kind of apocalypse. One of the responsibilities of a
nuclear power is to play, well, responsibly. How can you do that? First,
appreciate the fact that nukes are horrible things that can wipe out entire
cultures. That may seem hypocritical, but in fact it isn't. We didn't drop
atomic bombs on Japan because we were renegade cowboys looking to create a
new world order by wiping out a nation - we dropped them because we wanted
to END the war; we dropped them because studies showed that fewer Americans
and Japanese would be killed if we did.

President Tom believe that killing hundreds of millions of people will help
create the chaos he needs to bring back the Mahdi - or his version of the
Messiah, and the fact that he's also starting a nuclear program is NOT a
coincidence.

Princeton's Bernard Lewis (the Cleveland E. Dodge professor emeritus of Near
Eastern Studies at Princeton University, specializes in Muslim history and
interaction between Muslims and the West) has written an opinion piece in
the Wall Street Journal advising that the rest of the world would be wise to
bear in mind that for those who believe the end of the world is imminent and
good, there is no deterrent even to nuclear warfare.

As WorldNetDaily has reported, Iranian President Tom has urged his people to
prepare for the coming of an Islamic "messiah," raising concerns a
nuclear-armed Islamic Republic could trigger the kind of global
conflagration he envisions will set the stage for the end of the world.

He's also said, in a WND report, that Islam and its followers must prepare
to rule the world, because it is a "universal ideology that leads the world
to justice."

"In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so
well during the Cold War, would have no meaning," Lewis wrote. "At the end
of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be
the final destination of the dead - hell for the infidels, and heaven for
the believers.

"For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint, it is an
inducement," he said.

His apocalypse just might coincide with an Islamic tradition when many
Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged
horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with
Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back.

In Islam, as in other religious, certain beliefs describe the "cosmic
struggle" at the end of time. For Shiite Muslims, Lewis wrote, this will be
"the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of
the forces of good over evil."

The significance, he said, is that there's a "radical" difference between
Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons.

"This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the
apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers," he wrote. Iran's leaders
now "clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle
has already begun and is indeed well advanced."

As for intent, a passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an
11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, reveals priorities: "I am decisively
announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers (i.e., the infidel
powers) wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their
whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we
all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom."

Lewis wrote, "This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the
apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary the world."

History has proven that truly evil people all have one thing in common -
they don't hide their intentions; they don't try to be coy about their
plans. Hitler wasn't, and neither is President Tom; we just have to take
them at the word.

Also, "Atomic Iran" author Jerome Corsi notes (referring to the
Israel/Lebanon war) that it's less significant whether Hezbollah survives,
"but it's really the first chapter in the play for Iran and the Shiite Islam
nation to come to ascendancy in the Muslim world."

First is the battle against Israel and the United States, he said, then
against Sunni Islam. Where that group is more dominant, he said, is in Saudi
Arabia and Egypt, where group members are "not unhappy to see Iran
contained."

In the updated edition of "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the
Bomb and American Politicians," now available in paperback from WND Books,
Corsi discusses many of the disturbing developments related to Iran.

Meanwhile, Tanzanian customs officials have uncovered an Iranian smuggling
operation transporting large quantities of bomb-making uranium from the same
mines in the Congo that provided the nuclear material for the atomic bomb
dropped on Hiroshima 61 years ago, according to a recent report in the
London Sunday Times.

A United Nations report, outlining the interception last October, said there
is "no doubt" the smuggled uranium-238 came from mines in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo's mineral-rich Katanga province.

The smuggled uranium discovered by Tanzanian customs agents was hidden in
shipment of coltan, a rare mineral used to make chips in mobile telephones.
According to the manifest, the coltan was to be smelted in the former Soviet
republic of Kazakhstan after being shipped to Bandar Abbas, Iran's largest
port.

Uranium-238, when used in a nuclear reactor, can be used to create plutonium
for nuclear weapons.