Tuesday, May 13, 2014

CDF UNLIKELY TO CENSURE INDIAN JESUIT THEOLOGIANS OR THOSE AT THE GREGORIAN UNIVERSITY ROME

The Jesuit Fr.Bryan Lobo is the Director of the new Department of the Theology of Religions at the Gregorian University.This is heretical! The Rector of the Gregorian University is the pro-Dean of this Department. It is permitted by Cardinal Gerhard Muller.
A few years back I briefly met one of these Jesuit Indian theologians who had delivered a talk at the Gregorian University Rome and was basking in the praise of many there. I told him that I appreciated Dominus Iesus of Pope John Paul II. His face fell.I had to earlier sit through all that nonsense of his.
 
Fr. Michael Amaladoss and other Indian Jesuits theologians associated with the Vidyajyoti Theological  Center in India have been denying the Catholic Faith in their talks and writings and there does not seem to be any sign of change. The Vatican is allowing these dissenting Jesuits to continue as before without affirming the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation.
There are reports which say that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will censure Fr.Michael Amaladoss .This  is not likely.
 
Pope Francis has criticized 'triumphalism' and has not affirmed the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation: the necessity for all to be members of the Church with 'faith and baptism'(Ad Gentes 7).He has extended ecclesial faith to even Protestants and has presented the Protestant kerygma without the necessity of being a member of the Catholic Church for salvation.
However Pope Francis last May did say that Jesus could not be found outside the Catholic Church and cited Pope Paul VI and St.Ignatius of Loyola's understanding of the hierarchical Church.However he contradicted it in his exhortation.
 
This has been the theology of the Jesuit Fr.Jacques Dupuis who lived and worked for many years in India.The Indian Jesuit theologians are following  the late Fr.Dupuis who had received a Notification from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.
 
In inter religious dialogue in India , where Catholics are in a minority, the Jesuits will not affirm Vatican Council II which says all need faith and baptism for salvation. This was the message of Pope John Paul II when he went to New Delhi.According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (846) all need to enter the Church as through a door. This is not part of the writings of the Jesuit theologians in India. They use the dead man walking premise and interpret Vatican Council II as a break with the past.
 
The Jesuit Fr.Bryan Lobo is the Director of the new Department of the Theology of Religions at the Gregorian University.This is heretical! The Rector of the Gregorian University is the pro-Dean of this Department. It is permitted by Cardinal Gerhard Muller.
 
Also the Secretary of the CDF a former Jesuit professor of theology at the Gregorian University is on record on line, for affirming a theology of religions. 
 
So it is unlikely that the CDF will censure Fr.Amaladoss or the Jesuits at the Gregorian University who have the support of the Jewish Left as do the LCWR sisters in the USA.
-Lionel Andrades
 
 

Memorial of Our Lady of Fatima - May 13, 2014

The Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated under this title following apparitions to three shepherd children — Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco — in Portugal in 1917. The message of Fatima includes a call to conversion of heart, repentance from sin and a dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially through praying the Rosary. This optional memorial is new to the USA liturgical calendar and is inscribed on May 13. According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine. He was famous throughout Europe as a theologian, and as a strenuous defender of the Faith in controversy with Protestants. He joined the Society of Jesus, and was later made Cardinal and Archbishop of Capua. His numerous writings include works of devotion and instruction, as well as of controversy. He died in 1621, and was canonized and declared Doctor of the Church in 1931. His feast in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is celebrated on September 17.Today is also the feast of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. This title was given to our Blessed Mother in May 1868 by Saint Peter Julian Eymard to honor her relationship to the Holy Eucharist and to place her before us as a model in our duties and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

Our Lady of Fatima
The famous apparitions of the Virgin Mary to the children of Fatima took place during the First World War, in the summer of 1917. The inhabitants of this tiny village in the diocese of Leiria (Portugal) were mostly poor people, many of them small farmers who went out by day to tend their fields and animals. Children traditionally were assigned the task of herding the sheep.The three children who received the apparitions had been brought up in an atmosphere of genuine piety: Lucia dos Santos (ten years old) and her two younger cousins, Francisco and Jacinta. Together they tended the sheep and, with Lucy in charge, would often pray the Rosary kneeling in the open. In the summer of 1916 an Angel appeared to them several times and taught them a prayer to the Blessed Trinity.On Sunday, May 13, 1917, toward noon, a flash of lightning drew the attention of the children, and they saw a brilliant figure appearing over the trees of the Cova da Iria. The "Lady" asked them to pray for the conversion of sinners and an end to the war, and to come back every month, on the 13th.Further apparitions took place on June 13 and July 13. On August 13 the children were prevented by local authorities from going to the Cova da Iria, but they saw the apparition on the 19th. On September 13 the Lady requested recitation of the Rosary for an end to the war. Finally, on October 13, the "Lady" identified herself as "Our Lady of the Rosary" and again called for prayer and penitence.On that day a celestial phenomenon also took place: the sun seemed to tumble from the sky and crash toward earth. The children had been forewarned of it as early as May 13, the first apparition. The large crowd (estimated at 30,000 by reporters) that had gathered around the children saw the phenomenon and came away astounded.Official recognition of the "visions" which the children had at the Cova da Iria came on October 13, 1930, when the bishop of Leiria - after long inquiry - authorized the cult of Our Lady of the Rosary at the site. The two younger children had died: Francisco (who saw the apparition but did not hear the words) on April 4, 1919, and his sister Jacinta on February 20, 1920. Sister Lucia died on February 13, 2005, at her Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal, after a long illness. — Excerpted from Dictionary of Mary, Catholic Book Publishing Company.

The Message of Fatima
The public message of Fatima recalls that of Lourdes. Through the children Mary urges prayer for sinners, recitation of the Rosary, and works of penance. On October 13 she said: "I have come to exhort the faithful to change their lives, to avoid grieving Our Lord by sin; to pray the Rosary. I desire in this place a chapel in my honor. If people mend their ways, the war will soon be over."But Mary also confided several "secrets" to the children, some of which Lucy subsequently transmitted. Presumably there was prediction of another war in the near future and a request for special veneration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The final secret Lucy is thought to have entrusted to Pope John XXIII.As at Lourdes, the "apparitions" of Fatima have brought crowds of visitors. Pilgrimages, which began in the summer of 1917, have experienced growing success, not only among the Portuguese themselves but also among people from other countries, including the United States. The national pilgrimage following ecclesiastical recognition of the apparitions (May 13, 1931) is said to have drawn more than a million participants.Popes have shown exceptional favor toward Fatima, Pius XII, Paul VI, and John Paul II in particular making a visit to the shrine. The papal interest and the basilica built at the site of the apparitions has helped to swell the summer pilgrimages to Fatima. Crowds comparable to, and sometimes larger than, those at Lourdes are not uncommon. In a rustic setting, pilgrims hear the message repeated that Mary spoke to the children: prayer, works of penance, recourse to her Immaculate Heart. — Excerpted from Dictionary of Mary, Catholic Book Publishing Company.Things to Do:

Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament
This title penetrates the mystery itself of the Eucharist, and when well understood, manifests to us the most important part granted to Mary in the economy of the Holy Eucharist.If we have thoroughly seized Pierre Eymard's thought we understand that she is, first, the Mother of Jesus, giving to the Word her most pure blood, which was changed on the day of the Incarnation into His own Body, into His own Blood, in order to consecrate it later, on the night of the Last Supper, into His Sacrament of Love.Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament is Mary receiving in quality of universal dispensatrix of grace, the full and absolute disposition of the Eucharist and the graces that It contains, because this Sacrament is the most efficacious means of salvation, the fruit par excellence of the Redemption of Jesus Christ. To her, consequently, it belongs to make Jesus in the Sacrament known and loved; to her it belongs to spread the Eucharist throughout the world, to multiply churches, to raise them in infidel lands, and to defend faith in the Eucharist against heretics and the impious; to her it belongs to prepare souls for Communion, to rouse them to make frequent visits to Jesus, and to assist zealously at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She is the treasure-house of all the graces comprised in the Eucharist, both those that prepare the soul for It and those that flow from It. — Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament by St. Peter Julian Eymard

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2014-05-13

Last Men Standing - Michael Voris

Orthodox Catholics have no comments on the University of Bristol video

 University of Bristol logo.svg
English orthodox Catholic commentators on the blog Catholic and Loving It have no comment yet on the issue of the  University of Bristol. Can a Catholic theologian use an irrational inference about Vatican Council II and the Catholic Church to project a wrong image of the Catholic Church ? When repeated even after being informed, would Gavin D'Costa the professor of theology at the University of Bristol be promoting a lie ? Is it legal for a University in England to repeat an irrationality and falsehood about Catholics and their beliefs and Church-teachings' ?.
These were the questions to be discussed but they were not  since many Catholics are still confused about the basic teachings of the Catholic Church, on salvation and other religions.
-Lionel Andrades
 
 

A journey to heaven, hell, purgatory After a near-fatal motorcycle crash 30 years ago, priest said guardian angel showed him the afterlife

A journey to heaven, hell, purgatory After a near-fatal motorcycle crash 30 years ago, priest said guardian angel showed him the afterlife OSV Newsweekly

A journey to heaven, hell, purgatoryFather Jose Maniyangat, associate pastor of St. Catherine of Siena Church in Orange Park, Fla., anoints a parishioner. Father Maniyangat survived a motorcycle crash in 1985. Courtesy photo
Father Jose Maniyangat is a priest in good standing in the Diocese of St. Augustine, Florida. He is an associate pastor at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Orange Park, a suburb of Jacksonville. He is the diocesan spiritual director for the Legion of Mary. And, with the blessing of Bishop Felipe Estévez, he leads a Eucharistic and charismatic healing ministry in which he leads healing missions in parishes in the United States and throughout the world.
But that isn’t all.
Father Maniyangat also says he died in a traffic accident in 1985, was taken by his guardian angel to visit heaven, hell and purgatory and came back to life to continue his ministry as a priest.

‘Out of my body’

Father Maniyangat was born in Kerala, India, in 1949, the oldest of seven children. His father was a farmer, and Malayalam was their native tongue. The family faithfully practiced the Catholic faith that St. Thomas the Apostle introduced to the country about 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
At age 7, on the day young Jose (the Indian pronunciation sounds like Joe’s) had his first Communion, he heard an interior voice inviting him to become a priest.
He entered the junior seminary at age 14 and was ordained a priest on New Year’s Day in 1975. Because the diocese could not afford a car for Father Maniyangat, his bishop gave him a motorcycle for his use. But on April 14, 1985, when the priest was traveling to a parish mission to celebrate Mass, he was struck head-on by a drunk driver.
He experienced great freedom being liberated from the constant needs of the body.
“I didn’t miss my body one bit,” he said. “I didn’t feel tired or get hungry or thirsty.”
He met his guardian angel upon his death, a figure that was “bright, beautiful and radiant. It was so magnificent I can’t begin to describe it.”
His angel told him that he was going to meet God, but that first he wanted to show him hell and purgatory.

Heaven and hell

Hell, he said, was a sea of “unquenchable fire,” with demons “like monsters” and lost souls that were “dirty, filthy and ugly.”
He was able to see the souls, and they saw him, but they could not communicate with one another. His angel related that they were lost due to a variety of serious sins of which they had not repented. To his astonishment, he was allowed to see the souls of some people he had once known.
 
 
 
“They had seemed very holy on Earth, but it was hypocrisy. It was sad; I felt sorry for them,” he said.
Numbered among the lost souls were priests and bishops who were not faithful to their calling as shepherds.
He also noted a great deal of hatred and in-fighting that occurred between the eternally condemned.
In purgatory, Father Maniyangat had the opportunity to speak to the suffering souls. There was no fighting or quarrelling between souls as in hell, but they were sad, “stained” and anxious to go to heaven. They begged for his prayers.
In his ministry today, Father Maniyangat often stresses the need to pray for souls in purgatory.
“It is an act of fraternal charity. They are part of our family, the Mystical Body of Christ,” he said.
What goes around comes around, he added. “Once they are in heaven, they will be saints,” he said. “And they can pray for us and their prayers are powerful.”
Heaven “shined like the sun” and included millions of souls praising God. He met Christ, the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph.
“Our Lord told me that in my second life he had a great mission for me, and that I would work in a foreign land and speak a foreign tongue,” Father Maniyangat said.

Alive again

Back on Earth, the priest had been pronounced dead and was being taken to the morgue.
When his soul returned to his body, he felt intense pain due to his extensive injuries. He had many broken bones, had lost much blood and screamed out in pain. The attendants were terrified.
One rushed and told the doctor, “The dead body is screaming.”
Father Maniyangat was given a blood transfusion and underwent extensive surgeries. After two months in the hospital, he was sent home in a body cast. His doctor told him he’d never walk again.
Father Maniyangat prayed to be healed and received what he described as a “miraculous cure.” His astonished Hindu doctor couldn’t believe he was able to walk again, and he subsequently converted to Catholicism.
Father Maniyangat came to the United States in 1986 and became part of the Diocese of St. Augustine in 1992. His life-after-death experience has given him a different perspective than many people — and a great desire to bring people to God.
“Death can come to us at any time,” he said. “If you were to die today, where would you go?”

Believing

On his website, this statement appears in bold above the story of his out-of-body experience:
“Neither the Diocese of St. Augustine, nor any other Catholic Church authorities have investigated, approved or in any way endorsed the factual or theological contents of the Father Jose Story.”
Some believe the story of his visit to the hereafter; others don’t.
“I told my guardian angel, ‘No one’s going to believe I saw all these things,’” Father Maniyangat said. “My angel replied, ‘Don’t worry about it. Many people refused to believe Jesus.’”
Linda Chattaway of Orange Park is a believer. She worked with Father Maniyangat as a parish secretary and now maintains his website.
“It’s a private revelation, so it’s up to you if you want to believe it or not,” she said. “I do, because I’ve seen the fruits of his ministry, both miraculous healings and, more importantly, many people coming to the Faith.”
Chattaway said Father Maniyangat was faithful to Church authorities and not only “talks the talk, but walks the walk.”
“Father tells people to pray, fast and go to confession,” she said. “He does all these things himself.”
Jennifer Carbajal of Middleburg, Florida, first began attending Father Maniyangat’s monthly healing Masses a decade ago. She, too, has witnessed conversions and healings as well as a revival of her faith.
“Before I was living my life for myself,” Carbajal told OSV. “Now, I want to live every day for Jesus.”
The humble, down-to-earth priest “gives all the glory to Jesus,” she added, “and wants to do all he can to bring people to heaven.”
Jim Graves writes from California.
from Spirit Daily

Pakistan shopkeeper gets life term for blasphemy: tore up banner bearing Muhammad’s name and Qur’an verses

Pakistan shopkeeper gets life term for blasphemy: tore up banner bearing Muhammad’s name and Qur’an verses

  
 
 
By on May 9, 2014 pakistanblasphemyWhat? He got life in prison and not the death penalty? The local court must have been made up of moderates. He was, however, already beaten by one angry mob, and could eventually be killed by another. But not to worry: no doubt Jay Leno will hear about this and include a word for Malik Farooq, Asia Bibi and all the other victims of Pakistan’s blasphemy law in his next anti-Sharia protest.
“Pakistan shopkeeper gets life term for blasphemy,” Zee News, May 9, 2014:
Karachi: A shopkeeper has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a local court for an act of blasphemy in Pakistan’s biggest city.
The district and sessions court here ruled that there was enough evidence to sentence Malik Farooq for tearing up a banner which had the name of the Prophet and other Quranic verses inscribed on it, in February, 2013.
In many instances, mostly non-Muslims have been convicted under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law which human rights groups say must be reviewed so that it is not misused to settle personal enmity or disputes or for persecution of religious minorities.
Judge Nadeem Ahmed Khan also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Farooq who will have to undergo further six months of imprisonment if he fails to pay the fine.
The accused took the plea before the court that he was framed in the case as he had a dispute with the management of a mosque adjacent to his shop but the court ruled he had not produced any evidence to support his claim while the three prosecution witnesses who deposed against him all stood firm in their testimony.
According to the prosecution, Farooq and the main complainant, Tahir Hussain Shah, had shops adjacent to the mosque in Qayyumabad and in January, 2013, the accused with his friend tore up the banner and threw it in a dustbin.
The co-accused escaped from the scene but Farooq was caught and beaten up by an angry mob and handed over to the police who booked him under the blasphemy law.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/05/pakistan-shopkeeper-gets-life-term-for-blasphemy-tore-up-banner-bearing-muhammads-name-and-quran-verses

Raymond Ibrahim: The ‘Brave German Woman’ and Europe’s Islam Question

Raymond Ibrahim: The ‘Brave German Woman’ and Europe’s Islam Question

By on May 11, 2014    dhimmitude, Eurabia, Germany    
Heidi-Mund1-1200x630Several are the important lessons learned from last year’s “Brave German Woman” incident.
Context: On November 10, 2013, a Muslim imam was invited to give the Islamic call to prayer inside the Memorial Church of the Reformation in the city of Speyer, Germany—a church dedicated to honoring Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
“When the brave German woman, whose real name is Heidi Mund, heard about the event, she prayed,” reports CBN News. Not sure what she would do upon arrival, she grabbed her German flag emblazoned with the words “Jesus Christ is Lord” and headed for the concert:
“Until the imam started with his shouting [“Allahu Akbar!”], I did not really know what to do. I was just prepared for what God wants me to do,” she told CBN News.
Then the Muslim call to prayer began, and Heidi said she felt something rising up inside her.
“I would call it a holy anger,” she recounted. “And then I rose with my flag and I was calling and proclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord over Germany”…
And she repeated the words of Martin Luther in 1521 after he refused to recant his faith in scripture alone: “Here I stand. I can do no other” and “Save the church of Martin Luther!”
Video shows another concert-goer trying to calm her by saying, “This is a concert for peace.”
Mund can be heard responding in German, “No it’s not! Allahu Akbar is what Muslims scream while murdering people! Don’t be fooled! Don’t be fooled! This is a lie!”
She was thrown out of the church.
“They should have thrown the imam out and not me because I am a believer in Jesus Christ, but he serves another god. This Allah is not the same god. And this is not the truth.”
“This ‘allahu akbar,’ they use it when they kill people,” she argued. “This is, for me, worship to an idol, to their god. And when a Muslim calls ‘allahu akbar’ in a church, that means this church is not a church anymore, it’s a mosque.”
For more details on this story, check out CBN News’ various interviews and videos of and with Mund.
Now for some lessons concerning the significance of this anecdote:
Mund’s observations about the phrase “Allahu Akbar” are spot-on. Islam’s war cry, signifying the superiority of Muhammad’s religion over all things, the takbir (“Allahu Akbar”), is habitually proclaimed in violent contexts, specifically attacking and slaughtering non-Muslims, whether beheading “infidels” or bombing churches.
Muhammad himself used to cry it aloud prior to attacking non-Muslim tribes that refused to submit to his authority and religion.
Accordingly, Mund’s outrage at hearing an Islamic imam hollering out Islamic supremacist slogans is justified. Proclaimed in a church, “Allahu Akbar”—which in translation literally means “Allah isgreater [than X]”—means “Allahu is greater than the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible, and Father of Christ.”
And assuming the imam proclaimed Islam’s credo or shehada as is standard in the Muslim call to prayer (that “there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger”) that too is tantamount to declaring that the biblical God is false, and the message (or Koran) delivered by Muhammad—which includes a denunciation of Christ’s divinity, death, and resurrection—is true (see for examples Koran 4:157, 4:171, 5:17, 5:116, 9:30-31, 19:35).
This is precisely what the vandal who earlier painted in Arabic the phrase “Allahu Akbar” across the door of another German church likely had in mind.
Yet despite all this, despite the fact that only two or three generations ago, almost every Christian would have been incensed to hear a Muslim shouting Islamic slogans that by nature contradict Christianity inside a church, Mund was chastised by fellow Christians for her stand and kicked out.
This speaks volumes about how far Western European nations have plummeted into a cesspool of moral relativism, where even in prominent churches Christian truths are attacked, and those who take a stand are ostracized for being “intolerant”; it speaks of the naivety and nihilism that predominate in the West; of the effects of years of brainwashing and indoctrination in the name of “multiculturalism,” crippling the ability to think rationally; of how political correctness has censored not only words but the ability for people to connect-the-dots in the quiet of their own minds.
There is, however, a flipside to all this: Mund’s video denouncing the imam “went viral,” says CBN News, signifying its appeal; and many who saw it interpreted her actions as “brave”—hence the appellation. “Bravery” often refers to an act that, while laudable, few have the courage to do. That this title is so naturally and widely applied to Mund suggests that there are many who agree with her; they just lack the same courage, or conviction, to take a vocal stand—hence why she is the “Brave German Woman.”
The fact is, beneath Western Europe’s nihilistic veneer, many there would agree with Mund’s sentiments. Not all are sheep. But due to the aforementioned forces—decades of indoctrination in militant secularism/atheism, multiculturalism, Christian-bashing, and political correctness—they are unable to articulate their grievance.
Yet, whether they are able to express it or not, they remain disgruntled at Muslim affronts and weak responses from European elites.
After all, Muslims hollering Islamic slogans inside European churches is not quite an infrequent phenomenon. Last Christmas, the Chaplain of Royal Holloway University invited a veiled Muslim woman to read Koran verses during church service, again, despite the fact that the Koran contradicts the key tenets of Christianity.
Sometimes Muslims “invite” themselves to churches. Thus, days ago, also in the UK, a Muslim man—“dressed like a terrorist” and wearing a bandana with the Arabic phrase, “Allahu Akbar”—entered a church during service and started yelling things like “this is rubbish, you should be preaching Allah, turn to Islam, we send boys of 10 to war.”
And last Easter in France saw a Muslim man dressed in traditional Islamic attire enter a church during mass, set up his carpet next to the altar and start reading the Koran.
This is to say nothing of the violent crimes and rapes Muslims are increasingly responsible for in Europe.
The point is, more and more Western Europeans are becoming disgruntled, even if most are not yet “brave” enough to show it, and even if the powers-that-be, including media and government, continue to downplay and suppress them.
Days ago, for example, Britain’s Liberty GB party leader Paul Weston was arrested and is facing up to two-years’ jail time simply for quoting Winston Churchill’s unflattering observations about Islam in public.
In short, time will tell whether the powers-that-be will allow legitimate criticism of Islam to vent in Europe, or whether they will continue to suppress it—until the simmering cauldron of discontent spills over in ways much more dramatic than quoting Luther or Churchill, as has happened all too often in European history.
Raymond speaks about the “Brave German Woman” incident with CBN News:

Boko Haram: Girls who haven’t accepted Islam will be traded for jihadi prisoners

Boko Haram: Girls who haven’t accepted Islam will be traded for jihadi prisoners

By on May 12, 2014   in Nigeria    
NIGERIA protestersAll the learned analysts are insisting that Boko Haram (the Party of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad) knows nothing about Islam and is violating its teachings left and right. But here again, they’re well within Islamic tradition and law: kidnapping infidels and either killing them, enslaving them, ransoming them or exchanging them for Muslim prisoners, or releasing them outright is fully sanctioned in Islamic law: “As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, ‘When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks’ (Qur’an sura 47, verse 4)” — Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192.
“Boko Haram releases new video, shows missing Chibok girls,” Vanguard, May 12, 2014 (thanks to Izuchukwu):
LAGOS – Boko Haram released a new video on Monday claiming to show the missing schoolgirls, alleging the teenagers had converted to Islam and would not be released until all militant prisoners were freed.
The group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, speaks on the video obtained by AFP for 17 minutes before showing what he said were the girls, in Muslim dress and praying in an undisclosed rural location.
A total of 276 girls were abducted on April 14 from the northeastern town of Chibok, in Borno state, which has a sizeable Christian community. Some 223 are still missing.
The footage shows about 130 girls in black and grey full-length hijabs sitting on scrubland near trees, reciting the first chapter of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and holding their palms upwards in prayer.
Three of the girls are interviewed. Two say they were Christian and had converted while one said she was Muslim. Most of the group were seated. The girls appeared calm and one said that they had not been harmed.
There was no indication of when the video was taken, although the quality is better than on previous occasions and at one point an armed man is seen in shot with a hand-held video camera.
Boko Haram has been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north since 2009, attacking schools teaching a “Western” curriculum, churches and government targets.
Civilians, though, have borne the brunt of recent violence, with more than 1,500 killed this year alone while tens of thousands have been displaced after their homes and businesses were razed.
Nigeria’s government has been criticised for its lack of immediate response to the kidnapping but has been forced to act after Shekau threatened to sell the girls as slaves.
President Goodluck Jonathan has now accepted help from the United States, Britain, France, China and Israel, which have sent specialist teams to help in the search effort.
In the video, Shekau appears in front of a lime green canvas backdrop wearing combat fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon. Shekau does not appear in the same shot as the girls at any point during the 27-minute video.
Speaking in Hausa and Arabic, he restates his claim of responsibility made in a video released last Monday and said the girls had converted to Islam.
“These girls, these girls you occupy yourselves with… we have indeed liberated them. We have indeed liberated them. Do you know we have liberated them? These girls have become Muslims,” he said.
The militant leader said that Boko Haram’s brothers in arms had been held in prison for up to five years and suggested that the girls would be released if the fighters were freed.
“We will never release them (the girls) until after you release our brethren. Here I mean those girls who have not submitted (converted to Islam),” he added.
Boko Haram has used kidnapping of women and young girls in the past and Shekau indicated that more were being held.
Eleven girls were abducted from the Gwoza area of Borno state on May 4.

 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/05/boko-haram-girls-who-havent-accepted-islam-will-be-traded-for-jihadi-prisoners

Nigeria: Abducted girls forced to convert to Islam

By on May 12, 2014  in Nigeria    

 

“They are Muslims now. We have liberated them.”
Here is the video about which I wrote here. Most of the girls have apparently been forcibly converted to Islam, while the rest are being offered in exchange for jihadi prisoners.
In other words, this whole operation is all about Islam from start to finish, while the international media and government leaders continue to insist that it has nothing to do with Islam whatsoever.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/05/nigeria-abducted-girls-forced-to-convert-to-islam#

US Muslim groups won’t move to excommunicate Boko Haram

US Muslim groups won’t move to excommunicate Boko Haram

By on May 13, 2014
Shekau2Notice that the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro repeatedly asks Muslim leaders in the U.S. to offer Islamic counter-arguments to Boko Haram’s claims for Islamic justification for its actions, and they refuse to do so. This is, as I am quoted as saying in this piece, because they can’t.
“US Muslim groups won’t move to excommunicate Boko Haram,” by Neil Munro, Daily Caller, May 12, 2014:
U.S. Islamic leaders won’t try to formally excommunicate the Islamist Boko Haram group unless they can meet with its leadership to debate the religious legitimacy of its actions, a spokesman for a leading mosque told The Daily Caller.
“There is a great reluctance to excommunicate someone by extension. … It would be like convicting someone in absentia,” said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, the spokesman for the “Home of the Migrants” mosque, or Dar Al Hijrah mosque, in Falls Church Va. If crimes have been committed, the Nigerian government should punish the individuals, he added.
On May 7, Abdul Malik led a group of Muslim advocates at a press conference at the National Press Club, where they denied that Islamic strictures are shaping Boko Haram’s years-long campaign of killing and kidnapping Christians.
“Islam is not the problem,” said Ahmed Bedier, a Florida-based Islamic advocate. “We’re tired of people coming on television and asking where does this ideology come from,” Bedier said. “Well, this ideology comes from nowhere,” he insisted….
At his May 7 event, Abdul-Malik urged Boko Haram to change its view of Islam, even as he declined to challenge its religious claims. “Groups like Boko Haram desire to take us back to a medieval … world where kidnapping of women and girls and enslavement and rape are acceptable,” he said.
“The world has changed … [and] in particular we are saying as modern day Muslims that we now reject all of these acts and that they are contrary to our faith,” he said.
However, Abdul-Malik didn’t promise any religious or political action by U.S. Islamic groups. When pressed May 9 by TheDC to cite Islamic texts that contradict Boko Haram’s Islamist arguments, Abdul-Malik quickly ended the phone call….
In a February video, Shekau justified his murder of Christians by quoting the Quran. The verse cited by Shekau, “We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever, unless ye believe in Allah and Him alone,” is found in the fourth verse of the Quran’s 60th chapter.
“We wish to reiterate that our [jihad] is not for personal gain; it is meant to ensure the establishment of an Islamic state by liberating all Muslims from the excesses of the infidels,” the group’s spokesman, Abu Qaqa, said in 2012, according to study of the group. “We don’t kill innocent Muslims. The fact is the bottom line of our struggle is to set the Muslims free from enslavement. We only kill the unbelievers,” he said.
The Muslim groups aren’t excommunicating Shekau’s group because his Islamic claims are based on iconic Islamic texts, said Robert Spencer, the author of several best-sellers on Islamic law and traditions.
Slavery is endorsed in several sections of the Koran, where is described as “those whom your right [sword] hands possess,” he said.
The Quran is said by Muslims to be a direct transcription by Muhammad of statements by their god, Allah.
Close. Muhammad didn’t make transcriptions, according to Islamic tradition; his followers did. But in any case the Qur’an is considered to be a perfect transcription of the perfect and eternal book.
So “it is perfectly legitimate for a Muslim to capture a Christian woman and use her for sex,” Spencer said. “This is something that Mohammad did himself,” according to Islamic traditions, Spencer said.
The acid test of opposition to Shekau’s Islamic claims is whether the U.S. Islamic groups will declare that Shekau’s groups and ideas are heretical, said Spencer. But Islamic debates are very legalistic, so any attempted excommunication would require Islamic groups to cite Islamic texts before pronouncing “takfir” on Shekau and his movement, Spencer said.
TheDC asked Abdul-Malik if Americans Muslim groups would pronounce “takfir” on Boko Haram. “There is a great reluctance to excommunicate someone by extension. … It would be like convicting someone in absentia,” he replied.
The groups won’t take that step, Spencer said, because “they know Boko Haram has a perfectly good case based on the Koran … [and] they know that Muslims in their community … would be indignant towards them if they pronounce ‘takfir’ on a group that is following the Koran.”
Numerous U.S. Islamic groups contacted by TheDC declined to offer Islamic counter-arguments against Boko Haram. Instead, they merely said its actions are “unjust” and “un-Islamic.”
Shekau was trained as a Muslim cleric, according to a report by the International Crisis Group. He includes an Islamic title — imam — in his war-name, which is “Imam Abu Mohammen Abubakar bin Muhammad Shekau.” The name is also a salute to one of Islam’s earliest caliphs, Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr….
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/05/us-muslim-groups-wont-move-to-excommunicate-boko-haram