Britain’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced on 10 November that an extremist Islamist group called Muslims Against Crusades will be banned, starting at midnight (GMT). The parliamentary order, handed down in London, will make membership in the group a criminal offense.

The group had planned to stage in London on 11 November a demonstration called Hell for Heroes on the day millions of Britons honor the dead of two world wars and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I am satisfied Muslims Against Crusades is simply another name for an organization already proscribed under a number of names including Al-Ghurabaa, The Saved Sect, Al-Muhajiroum and Islam4UK. The organization was proscribed in 2006 for glorifying terrorism and we are clear it should not be able to continue these activities by simply changing its name,” May told members of Parliament.

The Terrorism Act of 2000 gives the home secretary power to ban any group continuing the activities of a proscribed organization but working under a different name.

A statement on the Muslim group’s website said, “the planned Hell for Heroes demonstration has undoubtedly struck a raw nerve in Parliament by exposing the blunt truth behind the poppy. The poppy, Armistice Day and Remembrance [Day] are the fig leaves behind which war crimes committed by serving British soldiers are covered and justified.”

Poppies, a symbol found in the 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields,” are worn by millions of Britons on 11 November, the day World War I ended in 1918.

A Nigerian archbishop slammed recently the Nigerian federal government for failing to pay due attention to a warning that predicted violence by Boko Haram insurgents along north-eastern states.

Archbishop Ola Makinde said this amid a bomb blast in Borno state directed at a police vehicle which injured seven people, three of them policemen who suffered critical injuries. There were also bomb blasts in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria, and other states in the north.

“Shortly after Abdul Muttalab was arrested (in the U.S. for alleged terror) and there were links to Yemen and Nigeria, the Christian Association of Nigeria raised the alarm that some extremist groups were being trained in some camps in the north,” Makinde told Sunday Vanguard.

“That was not treated seriously until they began to unleash terror on innocent people,” Makinde, who is prelate of Methodist Church of Nigeria, said to Sunday Vanguard.

The archbishop told Sunday Vanguard, “It would be recalled also that, several times, I raised concerns about the rising threat of home grown terrorism, given the pattern which the series of attacks that took place within that period were taking.”

Borno state assault

In Borno state, three people who are suspected members of Boko Haram assaulted a police car at the Bulunkutu roundabout that leads into a heavily populated area in the vicinity.

“The blast was targeted at members of the Joint Task Force and three of our men sustained injuries, but we made some arrests and investigation is ongoing on the matter to bring those culprits to book,” JTF spokesman Col. Victor Ebhaleme said to the Nigerian Tribune.

Need for serious intelligence

Makinde stressed to Sunday Vanguard that serious intelligence work is needed to address the Boko Haram. “[Serious] intelligence gathering, processing and action, and the federal government must do everything seriously possible to empower, strengthen and equip all agencies relevant to this assignment.”

The archbishop’s sentiments were echoed by a former governor of Bendel State, Chief Samuel Ogbemudia, a retired brigadier-general who agreed that the Boko Haram crisis can be blamed on poor intelligence.

Ogbemudia told Sunday Vanguard, “I think the inspector-general of police has been let down by his intelligence service. I also believe that [he] was not properly briefed when he took over … he ought to have been given a full briefing so that he could make a plan on how to arrest the ugly situation.”

No compensation for Christians

In a separate development, Rev. Yuguda Ndurvwa, CAN Borno State chairman, condemned Borno’s governor Kashim Shettima for failing to compensate Christian victims of Boko Haram.

Ndurvwa noted that 33 Muslim victims had already received 11 vehicles, cash, and homes. However, Christian victims of the sect had not received any help. He said CAN’s executive council will meet to discuss the matter.

Ndurvwa told the Nigerian Tribune, “[This] is a very privileged piece of information with which we are not happy, but [I am] sad on how the governor could segregate or exclude Christians killed and injured in the Boko Haram attacks, killings and bombings of our members and their churches and houses.”

Ergun Caner will no longer be dean of Liberty University’s theological seminary.

Caner, a Baptist minister, gained fame as a Muslim-turned-Christian who spoke across the country and on television of his conversion, and was considered an expert on Islam. When he joined Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 2005 enrollment trebled, the AP said.

However the university’s board of trustees concluded after an investigation that Caner made contradictory statements, fabrications and embellishments in a number of public speeches and in his book, particularly with reference to names, places he claimed to have lived in and dates, the AP said.

The story of Caner has led to a rise in skepticism about other ex-Muslims turned Christian, some of whom claimed to be former terrorists and who found welcome among Christian fundamentalists, the Washington Post said.

Other Muslims turned Christian who claim to have formerly been terrorists are U.S. citizens Walid Shoebat who wrote the book, “Why We Want to Kill You,” and Kamal Saleem, author of “The Blood of Lambs,” the Washington Post said.

Concern has been raised that some are even accepted as experts on terrorism by the media, Congress and the military. They have delivered speeches at Harvard Law School and made appearances at Fox News and CNN, the Washington Post said.

They have also given talks at a terrorism conference and the findings were sent to Capitol Hill and the Pentagon. Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has called this a national security threat, the Washington Post said.

Weinstein expressed concern that they were spreading fear of Islam and fomenting prejudice, the Washington Post said.

According to the AP, Caner will still be part of the faculty of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. The school has cited his cooperation with the investigation and issued an apology for misstatements.

The investigation of Caner came about when Muslim and Christian bloggers cited irregularities in Caner’s claims on YouTube. This led other apologists and pastors to raise questions about the contradictions, the AP said.

When the issues arose, Caner changed the biography on his website and asked some groups to remove damaging video clips from their own websites. Nonetheless the questions remained, and Liberty University conducted their investigation, the AP said.

University of California at Irvine Library, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Tensions are growing on college campuses between Jewish and Muslim student groups.

An incident in early February at the  University of California- Irvine in Southern California was apparently just the latest in a string at that university.

Muslim students began heckling Israeli Ambassador Michael Orin when he came to speak at the University.

The disturbance continued for close to 20 minutes, until Orin could no longer wait for the group to subside, and left the pulpit.

Eleven of the protesting students were arrested as a result; however it has raised several questions at universities and across the Internet:

1. Why was it allowed to go on for so long?
2. How far should freedom of religious speech be allowed before a situation can turn threatening or violent?
3. Why, by contrast, did Iranian President Ahmadinejad successfully complete his speech at UC Berkeley, in an atmosphere where order and respect were demanded?

According to a Web site report by the Jewish Federation of Reading, Pennsylvania, an event defending a two-state split of Israel into a Jewish-Palestinian state also caused tensions between Jewish and Muslim students at the University of Pennsylvania earlier this year.

The organization Students for Academic Freedom (SAF, not religiously affiliated)  reported in 2007 that Pace University in New York has repeatedly ignored anti-Semitic activity toward the Jewish student group Hillel since they attempted to get approval to show a film warning of extreme Islamic terrorism.

Pace University representatives claimed they didn’t want the movie to stir up violence or hatred, but SAF found that, although there have been incidents against both Jewish and Muslim students at Pace, only the ones against Muslims have brought about police investigations.

For me, that is a heavy statement.

It does appear to me that since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001,Americans have taken significant steps to make those who follow Islam feel respected and comfortable, and not at all blamed for the works of a few extreme terrorists who claim Islam as their faith.

But, I believe,  this has come at the cost of a rise in anti-Semitism  and an increase in anti-Christianity, as evidenced by claims that 9/11 was prompted by Israel (see evidence of theories at the Daily Star of Lebanon Web site), and that Christian support for Israel is unwarranted.

While America strives for diversity and tolerance, it seems that there is still an escalation toward the opposite, even among our young people.

Does trying to ignore our differences make them more evident instead of less?

How should Christian students react?
As Christians, we learn that our main enemies aren’t people of flesh and blood, but that we struggle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12 NIV).

Perhaps Christian students can display the love of Christ on campus, while also helping Jewish and Muslim students to see that their fight is not against each other, but against those explained in this verse – and that we can fight against the dark power of terrorism together.

A Jewish teenager, attempting to say his morning prayers, caused a terrorism alert on a US Airways airplane Thursday.

The plane had left New York and was going to Kentucky. Instead, it was redirected to Philadelphia, grounded, and surrounded by local and federal authorities, including dogs sniffing for bombs.

The boy had taken out his tefillin, as is stated in the Jewish Torah that every male thirteen and over is supposed to do daily as part of his prayer time.

Tefillin are two leather straps attached to small boxes which contain tiny scrolls of biblical passages. The tefillin wrap around the arm and head and serve as a reminder of being spiritually bound to God’s laws.

The Jewish Torah is similar to the Christian Old Testament. In both, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 says:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (NIV)

Today, only very religious Jewish men, most of the Orthodox and Hassidic sectors of Judaism, observe the tefillin prayer ritual faithfully. This is one reason it may be less recognizable in public.

Hysteria Demonstrates Americans’ Attentiveness to Terrorism Threats; but also Lack of Knowledge toward Faith-Based Traditions

That the boy and his sister were questioned by authorities is not being cited as an incident of anti-Semitism. According to a report by Associated Press, the concensus from most people interviewed was that we can’t be too careful about what is going to get pulled out of a box or suitcase on airplanes anymore. People can use innocent looking things to avoid suspicion.

However, one rabbi who spoke to the FBI stated it’s also a show of modern-day unawareness toward biblically based activities and commandments. With today’s interpretation of “separation of church and state” leading people to believe that prayer isn’t allowed in public, Americans aren’t as accustomed to seeing prayer rituals carried out. Nor are so many reading their Torahs and Bibles to learn about it.

Rabbi Benjamin Belch of New York’s Yeshiva University told AP that people should be aware of ignorance just as much as we should be aware of terrorism.

The teenager was never under arrest. It will be hard to determine how to remain terror-alert while being culturally sensitive.

It’s hard to separate what’s going on in the world today from Bible prophecy and eschatology, because it all seems to be coming true.

With the constant enmity between Israel and her Middle Eastern enemy nations, we could easily be taken in by the ranting of a sensation-hungry media that seems to cater to the likes and dislikes of Islamic terrorists. Our most recent example is the scrambling to come up with every excuse in the world for the attack on Fort Hood beside the fact that it may have been an act of extreme terrorism. Some evolving facts point in that direction. Hopefully, we will conclude for certain it was not.

When can we have peace?
Although God did say He would curse those who come against His chosen people, Abraham’s seed (Genesis 12:3), God never said that region would be peaceful or that it would always be in the hands of Abraham’s Jewish descendants. Nor did He say those problems wouldn’t expand to reach other shores. All those who believe in Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs to the promise (Galatians 3:28-29). We are also heirs to the suffering (1 Peter 4:12-13). Throughout the Old Testament, the Israelites disobeyed direct orders from God through Moses and their prophets, who declared they must remain separate from the pagans in the lands where they lived. They were not to intermarry or observe customs of other faiths. Time after time they disobeyed and fell into the hands of their enemies. Therefore, the Promised Land would not belong to the Israelites continually.

Similarly, America has had several great falling away periods from God—present time included. The lines of faith have been muddled by Christians who’ve willingly become unequally yoked with those of other faiths through marriage; and society allowing God to fall by the wayside not only to other gods, but to the god of political correctness and the idol of tolerance. 

And we keep making excuses for this: The world is changing; there is no longer any absolute, or right or wrong or good or bad; we must be tolerant to a fault, we mustn’t judge, etc., etc. These are all bandages on the surface of what is a problem in the heart.

The one thing America has not yet done—beginning with God’s people—is to observe 2 Chronicles 7:14 by turning from our wicked ways, seeking His face and begging His forgiveness for so many things. Only then will He heal our land. But instead, we are currently trying to paint the porch while the house is already on fire.  

“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). There will be no real peace until Jesus returns.

(All Bible verse links are at www.BibleGateway.com  and scriptures are from the HOLY BIBLE, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.)