Tag Archives: Russell Moore

Polemics

The Southern Baptist Convention’s progressive immigration policies threaten public safety

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Russell Moore and Barack Obama
Russell Moore and Barack Obama

I have a confession to make. I have really been struggling with the Southern Baptist Conventions slide into liberalism, not just on moral issues, but on policy issues as well. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me is the SBC slide towards open borders. Thankfully, not everyone thinks it is “compassionate” to spend other people’s money and risk other people’s safety. The Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank, is still taking the conservative view on immigration. And they do it by looking at the evidence of how open border policy is working out in other times and other places.

Here’s the latest on Germany from Robin Simcox, writing at the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

Diana Feldman received an unusual text message from the phone of her 14-year-old daughter, Susanna, late last month.

Written in broken German, the message said she would be back home in a few weeks and that her mother should not try to find her.

Yet the message was not from Susanna. She had already been raped and strangled, and her body was dumped next to some railroad tracks in the city of Wiesbaden in western Germany.

[…]Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, entered Germany in October 2015 with his parents and was a blight from the beginning. According to the BBC, he was allegedly tied to a robbery, possession of a weapon, and sexual assault on an 11-year-old girl in the refugee shelter where he lived (and where he dealtdrugs).

Bashar’s asylum claim was rejected toward the end of 2016, but he was allowed to stay in the country while he appealed the decision.

Over 18 months later, when he killed Susanna, a decision on his appeal still had not been made. Days after his crime, Bashar and seven other members of his family returned to Iraq. However, he was tracked down by Kurdish authorities and extradited to Germany.

Bashar has since admitted to killing Susanna.

[…]Hussein Khavari arrived in Europe in January 2013. He proceeded to throw a woman over a cliff that summer in Corfu, Greece, and was subsequently imprisoned for 10 years in February 2014 for attempted murder. However, he was released after just 18 months, part of a government amnesty aimed at reducing strain on its overcrowded prisons.

Khavari journeyed on to Germany, where he arrived in November 2015, and claimed asylum the following February. He claimed to be a 17-year-old Afghan upon arrival, saying that his father had been killed fighting the Taliban.

In October 2016, Khavari raped and strangled Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old German student, in Freiburg, in southwest Germany. Khavari left his still-breathing victim to drown in a nearby river after his attack. He was sentenced to life in prison.

During his trial, it emerged that rather than being a 17-year-old fatherless Afghan, Khavari was a Iranian. His father was alive and well, living in Iran. Khavari’s asylum claim was also undecided at the time of Ladenburger’s killing.

Another case from southwest Germany, this time in Kandel, saw Mia Valentin, a 15-year-old girl, being stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend last December. The killer, Abdul D., came to Germany from Afghanistan in April 2016, claiming to be 14 years old. In reality, he is now 20.

Such stories—coming in the wake of the mass sexual assault of more than 1,000 women in Germany on New Year’s Eve of 2015—have a variety of consequences.

Now consider this article from June 2016 from the far-left National Public Radio, which is delighted with the new progressive policies of the SBC:

Matthew Soerens of the evangelical refugee resettlement group World Relief praised the move, noting that churchgoers of many religious denominations are eager to aid refugees, and are “strongly opposed to governmental efforts that would block their ability to be a part of this sort of ministry.”

Soerens says Donald Trump’s proposal to bar immigration from countries with a “proven history of terrorism” would likely keep out Christians and other religious minorities as well.

Got that? He wants to let in refugees from countries with a “proven history of terrorism”. The point about Christianity is a red herring, since almost none of the refugees admitted under Obama were Christians.

CNS News explains in this article from October, 2016:

The administration admitted a total of 12,587 Syrian refugees during the just-ended fiscal year, exceeding the target President Obama declared last fall by 2,587 (20.5 percent).

Of the 12,587, the vast majority are Sunni Muslims – 12,363 (98.2 percent) – while another 103 are identified in State Department Refugee Processing Center data simply as Muslims and a further 20 as Shi’a Muslims.

Sixty-eight of the 12,587 Syrian refugees (0.5 percent) are Christians. They comprise 16 Catholics, eight Orthodox, five Protestants, four Jehovah’s Witnesses, one Greek Orthodox, and 34 refugees self-identified simply as Christians.

The Bible says that rape and murder are wrong. Perhaps Southern Baptist leaders like Moore and Sorens are just more concerned with political expediency than sound theology.

Keep in mind that no one in the SBC has a real private sector job where they earn money in a competitive free market by providing goods and services. When they talk about letting in refugees, they aren’t going to be liable for the crimes and social costs (education, health care, public safety, etc.). That’s on you, the taxpayers. And on the little girls who are raped and murdered. The SBC is not primarily concerned about underage sex-trafficking gangs run by Pakistani Muslim immigrants. Their priority is feeling good and being liked. Meeting with Obama in the Oval Office and preening for the cameras and hearing the praises of the far-left mainstream media. They like to be seen as “compassionate” by spending other people’s money and risking other people’s safety.

Once again, I must mention that I myself am non-white, and I favor skilled immigrants from all races. I am in favor of naturalizing skilled immigrants who can keep a high-paying job, refrain from committing crimes, and who are barred from collecting from any social welfare program for some long period of time. But refugees and unskilled immigrants should not be put on a path to naturalization under any circumstances. If individuals want to help them, they are free to help them with acts of voluntary charity. I myself am more interested in funding pro-life, pro-marriage, apologetics, etc. efforts.

News

Whose policies are responsible for the Islamic State terrorist attack against children?

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Muslim populations in Europe
Muslim populations in Europe

First, the news story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Salman Abedi, 22, who was reportedly known to the security services, is thought to have returned from Libya as recently as this week.

Devout Muslim:

He had become radicalised recently – it is not entirely clear when – and had worshipped at a local mosque that has, in the past, been accused of fund-raising for jihadists.

Abedi’s older brother Ismail had been a tutor at Didsbury mosque’s Koran school. The imam last night said that Salman Abedi, who wore Islamic dress, had shown him “the face of hate” when he gave a talk warning on the dangers of so-called Islamic State.

A family friend described him as “very religious”.

Parents were Islamic refugees:

Born in 1994, the second youngest of four children, Abedi’s parents were Libyan refugees who fled to the UK to escape Gaddafi.

Well educated:

Abedi went to school locally and then on to Salford University in 2014 where he studied business management before dropping out.

He lived in a “red-brick terrace” home with his parents. No poverty to speak of.

Wall Street Journal says:

Islamic State on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in the U.K. since 2005.

[…]In a statement published online, Islamic State said the attack was revenge for “aggression toward Muslim countries” and identified the assailant as a “soldier of the caliphate.”

The root problem is, of course, the open borders immigration policies enacted by the Labour Party of the UK. It was their attempt to tilt the electorate away from the free enterprise system, towards government dependency. And it worked. Of course, if a few UK citizens have to die for the far left Labour Party to win election after election… so be it, right?

Sober-minded Christian writer David French commented on this story at National Review:

While it’s impossible to predict any given terror attack, there are two laws of terrorism that work together to guarantee that attacks will occur, and they’ll occur with increasing frequency. First, when terrorists are granted safe havens to plan, train, equip, and inspire terror attacks, then they will strike, and they’ll keep striking not just until the safe havens are destroyed but also until the cells and affiliates they’ve established outside their havens are rooted out. Second, when you import immigrants at any real scale from jihadist regions, then you will import the cultural, religious, and political views that incubate jihad. Jihadist ideas flow not from soil but from people, and when you import people you import their ideas.

Let’s look at how these two ideas have worked together in both Europe and America. The map below (from AFP) charts significant terror attacks in Europe (including Turkey). You’ll note a significant increase in activity since 2014, since ISIS stampeded across Syria and into Turkey and established a terrorist caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. There existed a safe haven and a population to inspire back in Europe. The result was entirely predictable:

This is the predicable result he mentions:

Map of terrorist attacks in EuropeMap of terrorist attacks in Europe

And this is significant:

What about the United States? A similar phenomenon was in play. This Heritage Foundation timeline of terror attacks and plots documents a total of 95 incidents since 9/11. The numbers are revealing. After the implementation of the (now) much-derided Bush strategy, there were a grand total of 27 terror attacks and plots — almost all of them foiled.

After the end of the Bush administration, the numbers skyrocketed, with 68 plots or attacks recorded since. A number of them, including the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, the San Bernardino mass murder, and the Orlando nightclub massacre, have been terrifying successful. Indeed, there have been more domestic terror plots and attacks since the rise of ISIS in the summer of 2014 than there were in the entirety of the Bush administration after 9/11. And make no mistake, jihadist terrorists are disproportionately immigrants and children of immigrants.

What did Bush do that was so successful? He not only pressed military offensives in the heart of the Middle East, he fundamentally changed the American approach to immigration and implemented a number of temporary measures that, for example, dramatically decreased refugee admissions and implemented country-specific protective measures that have since been discontinued.

You’ll recall that Islamic State was caused by Barack Obama’s decision to retreat from Iraq. The refugee crisis worsened because of his other failed interventions in Libya and Syria. This is what happens when people are carried away by a happy-sounding “anti-war” message. Wiser voters thought about what would happen if we pulled out of Iraq, and voted against Obama. The wiser voters lost.

Speaking of Democrats, I wonder if Barack Obama and his Democrat supporters will call this terrorist attack “workplace violence”, like he did with the Fort Hood terrorist attack by Major Nidal Hassan? I’ve talked to a few Democrats about immigration from countries with a significant population of radicalized Muslims, and they are all in favor of increased immigration from those countries. Democrats are more scared of pro-marriage, pro-life Christians than of Islamic terrorists. After all, it’s not them dying in these attacks. Give them their gay marriage and their free birth control.

But I’m also noticing a lot of Christians trying to appear generous and compassionate lately, by embracing the same open borders policies as the progressives. They’re claiming generosity and compassion in public by spending other people’s money and risking other people’s lives. This is especially popular among Christians in academia, seeking to curry favor with their secular colleagues. For many Christian leftists like Russell Moore, embracing open borders immigration policy, is a quick way to avoid charges of lacking compassion. Except nobody ever asks these pious Christians who has compassion for the victims of their policies.

Finally, national security expert Andrew C. McCarthy notes that the current Republican administration’s efforts to vet incoming immigrants from Muslim countries has been opposed by Democrats in the judiciary, and far-left civil rights groups. Republicans are trying to prevent terrorist attacks like this at home, but they are opposed at every turn by naive Democrat voters who are more interested in feeling good and looking good than in protecting the victims of terrorist attacks. You can’t have it both ways when it comes to national security.

News

Twelve Pakistani immigrant men get 143 years in jail for gang-raping 13-year-old girl

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Muslim populations in Europe
Muslim populations in Europe

This story is from the UK Daily Mail, and I think it shows the problem with the compassionate “open borders” view of immigration advocated by some people on the religious left.

WARNING: This story is for mature readers, reader discretion is advised.

It says:

[…]12 men were jailed for gang-raping a 13-year-old white girl in West Yorkshire.

The gang of men from Pakistani origin were jailed for a total of 143 years at Bradford Crown Court today, for 13 months of horrendous abuse of the British white girl in 2011 and 2012.

[…]Eleven of the men were today jailed for rape and a twelfth man was jailed for sexual activity with a child under 16 today at Bradford Crown Court, but the ringleader has fled to Bangladesh.

West Yorkshire Police confirmed that the men jailed were of Pakistani origin. 

[…]Arif Chowdhury, 20, allegedly left for Bangladesh during the investigation after he was arrested in 2012 in connection to the raping of the schoolgirl, Bradford crown court heard last year.

He is also accused of pimping her out to his contacts in Keighley when he was just 15.

Louise Blackwell QC described Chowdhury, a convicted drug dealer, as being ‘evil’ and violent.

A jury heard how Chowdhury first raped the girl, who cannot be named, behind a church when he was 15.

He had previously got to know her when she was 13 after persuading her to do drug runs in Keighley.

She had attempted to stop helping the drugdealer, revealing to police how he had racially abused her and then raped her.

Chowdhury subjected her to regular beatings and made her have sex with other men in a year-long ordeal.

The judge’s comments are interesting:

During the case, the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, said their behaviour throughout the trial was the worst he had seen in 40 years of legal practice.

Judge Roger Thomas QC condemned the ‘insolent and disrespectful behaviour’ the accused showed in court which he said reflected their treatment of their victim.

He told them: ‘The attitudes of the majority of you have so clearly demonstrated to these proceedings has been contemptuous, disrespectful and arrogant on a scale that I have hardly seen before in many years of practice in criminal law.

‘Exactly the same attitude to the 13/14 year old girl who you all sexually abused and exploited for your own selfish gratification.’

He added: ‘None of these defendants had any concern for the victim.

‘They were totally uninterested in her welfare and what damage they were causing her.

‘The victim clearly demanded pity and understanding but their view of her was heartless and demeaning.

‘They saw her as a pathetic figure who had no worth and who served no purpose than to be an object that they could sexually misuse and cast aside.

‘They showed her no shred of decency or humanity when as a vulnerable child she so needed care and understanding.’

The court heard their victim now has post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression.

Now, this crime is not like these fake rape accusations that you see on college campuses, where the alleged victim never goes to the police and never goes to the hospital. This crime really happened. And it was investigated by the police. And the facts were determined in a real criminal trial In my view, the offenders got off too lightly – they should all have received the death penalty. That would have sent a message to others not to do such things to children. Yes, a 13-year-old girl is a child, and she ought to be protected and nurtured, not abused and degraded. If a girl is fatherless and has no protector, that is all the more reason for good men to be more protective of her innocence and dignity – not less protective. We have to have a vision for what a girl’s life should be like – education, work, marriage, a loving faithful husband, children, a home of her own. Dignity and value.

Christianity is different

That girl was known by God and made by God in order to reach out to him and to know him as he really is. Nothing about her origins, finances, family situation is relevant to the purpose for which she was made, which is the same purpose that we are all made for – to know God in Christ. On the Christian view, there is no room for looking at other people in distress and taking advantage of them. We should always be looking to others as equal in dignity and value, and made to know God. The Muslim men convicted of raping her were not doing what they were designed to do, because they followed a false religion, with false moral values. Christianity is true, and it rationally grounds the duty to love and serve others, and even to give up our lives to save others. That is the example of the founder that Christians are to emulate. Where was that example in the conduct of these Muslim men towards this little girl?

Russell Moore

One last thing I want to say is about Christian leaders who are very generous about welcoming in refugees from Muslim countries. Well, I mean they are generous with using taxpayer money to do this, not with their own money. One of these people  is Russell Moore, who was interviewed by the radically left-wing BuzzFeed.

BuzzFeed was very sympathetic with Russell Moore’s left-of-center view on this issue, and excited to be able to bash conservatives by using Moore as the club.

Excerpt:

Moore was also critical of candidates like Ted Cruz who are now arguing that the U.S. should only accept Christian refugees from Syria, not Muslims.

“I don’t think we ought to have a religious test for our refugee policy,” Moore said, adding that a rigorous vetting process could still make room for innocent Muslims. “We really don’t want to penalize innocent women and children who are fleeing from murderous barbarians simply because they’re not Christians,” he said, though he added that persecuted Christians in the region haven’t received enough attention from the U.S.

Moore wants to give interviews to leftist publications, where they will publicly praise him for his generosity and compassion, while shaming conservatives politicians who have a duty to protect the public. My priority is to protect that little girl from harm, not hand out goodies to grown-ups at taxpayer expense. The UK didn’t have to take in refugees and unskilled immigrants willy nilly, but they did it because they were more motivated by the desire to appear generous with other people’s money than by the desire to protect innocent victims from harm. As long as it’s not their money being spent, and their daughter being raped, people who talk for a living can seem very generous. What happened to this little girl is clearly horrendous, and it’s not the first or last event of its kind. People like Moore who feel we need to be more compassionate and less cautious are effectively turning a blind eye to the reality of the concern.

I support a legal immigration process that has some sort of requirement for some period of following the laws or learning Western customs, e.g. – legal immigration for those who come here to do college degrees and/or get work permits. But Moore wants take in refugees who have no education, no work history, and no idea what our Western values are. Immigrants from Muslim countries who apply to attend school and/or work legally, and go through a process where they follow the law, pay their taxes, and so on, are much safer to allow in than refugees. We need legal immigrants to prove over a long period of time that they can survive without resorting to criminal activity (drug-dealing, sex-trafficking, etc.) or collecting welfare. But refugees are not like that. And we don’t have adequate security screening. We can be generous, but prudent about protecting innocence, too. I don’t want to be responsible for letting in people who rape little kids.

Disclaimer: Half my family is Muslim, and my parents immigrated legally via college degrees and work permits. Legal immigration process. Law abiding. Continuous work history. No collecting welfare. None of us has ever been charged with anything worse than a speeding ticket or parking ticket.