Roanoke City Council

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

11BINFANTRY — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:29 GMT

Personally I believe religion should be a peronal preference and has no place in government. Religion is the most heated subjects im pretty sure there are some christians reading this right now getting all upset. Its the cause of wars and tragedy. Why dont we all just learn to accepts each others beliefs and non-beliefs Instead of forcing it upon people. Im not saying we should have a complete seperation of church and state which meant somthing completly different during the time of our forefathers that people try to argue but what im saying is we should not place one religion above all instead we should respect all religions for the sake of a better society because in the end it will be between you and you personal relationship with your god because we all are accountable for ourself not for everybody else

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Walker — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:53:06 GMT

The Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Fairfax, Va. went before the local planning commission Wednesday night to seek an expansion of their controversial and secretive school funded and controlled by the Saudi government.

A large group of residents near the school asked the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) for help in organizing and strategizing against the expansion, which has seen raids by local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and used anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and anti-American textbooks. The school is operated by the government of Saudi Arabia and there has been some confusion over whether federal or local officials should take jurisdiction over the extremist Wahhabi teaching and clandestine activities which have marked the ISA’s history.

Andrea Lafferty, TVC executive director was among those who testified at the raucous hearing--which lasted until after 2:30am-- had an overflow crowd and featured a large presence by supporters of the Islamic Saudi Academy. Residents near the ISA and members of local churches also attended the hearing in large numbers and voiced their opposition to the ISA.

TVC witnesses were jeered and booed by some in the crowd – many of whom wore long gowns and head coverings or veils.

Very interesting.....

Here are some highlights of what she told the Commissioners:

The campus of the Islamic Saudi Academy operates under the principles of Shariah law.

The principal who was arrested for not reporting the sexual abuse of the five year-old student was following Shariah law when he turned the child back to her abusive father and suggested he “get control” of her. Under brutal Shariah law, children do not have basic human rights and neither do women.

The ISA texts have included :

peaceful coexistence with so-called “infidels” is unattainable and that violence to spread Islam is not only permissible, but an obligation.

in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the other.

A narrative and drawing of the most efficient way to cut off the hand and foot of a thief. Is cutting off someone’s hands the sort of “free exercise of religious belief” which our fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson envisioned in the First Amendment to our Constitution?

Apostates (those who convert from Islam), homosexuals, adulterers and people who murder Muslims can be permissibly killed.

The apes are Jews, the keepers of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christian infidels of the communion of Jesus

Let’s be frank. Every time the Islamic Saudi Academy gets caught with hate filled textbooks they claim they have fixed the problem--- by crossing out a line with a sharpie pen, whiting out a section or simply tearing out a page and the ISA says is fixed. But you can’t fix what the Wahhabists teach.

Remember that 15 out of 19 of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudi nationals learning from these very textbooks.

Since the Commission made it clear they did not want to hear any concerns except those they deemed related to “land use,” Andrea closed with this statement:

The narrow definition of land use made me wonder as I prepared my testimony: Was there a Planning Commission in Auschwitz?

Were they more concerned about the upkeep of the property and the loud clatter of trains going in and out all night or, perhaps, the smoke stacks which spoiled the sunset.

What if someone had gone beyond the form and dealt with the substance of how the land inside that institution was really being used?

Are we too avoiding mentioning the obvious in our discussion of land use at the Islamic Saudi Academy?

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Walker — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:33:11 GMT

This is a great article I just read. Thought this was a good place to allow others to read it....

"My friend David has a knack for cutting through the smokescreens people throw up when they’re trying to avoid making commitments, be they commitments to God or to other people. Last week, with one comment, he blew away all the smoke that a young agnostic was hiding behind. It was a demonstration of tremendous insight, and it required some courage to say.

For several weeks David was teaching through a series on Christian apologetics, which involves providing evidence for the truth of Christianity. In addition to the biblical mandate to provide such evidence, David thought it would be wise to do so because 75 percent of Christian youth stop attending church after age 18. Many of them abandon the church because they’re bombarded by secularism in college and they’ve never been taught any of the sound evidence that supports Christianity.

Last week, after David finished a presentation refuting the “new atheists”—Dawkins, Hitchens and the like—a young man approached him and said, “I once was a Christian, but now I’m an agnostic, and I don’t think you should be doing what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?” David asked.

“I don’t think you should be giving arguments against atheists,” the young man said. “Jesus told us to love, and it’s not loving what you’re doing.”

David said, “No, that’s not right. Jesus came with both love and tuth. Love without truth is a swampy, borderless mess. Truth is necessary. In fact, it’s unloving to keep truth from people, especially if that truth has eternal consequences.”

David was absolutely right. In fact, if you look at Matthew chapter 23, Jesus was more like a drill sergeant than he was like Mister Rogers.

But the young man would have none of it. Without acknowledging David’s point, he immediately brought up another objection to Christianity. David succinctly answered that one too, but again the kid seemed uninterested. He fired a couple of more objections at David, who began to suspect something else was up—something I’ve noticed as well.

I’ve found that the machine-gun-objection approach is common among many skeptics and liberals. They throw objection after objection at believers and conservatives but never pause long enough to listen to the answers. It doesn’t matter that you’ve just answered their question with an undeniable fact—they’ve already left that topic and are rattling off another objection on another topic as if you hadn’t said a word. They don’t really seem interested in finding answers but in finding reasons to make themselves feel better about what they want to believe.

After all, a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs.

David recognized that’s exactly what was happening in his conversation. So after the kid fired off another objection, David decided to end the charade and cut right to the heart. He said, “You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?”

All the blood drained from the kid’s face. He was caught. He just stood there speechless. He was rejecting God because he didn’t like God’s morality, and he was disguising it with alleged intellectual objections.

This young man wasn’t the first atheist or agnostic to admit that his desire to follow his own agenda was keeping him out of the Kingdom. In the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul revealed this tendency we humans have to “suppress the truth” about God in order to follow our own desires. In other words, unbelief is more motivated by the heart than the head. Some prominent atheists have admitted this.

Atheist Julian Huxley, grandson of “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Huxley, famously said many years ago that the reason he and many of his contemporaries “accepted Darwinism even without proof, is because we didn‘t want God to interfere with our sexual mores.”

Professor Thomas Nagel of NYU more recently wrote, “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.”

Certainly the new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have problems with cosmic authority. Hitchens refuses to live under the “tyranny of a divine dictatorship.” Dawkins calls the God of the Bible a “malevolent bully” (among other things) and admits that he is “hostile to religion.”

It’s not that Hitchens and Dawkins offer any serious examination and rebuttal of the evidence for God. They misunderstand and dismiss hundreds of pages of metaphysical argumentation from Aristotle, Aquinas and others and fail to answer the modern arguments from the beginning and design of the universe. (Dawkins explanation for the extreme design of the universe is “luck.”)

Instead, as any honest reader of their books will see, Hitchens and Dawkins are outraged at the very thought of God. Even their titles scream out contempt (god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and The God Delusion). They don’t seem to realize that their moral outrage presupposes an objective moral standard that exists only if God exists. Objective morality—as well as the immaterial laws of reason and science—cannot exist in the materialist universe they attempt to defend.

In effect, they have to borrow from a theistic worldview in order to argue against it. They have to sit in God’s lap to slap his face.

While both men are very good writers, Hitchens and Dawkins are short on evidence and long on attitude. As I mentioned in our debate, you can sum up Christopher’s attitude in one sentence: “There is no God, and I hate him.”

Despite this, God’s attitude as evidenced by the sacrifice of Christ is: There are atheists, and I love them. "

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Walker — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:25:13 GMT

I agree with you. We are all capable of evil. In fact, we are born with the capacity for it. I am just presenting info about the evil that is happening NOW in the name of Allah, even by some muslims who CLAIM to be moderate. This guy actually created a TV network to create a positive, moderate image of muslims. Pretty ironic.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Angie P. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:25:16 GMT

look like one of the post is gone.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Angie P. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:24:31 GMT

I think we already have people running for the gov't with different religions. Mormons, Jewish, etc. is one of it. I'll tell you one thing, people will not vote a extremist of any religion. Rabbi, priestess, etc. are all label as extremist. Why do you think people have never voted for the constitutional party (or Alan Keyes for president) ?

The real question, Do you think we should make Sharia law part of our laws?

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Angie P. — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:47:00 GMT

you know, I almost thought about becoming a muslim. I was sort of what people call it "church shopping", but it didn't mean My heart was into muslim faith. Because I didn't believe in Christ at one time, beliefnet.com have match my beliefs to muslims, Jehovah Witness, Mormons, etc.

I thought, hmmm, I wonder about muslim... Almost got into it as well as Jehovah Witness but I had a change of heart (I've decided to try Noahide instead)

My point is, Just because someone say they are a muslim doesn't always mean they will kill. I know some muslim have threatened death in the name of their religion, but so have christians and MANY MANY other religions (even buddism, I can send some link on that too) Even Atheists if most of the population were atheists. The risk of some crazy guy killing the name of Atheists would be just as high just like many other religions. Right now the the population of atheists is really low so that's why it's rare. It all come down to it that there will always be some crazy person roaming around the Earth :D.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Walker — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:59:25 GMT

"Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband — an influential member of the local Muslim community — reported her death to police Thursday.

Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives have charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder.

"He came to the police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead," Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning.

Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers went to that location and discovered her body.

Muzzammil Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light.

The killing apparently occurred some time late Thursday afternoon. Detectives still are looking for the murder weapon.

"Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible," Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said today.

Authorities say Aasiya Hassan recently had filed for divorce from her husband.

"She had an order of protection that had him out of the home as of Friday the 6th [of February]," Benz said.

Muzzammil Hassan was arraigned before Village Justice Deborah Chimes and sent to the Erie County Holding Center."

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Walker — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:34:04 GMT

Muslim mob attacks Jewish center in Toronto

Thomas Lifson
Something approaching open season for attacks on Jews appears to be in force in Toronto. On the campus of York University, a Muslim mob attacked the Hillel House, pounding on the door and yelling antisemitic slogans. Unbelievably, according to this account in YNet, the police demanded that the center itself close down -- punishing the innocent and achieving the goal of the mob. The website Mere Rhetoric commented:

This is the same country where it's in-bounds to compare Jews to -- but where the same charge leveled against these genuine modern-day would end with a trip to the Star Chamber. And it's the exact same city where calls to wipe Israel off the planet are treated as mere anti-Zionism.

Considering the degree to which Canadian "Human Rights Commissions" have attempted to persecute Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant for noting the contents of the Koran, the lack of attention to chilling mobs and their facilitators is startling.

--------------------

Now I know these people don't represent every Muslim out there, but boy, we sure see a lot of this stuff. Haven't heard a statement from the moderate muslims in Toronto either. Surely it is coming soon.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Angie P. — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:18:13 GMT

I think people should just have their own private prayer group anywhere they want to pray . yes, even in gov't buildings (remember, everything is own by the gov't, even our own property... don't believe me, watch what happen when you don't pay your property tax). If you ask me, I think we should focus on written gov't documents. That the paper itself should not favor or restrict prayers. Not the employees who work for the gov't. They are citizens like you and me who may or may not want to pray with their co-workers. kinda like a christian club at school, allowing anyone who is a christian (or discuss christianity as long as they don't mind the prayers and such) to join.

And the gov't should not restrict freedom of speech and religion. You can make the most secular prayer as possible, but that's discriminate the christians who believe Christ is the only way and truth. They don't believe in blending in their religions with others. Remember the prayer in school? They tried to make it secular too:

http://atheism.about.com/od/churchstatedecisions/a/EngelVitale.htm :

"The State Board of Regents, which had supervisory power over New York public schools, had become concerned about an apparent decline in the morality of school students and so began a program of “moral and spiritual training” in the schools. This program included a prayer every morning which the Regents themselves had composed in a nondenominational form. Labeled the “To whom it may concern” prayer by one commentator, it stated:

Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country."

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

lilang — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:39:01 GMT

I agree completely. We had better wake up and start inviting God and Jesus into our prayers, especially in regards to government issues. This country is going to pot quickly and it has a lot to do with our wishy-washy beliefs or for some non-beliefs. Christians need to take a stand and be counted. If you don't want to pray or if it offends you to hear the name of Jesus then tone it out. I can't tell you how many times I have to listen to people taking God's name in vain and I may tell them that it offends me but I don't tell them that they don't have the right to curse. They are paving their own way to Hell and don't need my help getting there. God bless the USA and if the name Jesus bothers you then too bad because God and Jesus are the same and if you worship another god (little g) then I hope your god can save you when you need him or her or it.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Dave Hanson — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:16:26 GMT

Hmmm. Maybe we are beginning to agree on some things. I also disdain fascism. And I wish more Muslims would publically condemn terrorism. Perhaps moderate Islamic state leaders and Muslim organization spokespersons see that as "poking a mad dog." I'm not sure verbally condemning terrorists is the way to combat them anyway. Did denouncing Hitler, Stalin or Mao have any effect on them? The way to defeat terrorism is to (a) cut off its financial support and (b) improve the socioeconomic conditions that breed new recriits. Meanwhile we need to (c) protect our homeland.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Walker — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:02:22 GMT

My disdain is for Islamo-Fascism, which is the root cause. My last post simply was request that moderate muslims become more vocal and visible, transparent. That's all. There needs to be a respected Islamic group to emerge. CAIR is not the answer, they are part of the problem. Muslims who disagree with Islamo-Fascism need to get together and be heard. That's all I am saying.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Dave Hanson — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 02:50:48 GMT

Walker, you seem unable to see the distinction between Islam as a religion--that began over 1,400 years ago and peacefully co-existed for most of history with Christians and Jews, embraced by over a billion people today--and the actions of a tiny percentage of people who do indefensible crimes in the name of Allah. They do these things for reasons that are not religious: land that is contested, wealth (or the lack of it), political power (or powerlessness), brainwashing and manipulation by coprrupt clergy and governments.... You are totally justified in your hatred of terrorism. It is a sentiment you and I share. As you know, I take 9/11 very seriously and personally, but I do not consider it to be a Muslim act. I don't have a problem with Islam, or Muslims who are true to their faith, and I wish more was being done to rid the planet of terrorists and the conditions that breed them. Hating Islam serves no purpose, in my opinion.

Re: Does prayer have a place in government meetings?

Walker — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:06:48 GMT

Interesting to note that the FBI just halted any contact with CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations). CAIR is purported to be a "moderate" Islamic organization. The FBI has decided NOT to have any ties with them because CAIR has been named (a LONG time ago) as an un-indicted co-conspirator to many terrorist organizations, including HAMAS.

Where can we find a respected, moderate, PEACEful Muslim group who DOESN'T give money to people trying to kill us? As I said before, ACTIONS speak louder than words.

You keep on telling me you are peaceful and that we have nothing to fear. Okay, fine, stop sending money to Hezbollah and Hamas. Stop sending your children to the middle east for Jihad. Stop killing your daughters because they want freedom.

When protesting your new country's loyalty to Israel, don't shout "You need to go back to the OVENS," or whatever disgusting anti-semitic thing you said. (How can you, at once, DENY the holocaust, yet use it to berate the fictional victims? Odd logic.)

SPEAK out when these horrid Islamo-Fascist groups claim to kill for Allah. We can't hear you.

----------

I always find it humorous when I see that bumper sticker that says, COEXIST, with all of the religious symbols on it. Which religion is the one that seems most intent on destroying the others? Which of them actually MURDERS homosexuals with ZERO consequence?

I know, Hanson, these views of mine only come from MY own limited view of the world and its history. I certainly haven't read EVERYTHING on the subject, nor have I lived it. But, I trust my eyes and ears. I know silence when I see it.

Truly peaceful and moderate Muslims need to stand up and make themselves heard!