JANUARY 16, 2016, 11:55 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JANUARY 17, 2016, 10:13 AM
BY ABBOTT KOLOFF AND CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
Two years ago, 1,200 young people wearing bright yellow shirts from churches connected to the World Mission Society Church of God in Ridgewood filled an auditorium to receive emergency response training, prompting Bergen County officials to praise their unbridled enthusiasm, which included a rendition of the wave.
“We love you,” they chanted in return.
Former church members say they, too, were overflowing with love when they joined the church, but at some point saw another side to a rapidly growing religion rooted in a belief that a South Korean woman in her 70s is the physical manifestation of God. These ex-members — from New Jersey as well as other parts of the country — offered similar, independent accounts of being lured into the church, slowly at first, without being told all of its beliefs, then frightened into devotion and donating large portions of their savings by talk of the impending end of the world — in 2012.
Some of them, as well as several experts, have gone so far as to call the church a cult.
Leaders of the Ridgewood church, an offshoot of the South Korean World Mission Society Church of God, which boasts more than 2 million followers worldwide, responded to its critics by saying in statements to The Record that the label “cult” is a form of “religious intolerance” used to denigrate groups with “certain views that are contrary to the norm.” They denied preaching that the world would end four years ago.
And in a court filing, they said their “unfamiliar beliefs,” which include devotion to Zahng Gil-Jah, or the Heavenly Mother, left them “vulnerable to persecution as any new religion throughout history.” They called accusations made against them “fabrications.”
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA Invites all American Muslims to endorse campaign
January 6,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, the nation’s single largest Muslim organization, is launching an unprecedented and comprehensive campaign to separate True Islam from extremism. The True Islam and the Extremists campaign educates Americans and Muslim Americans on the peaceful, anti-extremist teachings of Islam by clarifying 11 of the most common misconceptions extremists use to radicalize youth.
With President Obama making a renewed call to root out extremist ideology by partnering with American Muslims, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community responds by further elevating our century-long efforts. To that end, the Community has extended invitations to over 2,100 Muslim American Imams and thought leaders to endorse the Campaign to demonstrate True Islam and advance this proven model to combat extremism.
Our most recent scientific survey conducted in Fall 2015 by YouGov indicates an urgent need to educate Muslim Americans on true Islam. For example, while true Islam backs free speech, 52% of Muslim Americans believe the state or someone from society should punish those who blaspheme against or insult Prophet Muhammad. Likewise, while Prophet Muhammad taught that loyalty to one’s nation of residence is part of a Muslim’s faith, only 52% of Muslim Americans believe Islam always requires loyalty to your country of residence. Moreover, while true Islam teaches separation of mosque and state, only about one in three Muslim Americans or 32% believe Islam supports separation of mosque and state. In contrast, 40% said it does not while 28% were unsure. Perhaps most concerning, 18% of Muslim Americans did not agree or declined to answer when asked whether true Islam condemns every form of terrorism. (7% and 12%, respectively).
Meanwhile, Muslim Americans express frustration at inconsistent Muslim leadership in the ideological fight against terrorism. A 2011 Pew survey reports that only 34 percent of Muslim Americans felt Muslim leaders have done enough to speak out against extremism. The same survey found that nearly half or 48 percent of Muslim Americans feel Muslim American leadership has not adequately addressed terrorism.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA believes that education of all Americans—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—is the solution to remedy this misinformation about true Islam and in the best interest of our national security. Since 1920, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA has worked with local, state, and national governments, with interfaith organizations, and with other Muslim organizations with a proven model to combat radicalization and terrorism in America.
“The Muslim American community is a diverse and vibrant community, and we may not necessarily agree on certain dogmatic beliefs,” said Dr. Nasim Rehmatullah, Senior Vice President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. “Our purpose here is not to debate dogma, but to recognize the common enemy of ignorance, fear, and extremism that harms all Americans regardless of belief. Our purpose is to stand united against extremism for the sake of peace and true Islam. On this tenet of justice, we look forward to working with all Muslim Americans and indeed all Americans to win this ideological war against extremism.”
The True Islam campaign rejects the notion that the “original” Islam is a violent ideology, and that reconciling Islam with modern values requires an “Islam 2.0.” Through the True Islam campaign, we seek to inform Americans (particular the youth) of the correct Islamic understanding—as taught by the Holy Qur’an and the
Prophet Muhammad—of the following eleven points:
True Islam wholly rejects all forms of terrorism.
True Islam believes in nonviolent Jihad of the self and of the pen.
True Islam believes in the equality, education, and empowerment of women.
True Islam advocates freedom of conscience, religion, and speech.
True Islam advocates for the separation of mosque and state.
True Islam believes in loyalty to your country of residence.
True Islam encompasses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
True Islam believes in all verses of the Qur’an and forbids lying.
True Islam recognizes that no religion can monopolize salvation.
True Islam believes in the need for unified Muslim leadership.
True Islam rejects the concept of a bloody Messiah.
The True Islam campaign demonstrates with action and a proven model that no conflict exists between American and Islamic values. It educates the public and combats radicalization in both Muslim and non-Muslim Americans, which strengthens national security. The Campaign will be publicized through press conferences, flyer distributions, meetings with members of local, state, and federal government, opinion editorials, television and radio interviews, interfaith dialogues, public lectures, university hosted debates, and the public invitation to all Americans and Muslim Americans to join us.
Today, the Muslim American community stands at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple, stark, and clear: will we allow extremists to define Islam as a violent ideology or will we counter their narrative by demonstrating the peaceful, pluralistic teachings of True Islam? We hope you will join us in agreeing that the latter is the only rightly guided path, and look forward to hearing from you. Please find details on how to register your organization at www.trueislam.com and on social media @TrueIslamUSA.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has already exposed a 14 year-old DC Media cover up involving numerous Muslim-American celebrations of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Now, according to a new report, in their never-ending quest to disqualify Trump and make serial-liar Hillary Clinton president, CBS News has apparently been caught red-handed cutting footage from a focus group mediated by Establishment Republican Frank Luntz that shows American Muslims criticizing the United States:
The Intercept:
[I]n interviews with The Intercept, two Muslim Americans who took part in the group complained that CBS edited out parts of the discussion where they raised their own concerns — including critiques of U.S. militarism, surveillance, and entrapment.
They also said that Frank Luntz, the right-wing pollster who led the focus group, silenced members of the group when they criticized discriminatory U.S. government policies.
One woman claimed that she brought up Luntz’s Jewishness:
For example, [Sarah] Harvard wrote that after Luntz asked the group whether they were Americans or Muslims first, she chose to demonstrate the offensive nature of the question by asking, “Well, are you an American or Jewish first?”
From the sound of it, Luntz was far from objective. One participant said:
He kept saying how he felt bad that no one listens to Muslims and how he wanted to give us an opportunity to talk to the general population. But how can that happen when we’re manipulatively edited to have us fit their own narrative and agenda?
According to Ms. Harvard’s own Facebook post, Luntz did not just edit out the inconvenient moments that didn’t fit his desired narrative, he went so far as to silence her when she tore into the American government as a racist institution that has “killed many Muslims.”
He also had silenced me and other participants who have routinely brought up the fact the government has enacted in state violence against the Muslim community — whether that may be through entrapment cases and surveillance programs — and our concerns about institutional racism. He shut me down when I said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton has killed many Muslims under the administration when we were discussing Trump, and ironically for a GOP strategist, he shut me down when I talked about how Democrats have enacted some of the most deadliest and discriminatory policies against Muslims. He also decided to stop letting me speak when I started talking about how Muslims should start focusing on combatting government policies rather than rushing to condemn terrorism or Islamophobia exclusively. They also cut out portions of where participants talked about media accountability when discussing Islam.
“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here … and … around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.’”
So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate.
Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard’s famed Samuel Huntington. His “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” has been described by Zbigniew Brzezinski as providing “quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.”
That Clinton is unaware of the thesis, or dismisses it, does not speak well of the depth of her understanding of our world.
Another attack on Trump, more veiled, came Monday in an “open letter” in The Washington Post where four dozen religious leaders, led by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, charge “some politicians, candidates and commentators” with failing to follow Thomas Jefferson’s dictum:
“I never will, by any word or act … admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.”
Intending no disrespect to Jefferson, if you do not inquire “into the religious opinions of others” in this world, it can get you killed.
“We love our Muslim siblings in humanity,” said the signers of Cardinal McCarrick’s letter, “they serve our communities as doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, journalists, first responders, and as members of the U.S. Armed forces and Congress.”
Undeniably true. But, unfortunately, that is not the end of the matter.
Did the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, 9/11, have nothing to do with the Islamic faith?
Did Fort Hood and the San Bernardino massacres, the London subway bombings and the killings at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the slaughter at the Bataclan in Paris, have nothing to do with Islam?
Does the lengthening list of atrocities by terrorist cells of ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front have nothing to do with Islam? Is it really illiberal to inquire “into the religious opinions” of those who perpetrate these atrocities? Or is it suicidal not to?
There has arisen a legitimate question as to whether Islamism can coexist peacefully with, or within, a post-Christian secular West.
Oldest American Muslim organization responds to President Obama’s call to root out extremist ideology
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, the nation’s oldest Muslim organization, will gather Muslims from across the U.S. in the largest Mosque in San Bernardino County at the end of the month for its 30th annual Jalsa Salana Convention. In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, anti-Muslim backlash felt all across the country and anti-Muslim rhetoric gaining popularity in the presidential campaigns, this convention will confront the fear many have of Islam and delineate between True Islam and extremism.
At the weekend-long convention, Muslim leaders will answer President Obama’s call to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology of groups like ISIS and those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity. In the spirit of partnership, the convention’s doors are open to all guests, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
The event will take place December 26th-28th at the Baitul Hameed Mosque in Chino, California. The three-day conference will include presentations on the following topics, for which subject matter experts are available for interviews:
True Islam – Message of Peace or Extremism
Shariah and Governance in Islam
Role of a Woman in leading the future generation to follow the righteous path
Khilafat (Caliphate) leads to success
Praying to God
Prophet Muhammad as a Mercy for Mankind
Finding Ease after Hardship
Blessings in Serving Mankind
Domestic Harmony
Overcoming impediments that take away from congregational prayer
“We educate our members about true Islam throughout the year, and this will culminate with a strong and unified message at this annual convention,” said Dr. Hamidur Rehman, National Vice President of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. “The world is in a state of turmoil, crying for a solution. We are here to offer that solution and pave a path to its implementation.”
About Ahmadiyya Muslim Community:
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is a dynamic, reformist and fast-growing international revival movement within Islam. Founded in 1889, the Community spans 206 countries with membership exceeding tens of millions. Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, established in 1920, is among the first American-Muslim organizations.
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the only Islamic organization to believe that the long- awaited messiah has come in the person of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) of Qadian, India. Ahmad claimed to be the metaphorical second coming of Jesus of Nazareth and the divine guide, whose advent was foretold by the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. The Community believes that God sent Ahmad, like Jesus, to end religious wars, condemn bloodshed and reinstitute morality, justice and peace. Ahmad’s advent has brought about an unprecedented era of Islamic revival and moderation. He divested Muslims of fanatical beliefs and practices by vigorously championing Islam’s true and essential teachings.
(FOX 11) – A collective of Muslim-American leaders have raised more than $194,000 for the families of those killed in the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
The initiative, called Muslims United for San Bernardino, was launched by Faisal Qazi, president of family-centered organization MiNDS Network and Tarek El-Messidi, founder of Islamic nonprofit CelebrateMercy.
“We wish to respond to evil with good, as our faith instructs us, and send a powerful message of compassion through action,” the founders said in a press release. “Our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said: ‘Have mercy to those on earth, and the One in the Heavens (God) will have mercy upon you.’ And the Quran teaches to ‘Repel evil by that which is better’ (41:34).”
The group initially hoped to raise $50,000, but exceeded that goal within 48 hours. As of Friday evening, $194,273 had been raised.
DECEMBER 4, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2015, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Temple will host ‘Dummies and Dreidels’ on Sunday
A children’s Hanukkah event, run in part by Ridgewood’s Temple Israel, will take place Sunday morning at Temple Beth Shalom in Fair Lawn.
The event, called “Dummies and Dreidels,” will feature family-friendly entertainment and refreshments, according to Rabbi Estelle Mills of Temple Israel.
The program will include a Hanukkah carnival for pre-school and elementary aged school children, a puppet show by a nationally-known Jewish puppeteer and latkes and other foods, Mills said.
The puppeteer, Jonathan Geffner, will be performing with “his wacky, whimsical, wooden sidekicks in the highly acclaimed Maccabee Mishegash Puppet Show,” according to a news release for the event.
OCTOBER 15, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY RODRIGO TORREJON
STAFF WRITER |
FRANKLIN LAKES – OAKLAND SUBURBAN NEWS
Oakland — When leaving home and traveling to an unknown land, there often are myriad reasons why. Freedom. Opportunity. Even survival.
For Sandy Khabbazeh, it was all of the above. Leaving her home in Aleppo, Syria, and her parents and older brother was by no means an easy decision, but it had to be made.
“I would consider myself a strong person because I had a lot of difficulty when I got here,” said Khabbazeh at a panel discussion on the Syrian refugee crisis, held at Ponds Reformed Church on Oct. 6.
The panel discussion was organized so area residents could hear firsthand the dangers and difficulties of being a refugee. Its goals were to elicit their feelings about the crisis and ascertain what they and the government could do to help the refugees.
Khabbazeh is one of the estimated 9.5 million Syrians who have been displaced by the civil war that broke out in 2011. As many as 6.5 million remain internally displaced. Arriving in 2014 on a student visa, Khabbazeh is being hosted by Rev. Nathan S. Busker of Pond’s Church, who moderated the discussion.
“It was about a year ago this month that Sandy knocked on the side door here, where our offices are located, and asked just to come in and pray,” recounted Busker. “From that moment, we began to befriend Sandy and get to know her. In January, she moved in with my family and she’s been there since.”
Upon hearing Khabbazeh and Busker’s story, religious leaders such as Minister Nolan Psalma of Upper Ridgewood Community Church, Imam Mahmoud Hamza of the Muslim Society of Ridgewood and Imam Mohammad Moutaz Charaf of the Elzahara Education Foundation in Midland Park expressed solidarity across religious lines and hoped to help housing refugees through their respective clergies just as Busker has.
The church leaders looked to panelist Robert Pettet, district director for Rep. Scott Garrett (R-5th District), for answers on ways they and their clergies could help, citing the government roadblocks often faced in the sponsorship process.
“If there are folks that come here and are brought here in more than one sponsorship where there’s a group of individuals, it’s not the government’s responsibility, is it?” said Pettet. “It’s ours. Because we are the people.”
While most agreed with personal accountability, no direct answers on the individual sponsorship procedure were offered. Pettet acknowledged his own lack of preparation and emphasized community accountability for the issue. Residents and church leaders pressed the issue, reiterating that their churches are already willing to help.
“I agree with that 100 percent, but if the government doesn’t allow refugees to come, we cannot help,” said Psalma.
While some people are spending as much as $600 a night at hotels for Pope Francis’ highly anticipated visit to Philadelphia, a North Jersey church group is spending less money on a far less luxurious place to stay: the Philadelphia Zoo.
“The zoo makes it a little more down to earth because it’s more like a pilgrimage,” said Melissa Peters, a congregant at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Ridgewood, New Jersey. “We’re not gonna be staying in a hotel room where we have showers or where we have continental breakfasts and things like that. Instead we’re sleeping with animals in order to see the pope.”
Peters and 220 other parents and children from the church will sleep on the floor of the Philly Zoo buildings housing the bird and insect exhibits during the Pope’s visit to Philly for the World Meeting of Families in September.
“A pilgrimage is very different from a vacation or a trip,” said Cathy Hunt, another congregant. “A pilgrimage is a prayer experience and any discomfort that you’ll feel the excitement will be tenfold that.”
Pope Francis asks U.S. bishops to welcome immigrants, take care of priests
Susan Miller and Gregory Korte, USA TODAY6:47 p.m. EDT September 23, 2015
WASHINGTON — Pope Francis urged his fellow American bishops to take care of the spiritual needs of priests and to welcome new immigrants into the United States, gently admonishing them to “flee the temptation of narcissism.”
In a tone more fraternal than scolding, Francis encouraged the bishops as spiritual shepherds but also urged them to confront the issues of the world: The response to abortion, childhood hunger, immigration, the elderly, terrorism are “essential aspects of the Church’s mission,” he said. “It is wrong, then, to look the other way or to remain silent.”
Francis also sought healing for the victims of the priest sexual abuse scandal. “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” he said.
Pope Francis: I am not ‘left-ish’
September 22, 2015, 04:45 pm
By Jesse Byrnes
Shortly before Pope Francis touched down on U.S. soil for the first time on Tuesday, he assured journalists that he is not a liberal, according to reports.
“Some people might say some things sounded slightly more left-ish, but that would be a mistake of interpretation,” Francis said aboard his flight from Cuba to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
“It is I who follows the church … my doctrine on all this … on economic imperialism, is that of the social doctrine of the church,” Francis added,according to Time.
Francis arrived to cheers and chants welcoming him to the U.S. when he landed outside Washington, D.C., where he will address a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, with speculation running rampant about what he might discuss.
The pope shook hands with President Obama, the first lady and their daughters, as well as the vice president and his wife after he landed.
Pope Francis has created political controversy, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, by blaming capitalism for many of the problems of the poor. We can no doubt expect more of the same during his visit to the United States.
Pope Francis is part of a larger trend of the rise of the political left among Catholic intellectuals. He is, in a sense, the culmination of that trend. There has long been a political left among Catholics, as among other Americans. Often they were part of the pragmatic left, as in the many old Irish-run, big-city political machines that dispensed benefits to the poor in exchange for their votes, as somewhat romantically depicted in the movie classic, “The Last Hurrah.” But there has also been a more ideological left. Where the Communists had their official newspaper, the Daily Worker, there was also the Catholic Worker published by Dorothy Day.
A landmark in the evolution of the ideological left among Catholics was a publication in the 1980s, by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, titled “Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy.” Although this publication was said to be based on Catholic teachings, one of its principal contributors, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, said: “I think we should be up front and say that really we took this from the Enlightenment era.”
The specifics of the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter reflect far more of the secular Enlightenment of the 18th century than of Catholic traditions. Archbishop Weakland admitted that such an Enlightenment figure as Thomas Paine “is now coming back through a strange channel.” Strange indeed. Paine rejected the teachings of “any church that I know of,” including “the Roman church.” He said: “My own mind is my own church.“ Nor was Paine unusual among the leading figures of the 18th century Enlightenment.
To base social or moral principles on the philosophy of the 18th-century Enlightenment and then call the result “Catholic teachings” suggests something like bait-and-switch advertising. But, putting aside religious or philosophical questions, we have more than two centuries of historical evidence of what has actually happened as the ideas of people like those Enlightenment figures were put into practice in the real world — beginning with the French Revolution and its disastrous aftermath.
It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Both the authors of the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter in the 1980s, and Pope Francis today, blithely throw around the phrase “the poor,” and blame poverty on what other people are doing or not doing to or for “the poor.“
Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary.
They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak, if his policy prescriptions were not as implausible as his social diagnoses are shrill.
Supporters of Francis have bought newspaper and broadcast advertisements to disseminate some of his woolly sentiments that have the intellectual tone of fortune cookies. One example: “People occasionally forgive, but nature never does.”
The Vatican’s majesty does not disguise the vacuity of this. Is Francis intimating that environmental damage is irreversible? He neglects what technology has accomplished regarding London’s air (see Page 1 of Dickens’ “Bleak House”) and other matters.
The voluntary exchange of goods and services, the essence of capitalism, is the most moral way to organize an economy. (It’s really self organizing mostly.) You give me something I want. I give you something you want. We both walk away better for the transaction.
Whereas socialism, often couched as somehow morally superior to capitalism, is based fundamentally on theft. Be it of wages, time, property etc. It is driven by force. As such it is deeply immoral.
Ask yourself how you would feel if someone walked up to you with a gun and demanded 30% of your wages. The bandit however assures you that the money he takes will go to help people who “need” your money more than you do. You may not however even know how the money which is stolen from you is spent. How would you feel? Would you go to the ATM and just hand the money over knowing that though you were being robbed your money was being given to people who “needed” it? (Probably the robber’s “needy” friends.)
Would you be OK with this? If you are not consider how similar this is to our current crony capitalist/socialist lite system we have in the USA. The only difference is the robber has an officially issued badge when he takes your wages and property.
Of course when someone has a gun it is generally wise to just fork over the money. But it sure isn’t a “moral.” situation.
