Showing posts with label uk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uk. Show all posts

Wednesday 21 May 2014

Abu Hamza is gone, but Britain is still a hotbed of radical hatred

Britain: The real threat to our security is not Vladimir Putin or Chinese cyber-warriors, but the new breed of jihadists
 
The one thing you can count on when dealing with Islamist extremists who freely ply their trade from the sanctuary of the British Isles is that they are fully aware of their human and legal rights. Whether it is through the useful advice provided by civil liberties activists – who more often than not are funded at British taxpayers’ expense – or the result of studying al-Qaeda’s manual on waging judicial jihad against the West, the leaders of British-based Islamist groups know only too well how to protect themselves against unwelcome scrutiny of their activities.
The extensive support network available to terrorists such as the Egyptian-born Abu Hamza al-Masri would certainly help to explain how the radical cleric from north London managed to avoid extradition to America for a decade or more, thereby making a mockery of British justice, as well as undermining the efforts of successive British governments to protect the public from attack.
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The life sentence that is likely to be imposed on Abu Hamza in September will symbolise the end of a generation of British-based Islamist radicals who openly rejoiced in the horrors of the September 11 attacks in 2001. But it is unlikely that this will deter the modern breed of jihadists, who arguably pose far more of a threat to our national security than Abu Hamza ever did.
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Tuesday’s conviction of a 31-year-old Portsmouth man for attending a terrorist training camp in Syria shows how seriously the security authorities are treating this challenge. A number of other suspects, including Moazzem Begg, the former Guantanamo detainee and darling of BBC current affairs programmes, are now awaiting trial on similar charges. Add to this all the other radical Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, that are using Britain as a base from which to campaign for the overthrow of pro-Western regimes – often through the use of violence – in countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and you get some idea of the scale of the security nightmare our hitherto tolerant approach to Islamist extremism has created.

Read the full article: Abu Hamza is gone, but Britain is still a hotbed of radical hatred
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Wednesday 23 April 2014

Problems attracting and maintaining worshippers

 The urgency to reach people with the Gospel can,
if the church is not faithful and watchful,
tempt us to subvert the Gospel by redefining its terms.

 We are not honest if we do not admit that the current cultural context
raises the cost of declaring the Gospel on its own terms.

 

Jim Hinch writes:


The exteriors of Crystal Cathedral. Garden Gro...
The exteriors of Crystal Cathedral. Garden Grove, CA, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Just 10 years ago, evangelical Christianity appeared to be America’s dominant religious movement. Evangelicals, more theologically diverse and open to the secular world than their fundamentalist brethren, with whom they’re often confused, were on the march toward political power and cultural prominence. They had the largest churches, the most money, influential government lobbyists, and in the person of President George W. Bush, leadership of the free world itself. Indeed, even today most people continue to regard the United States as the great spiritual exception among developed nations: a country where advances in science and technology coexist with stubborn, and stubbornly conservative, religiosity. But the reality, largely unnoticed outside church circles, is that evangelicalism is not only in gradual decline but today stands poised at the edge of a demographic and cultural cliff.

The most recent Pew Research Center survey of the nation’s religious attitudes, taken in 2012, found that just 19 percent of Americans identified themselves as white evangelical Protestants—five years earlier, 21 percent of Americans did so. Slightly more (19.6 percent) self-identified as unaffiliated with any religion at all, the first time that group has surpassed evangelicals. (It should be noted that surveying Americans’ faith lives is notoriously difficult, since answers vary according to how questions are phrased, and respondents often exaggerate their level of religious commitment. Pew is a nonpartisan research organization with a track record of producing reliable, in-depth studies of religion. Other equally respected surveys—Gallup, the General Social Survey—have reached conclusions about Christianity’s status in present-day America that agree with Pew’s in some respects and diverge in others.)

Secularization alone is not to blame for this change in American religiosity. Even half of those Americans who claim no religious affiliation profess belief in God or claim some sort of spiritual orientation. Other faiths, like Islam, perhaps the country’s fastest-growing religion, have had no problem attracting and maintaining worshippers. No, evangelicalism’s dilemma stems more from a change in American Christianity itself, a sense of creeping exhaustion with the popularizing, simplifying impulse evangelical luminaries such as Schuller once rode to success.
California's Crystal Cathedral, now Christ Cathedral (Photo by Wikipedia user Nepenthes)


Continue reading: Where Are the People? -
Evangelical Christianity in America is losing its power—what happened to Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral shows why

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Thursday 6 March 2014

Muslim Grooming (Rape) Gangs and Sharia

It’s the rape jihad epidemic via Sonia Bailley: Grooming Gangs and Sharia.

Muslims groups around the world are crying Islamophobia and playing the victim card as horrific Islamic-motivated crimes, such as grooming and rape-gangs, rage on with impunity throughout the Western world, especially in Europe. Rape or grooming gangs, which are almost entirely Muslim, are committing a crime that is religiously mandated in Islamic doctrine.
Muslim grooming gangs have been operating unchallenged in Europe for over 20 years, especially in the UK, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and France. These widespread and highly organized gangs continue to rape and pimp non-Muslim underage schoolgirls who are used as sex slaves and sometimes tortured or killed. Just recently, in mid-2013, British police arrested 45 mostly Muslim men (mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in West Yorkshire belonging to the largest grooming gang uncovered in the UK.
Throughout Europe, gang members are being described as “Asians”, and not Muslim. Governments, police forces, social services, childcare agencies, the mainstream media, and even academics fear being falsely accused by leftists and Muslim groups of Islamophobia or “racism” if they were to publicly identify the gangs as Muslim. In Britain, a detailed and comprehensive report will be issued next year illustrating the failure of the government to stop Muslim grooming gangs.


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Thursday 17 October 2013

Christadelphian Auxiliary Lecturing Society in changed times

It has been many years since the Christadelphian Auxiliary Lecturing Society (CALS or ALS) was set up to help the Brethren and Sisters of the UK preach the good news of the kingdom of God. As you may know it's current structure includes a Management committee (Mancom) coordinating and financing preaching throughout the UK and a number of branches (preaching areas) with their own committees coordinating and financing preaching in their own areas in the UK, see the ALS diary for more details.

While it is still the firm desire of the CALS to continue to support preaching in the UK, times have changed enormously since the CALS was established, attitudes have changed towards religion, the UK is a very different place culturally and the advancements of technology mean that the production of leaflets and preaching resources that used to be beyond the capabilities of most Brethren and Sisters and Ecclesias can often be done on a personal computer.

Christadelphian Hall in Bath/England
Christadelphian Hall in Bath/England (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Therefore we the CALS are considering how we can best serve the UK Brotherhood in the future and Want Your Input, to this end we have put together the below survey and very much want you and as many Brethren and Sisters to complete it, so please fill in the survey and pass on this message.

Click on the following link for the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X36MHJR

May God be with you and may He continue to bless us with the freedom to preach His word.

Until He Comes.

Your Brother In Christ

Steve Harris

On behalf of the CALS Management Committee
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Thursday 9 June 2011

Bible exhibition

From June 20-25, the Christadelphian Hall, in Grosvenor Road, Coventry shall bring a major exhibition celebrating 400 years of the King James Bible.The show illustrates the origins, history and message of the bible using modern technology, as well as several historical pieces. The exhibition also contains audio-visual material, interactive computer programmes and competitions for children.