UK Red Cross Bans Christmas in Shops
Friday, December 17, 2010 08:26 AM
Christmas has been banned by the Red Cross from its 430 fund-raising shops in the United Kingdom, according to a MailOnline report. After staff members were directed to remove any other signs of the Christian holiday, there followed criticism from both Christians and Moslems.Christine Banks, a volunteer at a Red Cross shop in Kent, said: 'We put up a nativity scene in the window and were told to take it out. It seems we can't have anything that means Christmas. We're allowed to have some tinsel but that's it. When we send cards they have to say season's greetings or best wishes. They must not be linked directly to Christmas.'
When we asked we were told it is because we must not upset Moslems.'Banks added: ' We have been instructed that we can't say anything about Christmas and we certainly can't have a Christmas tree."
My Question: Will the Red Cross soon have to change their name so as not to upset the Moslems?
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19 comments:
Since that story you reference is 8 years old and they haven't changed their name yet, I kind of doubt they will now. Btw, the UK Red Cross disagrees with Ms. Banks.
The Mail reports that it was "Yesterday" that "officials at the charity's London HQ confirmed that Christmas is barred from the 430 shops which contributed more than £20million to its income last year. 'The Red Cross is a neutral organisation and we don't want to be aligned with any political party or particular philosophy,' a spokesman said.
It also reported that five years ago the Red Cross HQ in Switzerland actually considered changing their symbol but gave it up after being ridiculed.
Keep in mind that the war with Islam is not over; in fact, it's just heating up.
What is disgusting here is it looks like every RW blogger picked this story up as it being what is going on today. Dave, this story is 8 years old. Be better than these RW bloggers and do a little research on the matter. Find the sites that show this to be an old story and stop relying on your brother to point you in the right direction.
Tom, this story didn't come from a right wing blog. It came from the News section of the December 20, 2010, online edition of the UK Daily Mail. Perhaps the Daily Mail is a purveyer of right wing ideology, but that only fits with the analysis of the media you sent me the other day.
the full name of the "Red Cross" is "International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies". They did consider adding a third symbol, but decided against it since it was thought it would be taken as a reflection of the movie, The Dark Chrsytal. I am not familiar with that movie.
The December 20, 2010 is the date on the web page, but not the article itself. The Sangrette immigration camp reference is the give away to when the article was actually written. Google y our blog headline and you will see the RW bloggers all picked this up on the 17th. How could they if the article did not come out until today? Don't believe me? Try this.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2596703.stm
Clearly dated.
Tom, once again you are missing the point. What does it matter when the story first broke? The fact is, I just read about it today in the Mail. And the point is, we are in a war with Islam for control of the West, and this story is only one more example of how western instiutions have been submitting to the will of Islam in a variety of ways for many years now. The Red Cross story, whether it was dated yesterday or eight years ago, is merely a manifestation of a long retreat from the values, beliefs, and traditions that have defined--indeed, made possible--western civilization as we know it.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is the world's largest humanitarian organization, providing assistance without discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinions.
They say they have never allowwed religious displays, Christian or Islam. The fact that some lady put up a display, most likely on her own, and was told to take it down means nothing. It sure doesn't mean what you think it means. Fine a better example to make your war case. Or do you think the red cross is a religious symbol in itself" Cuz it ain't. It's the reverse of the Swiss flag.
I give to the Baltimore chapter of the RC every year and they send me a card saying happy holidays. Most people have no problem with that.
and the fact that is 8 years old should make a difference to you!!!!
History of the Swiss flag: The region of Schwyz in central Switzerland, one of the three founding members of the Old Swiss Confederacy, and the one, whose name was later in history used to denote the confederacy as a whole, was granted immediacy in 1240 and carried a red flag from the middle of the 13th century on (yet still without the white cross). In 1289 they supported King Rudolf of Habsburg in a war against Burgundy and received as a recognition the right to represent the crucifixion of Christ and the tools used to torture him in the upper right field on their flag. Originally they painted this symbol on parchment and fastened it on the banner. Only later the cross symbol was painted directly on the banner.
There may be a religious connotation to the Swiss flag, but it was never meant for the RC flag, yet it was and hence they finally granted the crescent.
The fact remains you took an 8 year old article, did no fact checking on it, and tried to impugn an organization that actually does pretty good work and is accepted by most civilized nations. You and about a zillion other conservative bloggers.
Tom, the events may have happened eight years ago; I don't know and I don't care. The fact is, the article detailing the events appears in today's Daily Mail as a current story. No, I don't fact check every article I read on an online news source. If I did that, I wouldn't have time to live my life. Besides, it's the event that I was interested in, not when it occurred, which is irrelevant to my central point--one that you seem to willingly ignore. Instead you quibble over these subsidiary matters. And furthermore, I did not and would not impugn the work of the Red Cross. I think it is a praiseworthy organization. But that doesn't do away with the reality that it is subject to the pressures of political correctness as they relate to Islam.
My question to you is, do you or do you not believe that Islam (as an ideology, not every single Muslim) is fundamentally at war with the West?
No
Don't Gloss Over The Violent Texts
By Tawfik Hamid
In regards to Islam, the words "moderate'" and "radical" are relative terms. Without defining them it is virtually impossible to defeat the latter or support the former.
Radical Islam is not limited to the act of terrorism; it also includes the embrace of teachings within the religion that promote hatred and ultimately breed terrorism. Those who limit the definition of radical Islam to terrorism are ignoring—and indirectly approving of—the Shariah teachings that permit killing apostates, violence against women and gays, and anti-Semitism.
Moderate Islam should be defined as a form of Islam that rejects these violent and discriminatory edicts. Furthermore, it must provide a strong theological refutation for the mainstream Islamic teaching that the Muslim umma (nation) must declare wars against non-Muslim nations, spreading the religion and giving non-Muslims the following options: convert, pay a humiliating tax, or be killed. This violent concept fuels jihadists, who take the teaching literally and accept responsibility for applying it to the modern world.
Moderate Islam must not be passive. It needs to actively reinterpret the violent parts of the religious text rather than simply cherry-picking the peaceful ones. Ignoring, rather than confronting or contextualizing, the violent texts leaves young Muslims vulnerable to such teachings at a later stage in their lives.
Finally, moderate Islam must powerfully reject the barbaric practices of jihadists. Ideally, this would mean Muslims demonstrating en masse all over the world against the violence carried out in the name of their religion.
Moderate Islam must be honest enough to admit that Islam has been used in a violent manner at several stages in history to seek domination over others. Insisting that all acts in Islamic history and all current Shariah teachings are peaceful is a form of deception that makes things worse by failing to acknowledge the existence of the problem.
Mr. Hamid, a former member of the Islamic radical group Jamma Islamiya, is an Islamic reformer and a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
Why is the USA allowing a former terrorist to run around the country?
Since we have had this discussion before and I thought we had agreed to disagree I have no desire to repeat it. I am sure if I was so inclined I could find all sorts of stuff on verses in the bible that can be interpreted in such a way that someone thinks it is ok to kill abortion doctors or jews, or arabs.
In December 2012 the truth shall be known by all.
Tom, your search in the Bible will be in vain. Such statements are not there. The Koran, on the other hand, is full of such stuff.
What happens in December 2012?
"Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." Shakespeare
As for 2012; Let's hope we are still around then to find out.
December 23, 2010
Islamists’ War against ‘the Other’
Nine Shea
Since 2004, a relentless wave of Islamist terrorist attacks targeting Iraq’s indigenous Christians has prompted that group to flee en masse. At the time of Saddam Hussein’s fall, the number of Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian Orthodox, Armenians, Syriacs, and other Christians in Iraq was estimated at 1.4 million. Half of these Christians have since fled, and some observers speculate that this may well be the last Christmas in Iraq for the half remaining. In fact, it’s not just the Christian community that faces existential threats, and it is not just in Iraq. Every one of the indigenous religious communities evoked by the nativity story is disappearing from the region’s Muslim-majority countries.
Religious demographics are kept as state secrets in the Muslim Middle East, and most of those countries’ governments have not conducted a census in decades. Still, while the data are soft, it is established that Christians are by far the largest remaining non-Muslim group, and that they are clustered principally in Egypt, Iraq, and the Levant. It is estimated that they number no more than 15 million, a minute fraction of the region’s overall population. Lebanese scholar Habib Malik writes that these Christians are in a state of “terminal regional decline.”
The majority are Egypt’s Copts, numbering between 8 and 12 million. A year ago, Coptic worshippers were massacred during a Christmas Eve attack on their church in Naga Hammadi in southern Egypt, and several Coptic villages have been targeted by pogrom-like mob violence. In recent decades, Lebanon’s Christians have seen a sharp drop in their numbers, down from the majority there to one-third of the population, about 1.5 million. Syria has about 1 million; Jordan, about 185,000. The West Bank has about 50,000, and Gaza, 1,000 to 3,000. In Turkey, the site of Constantinople, which was the center of Byzantine Christianity from the 4th to the 15th century, some 100,000 Christians remain, less than 0.2 percent of the population. Iran counts about 300,000 Christians. Not all those who have fled from Iraq have left the region. About 60,000 have found refuge in Syria, for example. However, their presence is tenuous: They are barred from working and aid from abroad is scarce; some of the women have turned to prostitution, according to the Chaldean Catholic bishop of Aleppo, Antoine Audo, SJ.
The Persian Gulf region and northern Africa have long since been “cleansed” of their indigenous Christian churches. Native Christians — mostly evangelicals, probably numbering in the thousands — worship largely in secret; Saudi Arabia has only one publicly known native Christian, the oft-imprisoned and extremely courageous Hamoud Saleh Al-Amri. Foreign workers, including over a million Christians, now living in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are denied rights of citizenship and, in the former, even the right to have churches. Morocco summarily deported scores of foreign Christian educators and social workers last spring.
The other religions have contracted even more sharply in the Muslim Middle East. Since the establishment of the state of Israel, some of the region’s Jews voluntarily left Muslim-majority countries; but as many as 850,000 of them, such as the Jews of Baghdad sixty years ago, were driven out, forced to leave land and possessions behind, by freelance terror and government policies. The parts of Iraq, Egypt, and Yemen that had been great Jewish centers since Old Testament times now have Jewish populations numbering in single, double, and triple digits, respectively. Estimates of Morocco’s native Jewish community, now the largest in the Arab Middle East, range from 2,000 to 6,000. Iran is home to 20,000 or so Jews. Turkey has 25,000.
(continued)
(Continuation from previous post)
Zoroastrians, based on the plains of Iran since their religion’s founding somewhere between 1800 and 1500 b.c. by the devotional poet Zarathustra, are estimated to number between 45,000 and 90,000. Iran scholar Jamsheed Choksy has documented (see “Religious Cleansing in Iran,” by Nina Shea and Jamsheed K. Choksy, July 22, 2009) a “steady decline through emigration away from Iran since the Islamic Republic’s intolerance toward minorities began in 1979.” Iran’s largest non-Muslim community is the Baha’i, founded after Islam in Shiraz, in southeastern Iran, and severely repressed as a heresy; Baha’is in Iran number about 350,000. Non-Muslim communities collectively have diminished to no more than 2 percent of Iran’s 71 million people.
Yezidis, who draw upon Zoroastrian beliefs, are found in northern Iraq; hundreds of thousands of them have fled in recent years, leaving half a million still in their native land. Sabean Mandeans, mostly based in Baghdad and Basra, are down to one-tenth of their pre-2003 population of 50,000.
In past centuries, Islamic conversion by the sword and pressures under the grossly discriminatory dhimmi system took their toll on the Middle East’s “People of the Book” (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians). Now, factors such as lower birth rates, and emigration because of conflict at home and economic opportunities abroad, are commonly offered to explain these communities’ accelerating decline. Less plausibly, the region’s rulers, Western academics — many of whom they fund outright or otherwise provide inducements to — and religious leaders they essentially hold hostage also blame Zionism.
But the leading, and most obvious factor, one that was on full display during the Baghdad church massacre this October is rarely openly acknowledged or discussed: that is, the rise of extremist Islamist movements and the fact that most of the region’s governments finance, sympathize with, or appease them, or are too weak to keep them under control.
The fact that within the Muslim Middle East indigenous non-Muslim religious communities across the spectrum — Christians of every denomination, Jews, Zoroastrians, Sabean Mandeans, Yezidis, Baha’is — are all rapidly heading toward extinction, while Muslim sects flourish in the same areas, points to this underlying phenomenon of Islamic radicalism.
Fouad Ajami eloquently put it this way: “The Islamists are doubtless a minority in the world of Islam. But they are a determined breed. Their world is the Islamic emirate, led by self-styled ‘emirs and mujahedeen in the path of God’ and legitimized by the pursuit of the caliphate that collapsed with the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1924. These masters of terror and their foot soldiers have made it increasingly difficult to integrate the world of Islam into modernity. . . . But the borders these warriors of the faith have erected between Islam and ‘the other’ are particularly forbidding. The lands of Islam were the lands of a crossroads civilization, trading routes and mixed populations. The Islamists have waged war, and a brutally effective one it has to be conceded, against that civilizational inheritance.”
Dave, giving me articles written by evangelical RW neocons won't do. I am aware there are verses in the Koran that can be interpreted as one sees fit. I am aware the Koran says come make war on us then we will make war on you. Well, we are in Iraq, were in Kuwait, and we do prop up all these governemnts over there. heck, Bush even held hands with them. You, I'm sure, interpret the bible differently than the Catholics or protstants or jews don't you? Same happens with Islam.
Anyway, if you want to debate this further then give me some verses from the Koran that from your interpretation offends you the most and challenge me to present a different view of that interpretation. Neocons like Ms. Shea and charletons like Hamid tell me nothing I don't already know. One thing from Ms. Shea's article; when she talks about the Coptic murders in Egypt, she seems to leave out that it appeared to be a revenge killing from the rape of a 14 year old Muslim girl by a Christian. That does not make it right, but even Christians sometimes go off the deep end and perform revenge killings. Guy flies an airplane into the IRS. A guy blows up the federal building in OK City. It happens. Soldiers death and Katrina is because of homosexuality in America.
What is interesting is she never mentions the Koran is telling these people to do any of this. She does make it a point to show these people can't be controlled by the governments, which I can believe because those governments in the middle east are so corrupt.
Tom, you can take pot-shots at the messengers, but that doesn't mean their message is false. Once again you are missing the point. I have put numerous passages from the Koran on this blog in the past, so I'm not going to bother doing it again. For the sake of argument, let's say you are right. Let's say that the Koran does not teach that everyone who will not submit to Allah must be destroyed; that it is the mandate and destiny of Islam to dominate the entire earth. And let's say that most Muslims agree with you, that their only grievence with the West is that we have invaded their lands and aggrieved their people.
But you will have to agree that some Muslims believe that. Some believe they must take over the world for Allah, by force if necessary. Now, from what I have read, most so-called experts estimate that about 15% of all Muslims are of this view. Some estimates are as high as 35%. But let's say they are way off and the real number is only 1%. That means there are around 1 million people on this earth who are committed to taking over the world and destroying western civilization. Well, as far as I'm concerned, that's enough to constitute an Islamic war against the West. Even if the number is 1/10 of 1%, that's 100,000 people with ice water running through their veins, who would slice your head off in a second if they had the chance (unless of course you choose to bow the knee to Allah).
So Tom, you need to wake up. First, the Koran does not teach that Muslims should attack only when attacked. And a simple reading of their history proves this to be true. Second, the Islamic crusade to take over the world began in 630 AD when the armies of Muhammed conquered the armies of Mecca, and the only thing that has ever held it back has been superior military might. Read your history books.
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