The city government of Irving, Texas is standing up and saying sharia law is not going to be legal within the bounds of their city.
A Sunni mosque in Irving had announced earlier this year they were forming an Islamic Tribunal to provide mediation of disputes in the Muslim community according to Sharia Law. Now, the city has passed a resolution backing a Texas House Bill that would forbid the use of “foreign law” to decide issues within the city.
Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne has been the subject of hate from the Muslim community because of her bold stand against Sharia Law.
“As Mayor of the City of Irving, I took an oath to uphold the laws of the State of Texas and the Constitution of the United States,” Duyne wrote earlier this year. “American citizens need to remember that their rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and I believe no one should subjugate themselves to anything less.”
However, she says this new law is not aimed at religion of any kind.
“This bill does not mention at all Muslims, sharia law, Islam, even religion,” Duyne stated.
Duyne said that she would work to fight for anyone whose civil rights is violated in any way by people connected to the “Tribunal”.
Tunisian officials announced that a 23-member terror cell has been arrested in connection with the attack on the Bardo Museum that left 20 tourists and police dead.
All of the members of the jihadist network were Tunisian. Officials say they are looking for another Tunisian, two Moroccans and an Algerian who have connections to the terrorist networks.
The Tunisian man was identified as Maher Ben Mouldi Kaidi, also known as the “third attacker”, that provided the weapons for the terror attack.
The investigators say they have confirmation that the group was connected with Al-Qaeda, not ISIS as originally believed by some investigators. The group was working with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
AQIM had been the segment of the terrorist group that had been in control of much of Mali until French forces drove them out of the major cities and into the mountains.
The 2014 General Social Survey conducted by NORC and the University of Chicago said that while the number of Americans who said they believe in God held steady, the number who are abandoning specific religion at record numbers.
The study showed that 21 percent of Americans say they have no religion compared to just 5 percent in 1972.
The number was higher than a Gallup survey released earlier this year where 16 percent of surveyed Americans said they had no religion.
The GSS found that only 3 percent of respondents said there was no God. At least 58 percent said they have faith in God, 70 percent added they believe in life after death. Five percent of the survey identified as agnostic.
The younger generation showed the biggest increase in those without any religion. One-third of the adults under 30 said they have no religious affiliation.
A Texas woman has been arrested after she threw a bomb at a group of pro-lifers outside a Planned Parenthood abortion center in Austin.
Melanie Toney, 52, faces charges of aggravated assault. Witnesses to the incident were able to capture part of the license plate of Toney’s vehicle and call police with the information.
The attack on the members of 40 Days for Life and Texas Coalition for Life happened around 6 p.m. Monday. Toney reportedly drove slowly up to the group that was praying and then threw the bomb into the group.
“I realized she was throwing something out the window and it was on fire,” Ruth Allwein with 40 Days for Life told local television station KXAN. “It had a lit wick, so my first instinct was to back away, then I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“I ended up coming over and stamping on it, so it was a little bit nerve-racking,” Allwein outlined. “I thought about leaving it alone but then my thought was, ‘What if it explodes, what’s going to happen?’ So I decided it was worth coming back coming back over here and doing something about it.”
The device did not detonate because it landed on a soft, grass covered area rather than sidewalk where it would have exploded.
“We know that many women are hurting from past abortion experiences,” Heather Gardner of Central Texas Coalition for Life told Life News. “One of the ways people sometimes lash out is through anger and violence. We pray for this woman and pray for healing in her heart if she is hurting from a past abortion.”
If some Arkansas legislators have their way, a monument to the Ten Commandments will be placed on the grounds of the state capitol building.
The Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the proposal of Senator Jason Rapert and sent the matter to a full Senate vote.
“The Secretary of State shall permit and arrange for the placement on the State Capitol grounds of a suitable monument commemorating the Ten Commandments,” SB939 reads in part. “The Secretary of State shall arrange for the monument to be designed, constructed, and placed on the State Capitol grounds by private entities at no expense to the State of Arkansas.”
“The placement of the monument under this section shall not be construed to mean that the State of Arkansas favors any particular religion or denomination over others,” it continues.
Senator Rapert says the monument will be modeled after those in Oklahoma and Texas that have been declared Constitutional by the courts.
“I think as part of our state capitol, it would make a nice addition and give a nice honor to the fact that this is a part of the foundation of American jurisprudence,” Rapert stated. “We have room for many more, and we don’t have anything in particular that honored that aspect of the moral foundation of American law.”
A Syrian Christian captured by ISIS that was released after five months said that he had to call his family while he was being electrocuted because the terrorists wanted to force his family to pay a $80,000 ransom.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke with New York Magazine and related his story of torture.
He said that he was in Beirut and returning to Syria with a co-worker when they stopped at what they believed to be a checkpoint for the Syrian army. Instead, it was the terrorists who took them to a location and chained them to the wall.
“Anyway, we were blindfolded and chained, and every day they would torture us. They would come in, one at a time, and electrocute us or beat us with anything they could find,” the man said. “But they didn’t kill me because they wanted to ransom me. One time, they made me speak to my family on the phone as they were electrocuting me. Then, they made me call a friend, who told them he would pay.”
He said the same day he was forced to call his family, they took the other Christian hostage into the room next to him and shot him to death.
“Then one day, they told me and my friend, the man from Aleppo, that our families had paid and we were to be released,” he explained. “They threw us in the streets of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. My God, it was the most wonderful feeling I’ve ever had. There were Free Syrian Army soldiers. We went to them, and they took us to a church. I saw the cross and I thought, I’m alive.”
Islamic extremist group Boko Haram attacked the Nigerian town of Damasak and left at least 70 people dead with local officials saying the death toll could top 100.
A witness told Reuters that a mass grave with the bodies was found under a concrete bridge after the terrorists were driven out of the town by Niger and Chadian troops.
“There are about 100 bodies spread around, under the bridge just outside of town,” Chad military spokesman Colonel Azem Bermandoa Agouna told AFP. “This is the work of Boko Haram.”
Agouna said that the killings likely happened two months ago because body parts are basically mummified from the desert conditions.
“There are heads here and bodies there,” Agouna explained. “The mass grave has become like a termite mound.”
Residents say that Boko Haram kidnapped at least 400 women and children from the town before they withdrew on Tuesday.
The retreat from the town is the latest by Boko Haram. The terrorists also withdrew from the town of Bama but committed a mass killing of their wives before they left the town so that they could not be married to non-Muslims.
In the wake of a prominent prosperity preacher having to backtrack on a campaign to buy a $65 million dollar plane, Pastor and Gospel music star Kirk Franklin is speaking out against prosperity preachers.
“When a pastor wants people to buy him a private plane while a missionary in Somalia bathes children with sores, that’s a shortage of character. When I camouflage my ‘greeds’ to look like ‘needs,’ that’s a shortage of character,” wrote Franklin in a blog post on Patheos titled “The High Cost of Character.”
Franklin said that many of the prosperity preachers are taking their cues and antics from today’s hip-hop community like Jay-Z and Kanye West.
“This rises to the level of the truly absurd and sounds more like a rap verse that would come from Jay-Z or Kanye West who both by the way have blasphemous nicknames connoting them to God the Father (J-Hova) and his son Jesus Christ (Yeezus) respectively. Isn’t it ironic, or maybe not, that a preacher has a monetary moniker and rappers want to be connected to the divine,” he continued.
“Jay-Z, Kanye and their ilk have been spreading their own insidious brand of the prosperity ministry through their music and lifestyle brands. Their audience is much wider than the black community, but nonetheless they prey on the same group that the prosperity preachers target,” he added.
The preacher who had been raising money for the plane has cancelled his campaign for the jet after a wave of negative response from Christian publications.
A man who claims to be a Presbyterian minister but denies God exists…and still heads a “church” in Oregon…claims he’s very insulted when people tell him that he’s not a Christian.
“The concept of ‘God’ is a product of myth-making and ‘God’ is no longer credible as a personal, supernatural being,” John Shuck wrote in a blog post on his site “Shuck and Jive.” “Jesus may have been historical, but most of the stories about Him in the Bible and elsewhere are legends.”
Shuck rejects the Bible as literal and denies the existence of Heaven and Hell as well as God.
“Even though I hold those beliefs, I am still a proud minister. But I don’t appreciate being told that I’m not truly a Christian,” he stated. “Many liberal or progressive Christians have already let go or de-emphasized belief in Heaven, that the Bible is literally true, that Jesus is supernatural, and that Christianity is the only way. Yet they still practice what they call Christianity.”
Many observers of Shuck say that he is just openly doing what many others who have similar beliefs are trying to do: tear down the church from the inside.
“What you see here is nothing more than someone who wants to infiltrate the Church in an attempt to destroy it,” Andrew Rappaport of Striving for Eternity Ministries in Jackson, N.J. told Christian News Network. “The two things that he does not understand is, first, the Church will not be destroyed, and second, his whole argument that God does not exist is based on intelligence, logic, ability to reason and morality—all of which require the God that he denies, because immaterial things are not the product of chemical reactions; they require God.”
Federal investigators are looking to a list published by ISIS that calls for jihadists in America to kill 100 U.S. soldiers.
The “kill list” was posted by the “hacking division” of the terrorist group. The list gave the names, addresses and photographs of the soldiers with instructions for “brothers in America” to “deal with them.”
The terrorists say the 100 troops listed were part of efforts to defeat the terrorists in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
“With the huge amount of data we have from various different servers and databases, we have decided to leak 100 addresses so that our brothers in America can deal with you,” the threatening message accompanying the list read. “And now we have made it easy for you by giving you addresses. All you need to do is take the final step, so what are you waiting for?”
U.S. officials say many of the soldiers on the list had never taken any actions against ISIS.
However, the situation is causing concern among military families who have been contacted by NCIS and other federal law enforcement agencies about being on the “list.” Parents are concerned that moving onto a base would be a victory for the terrorists in making them move out of fear.
Investigators say the names and addresses are of soldiers who are on social media or who have spoken to the press and that the information was not obtained through hacking.
