The Bosque Boys

Dub Oliver Named Vice President For Student Life (full story).

The Roman Catholic Church is beginning to take a harder line against Islamic denials of the rights of Christians in Muslim lands. Read the article. Link from LGF.

We have done previous posts on this topic. Here and Here

To have a reasoned discussion, both sides must be reasonable. See this article in the Times on Muslim attitudes in Britain uncovered by an undercover reporter. Link from LGF.

Here is an excerpt.

Focus: Undercover on planet Beeston
Sunday Times reporter Ali Hussain spent six weeks in Beeston, where three of the 7/7 bombers came from. He found an enclosed community, rife with conspiracy theories

The rich smell of Indian spices wafted along the road. Voices babbled in Urdu and Sylheti, a Bangladeshi dialect that my own family speak. Thick-bearded men in robes strolled the streets and youngsters wore their jeans rolled above the ankle after leaving the mosque, as Muslim custom requires.

I felt both at home and in a foreign land. This could almost be an Asian city, I thought, rather than Beeston, the suburb of Leeds where two of the July 7 bombers had lived.

I had come to gauge the mood of the community after the 7/7 attacks, which struck London a year ago this week. The world I knew as a British Muslim sprang from cosmopolitan roots, and I wanted to discover what the people of this more insular community really felt about the bombers and western culture.

I found myself both drawn to the warm embrace of the Muslim community that dominates Beeston, and shocked by the views it espoused in private.

Here are links to our posts on Independence Day from the past week.
American Progress ; Movies for the 4th of July ; We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident ; Books for the Fourth of July ; Reading Gettysburg ; An American Life: Fred Robinson ; U.S. Churches and the 4th of July ; Islamofascists versus the U.S.

Have a safe and happy 4th!

Wizbang has a post linking various Independence Day items. Readers are encouraged to add their own links. Here

Jihadwatch today has a great post contrasting the statements in the Declaration of Independence with statements by Muslim leaders. Read the post.

Here is a portion:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." — Declaration of Independence

"Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution...Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash....Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim…then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain...Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed....Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them." — Sultanhussein Tabandeh, A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, F. J. Goulding, translator, London, 1970.

This post from the Daily Kos has been attracting some negative attention from the conservative blogosphere. For example LGF and OpinionJournal Best of the Web Today.

The Daily Kos post is entitled Red, White and Blue Idolatry & Why I Walked out of Sunday Morning Service. Here is an excerpt:
"Today I walked out of church about a third of the way through the service. A soloist was performing "God Bless the USA." I have always found that song to be especially cloying, but when I noticed it listed in the bulletin I decided to attempt to tolerate it. And I might have managed to do just that had not one or two individuals prompted the entire congregation to stand.

At that moment I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut. And it was a double whammy - not only was I offended politically, I was deeply offended spiritually. I would never under any circumstance stand in tribute to a performance of that particular song. As far as I'm concerned asking me to stand in a sanctuary bordered on blasphemy. How could I in good conscience stand to embrace the lyrics "I'm proud to be an American" in the very same week we learned U.S. soldiers raped an Iraqi woman then murdered her and her family to cover up the crime? What spiritually unwise person planned this nonsense?"


(An Okie Gardener again) As a patriotic Christian, I also have problems with Red, White, and Blue Idolatry, though for different reasons. (read more)

» Read More

The Timesonline has this excerpt from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book The Caged Virgin. Link found in LGF. Here is a portion of her essay to ponder.

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My parents belonged to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State the whole time I was growing up. The group's magazine usually could be found on the coffee table in the living room. My parents later dropped their membership, if I understand the story correctly, because AU chose to view abortion as a Church/State issue and push for unrestricted abortion. Now, another organization seems poised to make a similar mistake.

Amnesty International is moving toward the view that abortion is a fundamental human right, the denial of which is oppressive. Ironic that an organization dedicated to human life and rights should embrace human death and denial of rights to the unborn. Cardinal George Pell has a recent column on the issue.

Every Fourth of July in my childhood had a similar pattern. From daylight till dusk I engaged in destruction with firecrackers, blowing up empty cans (way out back by the barn so my mother would not realize that shrapnel was involved), and closer to the house creating tableux with toy soldiers and cars that I subjected to a barrage of Black Cats. The barn cats made themselves scarce that day.

Even when I became old enough to work in the hayfield, the evenings remained the same as in childhood. We stopped work in the early afternoon, cleaned up, and began setting up the grill. My mother made the ice cream and Dad and I went outside to crank it.

About this time our neighbors from the farm south of us would come over: Doris and Fred Robinson. Fred would sit outside with us while we turned the ice cream maker; Doris would go inside with Mom. Supper was grilled burgers and ice cream. Finally it would be dark enough to set off fireworks. Our house was on a ridge so we also could see the neighbors' Roman Candles and rockets.

Fred was a jolly man, given to self-deprecating humor. He had been born in Illinois, then come to northern Missouri to work on a relative's farm as a hired man. He spent his youth during the Depression as a hand on several farms. One story he told several times was of a farmer he worked for who would give him one .22 shell every Saturday afternoon and tell him to go get something for supper, usually squirrel. Nothing was wasted in those hard days. When WW2 came he served in the Army in Europe, then came home, married his sweatheart, joined the local Primitive Baptist church eventually becoming a deacon, and farmed as long as his health permitted before he and Doris sold the place and moved into town.

He told a few war stories, mostly in his self-deprecating style. One I recall was set in the Battle of the Bulge. He told how he and his unit went without sleep for over 72 hours. He would finish the story by saying "You wouldn't think a person could stay awake that long, but if you're scared enough you can." His unit also liberated a concentration camp. He told how the GI's gave the liberated prisoners their rations, which the survivors usually threw up. He would close the story with "I never thought human beings could be so thin and live."

Fred is gone now, as so many of that generation are. He was quiet, probably easy to overlook unless you knew him. All the time I remember him he looked like what he was in his overalls--a Missouri farmer. But, as a young man, he helped defeat tyranny and free a continent. He was so self-deprecating in his war stories that I did not learn until I read his obituary that he had received 3 Bronze Stars.

He was an American, an ordinary man who did extraordinary things when duty called.