August 4, 2008 | 10:06 pm

The interview: Hamas scion explains conversion to Christianity, respect for Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Last week I mentioned the amazing story of Christian convert Masab Yousef. What made Yousef’s story so surprisingly was his background as the eldest son of Hamas’ leader in the West Bank. Yousef was raised on a religious diet of hating the infidels and the state of Israel. Now born-again and living with tens of thousands of Israelis in California, Yousef, who goes by Joseph, has spoken out against Hamas and in support of Israel, which he misses and doesn’t expect to see again.

In this interview with Ha’aretz’s Avi Issacharoff, Joseph recalls how prison opened his eyes to the “real Hamas” and a simple act of evangelism planted the seed that changed his life. He sends his regards to Israel and calls Islam “a big lie”:

“I feel that Christianity has several aspects. It’s not only a religion but a faith. I now see God through Jesus and can tell about him for days on end, whereas the Muslims won’t be able to say anything about God. I consider Islam a big lie. The people who supposedly represent the religion admired Mohammed more than God, killed innocent people in the name of Islam, beat their wives and don’t have any idea what God is. I have no doubt that they’ll go to Hell. I have a message for them: There is only one way to Paradise - the way of Jesus who sacrificed himself on the cross for all of us.”

(skip)

“I left behind a great deal of property in Ramallah in order to achieve true freedom. I wanted to get to quiet surroundings that would help me to open the eyes of the Muslims and reveal the truth to them about their religion and about Christianity, to take them out of the darkness and the prison of Islam. In that way they’ll have an opportunity to correct their mistakes, to become better people and to bring a chance for peace in the Middle East. I don’t give Islam a chance to survive for more than 25 years. In the past they scared people and in that way they prevented anti-religious publicity, but today, in the modern age, they won’t be able to hide the truth any longer.”

At the moment he doesn’t have a partner, but he is relying on help from above on this matter, too. “I hope that someday God will give the opportunity to meet the right one. She will have to be a believing Christian, and if she’s a Jew who converted, even better.”

Sorry, Joseph, I’m no Yente.

August 4, 2008 | 6:47 pm

Pastor charged with murder, L.A. Times neglects religious implications

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Howard Porter (Photo: AP)

“Trusted to build a museum to his friend’s lifework, a pastor is accused of drowning the farmer.” That was the subhead of an article in today’s Los Angeles Times. Without being too macabre or full of bloodlust, its safe to say that story sounded really intriguing. Money, ministers, murder—like “Angels and Demons” in California’s Central Valley.

It’s not. The story by Peter H. King is a sad tale of the death of an 85-year-old farmer worth about $4 million and the ensuing murder trial of his friend, Pastor Howard Porter of Hickman Community Church. But aside from an off-hand reference to Howard’s church and this line a few paragraphs from the bottom—“While Porter’s backers insist that the man portrayed by prosecutors is a fiction, attendance at Hickman Community Church has dropped off quite a bit”—there is no mention of God in this entire story.

No talk of how Joe Christian has been wrestling with his faith as his spiritual leader stands before a judge. No mention of who Porter was and whether people saw God in his life. No defense from a skeptical church-goer who couldn’t believe her pastor would ever kill a man. And, most importantly, there is no quantification of “quite a bit” or explanation of why, apparently, most members of Hickman Community Church have continued attending there.

King’s story isn’t so religiously ignorant that it gives the impression high gas prices are forcing Jews to walk on the Sabbath, as a Times report recently did, but it’s spiritually unobservant to the point of negligence.

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August 4, 2008 | 5:25 pm

Al Qaeda: jihadi country club

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“Country club fundamentalism.” That’s how Jeff Sharlet described the right-wing Christian organization The Family. If you know the right people, you can join; if not, you’re outta luck.

Not equating Christian fundamentalism with the most notorious terrorist organization of our time, but there appears a a similarity between the power and privilege brothers in The Family and in al Qaeda receive from their group membership. In the Washington Post, two political scientists argue that the exclusive-club model helps explain why so many prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, like Salim Ahmed Hamdan, at left, have refused to offer valuable information the U.S. government would gladly pay for:

“The generic problem is the question of why people having useful knowledge can’t be bribed to reveal it,” said David Laitin, a political scientist at Stanford University who has studied why terrorist groups that specialize in suicide attacks are so rarely undermined by defectors and turncoats.

Along with Eli Berman, a political scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Laitin has developed a theory to explain why the Hamdans of the world tend to stay loyal to the bin Ladens.

Laitin and Berman argue that it is because a group such as al-Qaeda is really an exclusive club.

Most people think of clubs as recreational groups, but Laitin and Berman are using a more subtle definition. Clubs are groups that tend to be selective about their members. Unlike political parties and book-reading groups, which allow anyone to join, clubs make it difficult for people to sign up. And once admitted, members must make personal sacrifices to stay. In the case of an exclusive golf club, the sacrifice might involve paying sizable dues. In the case of some religious orders, would-be members might have to go through lengthy periods of initiation.

The “club model” of terrorism explains why cogs such as Hamdan stay loyal. Across all kinds of clubs, when members make sacrifices, they are much more likely to become intensely loyal to fellow members. Berman and Laitin think this is because the sacrifices that members make to join a club reduce their value outside the club. If you devote years to learning a religious text, that knowledge can give you social cachet within your club, but your effort counts for little outside the club.

“If you have to spend your life reading the Talmud, you are not very good at software,” Laitin said. “The sacrifices get you social welfare, but if you took a bribe, your value outside of that club would be minuscule.”

Indeed, it seems jihadis become much more valuable to the Great Satan (their words, not mine) when they renounce the movement than when they are captured.

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August 4, 2008 | 3:58 pm

Obama blazing the Antichrist’s trail

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Nothing makes me want to curse more, oftentimes, than my fellow Christ believers.

For example, this column from Hal Lindsey, author of the apocalyptic bible “The Late Great Planet Earth.” On the heals of Barack Obama’s European tour, Lindsey wrote Friday in WorldNetDaily:

Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him – a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib and seemingly holding all the answers to all the world’s questions.

And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won’t be Barack Obama, but Obama’s world tour provided a foretaste of the reception he can expect to receive.

He will probably also stand in some European capital, addressing the people of the world and telling them that he is the one that they have been waiting for. And he can expect as wildly enthusiastic a greeting as Obama got in Berlin.

The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance.

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August 4, 2008 | 1:13 pm

Condo conversions gone crazy, targeting churches

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Formerly St. Theresa Church (Boston Globe)

I seem to have missed this ongoing story of churches in big cities being sold and converted into luxury condos. As far as I know, this phenomenon has not made its way to Los Angeles, where condo conversions were once going bonkers and have shriveled since the declines of the economy and housing market.

Kind of adds new meaning to what Mendell Thompson, president and CEO of America’s Christian Credit Union, told me last fall: “We don’t have the house of the Lord in sub-prime loans.”

I can understand the market for luxury condos with the beautiful architecture of a traditional parish, though i wonder if that appeal would wear off overtime. And, of course, there are some bigger-than-this-world considerations for a developer to close escrow on a shuttered church.

This article from the Boston Globe takes a look at the religious implications of renovating a holy place for secular usage, and it’s apparent some developers suffer from a bit of that good, old-fashioned Catholic guilt.

Karnig Ostayan asked his Armenian pastor to bless the former St. Theresa of the Child Jesus Church in Watertown, before turning the church and rectory into 11 upscale condos.

“I want to sleep at night,” joked Ostayan, who attends St. James Armenian Apostolic Church, across Mt. Auburn Street. “Seriously, I know how much this church meant to people.”

Many a neighborhood church has gone condo. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston shuttered 65 parishes since instituting a sweeping parish consolidation in 2004. At least 30 properties have since been sold, many to developers eager to turn an old church into trendy housing, even in a declining real estate market.

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August 4, 2008 | 6:23 am

South African Rabbi: Israel doesn’t deserve apartheid attack

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The dirtiest word in Israeli politics is not “fascism,” as it in the United States, but “apartheid.” You often hear pro-Palestinian and occasionally liberal pro-Israel voices, such as the daily newspaper Ha’aretz, make the comparison between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the apartheid-era minority oppression of South Africa’s poor majority. In what appears to be an ongoing discussion in The Times of South Africa, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein says these circumstances of sociopolitical history bear little resemblance:

These accusations defame the Jewish state, and also diminish the victims of the real apartheid — the men, women and children of our beloved South Africa — who suffered for centuries under arrogant, heartless colonialism, and then for decades under the brutal apartheid policies of racial superiority, oppression and separation inflicted by the National Party. If everything is apartheid, then nothing is apartheid.

In Israel, all citizens — Jew and Arab alike — are equal before the law. Israel has none of the apartheid legislative machinery devised to discriminate against and separate people. It has no Population Registration Act, no Group Areas Act, no Mixed Marriages and Immorality Act, no Separate Representation of Voters Act, no Separate Amenities Act, no pass laws or any of the other myriad apartheid laws.

Israel is a vibrant liberal democracy, which accords full political, civil and other human rights to all its peoples, including its one million-plus Arab citizens, many of whom hold positions of authority throughout the Jewish state, including that of cabinet minister, member of parliament, and judge at every level of the judiciary.

All citizens vote on the same voters’ roll in regular, multiparty elections, and there are Arab parties and Arab members of other parties in Israel’s parliament. Due to Israel’s proportional representation system, Arab voters, although a minority, have often been partners in various coalition governments and influenced major long-term decisions affecting the country. And Arab Israelis, like all their compatriots, can express themselves and act freely as members of a transparent and open democratic society where criticism of the government in a free press is the norm.

This is, of course, only the case for Israeli citizens, and denizens of the occupied territories are not, except for maybe in a few cases, Israeli citizens. Still, Goldstein goes on, this does not warrant use of the a-word. His reasoning is after the jump:

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August 3, 2008 | 10:53 pm

Nearly 150 die in Hindu temple stampede

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Nearly 150 pilgrims, many women and children who had traveled to worship a Hindu goddess, were trampled to death Sunday during a stampede.

A long line of pilgrims had formed along a stepped path leading up to the temple in the morning when heavy rains began. Many then tried to take shelter in a covered area, local officials said. At that point, according to witnesses, rumors that boulders were beginning to roll down the hillside led to panic in the crowd, and people began running downhill into those gathered to avoid the rain.

“Because so many pilgrims were gathered at the shelter, the way up and down was blocked,” said Suresh Kumar, a spokesman in the police control room at the temple. “When pilgrims started pushing down and the way was very crowded, the stampede took place.”

Metal guardrails meant to protect visitors from steep drops were knocked down by the crowds, sending some people tumbling down the hillside to their deaths.

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August 3, 2008 | 3:50 pm

Jews booze, too

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Mel Gibson

The belief that Jews and liquor don’t mix goes back a long, long ways. Even 50 years ago, Time magazine recalled that old Yiddish song, “Shikker Iz a Goy.” From the song’s perspective, drunkenness is not a failing of the Jew but merely a trapping of the gentile.

It’s false, but the belief remains hard to shake. Like I’ve said before, its only in theory and cultural consciousness that Jews don’t drink heavily. They are less prone to alcoholism, but booze Jews do too.

The latest from Newsweek, via Luke Ford:

It was a Saturday afternoon in July, and according to the police report, the young man was driving drunk. So drunk, in fact, that he drove into the oncoming lane, rolled his car, crashed into a cottage and then tried to flee the scene on foot. It’s a sad but not surprising story—except for the details: the driver was an Orthodox Jew, vacationing in the Catskills. It was Sabbath, and he was wasted.

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August 2, 2008 | 3:01 pm

Montauk Monster just a dead dog

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A new image from boingboing

The original image of this creature, seen here, left people a bit breathless. Was it a dog with a beak or a sea turtle with long legs? Were we glad it was found dead on a Long Island beach and not alive in Manhattan like the lice in “Cloverfield?” Was its appearance the beginning of The End?

Relax. Armageddon is not upon us, and from the looks of this new image of the Montauk Monster, the curious creature was nothing more than a badly decomposed dog.

That was, of course, the most obvious explanation early on. For more background and Monty the monster’s Jewish connection, read GeekHeeb.

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August 1, 2008 | 6:48 pm

Prayer warriors keep doing the oil dance

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Hollywood prayer for lower gas prices

I continue to feel further and further ahead of the curve as the praying-for-lower-gas-prices movement motors on. The Associated Press reported this week that:

Two prayer services will be held at St. Louis gas stations to thank God for lower fuel prices and to ask that they continue to drop. Darrell Alexander, Midwest co-chair of the Pray at the Pump movement, says prayer gatherings will be held Monday afternoon and evening at a Mobil station west of downtown St. Louis.

Participants say they plan to buy gas, pray and then sing “We Shall Overcome” with a new verse, “We’ll have lower gas prices.”

“I’m going to have to ask these people to please stop or else risk divine wrath,” CK writes at Jewlicious.

I wouldn’t go that far, but I agree that God probably finds such petitioning annoying and shortsighted. Yes, he’s omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent and omni-everything; there is no limit to the pleas he can hear and the problems he can fix. But is this really what he wants us spending our time praying about, a few pennies at the pump? Aren’t higher gas prices caused by our own behavior, and don’t we carry the seeds of the solution?

“People seek—what is the word I’m looking for?—relief in many ways,” Jeff Spring, a spokesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California, told me two years ago when I wrote about a group that had traveled from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles to pray for lower prices. “We would recommend they continue to try to cut their use of gas to try to lower the prices. Reduced demand will lower their prices.”

“What about asking for help from above?” I asked.

Spring demurred.

“I’ll leave that question up to the theologians.”

Believe it or not, this is not a dense field of theological research.

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August 1, 2008 | 4:15 pm

Satire Obama can believe in

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

We know that Barack Obama is a bit touchy about jokes aimed his way, even when the jokes aren’t about him but American flaws. Well, here is some satire he can believe in: A new ad from Republican opponent John McCain, seen above, jabs at the messianic nature of Obamamania, but instead of attacking Obama gives viewers the perception that Obama really might be our savior—unless you watch the last four seconds, and I know everyone tunes in closely for a commercial’s punchline.

Don’t get me wrong: The ad is quite funny, especially when Charleton Heston, I mean Moses, makes a cameo and parts the Red Sea. I just don’t think it’s subtle humor is effective.

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August 1, 2008 | 3:28 pm

What Would Jesus Drive?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Christianity Today goes deep with NASCAR’s Christian underground.

“This sport will steal your soul and break your heart,” Tim Griffin, a Motor Racing Outreach chaplain, tells the magazine I moonlight for.

And I thought stock-car racing was religion.

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