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Florida man forsakes neo-Nazism for Islam, murders his roommates for insulting his new religion

Posted on May 12, 2023 by admin

“This wouldn’t have had to happen if your country didn’t bomb my country.”

By Robert Spencer, Front Page Magazine

As Florida Man stories go, this one is darker than the one about the bearded septuagenarian who won a women’s poker tournament, but it’s just about as odd.

A neo-Nazi, you see, got tired of the whole goosestepping and Heil-Hitlering routine, and decided to take refuge in religion. He converted to Islam, but then two of his roommates had the poor judgment to question the wisdom of his decision. He shot them dead. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to double homicide.

The New York Post reported Monday that Devon Arthurs, “now 24, agreed to a term of 45 years in prison in exchange for admitting his guilt for the 2017 shooting deaths of Jeremy Himmelman and Andrew Onseschuck inside a Tampa apartment.” Arthurs, Himmelman and Onseschuck had been members of the Atomwaffen Division (“Atomic Weapons Division”), a group of pimply-faced losers cosplaying as Nazis that, at least according to Arthurs, had sinister plans.

Arthurs, according to the Tampa Bay Times Monday, told police that another one of his roomies, Brandon Russell, was the founder of Atomwaffen Division, and that “the group had plans to carry out terrorist acts, including launching explosives into a nuclear power plant.” He also claimed that they planned to target synagogues. Instead of participating in their plotting, however, Arthurs left the group and ultimately converted to Islam. It was then that Himmelman and Onseschuck teased Arthurs “for his new faith,” according to the Post, and according to the Associated Press, “the families of the victims alleged that the murders were in retaliation.”

Newsweek reported Monday that Arthurs claimed that his murders had actually prevented these neo-Nazis’ plots from coming to fruition: “In a statement issued to police during interrogation, Arthurs argued that he was saving Americans from mass destruction after learning that one of his roommates, Brandon Russell, planned to bomb power plants and synagogues around Florida.”

Immediately after the murders, however, Arthurs had belied his own claims by not exactly behaving as if he actually opposed violence. He said that he also wanted the killings of his roommates to serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of anti-Muslim sentiment. Not the best way to communicate such a message, but it is what it is.

And that wasn’t all. The Tampa Bay Times notes that “on May 19, 2017, Arthurs walked into a leasing office at the Hamptons apartments in New Tampa and announced to several people that he had just killed his roommates. A property manager called 911 and watched as Arthurs walked to the nearby Green Planet Smoke Shop. He entered the store, brandished a handgun and held three people hostage.” He later told detectives: “I had to do it. This wouldn’t have had to happen if your country didn’t bomb my country.”

My country? Devon Arthurs is an American, but it is not uncommon for converts to Islam to regard themselves as citizens of the umma, the global Islamic community, a loyalty that supersedes all attachment to any particular nation. After his arrest, he was asked if he had been outside the country, and he answered: “They closed the door to jihad for me over there. So I figured I’d do it over here. But I wanted to do it within reason. Generally, like, speaking, the amount of bureaucracy in the United States is its biggest problem.” I wouldn’t say that’s our biggest problem, but Arthurs might be on the verge of an actual fact there.

Now, however, Arthurs is singing a very different tune. As he pleaded guilty Monday, he said: “I feel I can be an advocate against extremism. I’d like to take this moment to tell the world to stay away from extremist groups….I’m very sorry for everyone that was involved. I’m very sorry for everything that has happened.” He also said: “If I could go back and do something over, I would sign myself into a hospital and work on my anger issues and my rational thinking skills.”

Rational thinking skills. Now there’s an idea. America is suffering from a pandemic of people who lack rational thinking skills. Devon Arthurs murdered two people for mocking Islam in a nation where every last public official, the overwhelming majority of whom are non-Muslims don’t know the first thing about Islam, would insist that Islam is a religion of peace that doesn’t mandate death for blasphemy. Spoiler alert: it does. Islam mandates death for non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state who mention “something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet…or Islam” (Reliance of the Traveller, o11.10). Rational thinking skills would be a fine addition to the body politic all around.

The post Florida man forsakes neo-Nazism for Islam, murders his roommates for insulting his new religion appeared first on World Israel News.

CNN faces backlash for hosting Trump town hall

Posted on May 12, 2023 by admin

Critics on the Right and Left take aim at CNN over its Donald Trump town hall meeting and subsequent commentary on the event.

By The Associated Press

CNN is facing a backlash over its town hall featuring former President Donald Trump, the leading 2024 Republican candidate who refuses to play by the rules.

The town hall Wednesday was the first major television event of the 2024 presidential campaign, and CNN defended its decision to hold it as a chance to put Trump in front of a wider audience, outside of the conservative media bubble he has largely kept to since early in his presidency.

Critics said the event, which was staged in front of Republicans and unaffiliated voters who were expected to vote in the GOP primary, instead turned into a Trump campaign rally and allowed him to repeat longstanding falsehoods while dodging difficult questions

Tom Jones, a senior writer at the media research institute Poynter, said he had favored the idea of CNN holding the town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. But he said he was surprised by the conduct of the audience, which he had expected to be more neutral.

Instead, the crowd gave Trump a standing ovation when he walked onstage, applauded some of his most provocative comments and laughed at many of his quips, including when he criticized E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who accused him of raping her in 1996 and this week won a $5 million judgment against him.

Jones claimed the atmosphere put CNN’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, in a difficult position as she tried to elicit straightforward answers from Trump and grill him over his comments about the Jan. 6 incident at the Capitol and his claims that he won the 2020 election.

“Whenever she might have had him cornered, he was built up by the audience,” Jones said. “It just emboldened him. He realized, ‘I can do or say anything I want,’ and she got steamrolled at that point through no fault of her own. It was her against the entire room.”

The event was indicative of the new era of leadership at CNN and management’s efforts to lure back viewers who turned to Fox News and other conservative outlets over the past decade.

At a Thursday morning meeting at CNN, Chairman and CEO Chris Licht praised Collins’ “masterful performance,” saying she asked tough questions in difficult circumstances.

“If someone was going to ask tough questions and have that messy conversation, that damn well should be on CNN,” he said in a recording of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

He also defended the decision to hold the town hall before a Trump-friendly crowd.

“While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story, because the people in that audience represent a large swath of America,” Licht said. “And the mistake the media made in the past is ignoring that those people exist. Just like you cannot ignore that President Trump exists.”

The event did widen CNN’s audience, at least for a night. Nielson said the town hall averaged 3.3 million viewers, compared to the 707,000 who tuned in to CNN during the same time slot a night earlier.

But Jones said he was skeptical that the town hall would help CNN’s reputation in the long term, given the backlash. He noted that most of the network’s post-event commentary was highly critical of Trump, likely alienating conservative viewers who had tuned in just to watch the former president.

Nick Arama, a writer for the conservative website RedState.com, criticized CNN’s Gary Tuchman, who spoke with some of the audience members after Trump’s appearance, saying “he didn’t act as much like a moderator trying to get their opinion as a Democratic propagandist trying to impose his own opinion on them.”

Meanwhile, critics from the left were unsparing, saying CNN should have predicted how chaotic the event would be.

“CNN should be ashamed of themselves. They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan. 6th and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, wrote in a tweet.

Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief now at George Washington University, said the event was a harbinger of the difficult coverage decisions “every news organization needs to wrestle with because Donald Trump is not a normal candidate.”

“You can’t ignore him, but you can’t give him carte blanche either,” he said.

A one-on-one interview would have been preferable, though whether Trump would have agreed to that is a different question, said Sesno, who added that he saw value in allowing Trump to speak to a broader audience, including many people who might have mostly tuned him out in recent years.

Sesno noted that although Trump supporters delighted in his performance, Republican critics, including New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, seized on it to to press their concerns about the former president’s ability to win a national election.

“As chaotic and weird as the event was, I as a journalist think it’s important for people to see this,” he said.

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Flyers citing ‘8 million Germans’ as WWII victims alongside Jews distributed at Roger Waters concert in Cologne

Posted on May 12, 2023 by admin

Supporters of left-wing German pacifist group hand out flyers comparing Germany’s war dead in World War II to Jewish Holocaust victims.

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

Fans attending a concert by former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters in the German city of Cologne on Tuesday night were handed flyers that depicted the Jewish victims of the Nazis as merely one of several nationalities and ethnicities, including Germans, who suffered during World War II.

According to RABA, a Cologne-based NGO that monitors antisemitism, the leaflets were distributed by supporters of the DFG-VK Köln, a left-wing pacifist organization. Ostensibly protesting the German government’s decision to supply Ukraine with weapons to counter the ongoing Russian invasion, the flyer cited the slaughter of World War II as a warning of the dangers of armed conflict.

The victim groups included those targeted by the Nazis, among them “24 million Soviet citizens” and “6 million Poles”, but also emphasized the deaths of “8 million Germans” at the hands of the Allied forces. The German toll was placed above the last line of the flyer that acknowledged the murder of “6 million Jews.” Moreover, the figure of “6 million Poles” absorbs the three million Polish Jews exterminated by the Nazis.

In a post on Twitter, RABA said that the purpose of the flyer was “put the Holocaust into perspective.” It condemned the “marginalization” of the “systematically persecuted and industrially exterminated Jews.”

Concern has been rife in Germany over the past few months that Waters’ tour of five German cities will boost growing antisemitism in the country. A supporter of the campaign to subject the State of Israel to a comprehensive boycott as a prelude to its elimination, Waters has been vociferously denounced for using antisemitic imagery in previous shows, including an inflatable pig embossed with a Star of David. Calls to ban Waters under German laws to prevent antisemitism and the abuse or denial of the Holocaust were issued in four of the cities — Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne and Munich — while in Frankfurt, the municipal government’s decision to cancel the show was overruled by the city’s Administrative Court last week, which argued that the singer’s “artistic freedom” had been unlawfully curbed.

The inflatable pig was on view in Cologne on Tuesday night, as well as in Hamburg on Sunday, where Waters kicked off his tour. However, the Star of David was absent, replaced with a list of international arms manufacturers that included the Israeli company Elbit Systems.

Around 250 people assembled in Cologne on Monday night to protest Water’s concert. Jewish and Christian groups gathered in the city center for a protest that was addressed by Cologne’s Mayor, Henriette Reker, and the chair of its Jewish community, Abraham Lehrer. A stage banner at the protest declared, “Roger Waters spreads antisemitic statements — fans inform yourselves!”

Waters is certainly not avoiding political controversies during his tour, however. The concert at Cologne’s Lanxess Arena featured a backdrop with the images of every US president since 1981, identifying them as “war criminals.”

As well as attacking Israel, Waters has been a stalwart opponent of western aid to Ukraine. In Feb., Waters appeared at the UN Security Council at the invitation of the Russian mission, where he delivered a rambling address calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Ukraine.

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Leah Goldin says return of son’s remains must be part of ceasefire deal

Posted on May 12, 2023 by admin

“The prime minister must put Hadar on the table as a condition for ending the war,” the bereaved mother said.

By JNS

Leah Goldin, the mother of Givati Brigade Lt. Hadar Goldin, who was killed in action in the Gaza Strip in 2014, said on Thursday that the return of his remains must be part of any deal to end the current round of warfare between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Hadar’s body is being held by the Hamas terrorist rulers of the Gaza Strip along with that of Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who was also killed in 2014.

“The prime minister must put Hadar on the table as a condition for ending the war,” Goldin told 103FM Radio. She called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to be brave and to bring back the soldiers.”

A senior Israeli official said on Wednesday that Hamas is not involved in the rocket fire from Gaza during this round of fighting with Israel.

Egypt is trying to broker a ceasefire. Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Thursday continued to fire rockets and rockets at Israeli communities while the IDF targeted PIJ terrorist sites in the Strip.

Hadar Goldin was killed in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, during “Operation Protective Edge.”

Shaul, a member of the IDF’s Golani infantry brigade, died in the Battle of Shejaia in Gaza City.

Their bodies were taken by the terrorists and are being held to this day.

Hamas is also holding two live Israeli civilians, both mentally ill, Avera Mengistu, who crossed into the Strip in 2014, and Hisham al-Sayed, who entered the enemy enclave in 2015.

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Gentleness in Christian Ethics

Posted on May 12, 2023 by admin

Introduction

An increasingly concerning problem for American Christians is the way our moral responsibility to be gentle to each other has been oversimplified. It is as if someone with little moral awareness got ahold of some loppers and lopped off more of the moral shrubbery than they should have. In an effort to improve this situation, it’s worth examining a few ethicists that have had something to say on the subject of gentleness.

C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis delivered a series of lectures during the Second World War which would later form the basis of The Abolition of Man. Lewis references Plato’s Republic to summarize his own views on the consummate ideal of education. Lewis believed we must aspire to be humans of gentle hearts.

“The well-nurtured youth is one who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or in the ill-grown world of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart…’”

If you read Lewis’ lectures you will see he’s rewording an earlier description of gentleness:

“All teachers, and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it–believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence, or our contempt.”

When these two quotes are examined together we discover the truly educated are gentle and the gentle are those whose response is most fitting to the situation; they give that which is merited. Returning to Plato, they blame and hate the ugly. They give delighted praise to the beautiful.

Perkins

The same line of thinking may be found within the works of a popular English protestant reformer, William Perkins. Lecturing on Philippians 4:5:

“Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand,” Perkins viewed gentleness as “…a worthy Christian virtue, so excellent as the careful practice thereof is the marrow and strength of a commonwealth…And [it is] so necessary [that] without the practice of it, no house, family, city, commonwealth, kingdom or church can stand or continue.”

Perkins viewed this Christian virtue as the tendency to apply the law with a measured hand. He used the case study of thievery to illustrate his meaning. Suppose, for example, that a young boy, “…pinched with hunger, cold, and poverty,…” stole a loaf of bread. Should his sentencing be the same as a grown man who stole with none of those extenuating circumstances? A virtuous Christian, whether as a public judge or a private mother, would maintain the justice and peace of kingdom and home by sentencing each person as they deserved. Accordingly, the starving boy would be shown mercy, whereas the grown man would be treated with the rigor of the law. In Lewis’s words, the judge would give each case what it merits. The judge would rule in gentleness.

Aquinas

Perkins appears to rely on Thomas Aquinas, a 13th-century theologian. Under his many articles concerning justice, Aquinas discussed the virtue of equity. Equity is a translation derived from the latin aequitas. Thomas, though, had in mind the Greek word, ‘Epieikeia’. This is the same word translated ‘gentleness’ in Philippians 4:5. As you would expect, Aquinas discussed this virtue under the art of ruling well. In particular, the equitable or gentle ruler is one who knows how to apply the law well to individual cases giving each their due. Aquinas gave a helpful case study of a madman who entrusted his sword to a friend for safekeeping. If the man while in a state of madness wanted his sword returned, should the friend return it? If the madman was in a healthy state and sought return of his sword to fight for his country, should the friend return the sword? The case study relies on two facts. 1.) The law says that a person has the right to their property. 2.) The intent of the lawgiver is for people to flourish. Aquinas’ case study is brilliant because it makes you realize that any good ruler would not violate the intent of the law in order to stay strictly with the letter of law. The gentle ruler, in other words, keeps in mind what each case deserves with reference to larger God-given purposes.

Scripture

The ancient society of the Israelites also taught a fuller definition of gentleness. Both in the Torah proper (the 5 books of Moses) and in the later wisdom literature especially, the society esteemed a heart-shaped to rule the self, house, church, and nation in justice by giving each object, event and deed its due. The Oxford English Dictionary, in fact, under the entry for ‘gentleness’ includes a translation of Psalm 72:4 describing the king as ruling, ‘with gentle sway.’ The NKJV, a modern translation, renders it as: “He will bring justice to the poor of the people; He will save the children of the needy, And will break in pieces the oppressor.” Are these not all the features of gentleness? The king brings justice through his measured rule. The poor of the people and the children of the needy merit one attitude and action. The oppressor gains another sort of response. The king has the virtue to deliver to each as they deserve. Under his gentle sway, “…those of the city shall flourish like (well watered) grass of the earth.” (Psalm 72:16)

Applications

What difference should this make to our moral deliberations and acts when called to be gentle? Examining our examples, first we begin to notice that gentleness is located within the larger universe of maintaining justice and peace in ourselves, our families, our churches, our states, and nations. If we are to be gentle, then we must have a range of responses that are fitting to the moment. Some situations merit a kind word, others a rebuke. The gentle person knows the right word at the right time.

They suggest, second, a re-reading of the public speech and acts of Jesus Christ. Take Matthew 11:28, for example, wherein Jesus refers to himself as gentle and lowly. Although a different Greek word for gentleness is used in this passage, the traditional sense seems present here. Consider some of the surrounding details: Jesus is contrasted with the Pharisees of Chapter 12. The Pharisees are framed by the narrator as those who misapply the Torah with a rigor that kills instead of gives life. Jesus, on the other hand, rules with equity, moderation or gentleness. The symbol of his leadership is therefore a yoke that is light. What you witness in Matthew 11, consequently, is a king ruling with gentle sway.

They suggest, third, a re-reading of other verses relying on the reality of gentleness (1 Timothy 3:3, 2 Timothy 2:24, Titus 3:2, James 3:17, 1 Peter 2:18). As a pastor myself, I know that these verses are often utilized to make sense of domestic abuse cases. In such high-stakes circumstances, leaders cannot afford to oversimplify scriptural counsel.

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