The same God?

Islam purports to worship the same deity as the Jews and Christians. Does this make sense? What evidence is there to support such a claim? If such a statement were untrue, it would unravel the whole of Islam, wouldn't it?

Let us look at the respective natures of Allah and Yahweh.

1. Allah does not enter time and space to communicate with his creation. Yahweh has numerous contacts with his creation, beginning with Adam in the garden continuing through the incarnation in Jesus and culminating in the presence of the Holy Spirit in believers today. This is undeniably a deal breaker in the attempt to argue for identity of Allah and Yahweh.

2. Allah is not constrained by concepts such as logic and reason, he can produce evil, he delights in punishing those who do not believe, yet it is oddly said that he is merciful.

Yahweh is unchanging, always forgiving, always good and always faithful. Yahweh demonstrates love and compassion those who deny him, giving them many opportunities to return to His love.

It was this consistent faithfulness that Abraham relied upon when God told him to sacrifice Isaac...But God had promised to bless Abraham with multitudes of descendants through Isaac. Abraham knew he could rely on God's promise and that somehow God would make this work -- A much different and infinitely more profound story than that of the Abraham written of in the Quran, who submitted to an apparently monstrous command by Allah without any reason to believe Allah would or could make good on his promise. This difference between obedience and submission is food for a lot of conversation.

3. Names: Allah is not a name, but a title, where Yahweh is the personal name of God. If Allah gave the scriptures to the Jews, why isn't Allah mentioned once? Yahweh is mentioned thousands of times in the Bible.

4. Muslims account for the differences between the three faiths by insisting the Bible has been corrupted. On its face, this is a preposterous argument, since the Bible is not just believed to be scrupulously accurate, but historically and verifiably so. Allah's document came through one man, has no documentation even remotely close to the Bible verification.

Interestingly, the Quran says the Bible was not corrupted at the time of Mohammed....so when exactly did this 'corruption' occur? And given the fact that we have early manuscripts of the Bible available from 100 AD, we also have the astounding comparison of Dead Sea scrolls showing the Bible hasn't been 'corrupted' from Jesus time forward.

Try this illustration. If I wrote a book on how to build a chair, and it was translated into several different languages, I might see that in Thai, there was an interpretation of Oak to say Teak or perhaps some Alaska Native translated knife as 'ulu'. Now, there would be discrepancies in the Thai and Alutiq translations for sure, but the message of how to build a chair is still there for both to see.

Similarly, the Bible has been translated from its original Hebrew and Greek into thousands of languages...but the message of God's redeeming and sacrificial love is always there. A much different message than that of mankind's need to submit to a being that delights in death and suffering.

Amnesty aka The Dream Act ...

just in from Michelle Malkin ... highlighting that neither Stevens or Murkowski are on board to vote no. Call now!

...Here’s the latest from Numbers USA on the grass-roots campaign to kill the illegal alien DREAM Act amnesty:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has not announced when a vote will occur on the DREAM Act amnesty amendment (now SA 2919). Reid did announce, however, that no more votes will occur this week, and that the Senate will hold only one vote today on an unrelated defense matter. In other words, any potential vote on SA 2919 will not occur until next week.

It will take 41 NO votes to kill this amnesty. Currently, only 21 Senators are telling their constituents that they will vote NO on the amnesty.

Here are the wafflers who voted no on the illegal alien shamnesty bill in June, but have not yet pledged to vote no on the DREAM Act amnesty.

Phone them by contacting the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Are you a 9/10 or a 9/12 person? --- Michelle Malkin

Exerpt from a great article by Michelle:

There are 9/10 people and there are 9/12 people. 9/10 people live in a world of make-believe, where sensitivity trumps security and second-guessing is their only acceptable homeland security policy. 9/12 people are the John Does in your neighborhood, on your plane, train or bus, moving ahead with their lives but always on alert.

Which one are you?

see full article at her site

No Driver's License for Aliens ... HB3

Congrats to Rep Bob Lynn for sponsoring this bill ... If you can't document that you are a legal resident--no driver's license.

The bill is sitting in finance committee right now.

AS 18.65.310 is amended by adding new subsections to read:                                              
04            (h)  The department may not issue an identification card under (a) of this                                  
05       section to a person who has not presented to the department valid documentary                                    
06       evidence that the person is a citizen of the United States, a national of the United                             
07       States, a legal permanent resident of the United States, or a conditional resident alien                         
08       of the United States.

Alaska Legislature trying socialized medicine?

Yikes! Mandatory Universal Health Care. Call your representative now, and say NO.

HB242, Sponsors LEDOUX, Buch, Gara

TITLE: "An Act establishing an Alaska health care program to ensure insurance coverage for essential health services for all residents of the state; establishing the Alaska Health Care Board to define essential health care services, to certify health care plans that provide essential health care services, and to administer the Alaska health care program and the Alaska health care fund; establishing the Alaska health care clearinghouse to administer the Alaska health care program under the direction of the Alaska Health Care Board; establishing eligibility standards and premium assistance for persons with low income; establishing standards for accountable health care plans; creating the Alaska health care fund; providing for review of actions and reporting requirements related to the health care program; and providing for an effective date."

and SB160

Sponsors: FRENCH, Ellis, Wielechowski See full text of bill here

UPDATE:

Some of this is pretty scary for Alaska...such as:

23 Sec. 18.06.050. Essential health care services; eligibility. (a) Every resident
24 of the state who is not a beneficiary of a health care plan providing coverage for
25 essential health care services, or who is not eligible to be enrolled in a publicly funded
26 medical assistance program providing services equal to coverage for essential
health
27 care services, shall participate in the Alaska health care program.

Every resident? Legal resident or anyone? Why should I pay for people who are not here legally?

Well the bill defines 'resident' as that described in AS01.10.055--All you have to do is plant your illegal carcass here and you qualify for free health care under this bill!
"

AS 01.10.055. Residency.

(a) A person establishes residency in the state by being physically present in the state with the intent to remain in the state indefinitely and to make a home in the state.

So where does the Alaska Health Care Fund get its money?

28 Sec. 18.06.070. Alaska health fund. (a) The Alaska health fund is established
29 as a separate trust fund of the state. The fund consists of

30 (1) state money appropriated to subsidize uncompensated care;

31 (2) federal money appropriated to the fund;

01 (3) private employer and employee health care contributions received
02 by the department and appropriated to the fund;

03 (4) health care premiums received by the department and appropriated
04 to the fund;

05 (5) other appropriations by the legislature;

06 (6) contributions appropriated to the fund from the United States

07 government and its agencies, or from any other source, public or private, provided for
08 purposes that are consistent with the goals of the Alaska health care program; and
09 (7) interest earnings from investments of the fund appropriated to
the
10 fund.

Get ready to open your pockets, taxpayers! Yes, we will treat some emergent health problem for people who can't pay for it...but hospitals do that NOW! What we will begin promoting are long lines and poor care at tremendous cost..

Here is a good look at Universal Health Care
To quote a bit of it:

Can you imagine, in such a climate, that we will not end up with some form of tax funded universal health care?

If we do, you can be sure of two things . . .

1. The resulting policy will be sold as a visionary step forward
2. The prices and terms of your health-care will be set behind closed doors

The so-called visionary quo will come in return for a substantial quid. The program will amount to the most massive system of corporate welfare yet devised.

Sanctuary city update --

Anchorage Daily News has an article this morning about a proposed Assembly action to ask traffic violators their citizenship. Among many things, it answeres the question of how HJR22 of 2003 affects the issue...

Some cities, such as Chicago, ban police from asking people if they are legal U.S. citizens, according to The Associated Press. Anchorage has no such rule, Hasquet said.

Anchorage Police Department Capt. Bill Miller said the 2003 resolution -- which is not a law -- did not change the way police work with immigration authorities.

"We enforce any law that we have the opportunity to enforce," he said.

see the full article here

OBL, Thompson and the Long War

This is an excellent view of current status of the current political scene...

...That situation boils down to one, overarching reality: We are at war. We have been at war for 30 years. If the netroots want to parse the definition of war or even try and pretend that this is not so, it hardly matters. Radical Islamists believe they are at war with us. They believed it before there were netroots, before there was an internet. And they will continue to believe it no matter who is president, no matter what foreign policy we espouse, and no matter what their apologists and appeasers here and abroad would have you believe....

See the full article at RightWingNuthouse

Central Questions concerning Islam

from Lamb and Lion Ministries:

Central Questions

Well, what about it?

• Are Muslims the spiritual brothers and sisters of Christians and Jews?
• Do we all worship the same God?
• Are the Islamic holy scriptures, known as the Koran, inspired by God?
• Is Islam another path to God by which one can attain eternal life?
• Are the Islamic fundamentalists representative of true Islam, or are they a terrible aberration of an otherwise peace-loving religion?
• Is our war really a political one against international terrorists, or is it a spiritual battle against a demonic, intolerant, militant, and imperialistic religion known as Islam?

Hint: the answers are
no
no
no
no
yes, no
no, yes

Check out his website for full explainations

Anchorage is a Sanctuary City ??

Got this from BillOreilly.com, who pulled it from Congressional Research Service, June, 2007

August 23, 2007

Below is a list of cities and counties that have sanctuary policies, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service from June 2007.

• Alaska
  • Anchorage
  • Fairbanks
  ......In May 2003, Alaska's state legislature passed a joint resolution prohibiting state agencies from using resources or institutions for the purpose of enforcing federal immigration laws.

Most cities that are considered sanctuary cities have adopted a "don't ask-don't tell" policy where they don't require their employees, including law enforcement officers, to report to federal officials aliens who may be illegally present in the country. Localities, and in some cases individual police departments, in such areas that are considered "sanctuary cities," have utilized various mechanisms to ensure that unauthorized aliens who may be present in their jurisdiction illegally are not turned in to federal authorities. Some municipalities address the issue through resolutions, executive orders or city ordinances, while many police departments address the issues through special orders, departmental policy and general order.

I will check on who is responsible, and what we can do about this....Update to follow.


UPDATE...
It was HJR22 and SJR15 in 2003 that initiated this travesty... I copied the 'resolveds' from HJR22, but read it yourself here.

SJR15 sponsored by Ellis and Elton
HJR22 sponsored by Gutenberg

The official list of co-conspirators

SPONSOR(s): REPRESENTATIVE(s) GUTTENBERG, Coghill, Crawford, Kerttula, Holm, McGuire, Ogg, Samuels, Gara, Gruenberg
SENATOR(s) Ellis, Elton, French, Lincoln, Wagoner, Stevens G, Dyson, Seekins, Taylor, Guess, Therriault, Ogan, Davis, Cowdery

BE IT RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature supports the government of the United States of America in its campaign against terrorism, and affirms its commitment that the campaign not be waged at the expense of essential civil rights and liberties of citizens of this country contained in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that it is the policy of the State of Alaska to oppose any portion of the USA PATRIOT Act that would violate the rights and liberties guaranteed equally under the state and federal constitutions; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that, in accordance with Alaska state policy, an agency or instrumentality of the State of Alaska, in the absence of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under Alaska State law, may not

(1) initiate, participate in, or assist or cooperate with an inquiry, investigation, surveillance, or detention;

(2) record, file, or share intelligence information concerning a person or organization, including library lending and research records, book and video store sales and rental records, medical records, financial records, student records, and other personal data, even if authorized under the USA PATRIOT Act;

(3) retain such intelligence information; the state Attorney General shall review the intelligence information currently held by the state for its legality and appropriateness under the United States and Alaska Constitutions and permanently dispose of it if there is no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that an agency or instrumentality of the state may not,

(1) use state resources or institutions for the enforcement of federal immigration matters, which are the responsibility of the federal government;

(2) collect or maintain information about the political, religious, or social views, associations, or activities of any individual, group, association, organization, corporation, business, or partnership, unless the information directly relates to an investigation of criminal activities and there are reasonable grounds to suspect the subject of the information is or may be involved in criminal conduct;

/snowman..

OK, I must be missing something here. It starts off by talking about concern for citizens, not illegal aliens. Then it goes on to say immigration is the Fed's problem, and we're not going to help. Hmm, if some illegal alien decides to make a jihad attack and blow up the pipeline or torch the airport, is that still the Fed's problem?

Evidently the Alaska legislature is happy to be politically correct and keep their heads in the sand....and if the unthinkable happens, it is probably Bush's fault anyway.
I still need to find the actual vote tally...but at least Ellis and Gutenberg should be held to account for this violence against our security.
snowman/

UPDATE 2

Here's the house vote--looks like everyone voted for it, except Lynn.

05-12-2003                    House Journal                         1577 
CSHJR 22(RLS) was read the third time.

The question being:  "Shall CSHJR 22(RLS) pass the House?"  The
roll was taken with the following result:

CSHJR 22(RLS)
Third Reading
Final Passage

YEAS:  32   NAYS:  1   EXCUSED:  4   ABSENT:  3 

Yeas:  Anderson, Berkowitz, Cissna, Coghill, Crawford, Dahlstrom,
Fate, Foster, Gara, Gatto, Gruenberg, Guttenberg, Harris, Hawker,
Heinze, Holm, Kerttula, Kohring, Kott, McGuire, Meyer, Morgan,
Moses, Ogg, Samuels, Seaton, Stoltze, Weyhrauch, Whitaker,
Williams, Wilson, Wolf

Nays:  Lynn

Excused:  Croft, Joule, Kapsner, Kookesh

Absent:  Chenault, Masek, Rokeberg

And so, CSHJR 22(RLS) passed the House and was referred to the
The Senate apparently tabled the resolution  (yea for our team).

What does all this mean for us? Do local law enforcement folks ignore the Patriot act or do they comply? Watch for update. Snowman out.

Oops -- missed a pluralism lecture...

Missed this one: UAA, APU and the local Plur-istas are doing a good job of proselytizing for their new syncretism. When are local Christian and Jewish groups going to counter this with some discussions offering a more realistic and truthful examination of the clash against civilization. And put some truth about what the Bible actually says, as opposed to what Pluralists would like it to say.

Harvard professor to discuss Islam in UAA Polaris lecture
Daily News staff
Published: August 19, 2007
Last Modified: August 19, 2007 at 02:30 AM
William Graham, Harvard University professor of Middle Eastern Studies, will offer geopolitical insights during his presentation "Beyond a Clash of Civilizations? The Case of Islam" next Sunday at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

William Graham
Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity, and Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies
BA, University of North Carolina
AM, PhD, Harvard University

Professor Graham was appointed Dean of Harvard Divinity School and joined its faculty in 2002. He has been a member of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 1973. He has served as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Master of Currier House, and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on the Study of Religion, and the Core Curriculum Subcommittee on Foreign Cultures at Harvard. He is also former chair of the Council on Graduate Studies in Religion (U.S. and Canada). His scholarly work has focused on early Islamic religious history and textual traditions and problems in the history of world religion. In October 2000 he received the quinquennial Award for Excellence in Research in Islamic History and Culture from the Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), the research institute of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. He has held John Simon Guggenheim and Alexander von Humboldt research fellowships and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (1987, 1993); Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam (1977; American Council of Learned Societies History of Religions Prize, 1978); co-author of The Heritage of World Civilizations (7th rev. ed., 2005) and Three Faiths, One God (2002); and co-editor of Islamfiche: Readings from Islamic Primary Sources (1982-87). He is also the author of numerous articles and reviews. He is a summa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds honorary doctorates from UNC and Lehigh University.

From the Harvard Divinity School website Student Voices on Pluralism at Harvard

This discussion took place during the 2003 Dean's Weekend.
...
BILL GRAHAM: Our second panel takes up our question and moves it a little bit further in discussing the encounter with religion in the modern university. We have a group that's going to bring a variety of different perspectives. Diana Eck and I go back to graduate student days together here at Harvard, when we actually sat in some of these classrooms. There are so many things one could mention about Diana, but the most crucial thing here is her work with the Pluralism Project, the project that she has spearheaded now for a number of years which is looking at the new religious diversity in America and is the key national project trying to take cognizance of that and beginning to lay a groundwork of data for what we hope will be a variety of different kinds of studies of American religious pluralism in coming months and years.

...
/Snowman:
The Pluralism Project is a big Harvard program where folks get all squishy about how similar all religions are, and how we can all get along.

What they studiously fail to recognize is the reason pluralism can even breath is because those involved either believe nothing or know nothing about the faiths they include in this big stew.

Islam is not compatible with any religion, the core of islamic belief, as documented in the Quran, hadiths etc are to dominate and subjugate the world.

These are people who spend lots of time reading without seeing, I guess
/Snowman