martyr.jpe

Mark Steyn writes about the reasons our enemy Jihadists have such an easy time with the MSM. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? The MSM have eagerly collaborated with the enemies of America for decades. I wrote about CNN’s actions in Somalia here.

Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they’d converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam, and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism.

Consider, for example, the bizarre behavior of Reuters, the once globally respected news agency now reduced to putting out laughably inept terrorist propaganda. A few days ago, it made a big hoo-ha about the Israelis intentionally firing a missile at its press vehicle and wounding its cameraman Fadel Shana. Shana was posed in an artful sprawl in a blood-spattered shirt. But it had ridden up and underneath his undershirt was spotlessly white, like a summer-stock Julius Caesar revealing the boxers under his toga. What’s stunning is not that almost all Western media organizations reporting from the Middle East are reliant on local staff overwhelmingly sympathetic to one side in the conflict — that’s been known for some time — but the amateurish level of fakery that head office is willing to go along with.

Down at the other end of the news business, meanwhile, one finds items like this snippet from the Sydney Morning Herald:

“A 16-year-old girl was tailed by a car full of men before being dragged inside and assaulted in Sydney’s west last night, police say . . .

“The three men involved in the attack were described to police as having dark ‘mullet-style’ haircuts.”

Three men with “mullet-style” hair, huh? Not much to go on there. Bit of a head scratcher. But, as it turned out, the indefatigable Sydney Morning Herald typist had faithfully copied out every salient detail of the police report except one. Here’s the statement the coppers themselves issued:

“Police are seeking three men described as being of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean appearance, with dark ‘mullet-style’ hair cuts.”

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While I was extremely relieved that Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were able to endure the terror of their captivity and make it safely out of their Palestinian hell, it was disturbing to see their conversion video. I didn’t believe it for a minute but as Mark Steyn writes the journalists were forced to make a Faustian deal…….

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One hundred ten years later, for the Fox journalists and the Western media who reported their release, what’s the big deal? Wear robes, change your name to Khaled, go on camera and drop Allah’s name hither and yon: If that’s your ticket out, seize it. Everyone’ll know it’s just a sham.

But that’s not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you’re a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling — that the West is weak, that there’s nothing — no core, no bedrock — nothing it’s not willing to trade. In his new book The Conservative Soul, attempting to reconcile his sexual temperament and his alleged political one, Time magazine’s gay Tory Andrew Sullivan enthuses, “By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live — now, which is the only time that matters.” That’s almost a literal restatement of Faust’s bargain with the devil:

“When to the moment I shall say
‘Linger awhile! so fair thou art!’
Then mayst thou fetter me straightway
Then to the abyss will I depart!”

In other words, if Faust becomes so enthralled by “the moment” that he wants to live in it forever, the devil will have him for all eternity. In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions — that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was. It doesn’t matter how “understandable” Centanni and Wiig’s actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we’re willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead.

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So, how should we, who profess Christ, respond when forced to convert at the point of a gun?

We don’t read much about “martyrs” anymore unless it’s about the Jihadi - seventy two virgins kind. Some clueless Americans amuse themselves by watching the odious Bill Maher making fun of the terror Centanni and Wiig endured.

At one time in America’s history most Americans knew of a book called the Foxe Book of Martyrs. My grandmother showed it to me once and told me it was about Christians throughout history who refused to deny Christ and were killed for it. The Foxe Book of Martyrs is still available in some Christian bookstores. (and, happily on the internet)

Back during the aftermath of the Columbine High School Massacre for a time there was a story about Cassie Bernall, who was killed by one of the teenage male monsters after she was asked (at gunpoint) if she believed in God and answered yes.

Of course, it didn’t take long for the MSM to eagerly knock that story down. Salon.com was one of the first.

They couldn’t knock down the facts of Cassie’s life, however.

In fact, in a note written to a friend the night before she was killed, and handed to her friend the next morning at school, Cassie said: “Honestly, I want to live completely for God. It’s hard and scary, but totally worth it.”

My grandmother told me about Lady Alice Lisle who, according to our New England family legend was an ancestor. On September 2, 1645 Lady Alice Lisle, English widow of John Lisle, was beheaded for high treason at Winchester, by order of Judge Jefferies for sheltering a rebel, a dissenting minister named Hickes.

This occurred during the Monmouth Rebellion. Lady Alice Lisle is listed in an updated version of the Foxe Book of Martyres. Her ancestral home, Moyles Court, now houses a school, hopefully, not the kind that teaches students about Jihad.

There are many others in recent history who dared to speak of their faith to those who held them captive and others who were killed in their attempts to bring the Good News to those who had no hope.

And, of course, there are our wonderful troops fighting for us. Read all of Steyn’s article and realize what they are fighting for and be clear that the MSM is working hard to see us defeated.