These will continue to be in the news. This week it is the Arabic word KAFIR on the right arm of the US Secretary of Defense. Raymond Ibrahim explains the meaning.
"Translating the word to “non-Muslim” or “unbeliever” — as almost every modern, English-language Koran does — completely misses the all-important and decidedly negative connotations associated with the word and its definition. (This, incidentally, is why older English translations rendered the word kafir as infidel, as I often do; although still an imperfect translation, it sought to capture the pejorative sense of the Arabic in one English word.)
To Muslim ears, kafir (singular) and kuffar (plural) are virtually synonymous with “evildoers” and “enemies.” In fact, virtually every vile human characteristic — and several connected to animals — is associated with the word kafir.
As usual, let us turn to the Koran; it refers to kuffar as the “worst of beasts” (8:55, 98:6), similar to cattle and just as dumb (47:12, 8:65); they are inherently “guilty,” “unjust,” and “criminal” (10:17, 45:31, 68:35; 39:32); they are the “sworn enemies” of Muslims (4:101); and are “disliked” and “accursed” by Allah (2:89, 3:32, 33:64). The Islamic deity is himself their declared enemy (2:98) who requires that “terror be cast into their hearts” (3:151).
According to Koran 9:5, Muslims must “slay” those who reject Islam, “wherever you find them — seize them, besiege them, and make ready to ambush them!”
If that sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because the Muslim ambassador of Barbary (North Africa) paraphrased this verse when explaining to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams why his Muslim countrymen were raiding American vessels and killing and enslaving their kafir sailors. As Jefferson wrote in a letter to Congress in 1786,
The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, … that it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims, kuffar] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners."
On this most sacred day of the Christian faith, a US president who claims to be a Christian issues a threat to a nation of 94 million people, including over 500,000, Christians—threatening to commit war crimes (pursuant to Geneva Convention) against their civilian infrastructure.
"Behold the puerile, B-movie gangster style of his prose and his use of the word “F..kin’”—now the most overused word in the English language and the clearest expression of our degenerate culture.
"Upon seeing this post, I immediately thought of Madison’s reflections on the evil of war.
"The same malignant aspect . . . may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both.
"On this Easter Sunday, I pray that the innocent civilians of Iran will be spared from the sadistic and demented wrath of “President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Here's the post
@realDonaldTrump
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This week, the US President gave an apparently delusional update of the Iran conflict. Iran's military is decimated, and it's President is asking for a cease fire, he reported.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman immediately rejected that. State broadcaster IRIB quoted Esmail Baghaei as saying Trump's statements were false and unfounded.
Trump attributed the request for a ceasefire to Iran's "New Regime President."
On the same day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian criticized the US war against his country in an open letter to the people of the United States on Wednesday, calling it an absurd operation that is costly for their nation.
Within hours of Mr. Trump's analysis of a destroyed Iranian military, Iran fired more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states, demonstrating Tehran’s continued ability to attack even as US President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated and predicted the war would end soon.
In Mr. Trump's speech to the nation, Paul...
Today's assymetrical warfare: Iran's cheap munitions are taking out American's most expensive aircraft.
One internet observer:
"Iran, still using their pawns, while Israel and the US out there, with only their King n Queen left. Who will fall first?
"5 pawns and a king versus a king and queen in a chess end game, the side with the 8 pawns always wins. 5 pawns is enough. That’s standard.
"In a way, you could call it asymmetrical warfare."