Clearly Islam isn’t the only religion to be afflicted with a “ratbag” loony element. That’s something National Party leader Barnaby Joyce pointed out recently.
“Every group has their ratbags, even Catholics.
“We had, in the past, the IRA, but if someone said every Catholic is a member of the IRA I would say ‘no we’re not’. They’re lunatics, crazy criminals who want to kill people who have nothing to do with the religion I practise.
“In Islam at the moment, they have also got a lunatic fringe. You can’t go through every person of the Islamic faith and say they are all just like them.”
Since then I’ve come across a disturbing example of this element from the camp of my old “friend” Danny Nalliah and his political party Rise Up Australia. I’ve written about Nalliah before on this blog: https://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/category/danny-nalliah/
The following comes from Nalliah’s Rise Up Australia party spokesperson Rosalie Crestani:
Islam and Christianity are at loggerheads.
When you go right back to the crusades… and I will not say that the crusades were a completely bad thing because they were taking back land that was taken from them by the Muslims. Just like now I reckon we’re about to see, a crusade starting across,,, the western countries are going to start to rise up.
I mean the true western countries because I think America’s too far gone now.
They’ve got a jihadist in the White House. He’s the one that started ISIS mind you… he armed and he’s established them. He’s using the CIA to recruit…
In response to that and all of the other antichristian behaviour, rhetoric and false prophecy that has come out of the Nalliah camp in the decade since I became aware of him, all I can do is point again to the very strong warning Paul gives in 2 Thessalonians:
…because they refused to love the truth and so be saved… God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth.
______________________________________
The Rosalie Crestani quote came from a recording here, at roughly the 21 minute mark: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/putting-the-ex-in-muslim/7635674
That recording is the last of a five part series about Islam by an ex-Muslim. It’s a fascinating series, but contains short sections of comedic content that some will find offensive,
Onesimus Files 
…gluten free Sunni Muslims… peanut fire Shia Muslims… ultra-bot Muslims, and decepticon Muslims.
I listened to all five recordings. Thank you for the link.
I don’t know generally what to say anymore to people like Rosalie Crestani or people who would like her. It’s almost not worth it. I’ve had a weekend where I’ve had to hear things like nobody will hold Obama accountable for the things he’s done, because he’s black. To which I responded that I don’t see why people should go after him because he’s black when they don’t go after other presidents for what they have done. (Of course, that’s not getting into the fact he’s done less to complain about. For instance, he didn’t start this mess in the Levant.)
It does seem to be the actual answer (to what could otherwise be completely perplexing), that people will fall for blatant lies and contradictions and ultimate deceit when they haven’t been interested in truth for far too long. (Of course, they don’t say they aren’t about truth. And they claim to be spreading it, truth, that is, so called, the gospel even). And we’ve been warned (or seen the same kind of thing before).
Marleen, I’ve come to realise that people like Crestani and Nalliah can only maintain a following because they say what people want to hear. They aren’t the real problem, they merely FEED the problem. They can thrive because people don’t want “sound teaching” but prefer to “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions”.
I ended up telling someone she’s a hypocrite and a liar and that we shouldn’t talk about anything. [She can’t be honest about everyday personal matters either.] This was after she brought things up (to her, apparently, only political, and “religious” — not factual or practical) and then, if there was a response, brushed off disagreement by saying she doesn’t care or worry about these matters; obviously not true when she had brought them up. Then, a few hours later, she brought it up again. Actually, she asked if a few of us wanted to hear. And she went on anyway when we said no. Later, with time to look things up… such as actual quotations in context… I gave her solid information. She said the same kind of thing, a brush off not to “worry” (psychological displacement) about these things (and that “we” shouldn’t talk about them).
The “he” involved I didn’t have to follow up with and say he was hypocritical later because I, in the normal course of conversation, showed him. He had said [different topic, but both of these people were pushing Trump (as he is of the good person party… lately*)], angrily, that he doesn’t understand people asking for a higher minimum wage. I said they need to eat. He said they should go to college. A number of angles came up at that point. Someone else was there who said she and her daughter got free college educations (from a prestigious private college) because of where she worked. The male I have mentioned said he also doesn’t understand people who want free college. I pointed out that two people there (he and the hypocritical woman, not the one who said she was lucky she [as well as her daughter] got her education free) got college degrees subsidised by the city [not completely free, but pretty close]. Defensively, he said that’s because the city wanted blah blah blah. I said, “yeah.” (No need to be defensive, you know… unless you don’t like to hear from your conscience.) I said people now graduate with debt as if they’ve bought a house (no house). He said, “Well, college isn’t for everyone.” So I repeated, so they need some other kind of job and need to eat. He had previously argued (angrily) for employers replacing workers with robots or computers, said wanting more pay will mean those people won’t have any job. I said it’s not that the employers can’t pay them, they just don’t want to. He’d agreed as if so what. I think I said at some point that when we get rid if all people we won’t have to worry about paying them.
Nevertheless, when we went through the college circle of illogic, it ended. what could he say?
By the way, there are people here (in the U.S.) who get less than “minimum wage” — legally. So, if one imagines that really “slow” or disabled people should be thankful to be allowed into some corner of the work force and that the minimum wage obviously makes sense for them… guess what. They don’t actually get minimum wage. Domestic and service workers also don’t have to be paid minimum wage (even though they’re not stupid).
[This was a situation in which (another he) one of my sons and I were not arguing to vote for Hillary at all.]
* Certainly, there’s also the fact he’s imagined to be rich… and, even better, there are attractive young women involved… Trump’s youngest wife and oldest daughter (the one [not Tiffany] he usually brags on).
And Milania “said all the right things” (even though they were the words of a black traitor).
Painful the hoops one contorts through to justify how the words are good (now).
I think I meant projection rather than displacement (although the instance could be both)…
in addition to the habit on the part of the local individual of hushing people who address topical record.
{Also, I hope it’s clear already “the good person party” and “black traitor” are tongue-in-cheek poignant rhetoric.}
To get back more directly to your original topic, the hypocritical pair I was talking with over the weekend go to a Catholic church (on most Sundays, and leave without ever participating further). When they were younger (of childbearing age), they didn’t consider themselves Catholic (largely, even mainly, because the woman didn’t agree with their stance on birth control). [They were active in a different kind of church.] And the man’s sister (who is no longer alive on this earth) was Catholic (as that family had been all the time growing up) but was unhappy because of old-fashioned attitudes that were fostered in the Church that allowed husbands to dominate and discount their wives (which their father didn’t do, but which her husband did).
Still, one of the first “topics” brought up by the couple under consideration that I encountered a few days ago was the Kahns (an immigrant couple who stood on stage recently and asked if Trump has even read the Constitution); their son died deployed for the U.S.A. The local pair asserted, taking their cue from Trump (or, as you’ve hinted, his having taken a cue from people like them), the man had not let the woman speak. I didn’t want to get into a “thing” (although I did say I didn’t think it was the case because it seemed the woman didn’t want to talk at the time). I tried to let it go by saying if it was so, then they nevertheless sure found out (because of the subsequent hubbub) being American means letting your wife speak.
That’s not exactly true (and there are other Christian religions besides Catholicism here that make it not true), but I didn’t think it had to be a big deal with politics dominating the weekend. Still, they insisted. So I pointed out that if you get heavily into Christianity (and they’ve never imposed such upon themselves), you’ll find the same thing. The man of this pair then conceded so (remembering his sister). [Incidentally, it also came up — when additional people were present — that the Pope is considering letting women be deacons (only wives of male deacons; they are not allowed currently even though they are required to take the same training as their husbands in order for their husbands, not themselves, to be deacons).]
But the woman, who has not adhered to Catholic doctrine (and didn’t grow up Catholic or convert but now attends and reads their political pamphlets), wanted to bring up a statement by a natural-born American woman, who has lived much like this local woman herself, about “deep-seated[…] religious beliefs” around the world. This was brought up, read out loud by her, from a pamphlet I’d already had the intellectual curiosity to read to myself. The purpose of said oration was to wishfully supposedly show that the woman who’d said it is bad, unlike herself. [Strange to me, the text also included (something she didn’t read aloud) outraged reference to a demonized man covering an image* called “Jesus” — not called “a Jesus likeness”.]
{* It’s curious… when I first listened to what Crestani said (on the recordings), which was before the weekend, what came to my mind when she talked about keeping “the ten commandments” was making graven images. I was hard pressed to think of how she was indicating she hadn’t kept the ten (I wasn’t thinking they’re hard to keep overall — except also, coming to mind just now, when your parents tell you for example to do homework on the sabbath). And then I encountered this unhappy interaction which included a religious tract stubbornly pushing the reverence of idols. The particular church they go to also published an exuberant announcement some years ago of a statue of a saint coming to town and what people could or should do about it.}
[You know, maybe (yes) we can allow for some among us putting such figures on the walls of their homes and schools. But it’s gone too far when their fetish is seen as so necessary that others are fair game to effectively slander for not going along with their ways themselves. Wow. I just this minute remembered too that when I went to a store with the hypocritical woman, she proudly told me a story in which she talked a young lady (the daughter of an owner of a store she frequented before it went out of business) out of marrying her Catholic fiance because “she didn’t know what was ahead” or what she was in for in her life if she did marry a Catholic (said the hypocrite to her). I am ever flabbergasted as I put together more pieces of this weird self righteousness.]
I don’t know whether or not you’ve seen it in your news, but Trump’s now saying what Crestani said. Other Republicans are trying to give alternate interpretations of what he said, as they’ve been cleaning up for him throughout his candidacy (on one topic after another). There are low level operatives holding on [pretending what he says is defensible and makes sense] for dear “life” (hoping, I imagine, that this “rich guy” will want to hire them for his business endeavors even if he doesn’t win the Presidency). More crooked aspects of his business dealings are coming to light, though. It still looks to me like he could be going under financially.]
On this subject, his claim that Obama and Hillary are sympathetic to isis/ISIL, even when solidly respected conservatives have given him better words for what they want him to mean, he refuses. He says he disagrees with them. They know Obama and Hillary Clinton didn’t create the terror group, that they are not the founders (even if some Republican sympathizers have suggested such things or implied at least). He is sort of the sorcerers’ apprentice. I’m not sure, though, that he’s crafting his message by design. I think he’s mentally unstable and has not noticed the winks and nods, and that FOX grew an unstable demographic.
Yes we’ve seen that on the news here.
Trump and his ideas may be scary, but even scarier is the fact that enough people have supported him to make him a presidential candidate.
He would be terribly scary if he got the position (because of the authority he would have). At this point, the scarier thing is that so many people like him (or even think he’s a better choice than HRC even if they don’t like him). It is the case, though, that certain “news” outlets (and some churches) have set about warping minds.
Yet, one does not need to be trapped. I used to watch FOX. I thought they were okay. Then I saw that they decided to go with lies and slander. There is probably a span of time I didn’t see because it wasn’t as obvious as it got later, but I think they weren’t bad at first. (However, apparently their chairman was bad — Ailes.)
By which I am not simply pointing toward Catholicism again (and many there are sensible).
“Evangelicalism” has gone awry. And there’s an element of that tied into charismania too.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525
The above is an older article. Newer articles can be found about Ailes being removed from his job.
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/08/12/rnc-trump-campaign-holds-come-jesus-meeting-fix-mess/
http://www.redstate.com/aglanon/2016/08/04/you-knew-damn-well-trump-was-a-snake-before-you-let-him-in/
Today, the Trump campaign and the R(epublican)N(ational)C(ommittee) had
what was called a “come to Jesus” meeting.
Subsequently, Trump is saying “the press” doesn’t “understand sarcasm.”
For the RNC to be complicit in this is for them to continue a dumbing down of their public.
But what can they do? They have to tone down the calls/excuses for assassination.
Not only the dumbing down but also the susceptibility to falling for blatant lies.
Ope! The latest: saying he was sarcastic “but not that sarcastic …hones[tly].”
Oh. The hits keep coming. Now citizens should be tried at Guantanamo.
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/08/11/vladimir-putin-just-signal-invasion-ukraine-imminent/
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/14/trump_and_drudge_for_the_win_again_matt_drudges_army_is_bigger_than_the_rncs/
http://www.businessinsider.com/drudge-report-trump-2016-7
It’s not in this article, but I heard yesterday that Drudge says it’s “surreal” to hear a presidential candidate repeat things he himself has said. I’m not a follower of Drudge, but I’d guess Trump got the Rosalie Crestani notion there. Incidentally, have you heard that Trump says he’s been audited for fifteen years because he’s a strong Christian; there might be a bias against him because of that? Who’s foolish enough to believe that?
http://regated.com/2016/08/roger-stone-tells-regated-trumps-nomination-hostile-takeover-republican-party/
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/05/bedlam-hannity-national-review-wsj-editor-go-war-over-donald-trump/212210
http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/12/orlando-sentinel-highlights-trump-rubio-headlining-rally-anti-lgbt-extremist-groups/212368
http://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/08/12/fox-news-wrong-trump-terrorist-recruiting-tool/212366
Apologies:
It was Alex Jones (same ilk) who pondered how “surreal” it is to hear Trump repeat
“word for word” online ravings… that Trump says what he’s been pushing.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/09/trump-ally-roger-stone-clintons-recently-had-four-people-murdered/212270
https://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/12/trump-allies-roger-stone-and-alex-jones-team-push-conspiracy-clintons-recently-had-several-people/212372
This is an effort to take away from looking at Russia and Putin and Assange (as an active — rather than an innocent); better to look at Clinton (despite blatant red flags on Stone).
[Also, I don’t know if you got the news on this, Onesimus, but the Trump campaign got language changed on the Republican Party platform, at the start of the convention, so as not to support Ukraine v Russia.]
Quote (from first link): ….
Stone currently heads the pro-Trump super PAC Committee to Restore America’s Greatness after working for Trump’s campaign last year. He regularly talks with Trump and his senior staff. Trump has previously used Stone’s advice, including that the election would be rigged in November to favor Clinton.
Stone wrote in his book The Clintons’ War on Women that the Clintons are “plausibly responsible” for the deaths of roughly 40 people. The book is dedicated to Thorn and repeatedly cites his purported research on the Clintons.
Thorn worked for the virulently anti-Semitic publication American Free Press. The site announced Thorn’s death on August 1; a staff write-up stated that Thorn’s family said “there was no evidence of foul play at the scene and that Thorn most likely took his own life.”
Thorn wasn’t just an anti-Clinton writer; he was also a prominent Holocaust denier and anti-Semite. Thorn wrote the book The Holocaust Hoax Exposed: Debunking the 20th Century’s Biggest Lie, which claims to expose “the mythology surrounding ‘concentration camps,’ the truth about [concentration camp gas] Zyklon B, Anne Frank’s fable, how the absurd ‘six million’ figure has become a laughingstock, and the betrayal by maniacal Zionists of their own Jewish people that led to their deaths.” Thorn also blamed a “Jewish plot” for the 9/11 attacks.
Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the Daily Dot that “Thorn was akin to being a Nazi and was certainly a Nazi apologist.” Despite that background, Stone dedicated his book to Thorn — and now he’s claiming the Clintons killed him.