More ominous signs of Christian prosecution

by Allen West
My daughter Aubrey and I arrived in Dallas and our home in Woodbridge on Sunday morning. We had departed from Palm Beach Gardens Saturday evening after we watched Austen head off for her senior prom — a doggone big deal, dads!
Back in Dallas, after we unloaded the U-Haul, Aubrey, a very organized young lady, began the initial arranging of her room. And then came the request — “Dad, I know you haven’t been eating well here, so we need to go grocery shopping.” Dang it! This is what happens when your daughter is pursuing a Masters in Molecular/Cellular Biology. So we were off to the local Walmart Superstore just up the road. We gathered up her desired foodstuffs and headed to the checkout — and then this happened.

There was a young man doing the checkout and another Walmart employee came over and put up a sign, “No alcohol products in this lane.” So being the inquisitive fella I am, I used my additional set of eyes — glasses — to see the young checkout man’s name. Let me just say it was NOT “Steve.”
I pointed the sign out to Aubrey and her response was a simple question, how is it that this Muslim employee could refuse service to customers based on his religious beliefs, but Christians are being forced to participate in specific events contrary to their religious beliefs?

Boy howdy, that is one astute young lady.
Imagine that, this employee at Walmart refused to just scan a bottle or container of an alcoholic beverage — and that is acceptable. A Christian business owner declines to participate or provide service to a specific event — a gay wedding — which contradicts their faith, and the State crushes them.

EDITOR’S UPDATE: We spoke to the Walmart store, and apparently employees under 21 years old are prohibited from selling cigarettes and alcohol. However, that isn’t to say Walmart isn’t selectively caving to Muslim demands, such as this case regarding Halal meat in Ohio.
Recently I wrote about the reason why the sign goes up for the Muslim employee, but the law — and the liberal progressive left — punishes Christian business owners. It all boils down to one group having an anger management issue, and the PC “coexist” crowd is just too cowardly.
I have to wonder, if Christians were threatening to blow things up, would they be treated differently as a faith-based collective group? After all, perhaps there are those who take the whole “turn the other cheek” assertion as a sign of weakness — a gap to exploit.

And so I came across yet another incident of a very apparent double standard.
As reported by the Gatestone Institute, “Late on the evening of May 8, Newsmax TV announced that pressure from Americans acquainted with Sister Diana Momeka’s visa rejection has just caused the State Department to reverse its decision and permit her entry into the United States. Until then, however, she and others were barred After inviting a number of foreign religious leaders, mostly Muslim, the U.S. State Department, for the second time in a row, denied the sole Christian representative a visa — despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Christians are the ones being persecuted by Muslims. Sister Diana, an influential Iraqi Christian leader and spokeswoman who was scheduled to visit the U.S. to advocate for persecuted Christians in the Mideast, earlier this month was denied a visa by the U.S. State Department, even though she had visited the U.S. before, most recently in 2012. Sister Diana was to be one of a delegation of religious leaders from Iraq — including Shia and Yazidi — to visit Washington, D.C., to describe the situation of their people. Every single religious leader from this delegation was granted a visa — except for the only Christian representative, Sister Diana.”

But it’s not just the denial of a visa for Sister Diana — why is it that the Obama administration is allowing such a large number of Muslims entry into America — and not Christians, certainly not Yazidis, who are being persecuted in the Middle East?
I recently shared what I learned while speaking in Franklin, Tennessee — a southern suburb of Nashville. There, Governor Bill Haslem had to issue a letter to President Obama in order to ascertain who was in charge of the massive resettlement of Muslim refugees. And recently the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, has expressed a likewise concern.
Often many ask me — or flat out tell me — do I believe President Obama is a Muslim? I dispel that assertion quickly, but as I laid out, based on the statements and policies of President Obama — he is surely an Islamist sympathizer. And this Muslim resettlement, along with the inane desire to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran, combined with his known outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their affiliates in America is reason for concern.

And please, don’t try and excuse this away with claims about drone strikes — I am speaking about policy, not a pinprick here or there. But I suppose I need to climb off my “high horse” and maybe that was why Sister Diana was denied a visa — after all, she was over there in Iraq carrying forth the legacy of the Crusades.
We wrote here about the Muslim leaders meeting which President Obama held right before the most recent National Prayer breakfast — where was the meeting with Christian leaders? And Rev. Al Sharpton doesn’t count.
Now of course I can hear all the progressive socialist detractors steaming about this as they destroy yet another keyboard, banging out their angry retort. It’s funny, many of them don’t even bother to read the entire article.

And then there are those who just cannot comprehend what is being articulated. So let me make this REALLY simple with another example put forth in the piece by the Gladstone Institute. They write, “Similarly, in March 2014, after the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) brought together the governors of Nigeria’s mostly Muslim northern states for a conference in the U.S., the State Department had also blocked the visa of the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang, an ordained minister, citing “administrative” problems. The USIP confirmed that all 19 northern governors were invited, but the organization did not respond to requests for comments on why they would hold talks without the region’s only Christian governor.”
According to Emmanuel Ogebe, a Nigerian human rights lawyer based in Washington D.C., the Christian governor’s “visa problems” are due to anti-Christian bias in the U.S. government:

The U.S. insists that Muslims are the primary victims of Boko Haram. It also claims that Christians discriminate against Muslims in Plateau, which is one of the few Christian majority states in the north. After the [Christian governor] told them [U.S. authorities] that they were ignoring the 12 Shariah states who (sic) institutionalized persecution … he suddenly developed visa problems. … The question remains — why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?

Shall I remind folks of that maxim, “perception lends itself to reality?”
For whatever reason, in President Obama and his administration, we find ourselves witnessing the most anti-Christian executive branch in recent history. I would be happy to repeat the points that I made in referring to President Obama as an “Islamist sympathizer.”
And may I share, as a reminder, his statement before the UN: “the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Heck, I have yet to hear Obama state that “the future does not belong to those who would behead, crucify, rape, and abuse Christians and other religious minorities in the name of Islam.” Embracing Morsi and shunning el-Sisi. The release of five senior Taliban leaders for a known deserter — we don’t leave our men behind, right? So why are a Christian pastor, Saeed Abedini and a former Marine, Amir Hekmati, being abandoned by Obama?
As a matter of fact, what is the status on the Bergdahl Article 32 hearing? Trust me, it doesn’t take this long to put together an Article 32 hearing, just like it shouldn’t have taken so long for the investigation when one had already been done back in 2009.
There are many evident and blatant hypocrisies and double standards pointing back to President Obama and his acolytes. But I believe none are greater than the disparate manner in which he refers to Islam and Muslims as opposed to Christianity and Christians. Not to mention the abject disdain Obama has towards Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the State of Israel.

Sure, it was a nice hashtag campaign aimed towards Boko Haram, but Mr. Ogebe asked the very pertinent question, “why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?”
Sir, the folks at Hobby Lobby, the bakers in Oregon, the photographer in New Mexico, and the pizzeria owner in Indiana are all asking the same question.