Child Rape is “Part of Our Culture” Says Islamic Preacher in Denmark

Denmark's largest Shia mosque (not necessarily the mosque referred to in this article)

In Denmark, a prominent mosque has told their congregation that apostates, adulterers and any one who harms a Muslim should be killed. The Mosque chairman defended the sermons, saying, “we believe in Islam”.

Continuing: “If someone violates their marriage, either man or woman, they commit adultery and their blood is thus halal [acceptable under Muslim law, ed.] and they should be killed by stoning. If the woman is a virgin, the punishment is whipping”.

In the clip, the imam advocates an “eye for an eye” policy. “If someone kills a Muslim, then they should be killed,” he says, before adding that anyone who leaves Islam (Apostasy) should also be murdered.

The mosques’s chairman, Oussama El-Saadi, who personally declared his support for IS last year, defended the comments and said the TV2 journalist was a “spy” who had tricked the Imam responsible.

“Our imam needs to answer what he has read on Sharia, when TV2’s spy asks him about Sharia. We can’t cheat and say incorrect things about our religion”, Mr. El-Saadi said.

East Jutland Police said on Twitter that they would “investigate the remarks further and determine if it is a punishable situation”.

If this is indeed what is being preached from the pulpit of that mosque, the mosque has to be closed and destroyed, and the Imam and the Chairman deported to a country where Islamic Insanity is acceptable.

This unfortunate article makes no mention of child rape except in the headline! However, anyone who believes in Sharia, anyone who takes the Quran literally, accepts that rape of a non-Islamic child of any age is sanctioned by Mohammed, and rape of an Islamic child - a child bride, is sanctioned and was demonstrated by Mohammed with little Aisha, 9 y/o.

By: Carlee Villa

2 High Priests and Their Very Disappointing Responses to Child Sex Abuse

A Cardinal and an Archbishop in the Catholic Church passed away last week. Their stories are loosely linked and have some similarities, but one big difference. One involves the Boston Globe's exposing of systemic pedophilia in Massachusetts, the other involves a similarly stunning revelation of child sex abuse that predates the Boston Globes expose by several years.

The former priest became Cardinal Law. A brilliant and courageous advocate for civil rights in Mississippi in the 1960's. However, as he grew in responsibility in the church, his response to child sex abusers was to move them from one parish to another, thus enabling them to avoid the consequences of their evil and to always have fresh, unsuspecting victims available. 

He resigned in 2002 after the scandal broke. Cardinal Law was buried today at the Vatican with full honours and a blessing by the Pope himself.

For the second story, we move 1500 kms northeast to St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Archbishop Penney was a local boy and raised himself to the highest level in the church in that province. Here's his story from retired CBC journalist Roger Bill:

Somehow it seems fitting that no picture accompanies the obituary of the former Archbishop of St. John's at the Telegram website.

The Catholic church has wanted Alphonsus Penney to disappear ever since the first priest in the archdiocese was charged with sexually assaulting boys during his watch. That priest was Jim Hickey, and Alphonsus Penney knew Jim Hickey from the time Penney was an assistant priest at St. Joseph's church on Quidi Vidi Road and Hickey was a member of the church choir.

Rev. James Hickey, now deceased, seen here in a file photo, was jailed for sex abuse committed in 1970s.

Their long association made it difficult to believe the archbishop in 1988 when he told a hastily arranged press conference following Hickey's conviction that he never had any indication that Jim Hickey was abusing children. Penney said he had no knowledge of any complaint about anybody. "None," he said.

Later, an inquiry commissioned by the Church concluded that Penney had lied about what he claimed he didn't know.

It should be noted that Penney, himself, commissioned this inquiry and convinced an Anglican bishop to lead it. He resigned as a result of its findings. That's the difference between the two men. 

At the press conference the archbishop was asked why he allowed Jim Hickey to continue to work in a rural parish even though he knew the police were investigating a formal complaint of sexual assault. The diminutive archbishop said he was informed about the complaint, but "it was just one person's word against another."

The cross on Mount Cashel orphanage before it was demolished in 1992. (CBC)

At the time the victim's identity was protected by the court, but several years later that first young man who had the courage to come forward agreed to identify himself in a documentary produced by journalist Deanne Fleet for CBC TV's Here & Now program titled One Man's Word.

His name was Randy Penney, Alphonsus Penney's nephew.

The provincial government established a commission of inquiry, and people across the province were drawn to their televisions and radios every day as young men told painful stories about being abused at the hands of Christian Brothers in the orphanage.

Alphonsus Penney said he didn't know anything about that either and, further, the orphanage wasn't his responsibility. By the time the lawsuits started, Archbishop Penney had disappeared and the Congregation of Irish Christian Brothers of Canada was busy trying to shelter assets at the same time it was telling Mount Cashel victims it wanted to compensate them.

Former archbishop Alphonsus Penney dead at 93

The Brothers may have been slow to compensate their victims, but they were quick to demolish the orphanage and sell the site to Sobeys for a grocery store. Most people under 30 probably don't know that the two stone posts beside the park benches across the street from the Howley Estates Sobeys are the orphanage's gate posts, the last reminder of a very, very dark chapter in Newfoundland history.

Scrapping denominational education

Before the sexual abuse scandals, the Catholic church enjoyed immense power in Newfoundland and Labrador. Their hold on education was enshrined in the Articles of Confederation.

However, after a parade of priests and Christian Brothers marched off to jail, then-premier Brian Tobin held a referendum and asked voters if they wanted to end denominational education. An overwhelming majority voted Yes, the constitution was amended, and the church's century-old lock on education was finally broken.

Father Jim Hickey went to jail. He and his fellow priests damaged a lot of lives, and when I learned of his death I thought it would be appropriate if he was buried on the grounds of Dorchester prison in New Brunswick where he had been incarcerated.

Instead, Jim Hickey is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Toronto, but far from the area reserved for priests.

Alphonsus Penney will probably do better.

Eddie Long And The Black Church’s Legacy Of Child Sexual Abuse

This is a highly provocative article by a survivor of child sex abuse that I hesitated, briefly, to post. It appears to be critical of the Bible, but, in fact is critical of the misuse of the Bible. It also points out how a preacher can command the love and devotion of his congregation as he is fleecing them and raping their children. 

Christians come under a lot of criticism for being blind and stupidly following what they are taught. It is because of churches like Eddie Long's that we deserve that criticism. Jesus never taught us to help ourselves to money or child abuse as, I'm sure, Eddie Long has already come to realize in his new home.

This article is specifically written for black churches but is certainly relevant to churches of any color.

The same Bible that is used against women, LGBTQ individuals and other marginalized identities is simultaneously used to shame survivors and privilege harm-doers

Written By Ahmad Greene-Hayes

On Sunday, January 15, Bishop Eddie Long passed away. Long was the prominent Atlanta pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which at its height, boasted a congregation of over 25,000. A man of many controversies, Long had been closely scrutinized by the United States Senate for potentially profiting off of his church’s tax-exempt status.

He also came under fire for his homo-antagonistic sermons and his book, Deliver Me From Adam, in which he cloaks homophobia, misogyny and patriarchy in the lexicon of self-help. Long’s quest to cast out the spirit of homosexuality, however, did not stop there. Some have argued that he fathered and pastored a homophobic theological legacy at New Birth. In 2005, for example, he hosted his infamous “Sexual Orientation and Reorientation Conference” to convert LGBTQ Christians into heterosexuals.

Note: The author here unfortunately believes that gays are born gay and cannot be changed. Please read this article on my other blog if you also believe this.

Bishop Eddie Long Discusses Sex Scandal Allegations  Source: Pool / Getty

Just five years later, in 2010, Long was accused of sexually abusing four young men—Anthony Flagg, Spencer LeGrande, Jamal Parris and Maurice Robinson, who were teenagers at the time of their accusations. Like most predators, Long allegedly “groomed” these teenage boys into nonconsensual sexual activity. As noted on child rape survivor Oprah Winfrey’s website, grooming includes targeting vulnerable victims, gaining the victim’s trust, filling a need or void, isolating the child, sexualizing the relationship and maintaining control. Long was said to have used his prosperity gospel-accrued wealth to lavish Flagg, LeGrande, Parris and Robinson with private planes, expensive jewelry and luxury hotel rooms. According to the lawsuits brought by the young men, he then exploited his identity as a pastor and spiritual leader to add God’s blessing on his sexually perverse behaviors.

If you are far from God, as Long appears to have been, you cannot invoke God's blessing. You can pretend to, but there will be no real blessing. The lawsuits were settled out of court for undisclosed amounts. 

Yet Long’s members stood behind him. Although the New Birth Christian Academy closed down, the church doors remained open. 

The closing of the academy was, apparently, because of decreased enrollment and decreased giving. They had over 200 students, so it would have taken a large number, certainly in the dozens, to have withdrawn from the school as a consequence of Long's behaviour, for it to close its doors. The decreased giving also means that many members of the church also left. 

Congregants heard these children’s horrifying allegations of sexual abuse and many remained faithful to Long, even as he preached messages condoning homophobia, the subjugation of women and rape culture. In fact, after news of the child sexual abuse allegations surfaced, Long used the Bible to victim-blame and deny all charges in a sermon to his megachurch followers: “I’ve been accused. I’m under attack. As I said earlier, I am not a perfect man. But this thing, I’m gonna fight. . . . I feel like David against Goliath. But I’ve got five rocks and I haven’t thrown one yet.”

As a survivor of child sexual abuse and the son of Black churchgoing women and men, I am appalled by the ways that churches like New Birth create safe space for sexual violence. I am even more disturbed by the silence around rape and molestation, and the ways survivors are mocked and called liars. Meanwhile, abusers escape accountability, often keep their positions of power and manage to gain support as if they are the true victims.

I am too!

“To be called beloved is not only to shatter the silence, but to get rid of it altogether,” writes Emilie M. Townes in her essay “Washed in the Grace of God.” “We owe one another respect and the right to our dignity as people of God. If we deny justice, we are telling those who go without that they are worthless […] Folk need to hear the church say in a clear and unequivocal voice that sexual and domestic violence are not acceptable behaviors but they are lethal values.”

However, in a world where Bishop Eddie Long can be accused of being a child molester and garner the support of the majority of his congregation, it calls us to question the level to which some of our Black churches truly care about what happens to Black children. As blogger Son of Baldwin observes, “We love ovum and sperm. We love zygotes and embryos. We even love fetuses. But we do not — no, we absolutely do not — love children.”

Let me be clear, it is not uncommon for child abusers in the church—sexual and otherwise—to be protected by the incessant valorization of the Black male preacher. Long represented much of what the church prizes: fame, fortune and prominence. To see him in any other light than as a “man of God” would mean compromising conservative, prosperity gospel theologies, many of which excuse the church from enacting justice. “God” is characterized as the supreme judge who determines the outcome of all individuals. Long’s followers left him to God for judgment, even as God, like most adults, is regularly a passive bystander when children are sexually abused.

This is a bold, if not reckless statement for which the author may be held accountable. I certainly understand where it comes from for I know children are being sexually abused every day - millions of them (between 1 and 10 million by my count) every day. It is easy to blame God for standing by and allowing it to happen but we don't really know what God is doing; to say He is doing nothing is a big assumption and is probably wrong. Also, it places the responsibility that God gave man back onto God. God hasn't taken that freedom back from us; He allows us to suffer the consequences of our own choices. We, corporately, choose to be evil, lecherous people and our children suffer the consequences here on earth. In Eternity, the children will be blessed and the perverts will suffer. Meanwhile, we, if we are Christians, have the responsibility to pray for the children and for the perverts.

Long’s church continued with business as usual, shouting and dancing week after week to their pastor’s homophobic, sexist and classist interpretation of the gospel. All of which detracted from the severity of the survivors’ testimonies of sexual assault and sent the message that sexual violence within an intracommunal context is status quo and does not warrant the church’s collective action and strides toward justice. Long also used the Bible, one of the leading moral texts of the Western world, to excuse himself of communal accountability. This should not be overlooked. The same Bible that is used against women, LGBTQ individuals and other marginalized identities, was simultaneously used to shame survivors and privilege harm-doers. 

Alas, Bishop Eddie Long has passed away and he will soon be funeralized. However, Black church communities cannot bury his troubled past with him. The church—New Birth et al.—must reckon with the Goliath of child sexual abuse and rescue the true Davids, our children, from the perverse and death-dealing realities of molestation, incest and rape.

I couldn't agree more with this statement. There is rarely a week goes by that I haven't included at least one story on this blog of a pastor sexually abusing children from his congregation. There is clearly a lack of discernment in many, many congregations and elder's boards in American churches. This can only be because of a lack of intimacy with Jesus Christ. I fear many western churches, while well-attended and enthusiastic may be so far off-track as to be in a state of apostasy. The great 'falling-away' may be happening even while our church buildings are full.

Ahmad Greene-Hayes is a doctoral student in the Departments of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University. He also currently serves as an inaugural cohort fellow of the Just Beginnings Collaborative (2016-2018), where his project, Children of Combahee works to eradicate child sexual abuse in Black churches. Follow him @_BrothaG.

The Catholic Church - Homosexuality, Celibacy, Hypocrisy and Apostasy

Let me state right out that I am not a fan of the Catholic Church; I have done too many stories on the devastation of child sex abuse by priests and their enabling by Bishops to think that there is anything but hypocrisy there.

The problem with gays in the priesthood is a prime example. The difference between gays and straights is just this - gay sex. That is what homosexuality is about and that's all it's about! So, what are they doing in the priesthood? Do not priests take a vow of celibacy? Is that not why they cannot get married? Yet, while God-ordained sex is forbidden in the priesthood, gay sex is fine? Does that make any sense? You can be gay but you can't be straight, and be sexually active.

Being gay and not being celibate should disqualify priests or Bishops from serving in the church. The Catholic church is a magnet for gays and pedophiles and its hypocrisy stinks to the high heavens. 

Grindr scandal prompts Irish priest school

to crackdown on ‘vicious gay subculture’

© Peter Andrews / Reuters

Stricter rules are being introduced for trainee priests in Ireland, including mandatory evening prayers and supervised meals, after it emerged a number of priests were hooking up through gay dating app Grindr.

The figurative tightening of the cilice is being introduced at Ireland’s National Seminary in Maynooth will require student priests to eat breakfast and evening meals with senior staff in the college instead of dining wherever they want.

Shortly after the evening meal, the 55 men will also now have to attend an obligatory rosary at 9 p.m., according to the Irish Independent.

That will do them a lot of good: Matthew 6:7 - "And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words."

The trustees of Maynooth also plan to review social media usage by trainee priests, as well as what is described as the "appropriate use of the internet.”

The new rules are being brought in with the hope of limiting “any sort of behavior or attitude which contradicts the teaching and example of Jesus Christ.”

It is here where gays point out that Jesus never said or did anything about homosexuality (in the Gospels). Neither did he mention child sex abuse, or rape, or torture, or beheading, etc., etc. Does that mean He approves of them? 

Who do you think appeared to Abraham to warn him of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah if not the pre-incarnate Christ? Genesis 18:1 - And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre... And as He bargained with Abraham, He said, And he said, 'I will not destroy it for ten's sake'. Genesis 18:32. Leaving no doubt about Who did the destruction. 

Did He then change His mind about homosexuality? That we certainly would have heard about, but we didn't! Hebrews 13:8 - Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.

The move comes following revelations that there is a “gay culture” at the seminary with a number of the trainee priests using the gay dating app Grindr.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin told the Irish Times in early August that he was sending three student priests from his diocese to Rome instead of Maynooth as there was “an atmosphere of strange goings-on” at the Irish seminary.

While the new rules have been ridiculed on social media, one Irish bishop Pat Buckley, who has conducted his own independent ministry since 1986, says the trustees haven’t gone far enough.

“They should have put a ban on mobile phones because that would have sent a very clear message to the seminarians and to the Irish population that people, whether they are straight or gay, on mobile phones looking for promiscuous sex is not allowed," said Buckley, who is himself gay and in a civil partnership.

Amazing - he can't live with a woman, but he can live with a man. The Catholic restriction against marriage in the priesthood is quite simply absurd. It contributes greatly to the pedophilic culture in the church and its acceptance renders the entire church apostate at best.

Buckley also described the training college as having a “vicious gay subculture.”

Toronto ‘Exorcism’ Pastor Wayne Marlon Jones Hit with New Sex Assault Charges

Four women have now come forward: police

Wayne Marlon Jones, 53, of Ajax is charged with sexual assault
and three counts of fraud over $5,000

AJAX, Ontario -- More charges have been laid against an Ajax pastor accused of sexually assaulting women at his church.

Toronto police said Friday they had laid two new charges of sexual assault against Wayne Marlon Jones. The new allegations relate to two women who claim they were assaulted when they attended “spiritual guidance” sessions at the Mount Ararat Baptist Church in Toronto between 1993 and 1996, police said.

Mr. Jones, 53, now faces four counts of sexual assault. He was first arrested in August 2014 on allegations he had sexually assaulted and defrauded a woman while acting as pastor of the United Spiritual Baptist Church on Midland Avenue in Scarborough. Toronto police said the woman claimed she’d been exploited while participating in spiritual counselling sessions that included exorcisms.

On Feb. 16 Toronto police laid another charge of sexual assault. And on Feb. 26 two new charges were laid, this time relating to women who said they’d attended spiritual guidance sessions at the Mount Ararat Baptist Church in the 1990s.

Any responsible church would never allow a pastor or elder to hold closed door counselling or deliverance sessions with just him and a woman. Such a case is a field day for demonic forces.

An online biography of Mr. Jones says the Trinidad and Tobago native immigrated to Canada in 1984 and was ordained in 1987. The following year Mr. Jones “pastured” his own congregation, establishing the Mt. Ararat Spiritual Baptist Church. He was consecrated as a Bishop in 1990, the site says.

In a news release Friday, police indicated they believe there may be more victims. Call police at 416-808-1400 or Crime Stoppers at 416-222-8477.

Ajax is a town in the Greater Toronto area about 25 kms east of Toronto proper, on Lake Ontario.