Tuesday, June 17, 2014


בית עניא

Bethany (Aramaic: בית עניא, Beth anya, "house of misery/poverty"; Greek: Βηθανία) is recorded in the New Testament as the home of the siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, as well as that of Simon the Leper. Jesus is reported to have lodged there after his entry into Jerusalem, and it could be from Bethany that he parted from his disciples at the Ascension.

The root meaning and origin of the name Bethany has been the subject of much scholarship and debate. William Hepworth Dixon devotes a multi-page footnote to it in his The Holy Land (1866), largely devoted to debunking the meaning "house of dates," which is attributed to Joseph Barber Lightfoot by way of a series of careless interpretative mistakes. Dixon quotes at length a refutation of Lightfoot's thesis in the form of a letter by Emanuel Deutsch of the British Museum, who notes that neither the name Bethany, nor any of the roots suggested by Lightfoot, appear anywhere in the Talmud. Deutsch suggests a non-Hebrew root, a word transcribed in Syriac script whose meaning he gives as "House of Misery" or "Poor-house."

This theory as to Bethany's etymology, which was eventually also adopted by Gustav Dalman in 1905, is not without challengers. For example, E. Nestle's Philologica Sacra (1896) suggests that Bethany is derived from the personal name Anaiah, while others have suggested it is a shortened version of Ananiah, a village of Bethel mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah (11:32). Since Greek can neither reproduce an 'h' sound nor the Hebrew harsh 'ch' sound (cheth) in the middle of a word, a derivation from the personal name Chananya ("Yah has been gracious") is also possible. Another suggestion, arising from the presence of nearby Bethphage ("house of unripe figs"), is that its name comes from beit hini, meaning "house of figs".

Deutsch's thesis, however, seems to also be attested to by Jerome. In his version of Eusebius' Onomasticon, the meaning of Bethany is defined as domus adflictionis or "house of affliction." Brian J. Capper writes that this is a Latin derivation from the Hebrew beth 'ani or more likely the Aramaic beth 'anya, both of which mean "house of the poor" or "house of affliction/poverty," also semantically speaking "poor-house." Capper concludes, from historical sources as well as this linguistic evidence, that Bethany may have been the site of an almshouse.

According to Capper and Deutsch before him, there are also linguistic difficulties that arise when the Anaiah/Ananiah, "house of figs" or "house of dates" theses are compared against the bethania form used in Greek versions of the New Testament. Additionally, the Aramaic beit 'anya is the form used for Bethany in Christian Palestinian and Syriac versions of the New Testament. Given this, and Jerome's familiarity with Semitic philology and the immediate region, Capper concludes that the "house of affliction" / "poor-house" meaning as documented by Jerome and in the Syriac New Testament usage is correct, and that this meaning relates to the use of the village as a centre for caring for the sick and aiding the destitute and pilgrims to Jerusalem.

It may be possible to combine the Ananiah (as a personal name) and "house of the poor" derivations, since the shortening of Ananiah ("Yah has intervened") to Anya is conceivable though unattested (cf. the common shortening of Yochanan [and perhaps also Chananyah?] to Choni), whence a typical Semitic wordplay might arise between Anya as a shortening of the personal name within the name of the village and as Aramaic for "poor". Such a wordplay may have served the choice of the village as the location for an almshouse.

Bethany and care of the poor and sick

Capper and others have concluded that ancient Bethany was the site of an almshouse for the poor and a place of care for the sick. There is a hint of association between Bethany and care for the unwell in the Gospels: Mark tells of Simon the Leper's house there (Mark 14:3-10); Jesus receives urgent word of Lazarus' illness from Bethany (John 11:1-12:11).

According to the Temple Scroll from Qumran, three places for the care of the sick, including one for lepers, are to be located to the east of Jerusalem. The passage also defines a (minimum) radius of three thousand cubits (circa 1,800 yards) around the city within which nothing unclean shall be seen (XLVI:13-18). Since Bethany was, according to John, fifteen stadia (about 1.72 miles) from the holy city,[10] care for the sick there corresponded with the requirements of the Temple Scroll (the stadion being ideally 600 feet (180 m) or 400 cubits[11]). Whereas Bethphage is probably to be identified with At-Tur, located on the peak of the Mount of Olives with a magnificent view of Jerusalem, Bethany lay below to the southeast, out of view of the Temple Mount, which may have made its location suitable as a place for care of the sick, "out of view" of the Temple.

From this it is possible to deduce that the mention of Simon the Leper at Bethany in Mark's Gospel suggests that the Essenes, or pious patrons from Jerusalem who held to a closely similar view of ideal arrangements, settled lepers at Bethany. Such influence on the planning of Jerusalem and its environs (and even its Temple) may have been possible especially during the reign of Herod the Great (36-4 B.C.), whose favour towards the Essenes was noted by Josephus (Antiquities 15.10.5 [373-8]).

Reta Halteman Finger approves Capper's judgment that only in the context of an almshouse at Bethany, where the poor were received and assisted, could Jesus remark that "The poor you will always have with you" (Mark 14:7; Matthew 26:11) without sounding callous. Ling follows Capper's thesis concerning the connection between then place-name Bethany and the location there of an almshouse. Capper and Ling note that it is only in Bethany we find mention of the poor on the lips of the disciples, who object that the expensive perfumed oil poured over Jesus there might have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor (Mark 14:5; Matthew 26:8-9; John 12:4-6 [where the objection is made by Judas]); this objection may have been made in embarrassment and may also suggest a special connection between Bethany and care for the poor.

It has also been suggested, based on the names found carved on thousands of ossuaries at the site, that Bethany in the time of Jesus was settled by people from Galilee who had come to live by Jerusalem. This would explain why Jesus and the disciples, as Galileans, would find it convenient to stay here when visiting Jerusalem.  As Capper writes,

Galilean pilgrims avoided potential conflict with Samaritans by travelling south on the eastern side of the Jordan. Bethany was the last station on their route to Jerusalem after crossing the river and taking the road through Jericho up into the highlands. A respectful distance from the city and Temple, and on the pilgrim route, Bethany was a most suitable location for a charitable institution. It is not surprising that an Essene hospice had been established at Bethany to intercept and care for pilgrims at the end of the long and potentially arduous journey from Galilee. The house combined this work with care for the sick and destitute of the Jerusalem area. Thus Bethany received its name because it was the Essene poorhouse par excellence, the poorhouse which alleviated poverty closest to the holy city.

The village of Bethany is referenced in relation to five incidents in the New Testament, in which the word Bethany appears 11 times:


In Luke 10:38-42, a visit of Jesus to the home of Mary and Martha is described, but the village of Bethany is not named (nor whether Jesus is even in the vicinity of Jerusalem).

It seems to me that “House of Misery” or “The Poor-house” is the best translation of Bethany. However, someone proposes another theory-translating it as “house of the ship”!

Bethabara (/bɛθˈæbərə/ beth-AB-ər-ə; בית עברה; bēth‛ăbhārāh; Βηθαβαρά; Bēthabará; “house of the ford, place of crossing”), in modern-day Jordan: According to the King James Version (following Textus Receptus of the New Testament the place where John the Baptist baptized those who came to him (John 1:28). The Revised Version (British and American) (with Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek following Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi) reads "Bethany." It is distinguished from the Bethany of Lazarus and his sisters as being beyond the Jordan. The reading Bethabara became current owing to the advocacy of both Origen., and John Chrysostom, and that same Bethabara is attested in both the 6th century AD Madaba Map and in the Jewish Talmud. Various suggestions have been made to explain the readings. G. A. Smith (HGHL) suggests that Bethany (house of the ship) and Bethabara (house of the ford) are names for the same place. Bethabara has also been identified with Bethbarah, which, however, was probably not on the Jordan River but among the streams flowing into it (Judges 7:24). It is interesting to note that the Greek Septuagint Codex Vaticanus (LXXB) reads, Baithabara for Hebrew Masoretic Text Bēth-‛ărābhāh, one of the cities of Benjamin (Joshua 18:22). If this is correct, the site is in Judea.

Another solution is sought in the idea of a corruption of the original name into Bethany and Bethabara, the name having the consonants n, b and r after Beth. In Joshua 13:27 (Septuagint, Codex Vaticanus) we find, Baithanabra for Bethnimrah (Massoretic Text), and Sir George Grove in Dictionary of the Bible (arts. "Bethabara" and "Beth-nimrah") identifies Bethabara and Beth-nimrah. The site of the latter was a few miles above Jericho (see Beth-nimrah), immediately accessible to Jerusalem and all Judea (compare Matthew 3:5; Mark 1:5). This view has much in its favor.

Then, again, as G. Frederick Wright observes: "The traditional site is at the ford east of Jericho; but as according to John 1:29, John 1:35, John 1:43 it was only one day's journey from Cana of Galilee, while according to John 10:40; John 11:3, John 11:6, and John 11:17, it was two or three days from Bethany, it must have been well up the river toward Galilee. Conder discovered a well-known ford near Beisan called Abarah, near the mouth of the valley of Jezreel. This is 20 miles from Cana and 60 miles from Bethany, and all the conditions of the place fit in with the history."

Here are ten things you need to know about Turkey By Claire Berlinski

1. On March 27, the government of Turkey blocked YouTube, less than a week after blacking out Twitter. Ostensibly, this was to prevent the spread of videos that are said to feature the voices of Turkey’s foreign minister, intelligence chief, and a top army general proposing to send the Turkish military into Syria to protect the tomb of Suleiman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Dynasty.

2. If these tapes are real, Turkey has been considering staging an attack on itself as a pretext to intervene in Syria. Turkey is a member of NATO. Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty establishing the alliance states that members will treat an attack against one member as an attack against all and respond accordingly—up to and including the use of armed force. Were NATO to provide assistance to Turkey, the consequences could be apocalyptic. Among other things, Russia would certainly see this as a NATO aggression.

3. Turkey’s ruling AKP is facing a disaster in Syria. Turkey’s battle with the radical Kurdish-separatist PKK has claimed as many as 40,000 lives since the 1980s.

When Assad pulled his forces away from the border, the PYD (the Syrian analogue to the PKK) assumed control over the Kurdish majority regions, prompting Ankara to attempt to counter them by arming radical Islamist groups and opening its borders to foreign fighters.

The Turks presumed Assad would be toppled quickly, which proved false.

As a result, Turkey now faces both an infuriated Assad and a serious threat from groups like Jabhat al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS).

Following the seizure by ISIS of the Azaz border gate, Ankara reversed course, freezing Al Qaeda bank accounts and shelling ISIS strongholds along the border. But the damage can’t easily be undone.

In conjunction with a vast influx of Syrian refugees, this is now by far the most serious security problem Turkey faces. Since Turkey is in NATO, this is NATO’s problem, too.

4. Of late, Erdoğan’s struggle for power with Fethullah Gülen, a Pennsylvania-based cleric who leads a powerful transnational Islamist movement and is a major player in the American charter school movement, has become increasingly vicious. It has recently taken the form of a massive corruption probe into government officials, with wiretaps leaked daily that appear to incriminate the prime minister and everyone around him in a three-ring circus of malfeasance, skullduggery, and theft.

The leaks are widely, and for good reason, understood to be a form of retaliation by the Gülenists, who are well represented within the police and judiciary.

Erdoğan has countered by stifling journalists, firing or reassigning thousands of police officers, consolidating his control of the judiciary, and shutting down social media sites in a vain attempt to plug the leaks.

5. Gülen presides over a huge informal network of schools, think tanks, businesses, and media across five continents. His network in Turkey until recently worked in close alliance with Erdoğan as he neutralized the opposition, particularly in the military.

Gülen’s enthusiasm for illegal wiretapping and leaking didn’t bother Erdoğan when it worked in his favor. Nor did Erdoğan’s demagoguery and propensity to suppress speech bother the Gülenists.

6. The leaked recordings (which have not been independently verified) feature a voice, purportedly Erdoğan’s, dictating news headlines, choosing guests to appear on news shows, telling a media executive to reduce his coverage of the opposition, upbraiding another for using the word “corruption” in a news report, and calling his justice minister to discuss reversing a legal judgment in favor of a critical media firm.

7. One of the most explosive tapes, published on February 25, features conversation between voices alleged to be those of the prime minister and his son, Bilal. They are heard discussing how best to hide tens of millions of dollars in cash stored in the family home. The prime minister instructs his son to get rid of all the money, preferably after dark. His son says he has moved all but $41.6 million.

8. Erdoğan has accused foreign forces of inventing the corruption charges. As the corruption scandal broke, a newspaper known as a government organ splashed a photograph of the U.S. ambassador on its front page with the headline, “Get the hell out of this country!”

9. Local elections, on March 30, will be followed by Turkey’s first direct presidential election in 2014, and parliamentary elections in 2015. There is no reason to think these elections will bring stability, whatever the outcome.

The Gülenists will not be satisfied until Erdoğan is imprisoned or dead. A significant portion of the population will not believe the election results nor recognize any mandate Erdoğan claims.

10. There is good reason to be concerned about the fairness of the elections, and if not the fairness, the public’s perception of their unfairness. Given the new technology to be employed in the voting booths, the stakes, and the release of wiretaps suggesting Erdoğan’s willingness to break the law to suit his personal ends, it is unsurprising that many in Turkey are warning of the possibility of electoral fraud.

Should the elections be tainted by any hint of malfeasance, we should expect protests on the scale of those following Iran’s 2009 elections, and we should expect that they will be suppressed in much the same manner.

Claire Berlinski is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal magazine. She is an investigative journalist, travel writer, biographer, and novelist. She is a former resident of Istanbul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Egyptian Islamists Murder Young Christian, After Dragging Her From Car April 1, 2014 - 4:24 AM – By Patrick Goodenough



 

CNSNews.com) – Eyewitnesses have given a harrowing account of the murder in Cairo of a young Coptic Christian woman, hauled out of her car and beaten and stabbed to death by a Muslim mob, apparently targeted because of a cross hanging from her rear-view mirror. The incident occurred in the Cairo suburb of Ain Shams after mosque prayer services on Friday, when police clashed with Muslim Brotherhood supporters angered by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s decision to run for president. An eyewitness appearing on “90 minutes,” a program on the al-Mehwar satellite network, said 25-year-old Mary Sameh George was attacked in her car near a church, where she planned to deliver medicine to an ill and elderly woman. Protestors climbed onto her car, collapsing the roof, then hauled her from the vehicle, beating and mauling her – to the extent, he said, that portions of her scalp were torn off. She was stabbed multiple times, her throat was slit and when she was dead, the mob torched her car. One Coptic outlet said that according to the health ministry, the young woman had been stabbed at least a dozen times. The death of Mary Sameh George received little coverage in Egyptian newspapers. The state-owned Al Ahram daily, in a report on five people reported killed in various parts of Cairo on Friday among them a journalist who was shot dead, included one sentence saying, “A Coptic woman, Mary George, was reportedly stabbed to death by pro-Morsi supporters in the same area.”In a report on the death of the journalist, Daily News Egypt mentioned in passing that “Another woman, Coptic Christian Mary Sameh George, was stabbed to death in Ain Shams.”A wire service report quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman as saying protesters had “stabbed a Christian woman to death,” and blaming the Muslim Brotherhood for Friday’s deaths. The Australian Coptic Movement Association condemned what it called the “callous, vicious and unprovoked” killing.“Mary George was targeted for her faith in what is becoming an increasingly intolerable and inhospitable region for Christians; given that Ain Shams is a known stronghold for the Muslim Brotherhood,” it said, appealing to the authorities to ensure that the perpetrators were brought to justice.“The Egyptian government must send a clear message that this behavior will not be tolerated and that the culprits will be held to account under the full force of the law,” the organization said. It also urged Western governments “to pay due attention to the extreme and violent agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Egypt’s Copts, comprising less than 10 percent of the population, have faced discrimination and varying levels of persecution since long before the Mubarak was overthrown in 2011. But the subsequent rise to power of Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood was of particular alarm to the vulnerable minority, and many celebrated when the military ousted Morsi last July. The Coptic community was seen to be supportive of the military takeover, and some Morsi supporters vented their anger on Christians, with many churches coming under Islamist attack in an apparently coordinated campaign. The military-backed interim government has since cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood, declaring it a terrorist group, putting its leaders on trial, and sentencing hundreds of Morsi supporters to death. When Sisi, the general was oversaw Morsi’s removal, confirmed last week what many had long suspected – that he plans to run for the presidency in elections scheduled for May, the pro-Morsi alliance known as “National Coalition for Supporting Legitimacy” called for street protests after Friday prayers.“Let the million-man demonstration on Friday be great and remarkable,” the group said in an announcement on its Facebook page. “Let all those who are angry gather for a new phase which this nation needs.”In the light of the protests against Sisi’s announcement the U.S. Embassy in Cairo advised American citizens to “closely monitor events and scrutinize their movements closely through the week ending April 6.”They were warned to pay special attention to places where crowds gather, universities, and areas where protests are occurring, “as firearms have been used by and against protestors.” “Recent incidents continue to demonstrate that police and military personnel and facilities remain a target, thereby suggesting risk to U.S. citizens may be elevated at checkpoints and in areas where police and military congregate.” –

See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/egyptian-islamists-murder-young-christian-after-dragging-her-car#sthash.Sa9uW4wd.dpuf - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/egyptian-islamists-murder-young-christian-after-dragging-her-car#sthash.Sa9uW4wd.dpuf
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Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Noah


 

Noah’s Ark

I remember once when I was in a Coptic Church in Egypt, that part of the church was built to look like Noah's Ark. The idea is that the Church of Jesus Christ provides salvation. The way the Ark did. Come into the Body of Christ to live. The Noah's Ark movie looks like it is going to be good-but I read the Graphic Novel-it is good but it is based on the Book of Enoch as well as Genesis-and it doesn't follow either text 100%-but I think the writer/director is making this movie out of sincerity-not irreverence.



Noah’s Ark Movie

I read the comic upon which the movie is based. This is a neat graphic novel (basically a glorified comic book) about Noah. The upcoming movie is based upon this comic book.  The author has taken a lot from the Aramaic Book of Enoch as well as from the Book of Genesis. (The Epistle of Jude in the New Testament quotes from Aramaic Enoch.) In it, he has the "Watchers" basically angels who fell in an effort to "civilize" mankind, redeem themselves. In the Book of Enoch, they are condemned to eternal damnation. I need to look and see if Aronofsky made this up-or if it comes from Jewish Midrash. This also has an environmentalist message. I think the story of Noah lends itself to such an interpretation. Now, I do believe in conserving wildlife and our natural resources. The problem with the story, is that Noah wrongly thinks that God only spares he and his family in order to take care of the animals through the flood. Noah struggles with the idea that man must die out-so that the earth can return to a paradisical state. At the end of the story-Noah realizes mankind should be saved. In this version, Ham turns against Noah because Noah basically wants mankind to die out. So, its good-but it doesn't follow the Bible nor the Book of Enoch faithfully. It isn't all inaccurate though. I thought it was good-but it isn't strictly biblical. I think Aronofsky is sincere in this story-I don't think he is trying to blaspheme. The movie may be different from the comic-the film was screened to various audiences-and I think the studio pressured Aronofsky to follow the Biblical account a little closer. I imagine that there will be a theatrical release and then a directors cut on DVD. I did like it-but I do have reservations.

Free Resources: http://www.damaris.org/noah

Vatican Chief Justice: Obama’s Policies ‘Progressively More Hostile Toward Christian Civilization’

By Michael Chapman - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/vatican-chief-justice-obama-s-policies-progressively-more-hostile#sthash.DgeTlOfo.dpuf

(CNSNews.com) -- President Barack Obama's policies “have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization,” Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the highest court at the Vatican, said in a recent interview. Cardinal Burke added that Obama wants to restrict religious freedom and force the individuals, outside of his or her place of worship, “to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions.” In an interview first published in Polish in Polonia Christiana magazine and republished exclusively in English at LifeSite News, Cardinal Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis, was asked about President Obama’s policies towards Christian civilization and if there are any “Catholic reactions against this policy? If yes, what are they, [or] if not, why?”

Cardinal Burke, who heads the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court at the Vatican, said: “It is true that the policies of the president of the United States of America have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.” “Now he [Obama] wants to restrict the exercise of the freedom of religion to freedom of worship; that is, he holds that one is free to act according to his conscience within the confines of his place of worship but that, once the person leaves the place of worship, the government can constrain him to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions,” said Cardinal Burke. He continued, “Such policies would have been unimaginable in the United States even 40 years ago. It is true that many faithful Catholics, with strong and clear leadership from their Bishops and priests, are reacting against the ever-growing religious persecution in the U.S.” “Sadly, one has the impression that a large part of the population is not fully aware of what is taking place,” said the cardinal. “In a democracy, such a lack of awareness is deadly. It leads to the loss of the freedom, which a democratic government exists to protect. It is my hope that more and more of my fellow citizens, as they realize what is happening, will insist on electing leaders who respect the truth of the moral law as it is respected in the founding principles of our nation.” As CNSNews.com has reported, the Catholic bishops of the United States have stated that the Obamacare mandate requiring individuals (and businesses) to carry health insurance that offers contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs without co-payments is an “unjust and illegal mandate.” They have also declared the mandate a “violation of personal civil rights,” and that it should be “rescinded.”

Christians in captivity -- the agony of waiting

By Lela Gilbert, Published March 24, 2014, FoxNews.com

Patience is in short supply these days. Despite our instant communication capabilities, just about everyone is waiting for something. The phone doesn’t ring. The cable guy never shows up. A check is always “in the mail.” Last week I found my own patience stretched into a thin membrane by a pile of complaints – thankfully small ones. But mostly I was struck by the inevitable silence of waiting. When we’re hoping for answers, no news is far from good news. When we’re hoping for answers, no news is far from good news. And in fact, it was bad news that distracted me from my own woes as a headline scrolled down my iPhone. “Asia Bibi appeal hearing postponedhttp://global.fncstatic.com/static/v/all/img/external-link.png.” Asia Bibi is a Pakistani Christian, and her name is familiar to those of us who follow international human rights. Her story is almost unbelievable – and all too true: “In June 2009, Asia was involved in an argument with a group of Muslim women with whom she had been harvesting berries, after the other women became angry at her for drinking the same water as them. She was subsequently accused of insulting the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, a charge she denies, and was arrested and imprisoned. In November 2010, a Sheikhupura judge sentenced her to death. If executed, Asia would be the first woman in Pakistan to be lawfully killed for blasphemy.”

Many have spoken out on Asia Bibi’s behalf, including Pope Benedict. Two prominent Pakistanis, Shahbaz Bhatti, Minister for Christian minorities, and Salmaan Taseer, Governor of Punjab, were assassinated in 2011 for opposing Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws on her behalf.

Nonetheless, since 2009, this falsely accused woman has been on death row in a filthy prison cell, wondering if and when her death sentence will enforced. She longs for husband and five children. Day and night, in squalid surroundings, she fights off her fears, endures physical illness and prays. Unsure if she will live or die, Asia Bibi waits. Another story emerged last week from Iran, about US-citizen and former Muslim Pastor Saeedhttp://global.fncstatic.com/static/v/all/img/external-link.png Abedini, who is serving an eight-year sentence because he “undermined the Iranian government by creating a network of Christian house churches and ... attempting to sway Iranian youth away from Islam."  Despite urgent requests for medical care – his body is internally wounded from abominable prison conditions including beatings and torture – he was denied treatment. Eventually, presumably under pressure from several international organizations’ outcry, Abedini was taken to a medical center, unshackled and even permitted a brief visit from a family member. What happened after that? Once the encouraging proceedings passed, Abedini was still in pain, still bleeding from internal injuries. He remains hospitalized but untreated. Like Asia Bibi, he is the focus of much international prayer and non-governmental activism. Even the EU has spoken up, as has President Obama. But Abedini is entirely unsure about the future. Will he see his wife and two small children again? Will he live or die? He has been behind bars since September 26, 2012.

The family watches and keeps faith. Concerned people post and tweet and pray. And day in, day out, Saeed Abedini waits. Other captives are waiting, along with their loved ones, in Egypt. According to my friend and colleague, Coptic scholar Samuel Tadros, the big stories of church burnings and murdered Christians have diminished somewhat under Cairo’s new military regime. But less publicized evils remain. Most notably, kidnappings are rampant. On March 20, MidEast Christians Newshttp://global.fncstatic.com/static/v/all/img/external-link.png reported that two young women, 17 and 18, were abducted in separate incidents just days before. Coptic Worldhttp://global.fncstatic.com/static/v/all/img/external-link.png observed, “Coptic children or adults abducted at gunpoint and held (and sometimes killed or forced to convert to Islam) by “unknown persons” in exchange for money—are on the rise in Egypt…” Muslim kidnappings of Christians are also taking place in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and beyond. Captives are often raped, beaten, forcibly married, starved and eventually, if financial terms aren’t met, murdered. Meanwhile, the victims’ loved ones worry, weep and console each other. Of course, like all believers they pray, recalling the ancient promise: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (Is 40:31). So hoping against hope, they wait. Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world and abuses have surged exponentially in recent years. At the same time, the United States government, once a global champion of religious freedom, offers dwindling intervention. Reliance solely on the nations of the world to act, diplomatically or politically – with rare and notable exceptions – will likely result in the longest wait of all. And waiting is agonizing.

Lela Gilbert is author of "Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner" and co-author, with Nina Shea and Paul Marshall, of "Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians." She is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and lives in Jerusalem. For more, visit her website: www.lelagilbert.com. Follow her on Twitter@lelagilbert.

What is so Great about Saint Paul?

Christianity was, from its inception, multi-cultural and multi-lingual. Many people, including professing Christians, have a problem with the Apostle Paul. Some view him as the “real” founder of Christianity. Some Christians claim to be followers of Jesus, but not Paul. If we look in the New Testament, we see that almost half of it is by Paul or about him. Although Paul has his detractors, Christianity wouldn’t exist as it is without Paul. Paul made important positive contributions. It was Paul who made Christianity a global movement rather than a sect of Judaism. It is likely Paul’s cultural background that enabled him to accomplish certain things that the Twelve Apostles couldn’t. Eleven of the Twelve Apostles were Galileans. Judas Iscariot was most likely the only Apostle who hailed from Judea. The Jews of the Holy Land were mainly Aramaic speakers. Greek was spoken by some. The culture of Galilee and Judea was predominately Jewish. Paul was at least bi-lingual, speaking Aramaic and Greek. (He most likely also spoke Hebrew and perhaps Latin as well.) Paul was from Tarsus, an important Greek city. Paul was equally comfortable in his Aramaic Jewish culture and his Greek Hellenistic culture. This made Paul uniquely equipped to take the Gospel to the non-Jewish world, perhaps in a way the Twelve Apostles were not. (It is possible that before his Damascus Road experience, Paul was already involved in Jewish missions to Gentiles.)

Lamin Sanneh is the author of Whose Religion is Christianity: The Gospel beyond the West. This is an excellent book that every Christian should read. The first reason is that this book tells the story of the “Next Christendom,” the future of the Church, which is centered in the non-Western world. (The non-“white” majority “Next Christendom” is a phrase coined by Phillip Jenkins.) Sanneh calls this the phenomenon of World Christianity. (He doesn’t like to use the term “global” due to its association with “globalism” and a Euro-centric form of Christianity.[1]) It is mentioned in the book how missionaries labored for one hundred years in Africa, and saw very little results, and yet now Christianity is spreading rapidly throughout Africa. This shouldn’t be seen as all that surprising. After all, it also took Christianity over a hundred years to prevail over all Europe.

Sanneh believes that a breakthrough in missions was through the use of the local languages and using the local words for “God.” He also believes that since Christianity never really had an official language, it was able to transcend culture.[2] The Gospels represented a translation of the Gospel into another language, from Christ’s Aramaic into Greek. Interestingly, in his focus on the importance of translation, Sanneh doesn’t even mention the original Aramaic language of Jesus. The ancient Aramaic texts we do have, are translations of Jesus’ words from Greek back into Aramaic. To Sanneh translation is an important aspect of Christianity.

Paul not only was able to translate the Gospel message into Greek, his unique perspective to distinguish Jewish cultural practices that were not part of the Gospel. Of course, Paul encountered controversy, but he also embraced it, seeing that it was necessary for progress. (There are traditions from the early Church of the Apostles going into gentile lands. Some important traditions include Mark in Egypt, Thaddeus in Mesopotamia, and Thomas in Egypt. If these traditions are true, they show that Christianity was from its very beginning multi-cultural and multi-lingual.)

Obama protects Saudi Arabia from embarrassment by keeping Textbook report secret

Sharona Schwarz the Blaze, March 26

As President Barack Obama sets out for his visit to Saudi Arabia this week, a new report suggests the State Department has intentionally been withholding a comprehensive study on Saudi textbooks, because the books include offensive material that dehumanizes Christians and Jews that if made public would embarrass the kingdom. “The State Department appears to be withholding a government-commissioned textbooks study on the subject,” said the report by the DC-based research organization the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Textbook Diplomacy: Why the State Department Shelved a Study on Incitement in Saudi Education Materials.” “Passages [in textbooks] continue to dehumanize Jews and Christians, promote the murder of perceived deviants such as homosexuals, and sanction violence against Muslims who do not follow the Wahhabi brand of Islam that is sponsored by the Saudi state,” the government-commissioned study found, according to the think tank report. David Andrew Weinberg, who authored the Foundation for Defense of Democracies report, wrote that in 2011 the State Department paid the non-profit organization the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) $500,000 to conduct the study of Saudi government-published textbooks that are used widely not only in the kingdom, but are also sent free of charge to Muslim schools around the world, including in the U.S.

Lawmakers urge Obama to press Saudi king on human, religious rights during visit

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pressing President Obama to raise the issue of human and religious rights during his face-to-face meeting Friday with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.  The latest appeal came from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who wrote Obama a letter expressing concern over Saudi Arabia’s “systematic, ongoing and egregious” infringements against what he called basic religious freedoms. Rubio also urged the president to push for the release of religious prisoners and to “end persecution of individuals charged with apostasy, blasphemy and sorcery.” In May 2013, Saudi religious police announced they had arrested more than 200 people during the prior year on charges of sorcery, Rubio said. “High school textbooks in Saudi Arabia contain highly inflammatory passages that dehumanize or call for violence against non-Wahhabi religious groups such as Christians, Jews, Hindus, Shi’ites and Sufis,” the senator added.

England Adopts Sharia Law (See article by John Bingham


Top lawyers have written guidelines for British solicitors on drafting 'sharia-compliant' wills which can deny women an equal share of their inheritance and entirely exclude non-believers, it was revealed today. The Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, has written a guide on Sharia succession rules that will be used in British courts. It will mean that children born outside of marriage and adopted children could also be denied their fair share. The guide states: 'No distinction is made between children of different marriages, but illegitimate and adopted children are not Sharia heirs.

See Sam Webb, UK Daily Mail


Islamic World in Disarray

In Turkey, the people are revolting against the Hard-Line Fundamentalist Government. At the same time Saudi Arabia, on of the worlds most extremist governments, illegalized the Muslim Brotherhood and recalled all of its fighters in Syria. I thought that this was very odd, since the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahibi Islam are so similar-they make natural allies-but this report explains it.

In the past month, Saudi Arabia criminalized membership in the Muslim Brotherhood and classified it as a terrorist organization on par with Al Qaeda.

Its Interior Ministry issued a new law imposing harsh penalties on Saudis who join the fighting in Syria for fear that they might return as hardened militants. And to punish neighboring Qatar for its support of the Brotherhood, King Abdullah led the coordinated withdrawal from Qatar of his own ambassador and the envoys from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt.

See New York Times-“Obama Seeks to Calm Saudi’s as Paths split” March 27, 2014

Saudi leaders are already vexed at Mr. Obama for failing to throw America’s military might behind their proxy war with Tehran in Syria, where the Saudis are sending money and weapons to back the Sunni-dominated rebels. And the Saudis were flabbergasted last year when Mr. Obama reversed course at the last minute, calling off missile strikes against the Assad government for its use of chemical weapons.

The Saudis have sometimes financed jihadists abroad when it served their interests, in Afghanistan during the 1980s, for example, and in Syria now. But the Saudi royal family, which draws its legitimacy from an ultraconservative Salafi branch of Islam, has long feared the Muslim Brotherhood because of its rival blend of religion and politics and its effectiveness at political organizing. Saudi officials often quote Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, the former long-serving interior minister: “All our problems come from the Muslim Brotherhood,” he once declared, arguing that the group “has destroyed the Arab world.”

But the country’s open support for the military ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood has risks as well. The takeover and crackdown have elicited stirrings of dissent from Saudi clerics sympathetic to the Brotherhood. And around the region, Saudi Arabia is “losing friends left and right,” said Frederic Wehrey, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At the same time, Nasrallah, of Hezballah-is in Syria fighting the rebels at the behest of the Syrian govement. That leaves Lebanon bereft of his leadership for now-which is a good thing.

Israel is losing its grip on evangelical Christians : Younger generation open to Palestinian side of conflict. By The Forward and Nathan Guttman | Mar. 11, 2014 (See Haaretz Online)

Support for Israel is weakening among evangelical Christians, prompting a new struggle for the hearts and minds of younger members of America’s largest pro-Israel demographic group.  While hard numbers are not available, evangelical leaders on both sides of the divide on Israel agree that members of the millennial generation do not share their parents’ passion for the Jewish state; many are seeking some form of evenhandedness when approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  “What is happening is that the hard line of Christian Zionists was not successfully passed forward to the next generation, because it was based on theological themes that are now being questioned by younger evangelicals,” said David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Atlanta.  The grip of Christian Zionists over young evangelicals has been loosening for several years, according to observers within the community. But in recent weeks, the leading evangelical pro-Israel organization, Christians United for Israel, has set off alarm bells in articles and interviews decrying the inroads made by pro-Palestinian activists into the evangelical community. CUFI’s leaders are calling for a new strategy to block them. “The only way of solving a problem is when people know about it,” said CUFI’s executive director, David Brog, who has been leading the effort to win back millennial evangelicals. “This is the best way to rally our troops.”  Brog penned a lengthy article, published in the spring edition of Middle East Quarterly, in which he detailed what he views as a growing phenomenon and the reasons behind it. Titled “The End of Evangelical Support for Israel?” the article laments that “questioning Christian support for the Jewish state is fast becoming a key way for millennials to demonstrate Christian compassion and bona fides.” Brog argues that younger evangelicals are now “in play” and their support for Israel can no longer be taken for granted.  This conclusion is based primarily on gut feelings and anecdotal data. In June 2011, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey among evangelical leaders convened in Cape Town, South Africa, for the third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization. The findings indicated lower support for Israel than previously believed. A majority of American evangelical leaders (49%) expressed neutrality when asked if they sympathize more with Israelis or with Palestinians. Thirty percent expressed support for Israelis, 13% for the Palestinians.

 

The survey polled only leaders who participated in this international conference and did not offer insight into the views of rank-and-file evangelicals. But it highlighted the fact that only a minority within the evangelical leadership today hold strong pro-Israel views when it comes to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and attendant conflict with the Palestinians.

Still, Christian Zionism is by far the largest organized voice on Middle East issues among evangelicals. CUFI, led by the Rev. John Hagee, founder of Cornerstone Church, in San Antonio, has 1.6 million registered supporters and a staff of 25 full-time employees. With an operating budget of more than $7 million, CUFI organizes dozens of pro-Israel events throughout the country and an annual Washington conference that brings together evangelical activists and politicians.

CUFI’s leaders are now trying to mobilize funders and supporters to confront the shift among younger members of their community. The challenge they face is made up of individuals, campus activists and professors, small organizations and even documentary films that depict Israel as encroaching on Christian freedom of faith in the Holy Land.

On university campuses, pro-Palestinian Christians have seen some success in the face of CUFI’s more established 120-chapter campus operation. Activists in Illinois’s Wheaton College, a leading Christian school, protested a planned CUFI event on campus in 2009; in Tulsa, Okla., Oral Roberts University has appointed a harsh critic of Israel to its board of trustees, and at Bethel University, in Minnesota, President Jay Barnes visited Israel and the Palestinian territories on a trip that changed participants’ views on the conflict. Barnes’s wife, Barbara Barnes, published a poem after the trip, in which she wrote: “Apartheid has become a way of life. I believe God mourns.”

American evangelicals sympathetic to the Palestinians are also bringing co-religionists to Israel and the West Bank for tours and conferences. This week, Bethlehem Bible College and the Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust are hosting their third “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference. Speakers at the gathering, which presents a Palestinian perspective on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank for Christians, include Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Gaza physician who worked closely with both Arabs and Israeli Jews until his three daughters were killed in their home by Israeli tank fire during the 2008 Gaza military campaign; William Wilson, the president of Oral Roberts University; and Gary Burge, a theology professor at Wheaton College and author of the book, “Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians.”

The conference’s 12-point “manifesto” strongly condemns “all forms of violence” and warns against the “stereotyping of all faith forms that betray God’s commandment to love our neighbors and enemies.” It also rejects “any exclusive claim to the land of the Bible in the name of God” and states that “racial ethnicity alone does not guarantee the benefits of the Abrahamic Covenant.”

For some on Christian college campuses, the appeal of pro-Palestinian views may be part of a general trend among young evangelicals to question the conservative ways of their parents’ generation. Some students are pursuing a theological understanding of their religion that is more progressive on social issues. Polls conducted in recent years indicate that young white evangelicals are less conservative on issues of same-sex marriage, abortion and contraception. They are also less aligned with the Republican Party. This same trend of political diversification may be taking place on international issues.

CUFI’s concern, as voiced by Brog in his article, is about the younger generation of evangelical leaders; unlike such figures as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, they are not vocal about the issue of Israel. He describes the new generation of evangelical opinion makers as a “largely well-coiffed and fashionably dressed bunch dedicated to marketing Christianity to a skeptical generation by making it cool, compassionate, and less overtly political.”

One of the organizations gaining the most attention on this issue is the Telos Group, a Washington-based not-for-profit set up five years ago that describes itself as “pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, pro-American, and pro-peace.” In an interview on Glenn Beck’s “TheBlaze TV,” Brog singled out Telos, saying: “This is not your parents’ anti-Israel group. These guys are savvy, these guys are smart.”

Telos, which focuses a significant part of its work on faith communities, has to date taken 43 groups on tours of Israel and the Palestinian territories. President and co-founder Gregory Khalil said the group intentionally engages with a variety of Israelis and Palestinians on their trips. “I actually think David Brog could learn a lot about Israel if he would join one of our trips,” Khalil said, arguing that Brog mischaracterized the work of Telos.

But while the budding debate in the evangelical world over Israel is real, its proportions may be overstated. “We’re a tiny organization,” Khalil said of his group, which has only two staff members. Other publications and groups cited by CUFI as pro-Palestinian are also much smaller than CUFI’s own pro-Israel operation.

CUFI is not waiting for them to grow larger. In January, at a Jewish fundraising event, the group presented its plan to take two groups a year of young evangelical opinion leaders to Israel. “We need to use the same tool to fight back,” CUFI declared in its pitch for Jewish donor support. The group is also launching speaking tours on campuses, and intends to invest in videos and social media activity that will monitor Christian influencers and “confront them when they cross the line.”

The glaring precedent that pro-Israel evangelicals cite to justify their approach is the path taken by the mainline Protestant churches. In the past, many were sympathetic to Israel, or at worst neutral. But some have since become a stronghold of pro-Palestinian views in the American Christian world. A few groups, such as the Presbyterians, have been leading the way in calls for divestment and boycott against Israel.

But Gushee argued that evangelicals are unlikely to take this path. The mainline Protestant churches today may be aggressively anti-Israel, he said, but the shift among evangelicals “is not from pro-Israel to anti-Israel, but from pro-Israel to a more balanced approach.”

For more stories, go to www.forward.com. Sign up for the Forward’s daily newsletter at http://forward.com/newsletter/signup/

Horrible! Bodies of Aborted Babies are incinerated in England to provide heat for buildings!

Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals: The remains of more than 15,000 babies were incinerated as 'clinical waste' by hospitals in Britain with some used in 'waste to energy' plants


Women in Combat

So, the Marines are going to make their combat teams 25% female as a social experiment to see what would happen if you mix men and women in combat. Instead of playing games with our service-members lives-why don't we do the social experiment on real games-to see what would happen. The government should mandate that all NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball teams, be 25% female-and see how well they perform on the field. This way, no one will die-and you will get an idea of what it would be like to have women in combat-when the stakes are much higher. an addendum: The 25% female team has to go against at 100% male team. I wonder who would win.

 

 


[1] Lamin Sanneh Whose Religion is Christianity: The Gospel Beyond the West (Grand Rapids, M, Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co, 2003) p. 22
[2] Sanneh, p. 97
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Tuesday, March 4, 2014

KAHINA THE QUEEN OF THE BERBERS


The Desert Nomads
Long before recorded history, there was a group of nomads wandering the desert regions. While their earliest history is lost in the sands of time, scholars have been able to trace their origins by reconstructing the language they spoke. They did this by comparing the languages that evolved from out of this ancient prehistoric language. This language is called Afrasian. Several languages developed out of Afrasian. These include the Semitic languages, Berber, Egyptian, and the Chadic and the Cushitic languages. Important Semitic languages include Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and various languages of Ethiopia. In this story we will look at the Berber and Semitic peoples.
The Berbers live in North Africa in the region the Arabs call the Maghreb. They call their language Tamasheq. Berbers, Ancient Egyptians and Coptic Egyptians, and the Semitic peoples, are cousins who are the common descendents of the Afrasians. The Berbers lived in North Africa long before recorded history. It is their ancient homeland.  (When I speak of North Africa, it is spoken of to the exclusion of Egypt, though some Berbers live to the west of the Nile.) North Africa was conquered by the Phoenicians (who became the Carthaginians), then the Romans, the Vandals (one of the Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire), the Byzantines, and finally the Arabs. Other foreigners, notably Greeks and Jews, also lived in ancient North Africa.
The Children of Cain
Cain was a worshiper of the LORD God. He called God by the name Yahu-wah or Yahweh. In his zeal for Yahweh, he struck a man down, his own brother. Yahweh punished him for this sin, but spared his life. As a sign of protection, Yahweh put upon his forehead the Mark of Cain, a cross. Cain’s descendents tattooed this symbol upon their foreheads as a sign of devotion to the God Yahweh. Cain’s descendents were the nomadic peoples. The Arabic Bedouin and Saleb of the Middle East and the Nomadic Berbers of North Africa bore the Mark of Cain and observed the customs of the nomadic Yahweh worshiping Kenites, the Children of Cain. Today, the custom of tattooing is now dying out among the nomadic peoples in the Middle East and North Africa, but continues among the Coptic Christians of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Once I was observing Arab families who were visiting their relatives who had been incarcerated by American forces in Iraq. I noticed that the elderly women wore traditional clothes and bore the tribal tattoos but the younger women did not have tattoos and were dressed in the Western fashion. Certain anthropologists have photographed elderly women with the traditional tattoos so that the custom may be documented before it disappears. Interestingly, Islamic traditions state that Mohammed condemned the practice of tattooing. (Mohammed does not prohibit tattoos in the Koran, but does in the Hadith. The Hadith is considered authoritative in Islam.) Tattooing is an ancient Arabian and Berber custom that Islam wasn’t able to abolish for centuries. (Certain Muslim teachers also teach that Islam condemns singing and dancing- and belly dancing in particular. These proscriptions have been ignored by many Muslims for over a thousand years.)
The Rise of the Kahina
This is the story of Dahi-Yah the Kahina. She is also known as al-Kahinat -meaning "female seer" from the Arabic. (Kahina is derived from  the Arabic word "Kahin" meaning "soothsayer.") Kahina, was a military and religious leader of the Jrawa Zenata tribe of the Berbers. She was the daughter of a Berber chieftain named Tabat, who took the name Mātiya (or Matthew) upon his baptism. Kahina had large dark eyes and very long black hair.  She was tall for a woman of her time, and she was very charismatic. She emerged from among the desert Berber nomads and arose to become one of the greatest leaders of the Berber people. She was the last queen that ruled over the Berbers before the Islamic Conquest. She died in the year 702 A.D.
Before the Islamic conquest of northern Africa began, Africa was a province of the Byzantine Empire. At that time it had been re-conquered by Emperor Justinian after having fallen to Visigoth Barbarians. The entire area thrived under the capital city, Carthage. Peace  in the land brought economic prosperity. Its grain was exported, as well as goods produced by artisans, such as red pottery which had become renowned throughout the Eastern Roman Empire. Africa was rising to become an intellectual center of the world. Kahina's youth had been spent in this time at this time of economic prosperity and growth of education and near to where peoples of different races and religions thrived. There were Romans, Berbers, Visigoth settlers, and Numidians; there were also Catholics, Arians, Donatists, and Jews who lived in the region.
At the time of the death of Mohammed in 632, Muslims ruled only in Arabia. After Mohammed died, the Arabs revolted against Islam and in the “Wars of Apostasy” (the Ridda Wars) the Muslims subdued the Arabs. Then the Muslims began attacking neighboring lands. They conquered Syria (635-636), Palestine (638-640), and Egypt (639-642) from the Byzantines and first Iraq (635-637) and then Persia (637-642). In the 680s the Arabs swept across North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic. The Byzantines clung to their coastal cities. After the Muslims finally conquered Egypt in 646 AD, the years of peace would come to a close. Islam was quickly approaching, and the Byzantine Empire was suffering defeats on many other fronts, and was further weakened by a great civil war. There was no assistance given as the Muslim armies approached so the Byzantine Exarches of Africa were forced to rely upon what limited resources that could be found locally. Amazingly they were able to hold off the Arabs until 680 AD, when the Muslims finally broke through their defenses. The Byzantine retreated to the coastal cities as the Muslim commander, Oqba led raids along the coast, which reached the Atlantic Ocean in modern Morocco. The Muslim leader Oqba ibn Nafi reached the Atlantic in Morocco and, according to legend, rode into the sea and slashed at the water with his sword in fury that there were no more lands to conquer. However soon he, and his army were soon annihilated by a group of Berber tribes. On his return march in 683, Oqba was defeated and slain by the Berbers. The Arab Conquest paused for a decade but in 698 the Muslims finally took Carthage, evicting the Byzantine Christians completely from Africa.
Now the conquerors faced their last and most stubborn enemy; the Berbers led by Queen Dahi-Yah the Kahina. Dahi-Yah  succeeded Kusaila as the war leader of the Berber tribes in the 680s and opposed the encroaching Arab armies of the Umayyad Dynasty. Kusaila is known as Aksel by the Berbers. Kusaila was a 7th-century leader of the Awraba tribe of the IMAZIGHEN Berber people and head of the Sanhadja confederation. He is known for prosecuting an effective Berber resistance against the Muslim Arab invasion and expansion into North Africa in the 680s. Aksel grew up in Berber tribal territory during the time of the Byzantine exarchate. He led a combined Byzantine-Berber force when he defeated Oqba. On the return march to Kairowan, Kusaila joined with the Byzantine forces and organized an ambush. The Christian-Berber force, about 5000 strong, defeated the Arabs and felled Oqba at Tahudha near Biskra in 683. Kusaila now held undisputed mastery over North Africa and marched to Kairowan in triumph. In 688 Arab reinforcements arrived under Zuhair ibn Kays. Kusaila met them in 690 at the Battle of Mamma. Vastly outnumbered, the Awraba were defeated and Kusaila was killed. And thus Dahi-Yah came to rule.
Dahi-Yah was renown for her beauty. When she was a young woman, she was demanded by another chieftain to become his bride; when she refused he began to terrorize her tribe. Kahina was forced into hiding for a time, but finally she agreed to the marriage, in order to halt the massacres of her people by the vile chieftain. When she surrendered herself to him, he beat her, humiliated and raped her. Then he forced her to wed him.  On the wedding night, she murdered her new husband by smashing his skull with a nail, as Jael the Kenite had done to the tyrant Sisera. The chieftain was a tyrant, and Kahina was greatly praised and thanked for rescuing the people of his tribe from his leadership.
 Dahi-Yah had been born to a noble Berber family. She was graceful and wise and had an inquisitive mind. Her family provided her with the best education. One of her interests was that of exploring the natural world. She bore two sons. Bagay was the son of her first husband, the tyrant. Her other son Khanchla was begotten of one of her royal consorts. Later, she adopted an Arab man who defected to her from the Muslims. Dahi-Yah traveled with an icon bearing the image of Christ Pantocrater, which the Arabs, derisively called an idol. She had it carried with her when she went to war. Dahi-Yah also had scientific interests. She studied the desert birds and wrote of them and drew  pictures of them. An early parchment book with paintings of birds in its pages has been found which may have been the work of Kahina. The paintings were those of the species of birds found in Libya.
The Victory of the Kahina
The Umayyad Muslim leader Hasan ibn al-Nu'man marched from Egypt and captured the major Byzantine city of Carthage and other cities. However, during the siege of Carthage, Kahina had been busy rallying together all the Berber tribes under one ideal; to unite and defeat the Muslims.  She also gathered survivors of the Byzantine army and the remnants of the Visigoths. They were determined to drive out the invaders. They began with guerrilla warfare which turned into a full scale attack against the Muslim army. Searching for another enemy to defeat, Hasan was told that the most powerful monarch in North Africa was "the queen of the Berbers" (Arabic: malikat al-barbar) Dahi-Yah, and accordingly he marched into Numidia, where she reigned.
Hasan sent an envoy to Dahi-Yah to demand that she submit to Islam.
The envoy was brought before Dahi-Yah and she questioned him.
“Why have you attacked my kingdom?”
“We have come to end the period of Jahiliya-of darkness and ignorance-and bring the light of Islam.”
“We are not in darkness and ignorance. It is you who are ignorant. I have learned the traditions of my people from our elders and our ancient lore from our clanswomen. I am fluent in Berber, Punic, Latin and Greek. And I have read widely in Greek and Latin. How many languages do you speak?”
“I speak Arabic alone. But it is the language of God. The Arabic Koran is glorious and none can imitate it.”
“Why would anyone want to imitate such a rambling and incoherent diatribe? I have read many books far superior to your Koran. Since your people began attacking my people, I have mastered your language and read your Koran. There is nothing new in it. Only the repetition of certain religious truths of the most rudimentary level, nothing to the level of the sublime as we see in the teachings of the Messiah found in the Bible. I found your Koran to be disjointed and confused and lacking in any new spiritual truth and indeed regressive, especially in regards to the relations between men and women. I ask you as a Muslim, would you submit to my rule as queen?”
“It is not fitting for a woman to rule over men, for the Glorious Koran states that Allah has made men a degree above women and Allah is Mighty, Wise. (Koran 2:228). Allah has commanded saying, “Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is most high.” (Koran 4:34)”
“I once had a husband who beat me. I crushed his skull. Allah is indeed mighty and wise, but your false prophet, may he name be cursed forever, was an ignorant and unlearned man and it is obvious that he was fed tales from a Jewish man, a man far wiser than he, tales he used to compose his Koran. I have also been told the story of this false prophet. He was an illiterate beggar who married an older woman so he could take her money.  It is obvious that he couldn’t read. If he had been able to read he wouldn’t have made so many errors when he attempted to retell stories from the Bible in his Koran. Though he despised woman, without Khadijah, his wife, he would have been nothing. He dared not take another wife while she was still living, lest she cast him out. Tell me, what does your Koran tell you about how a woman should act?”
“A woman should cover her breasts and wear a veil. The Koran says, "And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts and do not display their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments except to their husbands or their fathers, or the fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons of their husbands, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or those whom their right hands possess, or the male servants not having need of women, or the children who have not attained knowledge of what is hidden of women; and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their ornaments may be known." (Koran 24:31) and tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them..."(Koran 33:59). The Koran teaches that only an aged woman may put aside the veil (Koran 24:60). In his teachings of the Hadith, the prophet, peace be upon him, stated with clarity that women must cover their faces with veils.”
“In the custom of my people, it is the men who veil their faces and women who uncover theirs. And we Berbers have no use for the customs of the Arabs. I will not avert my eyes from you, you savage. Why should I? I am not inferior to you and you are not my equal! It is you who should fear to look upon me! Nor will I cover my face or my breasts. Look upon them! This body your right hand shall never possess. If you attempt to do so, I will kill you. Look upon my body and see that I bear the sign of the cross, the tribal emblem of my ancestors and the sign of my savior the Christ. Tell me, have you heard of Augustine of Hippo?”
“No.”
“He was a Berber like myself. His writings are profound. In contrast to his writings your Koran is like the vulgar scribblings of the graffiti seen in the streets. Have you read any book besides the Koran?”
“No, and I vowed to read no other. It is the final and perfect word of God.”
“That is why you are a fool and why you shall remain one. The Koran is the product of an unlearned mind. While your prophet had knowledge of Judaism, his understanding of Christianity was limited. He confused the Trinity as “Allah, Jesus, and Mary” instead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and incorrectly called the Messiah Esau, when his name was Jesus (Koran 5:73-74, 116-117). The Jews substitute the name of Esau, whom they perceive to have been a villain, for the name of Jesus, as a way of mocking the Messiah. Yet your prophet didn’t have the wit to see this.”
“I invite you to accept Islam, or to pay the Jizya, if not submit to execution or fight us!”
“I am a free woman! I will not allow myself or my people to be enslaved by you and your barbarous customs. Your Koran is at variance with the teachings of the true Messiah. Let it be known that it was a North African, one of my people, who carried the cross of Jesus Christ. To this cross I cling. We will not leave the path of God’s Messiah to follow another. I know what you are. You come to kill our men, ravish our women, enslave our children and rob us of our property. You use your religion as a pretense to commit crimes against my people. I reject your religion, I reject your false prophet as a liar, and I reject your unholy book. I will never submit to the teachings of your accursed teacher, who was a liar and no true prophet.”
“And you are not a true queen! You are a witch and a sorceress. In insolence you speak against Allah and his prophet. Your kingdom shall fall before the armies of Islam.”
 “That remains to be seen, but I shall fight you and I will personally lead my warriors into battle. Soldiers, take this insolent swine and give him ten lashes and cast him from my presence!”
One of her advisors cautioned against this.
“He is an envoy. Should we cause offence?”
“His profligate phony prophet and perverse book of lies offends me. If we convert to Islam, the Arab armies will come and take our lands, our wealth and enslave us. If we are defeated, the same fate awaits us. It is better to fight. Yahweh granted me the throne of my ancestors. It is my duty to honor the legacy of my fore-fathers, to seek the good of my people, and create a better future for our descendants. Let us have war!”
The armies met near Meskiana in the present-day province of Oum el-Bouaghi, Algeria. Kahina completely defeated the Moslems  and pushed the invading army all the way back into Egypt, all the way to the Nile . She defeated Hasan so soundly that he fled Ifriqiya and holed up in Cyrenaica ( now known as Libya) for five years. Kahina won five years of peace and independence for the Berbers.
Dahi-Yah then reclaimed the ruins of Carthage, and became the unquestioned leader and heroine of northern Africa. She was now joined also by deserters of the Muslim army, including an apostate who became a lieutenant and her adopted son. Her fame as a seer and a prophetess who could read minds and foresee what would come to pass grew.  It was at this time she gained the name al-Kahinat. She ruled as a great military and administrative leader over her transformed army which now had disciplined army that was capable of being maintained, all while holding off the Muslims.
The Fall of the Kahina
Due to her foresight, Kahina knew that the Muslims would attempt to conquer their lands again, and so she began preparing in the best way she knew how. “I see that the Moslems shall return,” she said, “We must fight them as we can. Perhaps human innovation can challenge fate. If not, let history record that we challenged evil with all our might.”
She declared that the Arabs wished to conquer North Africa because of its wealth. She ordered Berbers who were still nomadic to destroy the cities, orchards, and herds of sedentary Berbers, to make North Africa a desert. She said, “What is it that attracts to our land these Arab spoilers? The wealth of our cities; the treasures of silver and gold dug from the bowels of the earth; the fruits of our gardens and orchards; the produce of our fields. Let us demolish our cities; return these accursed treasures to the earth; fell our fruit-trees; lay waste our fields, and spread a barrier of desolation between us and the country of these robbers!” According to Ibn-Khaldun, this savage policy of city burning and scorched earth cost the Kahina the support of city-dwelling Berbers. Instead of discouraging the Arab armies, her desperate decision hastened defeat. Her actions caused her to lose support of the settled population who were terrified by the destruction. They began to believe that even if they were defeated and enslaved by the Moslems, at the least they might survive.
Hasan eventually returned and, aided by communications with the captured officer adopted by Dihyā, he amassed an army at a locality in present-day Algeria.
As Dahi-Yah prepared for battle, she sent for her sons. She said to her servants, “Bring my sons Bagay and Khanchla before me.” Then she spoke to them in private saying, “Now is the time for dissimulation. I send you ahead of me to serve as my ambassadors. They will take you hostage. Then I shall fight and fall in battle. When you hear of my death, feign conversion to Islam. Pretend to join their cause. Remember, the survival of our Berber people is to be your primary goal. Make a pretense of fighting for Islam, but subvert the Muslims rule from within. I have looked into the future. While God is just and good, for some mysterious reason God has decreed that Islam shall prevail for a time. Maybe God is punishing mankind for his sins.  I foresee an age of Islam. An age of darkness, ignorance, slavery, disease, famine and despair. For many years there shall be warfare and brigandage, backwardness and decline. And yet, in the end Islam shall fall, and the Berbers will cast aside the bondage of Islam and the yoke of the Arabs and be a free people again. And at that time, the Berbers will become one of the great peoples of the earth. Pretend to be a Muslim, but make the survival of your people your highest goal. I sacrifice my life for my people. May my memory speak to generations yet unborn, our remote posterity, that I may speak to them through my actions, and thus inspire them to act, when the day of our liberation arrives at last.” Her sons wept before her but then obeyed.
Before the battle, foreseeing the outcome, she sent her two real sons over to the Arab army under the care of the adopted son, whom she knew to be a traitor. She then put on her armor, assembled her army, and rode before them, leading them into battle against the Muslims.
Al-Kāhinat died fighting the invaders, sword in hand, a warrior's death. Many of the Moslems fled before her. Those who opposed her lay in mounds of corpses surrounding her body. Though pierced with many arrows and many blows, she lived.  Knowing the Islamic law, that grants Moslems to rape “infidel” women taken in the field of battle (Koran 33:50, Koran 4:24, Koran 8:69-71), she took out a vial of poison she had hidden under her armor. She drank it and perished. Finding her corpse in the battlefield, the Muslims beheaded her. Her head was mummified and sent to the Caliph who had it nailed to the entrance of his favorite mosque. No one after her was able to organize effective resistance to the Islamic armies. North African had fallen to Islam.


After the Death of the Kahina
After the battle, Hasan gave one of the sons of Kahina charge of a section of his forces. Her sons Bagay and Khanchla led the Berber army to Iberia.
The Islamic historian Ibn-Khaldun complained that the Berbers were given to rebellion and heresy. He said, “They continued to rebel and apostatized time after time. The Muslims massacred many of them. After the Muslim religion had been established among them, they went on revolting and seceding, and they adopted dissident opinions many times. Ibn Abi Zayd said that the Berbers in the Maghrib revolted twelve times and that Islam become firmly established among them only during the governorship of Musa ben Nusayr and thereafter. That is what is meant by the statement reported on the authority of 'Umar, that "Ifriqiyah [Africa] divides the hearts of its inhabitants." The statement refers to the great number of tribes and groups there, which causes them to be disobedient and unmanageable. The Berber tribes in the West are innumerable. All of them are nomads and members of groups and families. Whenever one tribe is destroyed, another takes its place and is as refractory and rebellious as the former one had been. Therefore, it has taken the Arabs a long time to establish their dynasty in the land of Ifriqiyah.”
The Berbers are beginning to assert their independence from the Arabs. They have revived their ancient script and are using it to write their own language. The use of the Berber language and alphabet or the public display are Berber symbols (such as letters from the alphabet) could result in arrest. (The Berber writing system is called Tifinagh. The Berbers called themselves Imazighen in plural, and Amazigh in singular. meaning "free people" or "free and noble men". The word has probably an ancient parallel in the Roman and Greek names for some of the Berbers, "Mazices". There are several important Berber clans such as the Tuareg and the Kabyle. (There are various dialects as well such as Riffian and others.) The Tuareg are the “Blue Men of the Desert” who are nomads. Tuareg men often wear blue turbans and veils and generally keep their faces covered. Berbers are scattered across north-west Africa with important groups in Algeria, Morocco, Niger and Mali.
One day in the course of my travels in the deserts of the Middle East, I came across a Berber man. He was friendly. He wore a shirt that bore a Berber letter. I showed him a scar between my first and second knuckle on my left hand that resembled the letter. I fell and struck a rock as a child and it left the symbol upon my hand as a scar. He was amused to see that by some strange chance an American bore a Berber letter upon his hand! He told me how the Arabs repressed the Berbers and attempted to keep them from speaking the Berber language or writing with the Berber alphabet. However, the Berbers continued to assert their distinctive culture. There were also rumors I had heard of tribes of Berbers secretly returning to the Christian faith of their ancestors. The Kabyle community in Algeria has a decent-sized recently constituted Christian minority, both Protestant and Roman Catholic.
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