“And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?…
until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.” (Revelation 6:9-11)
The United States Constitution allows individuals to practice any religion they choose. However, the austerity of this right is tested when an individual’s belief is publicly displayed. For Muslim women wearing the hijab, or headscarf, the intersection between private religious practice and its social expression is explored on a daily basis…With the rise of Islamophobia, the participants found a stronger sense to exert their right to express their religious identities. Moreover, the women interviewed…embrace their religious practice despite intersecting forms of discrimination.
All Muslims in America, even those who are American citizens, have been subjected to levels of persecution far exceeding those experienced by Christians abroad.
The New York Times Magazine published a feature article profiling a former FBI agent who was imprisoned by the US for exposing the rampant abuses in the government’s domestic war on terror. In the piece, Terry Albury recounted the FBI’s systematic harassment and intimidation of American Muslims, its spying on the community, and its prosecution of many of its members under the guise of combatting terrorism.
Upon joining the FBI shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Albury recalled, “It was made very clear from day one that the enemy was not just a tiny group of disaffected Muslims. Islam itself was the enemy.” Its uniquely candid and self-reflective tone notwithstanding, there was little in this account that would come as a surprise to most American Muslims.
Twenty years on from the launch of a war that would place an entire minority population under a cloud of suspicion, it is worth examining how the lives of American Muslims have been irrevocably transformed. As securitised subjects, they have existed on one of the many front lines in the global war on terror, forced to reassess their identity and core values in the name of belonging.
Since 9/11/2001 “the “war on terror” has continued to write the script of what’s allowable for Muslims to think, say and do. Go off script and everyone thinks you’re either a budding radical extremist or, at best, a terrorist sympathizer.”
And what is the catchphrase of Islam?
Any Christians who immediately dismisses Muhammad as a sham needs to seriously remember their acceptance of prophets within Christianity over the last 2,000 years.
When a Muslim recites this they proclaim:
- That Allah is the only God, and that Muhammad is his prophet
- That they personally accept this as true
- That they will obey all the commitments of Islam in their life
Reciting this statement three times in front of witnesses is all that anyone need do to become a Muslim.
A Muslim is expected to recite this statement out loud, with total sincerity, fully understanding what it means. No matter how sincerely a person may believe, Islam regards it as pointless to live life without putting that faith into action and practice.
Carrying out Five Pillars of Islam demonstrates that the Muslim is putting their faith first, and not just trying to fit it in around their secular lives.
Islam is far more seriously practiced than Christianity.
Could it be that Islam’s faithfulness to the One True God, experienced as massive numbers of Muslim deaths, is what calls the Savior of the World into action?
The most recent Israeli war against Palestinians began on Oct. 7, 2023 when Hamas militants stormed across the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged 253 into captivity in Gaza.
Israel’s extreme response against the entire civilian population of Gaza led to a ruling of genocide and ethnic cleansing with arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court created in 1998 by the United Nations General Assembly’s Rome Statute.
In defiance to the International Criminal Court’s ruling that any signatory member must arrest Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he enters its country, President Trump imposed sanctions against the ICC, the first time ever sanctioning an international governmental organization. President Trump then hosted Netanyahu as the first foreign dignitary to Washington in his new term.
Of course, because the United States set the bar when it declared war against Islam in reprisal for a terrorist attack on 9/11 in New York City.
As of May 2025 American-backed Israel’s invasion of Gaza has killed 54,000 and injured 122,000 people, with thousands more missing under the rubble. Hospitals have been intentionally bombed out of commission, increasing the death toll.
Months of intense air and ground assaults have razed entire housing blocks to the ground; researchers who study satellite imagery estimate nearly 60% of buildings in the Gaza Strip have likely been damaged since the start of the war.
Ninety percent of the population is homeless, with hundreds of thousands in unsanitary tent camps struggling to find food and clean water. The UN’s secretary-general says “aid has dried up [and] the floodgates of horror have re-opened” in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has blocked the entry of all goods. “Gaza is a killing field, and civilians are in an endless death loop.”
“With this latest order, the area of Gaza under displacement orders or within Israeli-militarised zones has risen to 87.8%, leaving 2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12% of the strip, where essential services have collapsed,” the UN said in a statement released by its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).
With the growing threat of widespread starvation, Ocha emphasised the importance of Deir al-Balah for what remained of the struggling international aid effort. Warehouses, health clinics and a key desalination plant serving southern Gaza are located there. “Any damage to this infrastructure will have life-threatening consequences,” the agency added.
July 21, 20250: Israel has launched substantial air raids and a ground operation in Gaza, targeting Deir al-Balah.
The latest assault comes a day after the highest death toll in 21 months inflicted by the Israeli military on desperate Palestinians seeking food aid, with at least 85 killed on Sunday in what has become an almost daily slaughter.
Israel launched its renewed assault despite reports [or because of?]in the Hebrew media that Israeli officials believed Hamas was close to agreeing to a ceasefire.
Witnesses described massive airstrikes overnight in Deir al-Balah which is packed with Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in Gaza.
Unrwa, the UN refugee agency dedicated to Palestinians, said on X it was receiving desperate messages from Gaza warning of starvation. “Meanwhile, just outside Gaza, stockpiled in warehouses, UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale,” it said.
American investigative journalist Alfred Henry Lewis (1855-1914) famously said, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” …What he means is that hunger dispels the illusions of a polite society and unleashes the desperate animal-like nature that lurks inside all human beings. A starving man trying to feed his starving children will at some point abandon all law and order, doing anything necessary to keep himself and his children alive, including engaging in robbery, assault and murder.
Israel’s international allies, as well as many inside the country, are pressuring Netanyahu to end the war against Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon now. But instead, Netanyahu has vowed to continue to fight and hinted that his ambitions might go toward changing “the balance of power in the region for years to come,” raising concerns about his willingness to plunge Israel into a direct confrontation with Iran which leads a major faction of Islamic nations.
Iran has backed a “resistance axis” of Palestinian groups against Israel including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, as well as groups in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile Israel has supported groups deemed terrorist organizations by the Iranian government, including Mojahedian-e Khalq and Kurdish armed groups in Iraqi Kurdistan.
In October 2024 Iran launched more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. The U.S. Department of Defense and the IDF said they intercepted a majority of the missiles. Israel carried out airstrikes on military sites in Iran later that month.
June 2025 The decision to directly involve the U.S. in the war comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran U.S. and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and the 30,000-pound (13,500-kilogram) bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program buried deep underground. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s decision to attack in a video message directed at the American president.
“Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the awesome and righteous might of the United States, will change history,” he said. Netanyahu said the U.S. “has done what no other country on earth could do.”
Given Netanyahu’s and Trump’s history of bold moves, what can we expect next?
In January 13, 2025 MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Iranian counterpart for the signing of a broad partnership pact between Moscow and Tehran for a “comprehensive strategic partnership” between the countries.
“Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory…they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves…Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him…
O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people!
The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof…
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the LORD God of hosts.” (Isaiah 3:8-15)
- “Who raised up the righteous man from the east [Abram the Hebrew]…gave the nations before him?...
- Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations [nations, including Ishmael as well as Israel] from the beginning?
- I the LORD, the first, and with the last;
- I am he…
- I will plant in the wilderness…
- I will set in the desert…
- That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.” (Isaiah 41:1-20)
The following section of this chapter is often quoted as God’s promise to Israel and New Covenant Christians.
“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish.” (Isaiah 41:10-11)
But we can’t lift a few verses out of context! The beginning of the chapter sets the context – Isaiah is reminding Israel that their existence from the beginning is based on their relationship with the LORD.
“thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend…Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God:” (Isaiah 41:8-10)
This only holds true when the LORD is in fact the nation of Israel’s God, but not when Israel rejects Him.
Isaiah’s entire ministry is calling the government of Israel to reclaim this saving relationship because the rulers had lost it.
“The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me…Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward…From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores:” (Isaiah 1:1-6)
“Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the [true] King of Jacob. Let them [the false rulers] bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you…Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know [that he stays true to his word]? and beforetime, that we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that sheweth, yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is none that heareth your words…For I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. Behold, they are all vanity;” (Isaiah 41:20-29)
The solution is to stop professing one’s relationship with a Holy God, and to start acting in accordance with the Word of that God.
“Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah…when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:10-17)
Kingdom Come 