#islamic studies programs

[sporadicarbiterearthquake-blog]

What is the most dangerous foreign power to the US?

If you ask me which nation is the greatest threat to America, I will not say Russia, China or Iran.  We know that those nations do not wish us well.  Instead I will point to Saudi Arabian financed and directed 9/11.  The only proof necessary to demonstrate that the Kingdom has compromised American leadership is that instead of imposing the cost of 9/11 on the Saudis, their involvement in 9/11 was covered up.  Saudi election interference makes Russian election interference look laughable.  Saudi Arabia finances and/or controls an estimated 80% of US mosques.  It funds CAIR, the organization that claims to be an Islamic "civil rights organization," but is in fact, a front for terrorists.  The Saudis are attempting to brainwash America's college students by funding and controlling the many "Islamic studies" programs now at most of our largest universities.  Saudi propaganda efforts are not limited to college age students.  They also fund Islamic organizations that seek to insert, often very deceptive Islamic material into all K-12 classes, aided by their army of paid lobbyists, that include some the most powerful and strategically connected law and public relations firms in the U.S.,such as the Brownstein law firm in Denver and Washington, D.C.

The Saudis also conduct covert operations inside the US, many of which are efforts to smuggle Saudi citizens (most often Saudi students) charged with crimes (most often sexual in nature) out of the country, just as they smuggled Anwar al Awlaki, of whom an FBI agent declared was "at the heart of the 9/11 story," out of the US in 2002.  The link to the book is above.  Saudi oil is sold at Shell stations.  Let's boycott Shell as well as Citibank and Chase Bank both of which the Saudis have invested heavily and essentially control.

[themostofekramy]

~2024 goals~

Self-Improvement:

• have an aesthetic body

• actually implement 10 practical steps from books that i read

• get a job & save enough money to buy a laptop by myself

Programming:

• finish cs50

• make 10 complete projects

Self-studying:

• study philosophy and read a philosophical classic

• get fluent and have a full conversation with an Italian

• study Algebra I and Algebra II in the vecation

Islamic:

• keep praying nawafel (sunnah prayers)

• read the quran 3 times (not counting the one during ramadan)

• complete memorization of surah Al-baqarah

• memorize surah Al Imran

• study الصفات الإلهيه (Islamic theology book)

As for why i dont have a reading target its because after joining a reading contest last year i found that reading is not about quantity its more about what you get out of the books, so if i only read one book in the whole year but its good enough i dont mind

[pusatinfokampusjakartatimur]

KELAS KARYAWAN, Hub 0811-257-132, Kampus Swasta Ada Kkn

Langsung DAFTAR KLIK https://wa.me/ 62811257132 , Universitas Swasta Murah Di Jakarta Timur, Kampus Swasta Ilmu Komunikasi, Kampus Swasta Ilmu Komunikasi Terbaik, Kampus Swasta Islam Terbaik Di Indonesia, Rekomendasi Kampus Swasta Universitas Ibnu Chaldun adalah perguruan tinggi yang memiliki kualitas dan mutu yang Unggul Dalam Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Teknologi (IPTEK) serta Kokoh dalam Iman dan Taqwa (IMTAQ). Kami memiliki program khusus untuk kelas karyawan, pegawai, ASN, anggota Polri, dan TNI. Saat ini program studi yang tersedia adalah : - Ilmu Hukum - Ilmu Komunikasi - Farmasi - Manajemen - Administrasi Publik - Agroteknologi - Pendidikan Agama Islam - Perbankan Syariah - Komunikasi Penyiaran Islam - Ahwal Syaksiyah Untuk Informasi selengkapnya bisa hubungi kontak person kami: Call 0811-257-132 Call 0811-257-132 Call 0811-257-132 https://www.uic.ac.id #RekomendasiKampusSwasta, #CaraMasukKampusSwasta, #CaraMemilihKampusSwasta, #CaraDaftarKampusSwasta, #RekomendasiKampusSwastaDiJakarta, #UniversitasSwastaTerbaikDiJakarta2023, #BeasiswaUniversitasSwasta2023, #BiayaUniversitasSwasta, #CaraMasukUniversitasSwasta, #BiayaKelasKaryawanUIC

[mbzuhuniversity]

undefined

Pursuing a PhD in Islamic Studies can be a transformative experience that expands your knowledge, skills, and perspectives. It involves rigorous research, critical analysis, and academic writing, and can lead to exciting career opportunities in academia or other fields. Embrace the journey of intellectual growth and personal development. For more information, visit: https://www.mbzuh.ac.ae/college-of-islamic-studies/

[lonniemachin]

Laila reached out to me to help share her fundraiser. She is a 22-year-old Palestinian architecture student urgently raising money to evacuate Gaza and continue her education in Cairo. She has only raised €2,489 out of her €35,000 goal so far! Please donate, and if you can’t donate, please share!

From Laila’s GFM:

My name is Laila Auda. I’m writing to you while my heart is heavy, my tears are pouring down out of fear and despair. My only shimmer of hope to achieve my dream of being an Architect relies on you.

I’m 22-year-old dreamer and 178 days genocide survivor. I’ve endured unimaginable hardships including four major aggressions and countless military escalations. I’m still reluctant to believe that I’m reliving the 177th day of the fifth war in my prime years. Not only have these wars destroyed my dreams, but they have also deepened my trauma and depression.

In 2018, I was granted the opportunity of a lifetime through the ACCESS Micro scholarship Program funded by the US Department of State for 2 years English learning.

In 2020 I graduated from Arafat for gifted high school with honor degree 94.4%. And I was granted to a scholarship for 2 years in EL-UNRWA College pursuing my dream of being an Architect. In addition of finishing 3 external courses of software's used in architecture beside the college. I’ve put immense amount of pressure on my back to fulfill my dreams in my early twenties, having a message of being an inspiring soul of success. I was already in my small circle as three of my siblings want to be architects too! They see how I stay up all night making study models.

Now I’m a third-year architecture student completing my bachelor's degree in the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). The dream of completing my bachelor's degree in my homeland became almost impossible after the IOF bombed all the buildings of my university and amidst the terrifying conditions we endure daily being stripped of every human right imaginable.

I’m sure you’re aware of the situation we have been living. My words are laconic, but my pain is profound and my mental health has been irreversibly damaged due the state of war. Switching from a person who’s addicted to learning to a person who is thinking of how can I escape death. My dream is completing my bachelor's degree in Cairo university, come back to my homeland and be an active architect in the rebuilding programs.

My target is to raise 35000€, which will be allocated as follows:

(1500$) university registration fees.

( 5000$ ) education fees per year (*4 years > 20000$) as I’ll lose 1 one more year with the courses equivalence due to the difference between the plans.

for life expenses as student for 4 years. ( 10000$ )

Add to that 2.9% GoFundMe would take and the fees on money transfer the bank would take.

The overall sum amount is approximately 35000€ considering the bank my cousin- who's launching this campaign- is engaged which operates in Belgian currency.

Your support could mean the difference between dreams realized and dreams shattered. Together we can make a difference. Together we can ensure that the voices of those trapped in conflict zones are heard, and their dreams are not forgotten.

I love studying and I dream of a life where I can breathe giving. I want to help people to rebuild their homes thinking with them of every detail. I want to see people’s happiness by creating spaces that lies warmth within their souls..

I’m truly grateful for your time, consideration, and support. Your generosity will make a lasting impact in my life, illuminate the path toward a brighter and more hopeful chapter.

Every contribution, no matter the size it will be a step forward achieving my dream

If you would like to confirm the validity of this campaign, you can message Laila on X

Username: Laila_EYO

With gratitude

Laila Auda

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Barry Shaw

This brainwashing is being introduced into high schools and even into the elementary educational system in America.

One example, quoted in a Jerusalem Post article on June 7, 2024, titled ‘Portland’s teacher union creates anti-Israel program,” reported that the Portland Association of Teachers are promoting an indoctrination program for children as early as pre-kindergarten to high school in which the next generation of Americans will be brainwashed to delegitimize Israel, describing it as an “illegitimate settler-colonial state.”

American children are being taught to participate in Palestinian protests turning them into anti-Israel activists.

Together with a group known as Oregon Educators for Palestine (OGP) they have created a curriculum that includes courses such as “Know your Rights in Teaching,” “Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools,” and “Teach Palestine! Resources for Portland Public Schools” lesson guide.

Their document provides counter definitions to reduce the legitimacy of Israel by using key terms. For example, they deduce Anti-Semitism as being a “European Christian phenomenon” and Zionism as “a settler colonial political ideology and movement.”

Their guide recommends teachers to have the academic freedom (restriction) to select (reduce) writings on Palestine only to that written by Palestinian authors, as they put it, “to offer content and context based on the authors backgrounds and opinions.”

Part of their indoctrination removes words such as “terrorism” particularly when applied to acts of Palestinian terrorism.  Instead, they replace it with the word “resist.”

Everything is wrapped around concepts such as “Occupation” even if that applies to areas from which Israel withdrew its citizens in the search for peace.

Based on that novel concept, the barbarous attacks of Oct. 7, or mass killing by Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen, can be translated into acts of “resistance to the occupation,” even when committed by Palestinians emerging out of their self-governing territories to kill thousands of Israelis in their hometowns inside Israel.

I know. I became one of the members of the Netanya Terror Victims Association after a procession of suicide bombers and gunman targeted my hometown that hugs the clifftops of the Mediterranean, the sea defined by their slogan of a Palestine “from the River to the Sea.”  

In the quest for this homeland, they murdered dozens of Netanya folk, some of whom I knew.

Now social studies lessons for grades 3-5 in America will include a week-long curriculum on “settler colonization and Palestine.”

The Portland Association of Teachers represents over 4,500 educators. In their description of the events of Oct. 7, we can clearly define what they consider progressive to be utterly regressive.

PAT educators handed out documents claiming that the horrendous massacres, tortures, rapes, and hostage-taking were, in the words of PAT, justified “resistance.”

In May, Mosaic magazine featured an article entitled “Anti-Israel Indoctrination Starts in Elementary Schools.”

This is the opening phase of a Jihadi education in America. One that accurately copies Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad brainwashing.

There is a battle going on in the California school system. Last September, a law suit claimed that a California school district tried to impose an anti-Israel curricula.

[ana-bananya]

£3,200/£5,000

$1,800 until they reach their goal! Last donation was 6 days ago!

Abudjana Mohamed is a 19-year-old electrical engineering student from Sudan. Thanks to the fundraiser, he has already obtained a new passport and traveled to Ethiopia where he is applying for a visa.

Abudjana has also been accepted into a 4-year Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronic Engineering Program at the Islamic University of Technology (IUT) in Bangladesh on an OIC Partial Scholarship. This campaign will help him cover his remaining tuition fees and potentially his flight to Bangladesh. Please share and donate to help Abudjana continue his studies!

[centrally-unplanned]

Oh lets drag up some more 2000's politics debates - Noah Smith had this take today:

So bait is bait, but I think this fun bait, I'll take this. Its a definition game (what does "win" mean) but that can still be elucidating.

There is obviously a sense in which the US won the War in Iraq - which is extremely easy to reveal by looking at Afghanistan! Unlike there, where the explicit, named enemy of the US outlasted us, overthrew our imposed regime, and took power, in Iraq it is true that the country is currently governed by the system the US built, and it rules with relative stability. Not ideal, but hey its not Syria or anything. This would in fact be *shocking* to people in the 2000's - back then the general vibe was that Iraq would descend into full-on civil war. People openly discussed throwing in the towel and just letting the country split in three. And then all of that just fizzled out over time, and people started buying into the system. Its not glorious "nation building" but it looks like it stuck. It is fair to say that Iraq is not in fact a disaster case study in the nation building timeline (from an outcomes standpoint, from other lens like humanitarian its different), and its often unfairly seen that way.

But there is just no coherent definition of "win" divorced from strategy, divorced from goals. Imagine if the US today jointly invaded Israel & Gaza both, and hey throw in Hezbollah too, what the fuck ever (Pro tip: don't do this) with the goal of setting up governments that did whatever the fuck they wanted, don't care, as long as they don't attack each other anymore. And we got Iraq today as a result? Eh, I won't fight you too hard if you call that a win. This magical funland scenario hit the target, right? The US wanted to de-escalate regional conflicts in the region, it did that. How nice a place those are to live or w/e wasn't the point.

In Iraq, "not falling apart" was not the goal. The goal was end Sadaam's WMD program, which well raincheck on that, but moving on was also to End Terrorism by Sending a Message to other enemy countries like Iran and also building a beacon of secular, liberal democracy in the Middle East to show the people that there was a better path to Islamic Fundamentalism, thus reducing its strength in the region.

It Did Not Do That.

Man, can I not emphasize enough how much it did not do that, how much the War in Iraq did not reduce the strength of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East. It is literally, not figuratively-literally but actually-literally, one of the greatest own goals in the history of strategy since war has existed. I have explained that part in more detail too often in the past to repeat, but do I even need to? Say the sentence "The War in Iraq reduced Islamic extremism as a political movement" out loud and try not to laugh. You can't, its too absurd to get past your lips.

From that lens, the proper lens, I do not think you can call the War in Iraq a win. How stable Iraq is, while a dodged bullet for its people, barely scratches the surface of what would need to be shown to call it a win; and I see precious few nails that can join it.

[psychotrenny]

On a more serious note, the Islamic Revolutions of the 19th Century West Sudan (region) are interesting because they provide a relatively early example of holistic ideologically-motivated revolution that follows a deliberate plan of societal renovation. This contrasts with the many less directional revolutions that sought to solve very specific issues or merely change the individuals/associations who held power in society without changing the social structures themselves.

Like the backbone of these Islamic revolutionary movements derived from the West Sudanese intelligentsia and associated strata. Usman dan Fodio, Seku Amadu and Al-ḥājj 'Umar were all prominent scholars with close ties to the regional Islamic mercantile community, while much of their initial following derived from their students and the relatives of students. These movements also had very clear ideas of how they wanted to restructure society both socially and economically. While rallying against the specific misdeeds of local rulers (abuses of power, unfair taxation), each of reformers also had their sights set higher than the replacement of bad individuals with good ones.

Instead of merely removing the morally corrupt and religiously syncretic rulers, the reformers strove to expunging all pagan elements from broader society while establishing a stronger education system to more permanently spread and maintain orthodox Islam within their territories. And instead of merely lowering the taxes as new rulers they changed the basis that taxation laws were founded on; employing Maliki school Sharia instead of going entirely off the whims of worldly rulers. There were institutional changes to the very nature of Statehood in the region too. States were no longer ruled by kings who were divine personages themselves; they were replaced by Amirs who functionally first among equals with the other governing scholars. This meant that many formerly powerful institutions were either rendered impotent (Palace Slave officials) or eliminated altogether (the office of Queen mother/sister). Like through their study of Islamic literature and analysis of the societies they lived in, these scholars came up with a plan to change their societies and to one extent or another put it into action. The changes the wrought went far far deeper than the names of the rulings families

Mind you it's important not to exaggerate the extent of these changes. They may have deliberately altered the nature and mechanisms of culture and politics, but the mode of production did not receive similar treatment. There were certainly economic changes in the region throughout the 19th century but these were driven more by international trade relations than any domestic political programmes*; a decline in demand for slaves and increase in demand for the agricultural products from the region (Kola Nuts, Peanuts, Palm Oil etc.) meant a region wide decrease in the export of slave as more of them were retained locally for employment in agriculture. However this was a process that occurred throughout West Africa rather than being confined to the Islamic Sudan; it was not a result of deliberate effort by Islamic Reformists. These were revolutions of the Superstructure, not the Base. To put it in European terms they had much more in common with the Liberal revolutions of the 18th century than the Communist ones of the 20th.

Still the fact that there was any kind of genuine ideological program at all, complete with its share of well known thinkers and an entire library of relevant literature, certainly makes it more recognisable to the modern revolutionary than many of the other civil wars and succession disputes given such a title. Even ignoring how important this process was for the West Sudan specifically, it's a very interesting slice of history that more people should be at least aware of. This post was largely based on volume 6 of the UNESCO General History of Africa (mainly chapters 21-3) and I'd highly recommend reading the whole thing if you're curious. At bare minimum it should be remembered that this sort of history is not unique to Europe

*I've definitely read a paper (which I cannot for the life of me find in my notes so if anyone knows something relevant it would be greatly appreciated) that suggests these processes aided the Islamic Reformers as many of the Pagan/Syncretic rulers relied mostly on slave raiding and sale while the more orthodox Islamic communities were already more involved in plantation production. However I've seen nothing to suggest this was a direct influence on or result of Islamic Reformist politics and a similar process occurred in the Pagan kingdoms to the South and East too

[humansofnewyork]

(26/54) “Mitra was the oldest in her class, but all the younger students loved her. She knew all the latest in culture: the movies, the magazines, the trends. Every night when I came home she’d always be up listening to tapes. The seventies were a golden age of music in Iran: Googoosh, Delkash, Marzieh, Aslani, Hayedeh, Shajarian. And Mitra had many of their songs memorized. She was a great student. During the second year of her program she was chosen to study under one of Iran’s top Shahnameh professors. It was the closest she ever came to understanding me. One day in class the professor told her that every society needs a few idealists, because they’re the ones who move society forward. Often I would help with her homework, and it helped me view Shahnameh from a more academic perspective. Ferdowsi uses the mythic kings as placeholders for periods in Iran’s history. When he writes that Jamshid ruled for seven hundred years, he means that it was a time of great freedom and culture in Iran. But when Jamshid loses touch with the people, a period of terror and oppression follows. The throne is taken over by the Serpent King Zahak. In Shahnameh Zahak is the embodiment of darkness. He cares only for his own power. Two giant snakes grow out of his shoulders. The devil promises Zahak that he will stay in power, as long as he feeds the snakes with the brains of young Iranians. It had to be the brains of the young. Because young people are the ones with energy. They’re the ones with courage. They’re the ones that can overthrow the regime. One day twenty students at Mitra’s school entered the cafeteria wearing masks, and began to forcibly separate men and women. They physically assaulted any women who were wearing make-up or Western clothing. On the way out they scattered pamphlets on the floor, warning that all women should adhere to Islamic guidelines, or there will be consequences. An atmosphere of fear began to spread across the campus. Mitra began wearing a hijab to school. She chose a beautiful white one, made of silk.” 

میترا از همکلاسی‌هایش مسن‌تر بود، همکلاسی‌های کم‌سن‌وسال‌تر او را دوست داشتند. دایره‌ی دوستانش گسترش یافت. میترا از تازه‌ترین رویدادهای فرهنگی با خبر بود: فیلم‌ها، روزنامه‌ها و گرایش‌ها. شبها که به خانه بر‌می‌گشتم او را در حال شنیدن نوارهای کاست می‌دیدم. دهه‌ی هفتاد دوران طلایی موسیقی بود: گوگوش، دلکش، مرضیه، اصلانی، هایده، شجریان و ... میترا بیشتر ترانه‌های آنها را از بر داشت. در سال دوم دانشگاه، کلاسی را برگزید که استادش یکی از برجسته‌ترین استادان شاهنامه‌شناسی دانشگاه تهران بود. سالی بود که میترا را بیش از همیشه به اندیشه‌هایم نزدیک می‌دیدم. روزی استادش گفته بود که همه‌ی جامعه‌ها نیازمند آرمانخواهان‌اند زیرا آنها هستند که جامعه را پیش می‌رانند. اگر فرصتی دست می‌داد، در درس شاهنامه یاری‌اش می‌دادم. این کار برایم خوشایند بود. کمک کرد تا داستان‌های شاهنامه را از دیدگاه دانشگاهی بکاوم. دریافتم که فردوسی پادشاهان افسانه‌ای را بسان نمایندگان بازه‌های زمانی برگزیده است. هنگامی که می‌نویسد پادشاهی جمشید هفتسد سال به درازا کشید، منظور او دوران آزادی‌های فراوان و گسترش پرشکوه ایران و فرهنگ ایرانی‌ست. ولی پیوند جمشید با مردم گسسته می‌شود. فر او می‌کاهد و تخت پادشاهی به ضحاک می‌رسد. ضحاک نماد تاریکی‌ست. خودکامه‌ای ستمگر است. دو مار بزرگ بر شانه‌های او می‌رویند. اهریمن به ضحاک می‌گوید تا زمانی که مارها را با مغز جوانان سیر نگه دارد، آسوده خواهی زیست زیرا جوانان نیرومند، آرزومند و دلیرند! جوانان می‌توانند حاکمان ستمگر را سرنگون کنند. یک روز بیست دانشجو وارد سالن غذاخوری دانشگاه شدند و به زور مردان و زنان را از هم جدا کردند. آنها به زنانی که آرایش‌ کرده و لباس غربی پوشیده بودند، یورش بردند. هنگام بیرون رفتن از سالن غذاخوری، بیانیه‌هایی بر زمین ریختند که به زنان هشدار می‌داد، می‌بایستی به احکام اسلامی پایبند یا در انتظار پی‌آمدهایی ناگوار باشند. ترس در پردیس دانشگاه گسترده شد. میترا حجاب بر سر کرد. او روسری ابریشمین سپیدرنگی را برگزید

[moonlayl]

Every University building in Gaza has been destroyed

Al Israa University

Gaza’s youngest university was establish in 2014 in Gaza City. It was scheduled to mark its 10th anniversary this year with the opening of a public museum on Palestinian history and culture.

It’s main building was occupied for 70 days by Israeli soldiers and then destroyed by explosives on January 18th, 2024.

Among the university buildings that were targeted was the National Museum which contained around 3,000 artifacts that were looted and blown up.

Al Azhar University

This university was established in 1991, in south of Gaza City. It offers 76 bachelor’s programs, 24 master’s programs, and doctoral programs.

On 6 November, Israeli airforces bombed the university campus.

There were 16,000 students studying at the university.

Al Aqsa University

Al Aqsa University began in 1955 as a teacher’s institute under the administration of the Egyptian government. In 1991 the institute developed into a college known as the Governmental College of Education. At the beginning of the 2000/2001 academic year, the college was transformed into Al Aqsa University.

On January 22nd, Israeli forces shelled Al Aqsa University, which was operating as a shelter for displaced people at the time.

Islamic University of Gaza

Gaza’s oldest university, founded in 1978, had over 17,000 students by 2023.

Israel destroyed the campus on the night of October 10th, 2023.

The University of Palestine

It was established in 2005 in the south of Gaza City as a private Palestinian institution for higher education. It’s been used to shelter displaced Palestinian families during the genocide.

On January 17th, 2024, Israel detonated more than 300 mines at the university.

Al Quds Open University

It was established in 1991 and was the first open learning institute in Palestine. It has branches in Gaza City, Khan Yunis, Rafah, and Jabalia. It had 60,000 students studying across 19 branches and centres throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, making it the biggest non campus university in Palestine.

Israeli forces turned university buildings into open barracks, before bombing the Gaza branch in November 15th, 2023.

University College of Applied Sciences (UCAS)

The university college of applied sciences was founded in 1998. Its main campus was in Gaza City and over 8,500 students were enrolled in 2023.

It included a donor-funded non-profit start-up incubator that supported entrepreneurs in the Gaza Strip and helped aspiring entrepreneurs turn their ideas into successful businesses.

On January 22nd, 2024, Israeli forces shelled UCAS. At the time, the university was sheltering displaced families.

[qidynamics]

“It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

“That’s not a 501(c)(3) activity.”

A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.

These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.

EXCERPTS:

“We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness,” says a strategy document that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year vision to “redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation.”

Ziklag was the brainchild of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a previous organization founded by Eldred called United In Purpose, which aimed to get more Christians active in the civic arena, according to Bill Dallas, the group’s former director. United In Purpose generated attention in June 2016 when it organized a major meeting between then-candidate Trump and hundreds of evangelical leaders.

After Trump was elected in 2016, Eldred had an idea, according to Dallas. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Christian people to come together,’” Dallas recalled in an interview. Eldred told Dallas that he wanted to create a donor network like the one created by Charles and David Koch but for Christians.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice President Mike Pence appeared at a Ziklag event, as did former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Meadows and other members of Congress. In its private newsletter, Ziklag claims that a coalition of groups it assembled played “a hugely significant role in the selection, hearings and confirmation process” of Amy Coney Barrett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

The Christian nationalism movement has a variety of aims and tenets, according to the Public Religion Research Institute: that the U.S. government “should declare America a Christian nation”; that American laws “should be based on Christian values”; that the U.S. will cease to exist as a nation if it “moves away from our Christian foundations”; that being Christian is essential to being American; and that God has “called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”

The Seven Mountains theology embraces a different, less democratic approach to gaining power. “If the Moral Majority is about galvanizing the voters, the Seven Mountains is a revolutionary model: You need to conquer these mountains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies and an expert on Christian nationalism. “It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

A driving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wallnau, a prominent Christian evangelist and influencer based in Texas who is described by Ziklag as a “Seven Mountains visionary & advisor.” He was one of the earliest evangelical leaders to endorse Trump in 2015 and later published a book titled “God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling.”

One key document says that “the biblical role of government is to promote good and punish evil” and that “the word of God and prayer play a significant role in policy decisions.”

Other internal Ziklag documents voice strong opposition to same-sex marriage and transgender rights. One reads: “transgender acceptance = Final sign before imminent collapse.”

A prominent conservative getting money from Ziklag is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the January 2021 phone call when then-President Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Georgia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a network of “election integrity” coalitions in swing states that have spent the last three years advocating for changes to voting rules and how elections are run. According to one internal newsletter, Ziklag was an early funder of Mitchell’s post-2020 “election integrity” activism, which voting-rights experts have criticized for stoking unfounded fears about voter fraud and seeking to unfairly remove people from voting rolls. In 2022, Ziklag donated $600,000 to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s election-integrity work. Internal Ziklag documents show that it provided funding to enable Mitchell to set up election integrity infrastructure in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

EagleAI, which has claimed to use artificial intelligence to automate and speed up the process of challenging ineligible voters.

Now Mitchell is promoting a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use artificial intelligence to automate and speed up the process of challenging ineligible voters. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

According to an internal video, Ziklag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known donations to the group.

Operation Checkmate

Ziklag lists two key objectives for Operation Checkmate: “Secure 10,640 additional unique votes in Arizona (mirroring the 2020 margin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one million ineligible registrations and around 280,000 ineligible voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.”

In a recording of an internal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bourgeois stressed the electoral value of targeting Arizona. “I care about Maricopa County,” Bourgeois said at one point, referring to Arizona’s largest county, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”

Targeting Transgender

Operation Watchtower

For Operation Watchtower, Wallnau explained in a members-only video that transgender policy was a “wedge issue” that could be decisive in turning out voters tired of hearing about Trump.

The left had won the battle over the “homosexual issue,” Wallnau said. “But on transgenderism, there’s a problem and they know it.” He continued: “They’re gonna wanna talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Meanwhile, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about parents and their children, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “target on the forehead of Goliath.”

As preacher and activist John Amanchukwu said at a Ziklag event, “We need a church that’s willing to do anything and everything to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

“I am troubled about a tax-exempt charitable organization that’s set up and its main operation seems to be to get people to win office,” said Phil Hackney, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on tax-exempt organizations.

“They’re planning an election effort,” said Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activity.”

“It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

“It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

[gothhabiba]

There is a hierarchy of languages [in Morocco]: written languages are conferred a higher status than spoken languages, which confirms the earlier discussed diglossic relation between Standard Arabic and Darija. However, in Morocco an atmosphere has emerged in which a plea for Darija is by many people considered a plea against Standard Arabic, and consequently against Islam and the Arab nation (Ziamari and de Ruiter, 2016; see also Gago Gómez in this volume).

[...] Darija is the language that most Moroccans speak when they talk to each other but [...] it does not enjoy the status of national language. Darija allegedly lacks any form of status or prestige. Darija is being undervalued and thus Moroccans not only underestimate the importance of their mother tongue, but of themselves too. In education, Darija could play an important role as a language of instruction, but officially this is not allowed.

The creation of Nichane marked an important phase in the emancipation of Darija, since it represented a breach of the old boundaries in which Standard Arabic was exclusively used for written purposes and the use of Darija was limited to the spoken domain. [...]

Another step forward is Darija being used as a language of cultural creativity, and the emergence of a ‘Darija generation’ (term used by Caubet, 2006), predominantly in Casablanca and other big cities in Morocco where artists express themselves in Darija both orally and in [writing]. [...] Foreign soap series are dubbed in Darija (Ziamari and Barontini, 2013) and many programs are now using a language variety that was considered inappropriate before this development started. In publicity and marketing Darija has become a real competitor for Standard Arabic (Ziamari and de Ruiter, 2016). The factual Moroccan linguistic landscape is now characterized by billboards using written Darija [...] (Hoogland, 2013). Ziamari and de Ruiter (2016:458) conclude with the remark that the linguistic changes in Morocco are coming from the bottom up and that these changes are redefining the linguistic borders between what is official and what is not. The linguistic reality in Morocco is moving in a direction of enforcing vernacular language practices.

— Jan Hoogland, "Darija in the Moroccan Press: the Case of the Magazine Nichane," in Sociolinguistic Studies 12.2 (2018), pp. 275-6. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.35567

[lonniemachin]

Hamza’s brother Zain reached out to me to help share Hamza’s fundraiser. Hamza is a Palestinian nurse urgently raising money to help evacuate he and his family from Rafah. He has only made $2,129 out of his $35,000 goal! Please share and donate, and if you can’t donate, please still share!

Hamza’s Twitter/X account: @almofty_hamza

From Hamza’s GFM:

Hi, my name is Hamza, and I am raising funds to rebuild my family's home and support my loved ones during this war.

As you may already know, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. I have lost more than a hundred relatives, many still missing, and my family trapped in Gaza can attest to countless more coworkers, community members, and friends they have seen killed firsthand.

Prior to the war, I was an active member of the community. I have a passion for helping others, and for this reason, I was a nurse practicing in hospitals around Gaza. Outside of nursing, I was also a volleyball player for the Palestinian national team. After the war broke out, I volunteered at hospitals to treat those injured in the airstrikes until I was forced to stop to move with his family.

My brother, Zein El Dein, had taken courses in web development and dreamt of becoming a programmer. His dreams were cut short after the school he went to was destroyed and flipped his entire life around.

My sister, Islam, earned top marks in school that landed her in a program for engineering at her local university. Her studies were paused during the war, and with the bombardment of that university, she is trying to find somewhere outside of Gaza to continue her education and pursuit of that dream.

Omar and Mariam are both children who were still in grade school when the war broke out. Their education was not only put on pause, but were forced to grow up and try to understand why they were being displaced, why they struggled to get food, and why their friends and neighbors were being killed in airstrikes.

My father, Talaat, was pursuing a PHD in nursing at the time the war broke out. The university has been destroyed, and he has been trying to take care of his family since.

We are currently staying in Rafah, and below are pictures of my original home, now destroyed.

Many of the people that used to be around me are either confirmed dead, missing because they are trapped under the rubble, or displaced just like us. These are people who played alongside me on the national team, classmates who were pursuing their passion for nursing just like I was, and people who volunteered at hospitals when the war broke out.

Losing so many of the close friends each of us had to this war has only added to the suffering of the destruction of our home and our displacement to the refugee camps in Rafah.

As you can imagine, I cannot watch my family continue to be in this miserable condition after we lost what was everything. So, I turn to this fundraiser, and to the global community to rebuild what was destroyed and relieve my family of their suffering with financial support.

Please donate generously, share this widely, and pray for their safety and evacuation. Anything helps, and all contributions, no matter the sum, bring us closer to the goal of achieving our dream.

Thank you, salam

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jack Elbaum

Despite the unanimous vote and the seemingly uncontroversial content of the bill, it garnered opposition from radical anti-Israel and progressive organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies.

The bill “was surprisingly opposed by Jewish Voice for Peace, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies,” JPAC wrote in a press release.

The root of this opposition, the group claimed, had to do with opposition to Israel: “They argued that Holocaust educational institutions should not contribute to Holocaust education if those institutions also support Israel.”

But JPAC noted that “all major US Holocaust educational institutions do [support Israel].”

“Despite such disingenuous opposition,” JPAC added, “the bill’s overwhelming bipartisan support in the legislature demonstrated the desire for such education.”

The Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) was another organization that opposed Senate Bill 1277.

The legislation would “put genocide education in the hands of anti-Palestinian organizations that deny Israel is committing a genocide,” Lara Kiswani, executive director of AROC and a lecturer at San Francisco State University, told the progressive news organization Truthout.

The opposition to the bill was despite the fact the program would go beyond just Holocaust education.

“In addition to the Holocaust, educational groups about the Rwandan, Cambodia, Guatemalan, Uyghur, and Native genocides are members of the Collaborative,” JPAC noted. “Together, they develop curriculum, train 8,500 public school teachers, and educate one million students by 2027 – including teachers and students in every California local educational agency (LEA).”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has a long history of celebrating and justifying terrorism against Israel. It created and distributed flyers that read “L’Chaim Intifada” at the height of the second intifada, which featured more than 130 suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and countless shooting and stabbing attacks. The flyer also included a picture of Leila Khaled, a Palestinian terrorist who hijacked a plane in 1969 and attempted to do it again a year later.

[grison-in-space]

Via a conversation on Metafilter about the state of Florida's decision to crush its public institutions, a person I think is particularly wise left a comment about the state of the legislature on higher education in Wisconsin.

The situation in Florida is atrocious, but it's important to be aware of how widespread this movement on the part of MAGA politicians to ban all academic and support programs related to gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality is. I'm a professor in the Wisconsin state university system, where, in addition to my regular fulltime work in my home department I direct the LGBTQ+ Studies Program (a more-than-halftime job I have done for many years in return for zero additional salary, or summer funds, or course buyout, or any other compensation...).

This summer, the Wisconsin state legislature, gerrymandered into permanent Republican control, voted to ban all DEI programs in the state university system, and cut $32 million from the university budget, which it stated was amount of "taxpayer money being wasted on divisive indoctrination efforts" (to paraphrase Assembly Speaker Robin Vos). This comes after years of successive budget cuts and a ten-year tuition freeze and years of faculty and staff taking pay cuts in the form of "furloughs" through which we were expected to just keep working. The situation is now somewhat improved in that Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed the DEI ban, but he cannot restore the funding. Anyway: a few days after the legislative vote to ban DEI , I was giving a talk about the range of state bills attacking trans youth and adults, and there was a Democratic state legislator on the panel. When we were introducing ourselves and I told her I directed the LGBTQ+ Studies Program, she said, "Oh, but that's no longer legal. Well, unless Evers vetoes the ban; we'll see."

After doing some blinking, I responded by explaining the difference between DEI programs and academic programs. DEI programs provide student support services, which is deemed administrative work, in contrast to academic programs. The LGBTQ+ Resource Center and the LGBTQ+ Studies Program at my university are both vital and important. But the resource center organizes support groups and social activities for students, while the academic program teaches classes and sponsors academic talks. Academic programs are not part of the DEI system--and the very same legislature that voted for the DEI ban had spent years prior threatening sanctions against students and faculty for supposedly not sufficiently respecting the absolute value of free speech in academia. Legislators presented instructors as censorious ideologues, students as snowflakes in love with a victim narrative, and the legislature as the champion of teaching and discussing all ideas freely.

The image of DEI programs presented by Republican legislators is some kind of kink fantasy, in which cis straight white men are forced to prostrate themselves, declare themselves to be bad and deserving of punishment, and lick the boots of students who are trans and queer, of color and feminist. The reality is that university DEI programs are providing mental health services and tutoring and social support to college students, at a time when their levels of mental health challenges are very high. They have zero to do with the kink humiliation fantasy, they really are about inclusion, and it is ludicrous and cruel to cut social support to marginalized college students.

But even if the state ban were not vetoed, a DEI ban does not dismantle programs like Gender Studies or African and African Diaspora Studies or LGBTQ+ Studies, because they are academic programs, I explained to the Democratic legislator. But from her response, it was clear that not only did Republican Wisconsin legislators think they'd banned all academic programs examining race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and who knows what else (disability studies? Jewish studies and Islamic studies?), but that the Democratic legislators seemed to believe so as well.

The flip from "we are the party of free speech!" to "we are the party that bans books and entire academic disciplines!" happened with dizzying speed. But take it from me as a trans person--these legislative attacks can burst across the country in the space of months, shifting the landscape radically. The thing about the MAGA movement is that it is made up of people who believe that the situation is desperate, the American project is on the verge of failure, and the time has come to destroy or be destroyed. Most Americans, including non-MAGA Republicans, want to see the culture war cool down and Americans get along, but MAGA-sorts want it to go hot. And I have to admit some despair about what to do about this, because of the unpersuadability of this group. Take a look at Question 39 from this CBS/YouGov poll of Iowa voters last week, and what percentage of Republican voters there believe they are being lied to by various parties. The percentage of MAGA voters who said they said they believed they were being told the truth by Trump was 71%, in comparison to 63% for friends and family, 56% for conservative news sources, and 42% for religious leaders. Only 32% of Iowa Republicans generally believed they were told the truth by medical scientists. (The figures for Joe Biden and "liberal media" were 10% and 8% respectively.)

It is hard to persuade people with facts and logic and calls for empathy when they think you are a liar attacking their great leader with whom 99% say they identify. What we have to do is persuade others to stand up. And I don't want to be doomy, but my experience with resisting transphobic legislation and action causes me a lot of concern. It's not just "the face-eating leopards won't eat my face" problem. The fact is, frankly, that a lot of institutions and people are craven. This past year I was in a working group with medical and social scientists advising the HHS about creating guidelines for research with intersex and transgender populations, and then Libs of TikTok spread lies about hospitals supposedly performing "sex changes" on little kids, and several children's hospitals received bomb threats--and suddenly most of the medical researchers working with trans youth were pulled from the working group by the hospitals they were affiliated with. Hospital administrators are shutting down research on trans youth and clinics serving trans youth, rather than having the backs of threatened doctors and patients, handing a victory to the face-eating leopards who growled at them.

My conclusion is that we need to focus energy on teaching people who have not dealt with serious bullying before how to stand up to bullies. For people like concerned parents considering attending school board meetings to oppose book bans, we could teach basic mutual aid strategies, like forming a supportive group to attend together. But what we are to do about people like college administrators and corporate executives who would like to do the right thing for students and employees, but not as much as they'd like to avoid offending a wealthy donor or receiving negative conservative media attention. . . that's a big question to me.

I have left my own longer comment in the wider thread.

(If you also like longform, thoughtful text conversation, this is my regular plug for Metafilter as a platform. If you DM me an email address, I can send you an invitation link for a free account.)