Muhammad: A Critical Biography by Robert Spencer. Book review.

 

Muhammad: A Critical Biography by Robert Spencer
Americans must read this book

 

Over a year ago, a political figure permitted me to participate in a private discussion site dedicated to the output of a group of prominent journalists, scholars, political operatives, and public servants. Some of the men and women in this group had written bestsellers, managed campaigns, worked in the White House for Republican presidents, or commanded troops. Some were practicing and others were lapsed Catholics; some were proud Jews, dedicated to Israel.

 

At the discussion site, I was just one commentor among thousands, but every now and then one of the celebrities whose work we were commenting on would respond to one of my posts. These "brushes with greatness" delighted me.

 

Over a year later, I received an email that sent a chill through me. The sender was a beautiful young white woman with a great head of hair. Her online bio ironically states, "My passion is helping humans understand one another — and the world around them." In her two-hundred-word reprimand, she quoted and analyzed my posts. She informed me that she had deleted my posts and would not allow me to speak for the next thirty days. If I sinned again, I would be permanently silenced. She accused me of posting thoughts that were not "kind" and not "true."  

 

You think I would have learned.

Desert Fathers; Tish Harrison Warren; Jen Hatmaker; Tony 2026 book and movie reviews

Desert Fathers; Tish Harrison Warren; Jen Hatmaker; Tony 2026 book and movie reviews 

What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience by Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren was published by Convergent, an imprint of Random House, on May 12, 2026. It is 192 pages long. Warren is 47 years old, married, and the mother of three. For her previous two books, Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night, Warren has won two Christianity Today awards, as well as an Intervarsity Press Readers' Choice award, and an Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Christian Book of the Year award.

 

What Grows in Weary Lands argues that the Desert Fathers and Mothers offer guidance to Christians today. These Fathers and Mothers retreated to monastic desert lives in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in the third century AD. Their wisdom is available to modern readers via a collection titled Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In spite of this title, the collection includes quotes by Desert Mothers as well.

Questions for Muslim Candidates

 

Questions for Muslim Candidates

No more softball

 

The essay, below, briefly discusses how the Judeo-Christian tradition affected American democracy. It summarizes how Protestant America reacted to Catholic candidates. It ends with questions that should be put to Muslim candidates.

 

Part One: A Brief Look at the Impact of America's Judeo-Christian Foundation.

Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising

Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising 2016. 

Today marks the 82nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. At exactly 5:00 PM—"W-Hour"—on August 1, 1944, the armed struggle to liberate the capital from German occupation began. The Uprising was part of Operation Tempest (*Akcja Burza*), conducted by the Home Army; its goal was to strike against the Germans before the Red Army arrived and to have the legitimate structures of the Polish Underground State assume authority in the liberated areas 

At this same time every year, Warsaw comes to a standstill for a minute to pay tribute to the insurgents and the city's civilian population. The sound of sirens serves as a reminder of their courage, suffering, and the tragic price paid in the fight for freedom 

Interestingly, the artwork by Kuba Różalski presented today was created a decade ago, yet it remains a powerful symbol of the dramatically unequal clash between the insurgents and the overwhelming war machine of the Nazi regime.

#PolishMastersofArt

The Chronicle of Lerna by Michal Karski

 The Trojan War has been over for many years and the glorious city of Troy is just a memory, but the anti-Trojan propagandists are still at work. There are people who fought with Agamemnon’s army who are intent on justifying Achaean aggression. The truth of what really happened at Troy is already being manipulated for political ends.

At his peaceful home overlooking the bay of Argos, the poet Linos of Lerna, who was with the Argives at Troy and served for a time as Agamemnon’s personal chronicler, decides to set the historical record straight.

Available at Amazon here

The excerpt, below, is interesting! Thank you to Michal for sharing it. 

Here is an excerpt from the ending of Chapter Two. The poet Linos is talking to his helper, Glaukos:

"As for the story of the Trojan campaign, you and I both know, my boy, that the spur for Agamemnon’s enterprise was primarily the lust for conquest and booty and an opportunistic land-grab at the expense of the isolated Trojans. Helen’s abduction may have been the motivation for Menelaus himself, but it only served as a convenient pretext for Agamemnon.

Of course, the entire thing is now being painted by Menelaus and his acolytes as some kind of mythical quest of divine origin, with the abduction of Helen coming to the fore and increasingly being proposed as the one and only legitimate cause for the Achaeans to make war on the wealthy city of Troy with its fertile lands and its world-famous horses.

But the Spartan propagandists and spinners of Menelaus are also engaged in something quite sinister. They are already doing their utmost to try to shift the blame for the war onto the Trojans. The perpetrator is beginning to blame the victim. The glaring example that springs immediately to mind is the expression ‘Trojan Horse’.

 

How so, sir?

 

Think about it, Glaukos. The famous Trojan Horse. The wooden horse was constructed by the Achaeans and was left on the Trojan shore. Should it not be called the Achaean Horse or the Argive Horse or the Danaan Horse? Or perhaps the Horse of Odysseus, after the man who thought of it, or the Horse of Epeius after the actual architect?

No, the revisionists at the court of Menelaus have successfully labelled it a ‘Trojan Horse’, supposedly on the grounds that it was built in Troyland of Trojan wood. What they are actually doing, of course, is subtly and deliberately trying to conflate victim and aggressor. Any surviving Trojans who hear the story of the ruin and burning of Troy will recall not only the horror of the desperate fighting and carnage and atrocities committed upon the civilians of Troy, not to mention the total devastation and destruction of the city, but they will also suffer the added indignity of having the engine of their destruction labelled as ‘Trojan’.

 And, judging by the frequency of the use of this phrase by now – I had to remonstrate with that minstrel fellow for using it – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this expression becomes the generally accepted shortcut in future ages.

 

I had never considered that, venerable sir.

 

Thersites was one of those who understood the value of propaganda quite early on. “In the long run, propaganda can be more effective than a sword-thrust,” was one of his maxims. We may be fighting a losing battle against the revisionists of Menelaus, but fight we must, Glaukos. We owe it to the inhabitants of Troy, who may not have had a perfect society, but who certainly did not start the war nor do they deserve the kind of denigration which is being heaped upon them by the victors.

There were certainly xenophobes among them, and far be it from me to defend the indefensible, but on the whole, they were no more and no less xenophobic than any other society of the region. Far be it from me to be an apologist for injustice and I did, after all, take part in the campaign against them, because we all believed they had transgressed against the gods by abducting Helen, and I was one of the many among us who believed that much more should have been done by way of diplomacy, but I am not biased either for them or against them.

I can understand that Menelaus might want to present some kind of justification for his own and his brother’s actions, but aggression must be called out for what it is and no amount of revision will disguise that and no amount of myth-making can convince posterity that the Trojans were the architects of their own downfall or somehow deserve to be collectively slandered, much less deserved to be obliterated in the first place."

The Odyssey of Christopher Nolan Movie Review

 

The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan

 

One movie lover's response

Are Jews "Oppressors" ?

In response to my piece "I Stand with the Jews,"  a comment came in talking about "oppressors." The commenter did not specify what group he meant by "oppressors." 

In case he meant Jews, here's my response. 

Jews? Oppressors? See the above map. Israel is barely viewable, it's so tiny. 

Jews are now, and have always been, LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the world population. Less than one percent. 

Jews live in tiny little Israel, and also in the US, with smaller populations in a few other Western nations. 

Everywhere Jews live, they are subject to arson, shooting, stabbing, rape, and torture, often committed by Muslims, who make up more than one quarter of the world population. 

Islam has always taught murderous contempt for Jews. The founder did more than teach it; he exemplified it, in, for example, committing a genocide of an entire Jewish tribe. 

Massacre of the Banu Qurayza (627 CE): Following the Battle of the Trench in Medina, the entire male population of this Jewish tribe—estimated between 400 and 900 men—was executed, and the women and children were enslaved by early Islamic forces under the prophet Muhammad.

1033 (Fez, Morocco): A violent assault on the Jewish quarter resulted in thousands of deaths

Granada Massacre (1066 CE): A Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela, and slaughtered an estimated 4,000 Jewish residents, destroying the local community.

Almohad Persecutions (1147–1212 CE): The fundamentalist Almohad Caliphate instituted forced conversions and carried out sweeping massacres across Morocco and Muslim-controlled Spain. Tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, driving prominent figures like Maimonides to flee the region.

Fez Massacre (1465 CE): A local revolt against the Marinid dynasty targeted the city’s Jewish population after a Jewish vizier was appointed. Mobs killed thousands of Jews in Fez, leaving only a handful of survivors.

More recently, the Farhud was a violent anti-Jewish pogrom, meaning "violent dispossession" in Arabic, that took place in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1–2, 1941.

An estimated 850,000 to 900,000 Jews fled, migrated, or were expelled from Arab and Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East and North Africa during the 20th century. This mass displacement unfolded primarily in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the creation of the State of Israel, driven by systemic state-sanctioned persecution, violence, and property confiscations

Followed by decades of hideous terror, murders, bombing school buses and pizza parlors, torturing Olympic athletes to death, murdering my friend's aunt, chopping up lost Jews and displaying bloody hands, dumping a wheelchair-bound Jew into the sea ... Murdering babies in their cribs. 

And of course On October 7, 2023, led by Hamas and other armed groups, thousands of militants launched a massive, coordinated surprise attack on southern Israel by land, air, and sea. The assault resulted in the deadliest day for Israel in its history, killing about 1,200 people and leading to the abduction of 251 hostages into the Gaza Strip

Oh, oh, but it's the Jews who are oppressing people. Bullshit.