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On January 15, during a Sabbath service at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, four worshipers were taken hostage by Malik Faisal Akram. Thankfully, all four hostages were freed, but that does not erase the evil and hate surrounding this terrorist attack.
Using Jewish worshippers as hostages to force the release of an imprisoned convicted terrorist was the explicit motive of Akram, as made clear by his statements during the attack. The Washington Post reported, “Akram chose this place, according to people who heard him on the live stream, because it appeared to be the closest assemblage of Jews to a federal facility in Fort Worth where an American-educated Pakistani convicted terrorist is serving an 86-year sentence for shooting at U.S. soldiers and FBI agents.”
Ironically, the day after this horrific attack, the United States observed National Religious Freedom Day, which commemorates the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786. This law later inspired and shaped the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Religious freedom – often referred to as America’s first freedom – is fundamental to who we are as a people and a nation. America’s Founders understood religious freedom not as the state’s creation, but as an unalienable right from God.
But as we witnessed in the Texas synagogue last weekend, even in the United States, where religious freedom is regularly defended, people of faith continue to face violence and persecution. Sadly, the attack in Colleyville is just one of many examples.
In New York City , which has the world’s largest population of Jewish people outside of Israel, Jews were the targets of 164 incidents of hate crimes between January 1, 2021, and October 31, 2021. Compared to the same period in 2020, this is a 53 percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Similarly, since May 2020, […]
They’re Trying to Shut Us Down
Over the last several months, I’ve lost count of how many times the powers-that-be have tried to shut us down. They’ve sent hackers at us, forcing us to take extreme measures on web security. They sent attorneys after us, but thankfully we’re not easily intimidated by baseless accusations or threats. They’ve even gone so far as to make physical threats. Those can actually be a bit worrisome but Remington has me covered.
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JD Rucker