Day: December 14, 2025
Ukraine”s Zelenskiy drops NATO ambition as Berlin peace talks begin
Ukraine has relinquished its aim to join the NATO military alliance in exchange for Western security guarantees as a compromise to end the war with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday as peace talks got underway in Berlin.
CAAP extends flight ban over Mayon Volcano anew until morning of Dec. 15, 2025
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) has extended its flight ban over Mayon Volcano in Albay anew until Monday morning, December 15.
Australian bystander disarms suspected shooter in Australia Hanukkah attack
Bystander Ahmed al-Ahmad tackled a gunman during the Hanukkah shooting in Sydney on Sunday, saving lives before being shot twice.
Israeli officials heap blame on Australian government after Bondi Beach shooting: ‘Countless warning signs’
Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar blamed Australia’s government for a deadly attack on a Hanukkah event that killed 11 people.
Melania Trump’s White House Christmas is a shining beacon of America
First lady Melania Trump unveils White House Christmas decorations with “Home Is Where The Heart Is” theme, honoring Gold Star Families in the Blue Room.
‘Mike & Molly’ star calls food his ‘poison pills’ after dramatic 170-pound weight loss transformation
“Mike & Molly” star Billy Gardell lost 170 pounds through bariatric surgery after reaching 370 pounds and developing diabetes, saying it saved his life.
Trump encourages Jewish Americans to ‘celebrate proudly’ during Hanukkah after deadly Bondi Beach shooting
President Donald Trump tells American Jews to “celebrate proudly” after deadly Bondi Beach attack on “Hanukkah by the Sea” event kills 11, injures dozens in Australia.
Patriots will hold pregame ceremony for victims of Brown University and Bondi Beach
The New England Patriots will hold a moment of silence to honor the victims of two deadly shootings in the U.S. and Australia on Sunday afternoon.
The Lessons We Need To Learn
Lesson 1: Be careful with your bragging. First the host’s beloved, as he tells us constantly, Ohio State loses the Big Ten football championship (something he barely mentioned this past week) to former Big Ten doormat Indiana University (a name never mentioned in the week past) and now Indiana’s quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, wins the Heisman Trophy over Ohio State’s Julian Sayin. Bragging just makes the eventual humiliation that much more humiliating. Sadly, now we must turn our attention to far more consequential, and unfortunately deadly, news and lessons.
The post The Lessons We Need To Learn appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Ted Nugent’s loud protest is the wake-up call Western elites want to ignore
Ted Nugent is known for many things. Subtlety isn’t one of them.
This is a man who treats volume knobs the way toddlers treat bedtime: with open defiance. So when a mosque in his Michigan town began broadcasting the early-morning call to prayer over loudspeakers, Nugent reacted in the way only Nugent would. He turned his back yard into a launchpad for a one-man rock assault.
You don’t need to be religious to see the problem. You only need to have ears.
Excessive? Perhaps. But it tapped straight into a frustration millions feel but rarely voice — not loudly, anyway.
The early-morning Islamic call to prayer echoing through American suburbs isn’t “diversity” or a charming cultural detail. It’s noise — loud, sudden, inescapable noise. It jolts families awake, spooks pets, startles infants, and demands that the entire block adapt.
Nugent’s counterattack may have been a little over the top, but beneath the distortion pedals sits a simple point: Public peace matters. In a free country, quiet hours come first. And no imported custom, however sacred to some, earns an automatic exemption.
Richard Dawkins once called the Islamic call to prayer “hauntingly beautiful.” This from a man who spent decades explaining that God doesn’t exist. It’s a strange kind of aesthetic tourism: Romanticize a religious ritual while rejecting the very religion that produced it. Dawkins was wrong about the existence of God, and he is equally wrong about the Islamic call to prayer.
The call to prayer wasn’t designed as background music, and it wasn’t conceived for multicultural suburbs where everyone keeps different hours and believes different things. It was forged in a seventh-century society where faith and authority were fused, where religion structured public life down to the minute, and where submission — literal, explicit submission — wasn’t merely encouraged but expected.
Islam’s founding worldview assumed a unified religious community, a shared legal and moral order, and a sharp distinction between believers and nonbelievers. That distinction shaped status, obligation, and allegiance.
In the Muslim context, the adhan makes perfect sense. It is a public summons for a public faith, a declaration of dominance over the rhythm of the day, and reminder that life moves according to Allah’s schedule — not yours. It reminds everyone, believer or not, that the community’s obligations take precedence over the individuals’ preferences.
But transplant it into America (or any predominantly Christian society), and it makes zero sense. The operating systems and expectations are different. The very idea of a faith dictating the morning routine of people who don’t share it runs directly against the grain of Western life.
RELATED: Why progressives want to destroy Christianity — but spare Islam
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This is the part Dawkins missed entirely when he praised the adhan.
It’s easy to romanticize a sound when you encounter it on holiday, filtered through distance, novelty, and sand-warm nostalgia. It’s quite another when it is broadcast at 5 a.m. into a neighborhood that never agreed to have its eardrums shattered before the coffee even brews.
Dawkins hears melody, but he ignores meaning. He praises the tune while overlooking the text, which was never written for pluralism. It was written for a social order in which Islam set the terms — and nonbelievers either complied or faced the consequences.
You don’t need to be religious to see the problem. You only need to have ears.
The adhan doesn’t float gently on the breeze. It is projected through megaphones with the explicit purpose of commanding attention. It is designed to override the soundscape of daily life. Barking dog? Buried. Garbage truck? Drowned. Your alarm clock? Irrelevant. The Islamic call to prayer cuts through everything because that is precisely what it was built to do.
And that is where the first collision occurs. In America, no foreign religion should be granted the right to reorder everyone’s routine. Christianity, which most readers know intimately, offers a useful contrast. Church bells ring, yes, but briefly and symbolically. They don’t deliver multi-minute recitations meant to summon or correct anyone.
But with fewer bells ringing, other sounds inevitably move in to fill the void. These include ones far louder, far longer, and far less rooted in America’s traditions.
There’s a difference between freedom of religion and freedom to dominate the public square.
In a predominantly Christian society, faith is personal, chosen, and interior. Prayer happens inside churches, inside homes, inside hearts — not broadcast across rooftops as compulsory ambience. The Western idea of worship is reflective and voluntary. The call to prayer, by contrast, is commanding and public by design.
Sound, as Ted Nugent knows well, is anything but neutral. A community’s soundscape shapes its psychology. People become anxious, irritable, exhausted, and far more prone to accidents when their sleep is disrupted. After all, we prosecute noisy neighbors for far less.
Yet Western elites recoil at the idea that a religious practice might be subject to the same standards as the guy who revs his motorcycle at midnight. If anything, a more intrusive and more extended ritual deserves more examination — not less.
Although I truly dislike what Islam represents, this isn’t about hatred. It is about the delicate, daily compromises a pluralistic nation depends on. When one group insists on broadcasting its obligations to everyone else, the common ground cracks, the social contract comes apart, and people start to feel like strangers on their own streets.
The call to prayer has no place in polite society. There’s a difference between freedom of religion and freedom to dominate the public square. One belongs in America. The other never will.
