Category: Religion

Gnostic Feminism

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In a post Sunday (“Feminist Tumblr: ‘Broken People’ and the Tragedy of the Darwinian Dead End”), I made reference to how “an evil idea has flourished in our time . . . latter-day gnosticism,” remarking: “When theologian Peter Jones wrote, ‘Gnosticism and feminism are a match made in heaven,’ he was only half-right — this ‘match’ was made in Hell.” People are free to scoff at such warnings, but even if you are not a Christian, it is impossible to ignore the similarities between feminism’s cult ideology and the gnostic heresy. Permit me to quote from Peter Jones’ 1997 book, Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America:

Do you want to capture a civilization? Change perceptions of sexuality. . . . Sexuality keeps a civilization functioning. . . .
“We are doomed as a species and a planet,” prophesies a religious feminist, “unless we have a radical change of consciousness.” . . .
It is little wonder that a leading voice in the contemporary deconstruction of Western Christendom was the French homosexual, Michel Foucault. Foucault sought to deconstruct the value system of heterosexuality by arguing that truth is only power and that heterosexual values are a power-play of the majority imposed upon the homosexual minority. . . .
In the Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi, the dominant theme is asceticism, the refusal of all sexuality. . . . This has the appearance of Christian holiness, and appealed to Christians living in the dissolute Greco-Roman pagan world.

Rather than to quote further (those excerpts are from Chapter 12 of Jones’ book), I will cut to the chase, and remind the reader that the Apostle Paul had warned against this dangerous heretical doctrine:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. (I Timothy 4:1-3 KJV)

“Forbidding to marry” — this hostility toward an institution ordained by God is common in cults. And, quoting the second-century bishop Irenaeus, Jones notes (pp. 243, 322) why these hypocritical “seducing spirits” demanded their Gnostic followers be unmarried: “Some secretly defile those women who are being taught this doctrine by them,” Irenaeus wrote in Against Heresies, while others “feigned to dwell chastely with them as with sister, [but] were exposed as time went on when the ‘sister’ became pregnant by the ‘brother.'” In other words, by prohibiting marriage, and proclaiming an ascetic ideal, Gnostics acquired vulnerable followers whom they could control and exploit sexually. There is much more in Professor Jones’ book worth studying, and I wholeheartedly recommend  Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America.

 

TERROR ATTACK IN EUROPE: BOMB BLASTS ROCK BRUSSELS AIRPORT; UPDATE: ISIS TO BLAME; ‘LET’S STOP PRETENDING,’ OFFICIAL SAYS UPDATE: 34 DEAD, CNN REPORTS

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Islamic terrorists struck early Tuesday morning in Europe, as bombs exploded in the Brussels airport. Early reports indicate at least two bombs were used in the attack, which came just days after authorities in Belgium arrested a fugitive sought in the 2015 massacre in Paris.

UPDATE 4:45 a.m. ET: The exact number of killed and wounded in the attack is unknown. CNN’s first online report:

Two explosions occurred at the airport in Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday.
Several people were killed, according to the country’s public broadcaster, RTBF. Initial reports say up to 10 people were killed and more than 30 people were injured.
Federal police at the airport at Zaventem told CNN that “there has been an explosion” and “something has happened.”
Dozens of people have been taken on stretchers out of the airport, according to eyewitnesses.

The New York Times reports:

Two explosions killed at least one person and forced the evacuation of Brussels Airport around 8 a.m. on Tuesday, according to the authorities and news reports, halting arrivals and departures.
The sources of the blasts were unclear, as was the number of wounded, though a witness told CNN that he had seen people being taken away on luggage carts, and photographs on social media showed people streaked with blood and soot, looking stunned but conscious.
Other images posted on social media showed smoke rising from the departure hall, where the windows had been blown out, and people running away from the building. Hundreds were herded outside.
“We are trying to know more about what is going on,” said Anke Fransen, a spokeswoman for the airport. “It is certain there are several victims in our departure hall.”

UPDATE 5 a.m. ET: There are also reports early Tuesday of possible attacks on the Metro commuter rail in Brussels. The attacks follow on the arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attack in Paris:

The arrest of terror suspect Salah Abdeslam resulted in authorities finding a large number of weapons, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Sunday.
“He was ready to restart something in Brussels,” said Reynders, speaking at the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum. “And it’s maybe the reality because we have found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons, in the first investigations and we have found a new network around him in Brussels.”
The investigation also showed more people were involved in the November 13 Paris attacks than first thought, he said. . . .
His comments were reiterated by Belgian State Security Chief Jaak Raes, who told CNN Belgian affiliate VTM News on Sunday that it was “of the utmost importance that Abdeslam was captured alive, because we can now try to reconstruct the entire scenario.”
That was crucial in order “to see to what extent the intelligence services can learn lessons from the information that is gleaned,” he said.
He warned that the threat posed by ISIS to Europe was far from over, saying: “We know that a number of people are possibly on their way to Western Europe, with the intention of conducting an attack — to, with the ‘jihad mentality,’ do damage to Western democracy. We need to stay very vigilant about that.”
Authorities have said nine terrorists killed 130 people with guns and bombs in Parisian restaurants, shops and a concert venue the night of November 13.

UPDATE 5:50 a.m. ET: The latest news from BBC:

The first set of explosions took place at around 08:00 (07:00 GMT) [3 a.m. EDT] at Zaventum airport.
Some time later, a blast was reported at Maalbeek metro station, close to the city’s EU buildings. . . .
The explosion at Maalbeek station, near the EU institutions in Brussels, at 09:11 (08:11 GMT) [4:11 a.m. EDT] this morning has prompted a shutdown of the entire metro system, and trams and buses are not running either. . . .

  • A French student has tweeted video of people being moved away from Maalbeek station along the metro track.
  • Belgian broadcaster VRT says at least 13 people were killed and 35 were wounded at the airport
  • Shots were heard before the explosions, which appear to have struck near the American Airlines and Brussels Airline check in desk

UPDATE 8:10 a.m. ET: The London Daily Express:

ISIS revenge: Terror group claims
responsibility for Brussels attacks
Reports from Kurdish media said the terror group had admitted being behind today’s strike. . . .
Spanish Foreign Secretary José Manuel García Margallo immediately laid the blame with ISIS — also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh.
He said: “Let’s stop pretending, let’s worry about Daesh, which is the enemy.”
Describing the group as a “terrorist cancer”, he said: “We must be aware that as they are hit in Syria and Iraq, they are going to go elsewhere.
“They have sleeper cells all over the world and Belgium has a very serious problem.”

As of 7:30 a.m. ET, reports indicate at least 15 killed and 55 injured in the Metro bombing. With the 13 reported killed at the airport, that brings the death toll to 28 in Brussels.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m. ET: CNN now reports that the death toll in Brussels is 34, with at least another 170 people injured.

 

Rape Culture: German Women Terrorized by Growing Menace of Muslim Violence

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Last month, after German women were assaulted during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, I published this headline:

Muslim Rape Gangs Attack Women, and
Feminists Won’t Say a Word About It

Well, a few actually did say a word about it — Laurie Penny, for example, denounced as “racists” anyone calling attention to sexual violence committed by Muslim men — but no feminist will acknowledge the reality of what the Islamic invasion of Europe means for women there.

Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, and feminists therefore advocate (as “intersectionality”) a de facto alliance with any enemy of Christianity, capitalism and democracy. Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War know that feminists defended Soviet imperialism in Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola and elsewhere. So-called “Second Wave” feminism originated in the radical New Left of the 1960s, and in the 1980s feminists were among the most outspoken enemies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, whose policies ultimately defeated what Reagan called the “Evil Empire.” Like every other movement of the Left, feminism is anti-social in its motives and destructive in its purposes, advocating a poorly understood goal (“equality”) that is impossible in reality, even if it were desirable in theory. Friedrich Hayek explained this long ago in The Mirage of Social Justice, and the Left simply ignored him, so there is no point explaining why the Left is wrong. If they would not listen to a Nobel Prize-winning economist, they’re not going to pay attention to me, but I digress . . .

Germany is paying a price for its government’s pro-Muslim policies:

Cologne authorities say it’s impossible to guarantee 100 percent security for the German city’s famous Carnival celebrations starting this week, but security forces will be out in force to try to ensure people can enjoy the events without fear.
In the wake of a string of robberies and sexual assaults in the city on New Year’s Eve blamed largely on foreigners, police chief Juergen Matheis said Monday he’s doubling the number of officers on hand compared with last year to more than 2,000, and also bringing in 350 cadets.
Video surveillance is also being added, and local police are coordinating closely with federal counterparts, fire and rescue units and others.

Notice the politically correct omission of the word “Muslim” from that Associated Press report and notice, also, how the article shifts the perspective — “sexual assaults . . . blamed largely on foreigners” — to signal the reader not to ask, “Who committed these crimes?” but rather to wonder, “Who blamed foreigners?” It is the implied hostility toward “foreigners” that the Associated Press finds objectionable, rather than the behavior of these “foreigners,” whose identity is never specified, so that we might imagine Taiwanese tourists or American exchange students were terrorizing women in Germany. The best way to cover Muslim violence, according to the liberal media, is to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

ITEM 1: Ercan Yasaroglu, a famous German social worker, said in a recent interview that the violence that happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve is now routine in many German cities: “Once it gets dark, drugs are sold and passers by are robbed. They act in groups, stalking their victims, for example, at an ATM. . . . Meanwhile, there are also these sexual assaults. Girls who are surrounded and groped.” The perpetrators are “young guys from North African countries.”

ITEM 2: In the small German town of Bad Schlema, Mayor Jens Müller caused outrage at a town hall meeting when he told residents their children must stay away from certain areas and “not provoke” migrants to avoid sexual harassment, as well as suggesting they need not worry because German men are a “problem” too. One resident, who expressed concern for his 10-year-old granddaughter, told the mayor that “girls have been harassed” by refugees. The mayor said: “It’s technically not necessary for the girls to walk near the refugee shelters, there are alternative routes.” When residents became angry at being told their children cannot walk in their own community, the mayor threatened to call police to have the indignant citizens removed from the meeting.

The mainstream media in America are ignoring all of this. Nobody except Pamela Geller seems to care that an all-girls school in Cologne cancelled classes to avoid putting its students at risk of rape during this week’s Carnival celebration. Feminists fomented hysteria over a non-existent “rape epidemic” on U.S. university campuses — indeed, they insisted that anyone who doubted the existence of the fictional University of Virginia rapist “Haven Monahan” was a “rape denialist” — but when gangs of men sexually assault women in the streets of Germany, the only comment from feminists is to denounce the alleged “racism” of those who condemn this barbaric violence.

It is incorrect to suppose that feminists are merely stupid or misguided. They are active agents of evil. They hate honesty, decency and kindness, and love everything that is false, selfish and wicked.




 

Is This Donald Trump’s Testimony?

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by Smitty

Byron York talks to The Hair and The Donald beneath it, asking the following:

Let’s go to Ted Cruz. He is apparently testing ways to attack you in Iowa. His campaign is calling people, testing, saying you have never asked God for forgiveness, saying you’re a “New York liberal pretending to have conservative values.” What do you think about that?

Well, first of all, I’m a believer in a very big way. I went through my Sunday school, I’ve done everything that you’re supposed to do and that I love doing, and I feel really great about it. I think that the evangelicals have really taken to me, and I taken to them, and I’ve always taken to them. I’m doing very well with the evangelicals. In fact, nationwide, I’m leading by a substantial margin.

Stipulate that there is not a precise, cookie-cutter approach to offering a testimony, and York did not ask: “What is your Testimony?” So, one must take whatever the answer is at face value.
This bit from Inquisitr.com is of note:

According to the progressive publication Thinkprogress, Donald Trump’s consistent claims to be a member of the Queens Presbytery has been a source of considerable embarrassment and discomfort to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. It is well known that the denomination has publicly come out in support of gay marriage and other liberal policies. Additionally, the church as a whole has publicly committed to assisting the proposed intake of Syrian refugees. Both of these positions are directly opposed to Donald Trump’s positions and statements.

The church issued a statement Wednesday denouncing Trump’s comments as un-Christian and inconsistent with the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. They also announced their intention to attempt to expel Donald Trump from the Presbyterian faith. Presbyterians have a mechanism for expulsion that is similar to the Catholic practice of excommunication. An entity or individual within the church can make a complaint against a member which leads to judicial proceedings. Depending on the outcome of these proceedings, the member may then be expelled from the church. This would effectively mean that Trump would no longer have access to church services and sacraments, and would also put paid to any connection Donald Trump’s campaign might seek to establish with the Presbyterian denomination.

It’s hard to tell what to make of all that, on a variety of levels. In the case of, for example, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Santorum, Huckabee, and Paul, it’s less hard to tell. I’ve heard Christie allude to his Catholicism. Don’t know about Fiorina too much.
Faith, while a personal matter, is an important check on megalomania. It would be instructive to hear, in an offline, off the record setting, Donald Trump’s actual testimony.

Muslim Rape Gangs Attack Women, and Feminists Won’t Say a Word About It

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Sexual savagery on the streets of Germany:

Roving packs of men sexually assaulted dozens of women on New Year’s Eve in western Germany’s city of Cologne, officials said, describing the attacks as unprecedented.
The spree suggested a “new dimension of organized criminality,” German justice minister Heiko Maas told a press conference on Tuesday.
Police said the attackers — who struck in pairs and groups of up to 20 men — appeared to be part of a larger, 1,000-strong group that had gathered in one of the city’s main plazas for New Year’s celebrations.
Cologne’s police spokesman Thomas Held told NBC News that authorities had fielded around 90 complaints of pick-pocketing, groping and at least one of rape.
Eye witnesses described getting groped multiple times near the city’s train station and its famed cathedral.
“It was horror. Although we shouted and hit around us, the guys did not stop. I was desperate,” a 28-year-old woman identified as Katja L. told Cologne’s Express newspaper, saying she was groped about 100 times while walking 600 feet.

(It was almost as bad as a University of Virginia frat party.)

Another woman, who did not give her name, told Bild newspaper that several men attacked her and her friend. “They had circled us and started to grope us. They were everywhere with their hands,” she said. . . .
Police on Monday had said the suspects appeared to be of “Arab or North African descent,” sparking fears on social media they were among around 1 million asylum seekers who have flooded Germany this year.

American feminists, who have incited irrational hysteria over a non-existent “rape epidemic” on U.S. college campuses, will ignore this news. American feminists never said a word about the Rotherham Horror, in which English girls as young as 11 were pimped out by Muslim predators. American feminists don’t want to call attention to certain crimes committed by certain criminals, and it is not just Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation against Bill Clinton that feminists demand that we ignore. The feminist movement in the United States is controlled by the Democrat Party, and therefore rape is just a talking-point to them, an “issue” that feminists help Democrats exploit for partisan purposes. Because feminists are dishonest partisans, their agenda requires a lot of deliberate falsification — the phony “1-in-5” statistic, the UVA rape hoax, etc. — and it also requires feminists to ignore a lot of actual rapes which do not fit the Democrat Party-approved propaganda narrative.

Feminists have expended enormous effort to create the impression that rape is a crime commonly committed by “privileged” college boys. This falsehood serves the interests of the Democrat Party in several ways, especially because demonizing “privileged” (i.e., white, middle-class, heterosexual) males is part of a message that helps Democrats mobilize female voters, minority voters and gay voters. This is a type of hate propaganda which masquerades as “progressivism.”

By an obverse principle, the Democrat Party propaganda machine (including feminists) ignore any news that would suggest either (a) mass immigration is harmful to American society, or (b) Islam is dangerous. No matter how many violent crimes against women in the U.S. are committed by illegal aliens, no America feminist will ever call attention to such a crime, because all immigrants are presumably part of the Democrat coalition, and it’s bad publicity to mention how much harm their party’s constituents inflict on innocent Americans. (This is why liberals ignore rampant crime in Chicago and other Democrat Party strongholds.) Similarly, because most Republicans believe that radical Islam poses an existential threat to American civilization, Democrats (including feminists) pretend that Muslims are less dangerous than Methodists, Mormons or Mennonites. For more than three decades, feminists have been shrieking about the theocratic menace posed by “the Religious Right” (i.e., any Christian who votes Republican) and yet at the same time, feminists demand that Americans believe Muslims are all harmless misunderstood victims of “Islamophobia.”

American feminists will tell any lie if it helps the Democrat Party, and you will be accused of “hate” if you dare to tell the truth about what unrestricted Muslim immigration will mean:

Just five arrests have been made by German police after central Cologne was transformed into a war-zone on New Year’s Eve, as an estimated 1,000 migrants celebrated by launching fireworks into crowds and sexually assaulting German women caught up in the chaos.
The sordid details of the horrifying sexual assaults and attacks made against ordinary Germans by large gangs of migrants in Cologne in the early hours of Friday morning are just now emerging. . . .
One woman had her tights and underwear torn off by the crowd, and a police source quoted said there had been “rapes” at the station that night.
So far, police have identified 80 victims of the gangs, 35 of which were subjected to sex attacks. Others were assaulted or robbed. Officers suspect there are many more as of yet unreported cases from the night, and are appealing for victims to come forward after their ordeals. . . .
In addition to the sex attacks, there were several brawls between migrant gangs at the railway station, and large numbers of fireworks were fired into the crowds and at the hapless police.

This violent mayhem is coming soon to an American city near you, thanks to the Democrat Party and their feminist propaganda squads.




 

The Face of a Terrorist Mastermind?

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Enrique Marquez may not look like a terrorist, but he is now a focus of the FBI investigation in San Bernardino:

As federal officials scour the backgrounds of the couple who went on a terrorist rampage here last week, they are looking carefully at Enrique Marquez, a childhood friend and relation by marriage of the husband, Syed Rizwan Farook. It was Mr. Marquez, 24, who bought the two assault rifles that Mr. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, used to carry out the attack, which killed 14 people and wounded 21 others.
Mr. Marquez, who works at a Walmart store, bought the weapons legally in 2011 or 2012 and either gave or sold them to Mr. Farook, federal officials said. Investigators have spoken with Mr. Marquez and were keeping close tabs on him; although they have not named him as a suspect, they believe he has knowledge about the Farook family and its recent activities.
In November 2014, Mr. Marquez married Mariya Chernykh, whose sister, Tatiana, is married to Syed Raheel Farook, brother of Syed Rizwan Farook. Tatiana Farook is a hairstylist and makeup artist who also goes by the name Tatiana Gigliotti. She and her husband were witnesses at the wedding of Mr. Marquez and Ms. Chernykh, according to a marriage certificate released by the California Department of Public Health.
Another of Mr. Farook’s siblings, Saira, is married to Farhan Khan. For some period of time the Khans attended the same mosque as Mr. Marquez, who is a convert to Islam, according to people who know them.
Mr. Marquez could be crucial in helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation determine when the couple began their plot and understand more about their thinking.

Meanwhile, we learn more about these disciples of the Religion of Peace:

Syed Rizwan Farook, the man at the center of last week’s massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., might have plotted an attack as far back as 2012 with one of his longtime friends, senior law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
In addition, the F.B.I. revealed Wednesday that Mr. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were discussing jihad and martyrdom online in 2013 before they were married and she came to the United States.
The new timeline suggests that the couple were considering violent action before the Islamic State rose to prominence in 2014 and began trying to inspire sympathizers to carry out attacks in the West.
And the disclosures raise questions about how thoroughly American law enforcement and immigration officials vetted the wife before giving her a visa to enter the United States from Pakistan a year before the shooting, which left 14 dead and 21 wounded.
“ISIL inspiration may well have been part of this, but these two killers were starting to radicalize towards martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013,” the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, using an acronym for the Islamic State. . . .
Mr. Marquez has been cooperating extensively in recent days with federal authorities, discussing at length his relationship with Mr. Farook. . . .
The authorities are still seeking to corroborate what Mr. Marquez is telling them. Because he provided two of the four weapons used by the attackers, some investigators have questioned his credibility, thinking that he might exaggerate what he knows about the couple to win favor with the authorities.
Mr. Marquez is also said to have mental health issues. Shortly after the attacks, he checked himself into a mental health facility in California.

So, he’s crazy? I repeat: Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Syed Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, Named in #SanBernardino Massacre

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The Los Angeles Times reports:

The suspects in the shooting rampage were a married couple who had just dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with a grandmother, family representatives said.
Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, were married two years ago, according to Malik’s brother, Farhan Khan . . .
On Wednesday morning, Farook and his wife dropped their daughter off with Farook’s mother in Redlands, saying they had a doctor’s appointment, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Los Angeles office.
The grandmother grew worried when she heard of the shooting attack in San Bernardino, and “she started calling. No answer,” Ayloush said.
The family was worried the couple were shot in the attacks, but then they started receiving calls from media outlets indicating Farook was a person of interest.
Farook was born in Illinois, and his parents immigrated to the U.S. from Southeast Asia, Ayloush said.

UPDATE: More from the Los Angeles Times:

As the holiday gathering got underway Wednesday morning, Syed Rizwan Farook joined dozens of his colleagues from San Bernardino County’s public health department. Farook, an inspector, seemed quiet during the early hours of the event, then vanished just as a group photo was about to be taken.
Shortly afterward, gunfire erupted at the Inland Regional Center where the employees filled a conference room. By the end of the day, police had identified Farook, 28, as a suspect in the massacre and said he was one of two people shot to death in a gun battle with officers. The other was 27-year-old Tashfeen Malik, who a family member said was Farook’s wife. . . .
Co-workers told The Times they were shocked to hear Farook’s name linked to the shooting. . . .
They said Farook recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife he had met online. The couple had a baby and appeared to be “living the American dream,” said Patrick Baccari, a fellow health inspector who shared a cubicle with Farook.
Baccari and Christian Nwadike said Farook, who worked with them for several years, rarely started a conversation. But the tall, thin young man with a full beard was well liked and spent much of his time out in the field.
They and other colleagues said Farook was a devout Muslim, but rarely discussed religion at work.
“He never struck me as a fanatic, he never struck me as suspicious,” said Griselda Reisinger, who worked with Farook before leaving the agency in May.

(Via Memeorandum.) The talking heads on TV are asking, “Was this terrorism?” As if the word “terrorism” requires an official designation to fit the definition. Given the apparently meticulous planning that went into this attack, and considering that it was committed by devout Muslims, all we need is common sense to say that this was Islamic terrorism. Is there any indication it was anything else?

UPDATE II: Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit reports:

San Bernardino police announced [Wednesday night] that the Islamic killers who slaughtered 14 people at a community social services building were wearing GoPro cameras.
The male and female were wearing protective vests and carrying several firearms when they were gunned down by police after the massacre. . . .
Local officials reported the name of the female suspect in San Bernardino shooting as – Tashfeen Malik.
They were wearing GoPro cameras when they were killed. The couple were at home when officers arrived and then took off and were followed by police when they were shot dead. . . .
Several jihadists in Europe have worn cameras during their bloody attacks in the past year.

UPDATE III: While it appears the attack in San Bernardino had a religious motive, other attacks had a political motive:

Left Spends Day In Coordinated Attack on
Saying “Thoughts and Prayers” For the Victims

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) So, while Islam is at war with America, the Democrat Party is at war with Christianity.

 

TERROR RAID: French Police Kill Two, Arrest Seven Suspects in Saint Denis

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In a pre-dawn raid reportedly aimed at the mastermind of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, at least two suspects were killed and five arrested in the suburb of Saint Denis. CNN initially reported three suspects had been killed, including one female who blew herself up with a bomb, during the raid targeting Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected of organizing the Paris attacks. The Washington Post reports:

Gunshots and explosions rang out from the northern suburb of Saint-Denis early Wednesday as more than 100 French police and army troops laid siege to an apartment with at least six terror suspects, potentially including the alleged ringleader of Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris.
The narrow streets of Saint Denis were clogged with police vehicles and ambulances as witnesses reported multiple explosions. The operation began around 4:30 a.m. [11:30 p.m. ET], and left several police officers wounded and at least two suspects dead. The dead included a woman who blew herself up, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutor’s office said three men were removed from the besieged apartment block and taken into custody. Their identities were not given. A man and a woman were arrested next to the apartment and also taken into custody. One suspect appeared to be still holed up.
Police may have been targeting Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian man authorities believe has led the Islamic State’s effort to terrorize Europe, according to an official familiar with the operation. He is seen as the “guru” of Friday’s deadly attacks at a stadium, concert hall and bars and restaurants in Paris, which killed at least 129 people and wounded more than 300 others.
French police have not officially confirmed who was the target of the raid.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports:

After a series of gun battles early Wednesday, the French police arrested five suspects hiding out in an apartment in the northern Paris suburb of St.-Denis in an operation aimed at detaining the Belgian militant suspected of organizing the attacks that killed 129 people on Friday. One woman died in the police assault when she detonated an explosive vest.
The raid began at 4:20 a.m., the Paris prosecutor’s office said, as special police forces, backed by truckloads of soldiers, cordoned off an area near Place Jean Jaurès, a main square in St.-Denis not far from the Stade de France, where three of the seven attackers who died on Friday blew themselves up. The shooting went on for 20 minutes, residents said, and continued in bursts until 7:30 a.m., when there were several explosions and gunfire.
Three men hiding out in the apartment were taken in by the police, the prosecutor’s office said, without identifying any of the three. A man and a woman were also captured near the apartment and have been taken in, the authorities said. Five police officers were lightly wounded, the police said.

UPDATE II: CNBC reports seven arrests:

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed one woman has died after detonating a suicide bomb, while sources told Reuters earlier a man had also been killed.
It also confirmed that five people have been placed under police custody following the raid. Two more have were arrested later in the morning, according to Reuters. . . .
Some more reports from Reuters about the suspects in the St. Denis raid. The news agency, citing a source, says they had planned an attack on the French business district.

The BCC reports:

The female suicide bomber who was killed in the Saint Denis raids was a relative of lslamic State militant Abdelhamid Abaaoud, BFM TV in France reports. Abaaoud is suspected of masterminding Friday’s attacks. . . .
Seven people were arrested in the raid, police are quoted by the AP news agency as saying. . . .
Several police officers were injured and a police dog killed.

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