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Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1488
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 2:40 pm: | 
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It always brings a smile to my face (though you people can't see) when I read posts such as kathleen's, which IMHO shows when you don't have arguments that can stack up, you have to dreg up the " common humanity" catch-all defense, and the subtle hint that those apparently not recognizing our shared two-legged existence is the cure-all for everything are.... gasp.... "haters".
It would seem inconsistent to me, for example, that a person or persons, who perhaps have studied arab culture, islam, and arabic academically, do so or have done so from a firmly rooted basis of hate and a desire to commit genocide of muslims.
But I am certain Kathleen has an answer for that (or conspiracy theory)?
Back to our shared two-legged existence though.
We share a common humanity but not common ideas or values with radical islamists, including that of the value of human life.
The problem is the difference allows them to fly planes into the WTC and kill 3,000 Americans. Not insubstantial, I think.
I can say that I have known people who are unfailingly personable, gracious, and willing to extend themselves for you, person to person, but who will also respond to the WTC attack by saying americans should consider their foreign policy, that there is a cause and effect, deflecting the very horror and total wrongfullness of the act that was done to us on 9-11.
Additionally, I have heard Saddam Hussein, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, and what they have done and do, be referred to admiringly and approvingly. Some would also like to see the U.S. adopt the sharia, or islamic law.
You need to consider people's ideas and values which may be dangerous to this country if reduced to actions, not how personable they might be in human interactions.
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Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1957
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 2:53 pm: |
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That last post could be the introduction to a book called
McCarthyism for Dummies |
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1489
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 2:56 pm: |
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tjohn-
To quote Ronnie Ray-gun, " well, there you go again".
If the arab countries experienced democratic reform and economic growth they would be less likely to start a war with Israel than to start one given history and cost/benefit analysis.  .
Your " demographic" argument is a stinker in terms of it leading to the demise of Israel by being out-populated by arabs, because it already is. In some cases the existence of Israel is in the interests of certain arab states.
If you read what I wrote on radical islam in previous threads you would not be confused. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15423
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 2:58 pm: |
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factvsfiction, I fear radicalism (or is the word radicality?) of all stripes.
So how should we respond to radicalism? Wage war with countries that harbor it? That doesn't seem to likely to be a winning strategy. It would include, well, I guess all countries, certainly including our own.
US foreign policy is an explanation of why many Middle Easterners are angry at us. Terrorist acts are not justified. But there is a grey area where we can explain without excusing evil acts. Notice how crime is higher in poor areas. People there have few reasonable resources, and they also have little to lose. They lack hope, and they lack a clear understanding of the consequences of their actions. Those things lead to crime. This is not an excuse, but an explanation is useful. Dismissing the point about foreign policy is turning your back on such useful explanations.
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Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1490
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 3:02 pm: |
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Hoops-
Is there a " wikipedia for dummies" too? |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15425
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 3:02 pm: |
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Our posts crossed in cyberspace. You wrote:
If the arab countries experienced democratic reform and economic growth they would be less likely to start a war with Israel than to start one given history and cost/benefit analysis.
Why do you put a laughy-face after that? I almost agree. I think that if Arab countries experienced sustained prosperity and stability, they would be less likely to start a war with anyone. Democracy might bring about prosperity and stability, but other vehicles might bring them, too. I don't know for sure. Democracy is, to me, a means, not an end. I wouldn't want to give it up, but not everyone craves it, and you can't whet people's appetite for it by invading their country. "The floggings will continue until morale improves," to understand grossly our policy.
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Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1958
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 3:08 pm: |
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I really dont get your continued wikipedia references. I suppose it is just another one of your techniques to deal with the messenger and not the message.
because after all is said and done your arguments, reasoning, and conclusions are illogical |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 929
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 3:46 pm: |
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This is from Deutschland, Der Spiegel, in English.
This is not a report of demonization.
It is a report, and you can run, but you can't hide from the facts.
The Protestant Crusade Conspiracy
By Brenda Strohmaier
Who planted the bombs on German trains? Depends who you ask. Many Muslims in Germany think it's a government conspiracy. Just like with Sept. 11. And London....
A mosque in Hamburg. Many Muslim immigrants have interesting theories to explain the world.
Zoom
Getty Images
A mosque in Hamburg. Many Muslim immigrants have interesting theories to explain the world.
This just in: The Lebanese men suspected of having deposited bombs on German trains last month were hired hands -- in the employ of the German government itself.
That, at least, is what one 27-year-old from Saudi Arabia believes. "It's all a Protestant crusade," the man explains. "All of northern Germany is Protestant, isn't it? And so is President Bush." Then the man launches into a melange of confusing arguments and historical facts. The bubonic plague, Martin Luther and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl all make a cameo. It's all connected somehow, the man is sure of it.
The young Saudi Arabian's views may make little sense from a Western point of view, but you can meet him and talk to him at a street corner in the middle of Hamburg, right by the central station. Foreigners from all over the world live in this neighborhood, called St. Georg, and a large number of them are Muslim. Several mosques have been built in the neighborhood. Many nearby stores carry no alcohol -- but they do have electronic memory aides for Koran students on offer.
And then there are the conspiracy theories. They are everywhere -- dozens of them -- including some to explain away Germany's recent terror scare. The others -- some mutually contradictory -- have pat explanations for what's really going on in the world.
The Saudi Arabian's crusade theory is being hotly debated on Steindamm, one of the main streets in the neighborhood. "It's not about religion, it's about money," says an Algerian wearing a Lacoste shirt. A man from Tunisia immediately agrees and asks, "Why else have German soldiers been sent to Congo?"
In their struggle for money and oil, Western states will use whatever means they can, according to the theory. That the USA knew about the September 11, 2001 attacks before they happened but chose not to prevent them is a widespread view. "We think the United States needed those attacks so they could start the Iraq war," explains Mahran Abdulwahab, a Lebanese graphic designer with a Hamburg accent.
"They're crazy."
Asked what they think of the suspects arrested for the foiled train attacks, many respond with remarks like: "They're crazy." Few have more to say. Abdulwahab also thinks such attacks are sheer madness. "It only harms people like us who live here," he says. But even he -- whose views are quite moderate and who even had a Jewish girlfriend once -- can't help claiming you'll never get the whole truth from the Western media because "their reporting is just too pro-Jewish." Many such anti-Semitic remarks -- and worse -- can be heard around Hamburg's central station.
Or on television. Just a few days ago, a 17-year-old Kurd from Bonn espoused the following theory on SPIEGEL TV: "What happened first," he said, talking about the recent conflict in Lebanon, "was that the Jews raped a child, or something like that." Later he claimed to have learned from a credible source that Jews once systematically shot six-year-olds in a kindergarten. "They let the teacher live so she would become mentally ill," the young man said.
Bizarre theories about the conflict in Lebanon can be heard in St. Georg too. A telephone salesman insists the recent police raids in London were all propaganda. Has he heard that a bomb attack was being prepared with liquid explosives? It's all lies, he says. "No one believes any of that. It's just about distracting people from the war in Lebanon." As he speaks, the salesman points outside the entrance to his store, where a group of men is chatting. "We all think this way here," the man says.
NEWSLETTER>
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Anti-Semitism on the air
Such views are promoted by television propaganda like that aired by al-Manar, the Hezbollah-financed TV channel. Al-Manar not only glorifies suicide attacks, but it even features anti-Semitic TV shows as part of its children's program. "These films are made for children. Entire generations grow up with anti-Semitic ideas about Jews being apes and pigs," laments Wahied Wahdathagh of Berlin's Middle East Media Research Institute, which examines the programs aired on Arab television. The situation is exacerbated by films like the Turkish blockbuster "Valley of the Wolves", which features a Jewish doctor removing organs from the bodies of prisoners detained in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
But Lebanese men like Abdulwahab, the graphic designer, insist they're able to differentiate. "We know al-Manar is run by Hezbollah," he says, "so we watch other channels too." At the same time, many immigrants deny that Germans are able to use the media critically and intelligently. "Many of them only read Bild" -- the popular tabloid -- "and watch TV. They think we're all terrorists," a young Tunisian explains.
And he has a theory to prove it: All the coverage of terrorism means people are forgetting the real problems of immigrants. "It's about distracting people," the man says. "All we want to do is live here peacefully. And that means we need jobs, jobs and more jobs. Why don't you write that in your article."
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Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1491
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 4:46 pm: |
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Hoops-
I respect those who make the effort to educate themselves, even if they disagree with me. Your sad posts speak for themselves in that regard, IMHO.
Tom Reingold-
Having written that I am a "troll" I don't know how I wish to deal with you Tom. I understand " where you are coming from" and appreciate you are a "thinker" in contrast to the annoying Kos clones that proliferate on these threads and just repeat the same dribble. Having stated I recognize the beauty in islam, and probably finding it much less alien to my sensibilities than the majority of the posters here on MOL would, I find that you have disappointed me with your comment.
I "grinned' in response to tjohn's argument primarily because a rigorous intellectual evaluation, which tjohn, who is not a dummie, should have done, would reveal it does not hold water.
joel dranove- NEVER reference little green footballs web site here on MOL. It is like referencing the anti-christ. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15430
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 4:53 pm: |
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factvsfiction, please accept my apology for calling you a troll. I was honestly wondering if you were at that point, but I see you're not. I don't remember what led me to say it, but I remember at the time that your argument made no sense to me.
So now let me take the time to complain about your characterizing my views as kumbaya. I find it dismissive and condescending, and I'll point out that I have not condescended to you. I hold very deeply my hopes that the human race can -- or at least ought to try to -- learn to understand each other, which can, I hope, lead to greater peace. You don't have to agree with that, but I believe that if you choose not to, you cause excess pain to yourself and others.
Joel Dranove, I concede your point that Muslims are committing gravely terrible acts and that they have throughout history. What else would you like as a form of concession? Do you want us to concede the point each and every time you post one of those stories? Or is there something else? Just what will let you go to bed satisfied that we have heard you?
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Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1960
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 4:55 pm: |
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No fiction you respect those that think like you. Your sad posts speak for themselves in that regard, IMHO. |
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 1493
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 5:14 pm: |
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Hoops-
I am not interested in a peeing match with you. I have never said you are not a smart person, merely that on this particular subject you need to educate yourself more. It is too bad that you want to view that as patronizing rather than encouraging. We can have legitmate disagreements and discussion when there is greater substance and background to those opinions, or even greater understanding and perhaps, god forbid, agreement with my own.
Tom Reingold-
Thank you for your apology. I did not characterize you specific views in that manner if you read my post carefully, in fact I exempted you from my generalized comments about posters here on MOL. It is quite ironic to be tagged as a muslim hater or a racist by innuendo here when I probably am more familiar and comfortable with that world than the posters who are doing so !
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15431
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 5:27 pm: |
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factvsfiction, please check your email for a privateline I sent to you.
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joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 934
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 24, 2006 - 12:47 pm: |
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There is hope, but is it too little, too late?
The Sunday Times - Review
The Sunday Times August 20, 2006
If you want sharia law, you should go and live in Saudi
Shahid Malik, the Labour MP, explains why he told fellow Muslims that if they don’t like Britain they should pack their bags
Scotland Yard described it as a plot “to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. John Reid concurred: “The terror threat to the public was unprecedented, the biggest that Britain had ever faced.”
As it transpired, there was nothing melodramatic about these descriptions. It was to be a “terror spectacular” beyond our worst nightmares, involving blowing up a dozen aeroplanes in mid-air over the Atlantic Ocean, with the wilful massacre of more than 1,000 innocent men, women and children.
*
Last Tuesday, after a 90-minute meeting with John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, to discuss the challenges of extremism and foreign policy, I emerged and was immediately asked by the media whether I agreed that what British Muslims needed were Islamic holidays and sharia (Islamic law). I thought I had walked into some parallel universe.
Sadly this was not a joke. These issues had apparently formed part of the discussion the day before between Prescott, Ruth Kelly, the communities minister, and a selection of “Muslim leaders”. I realised then that it wasn’t me and the media who were living in a parallel universe — although certain “Muslim leaders” might well be.
Maybe some of these “leaders” believed that cabinet ministers were being alarmist, that the terror threat posed by British extremists was exaggerated. Maybe they thought that the entire plot and threat were the “mother of all smokescreens”, a bid to divert our attention from the killing fields of Lebanon. Or maybe it was another symptom of that epidemic that is afflicting far too many Muslims: denial. Out of touch with reality, frightened to propose any real solutions for fear of “selling out”, but always keen to exact a concession — a sad but too often true caricature of some so-called Muslim leaders.
Other members of the Muslim community I am sure would have cringed as I did when listening to Dr Syed Aziz Pasha, secretary-general of the Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland, who explained his demand for sharia and more holidays: “If you give us religious rights we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.” He has done much good work over the years but this is clearly not one of his better moments.
Who speaks for Muslims? The government has a near impossible task but I’m sure even it realises that we need to look beyond some of the usual suspects and, crucially, to find mechanisms directly to engage with young people, where many of our challenges lie. To me the plot seemed all too real: I flew back from the United States that very week; my sister, her husband and their two kids live in New York so we all regularly shuttle to and fro. If the alleged plot had been realised we could all have been “statistics”.
As I have repeatedly said, in this world of indiscriminate terrorist bombings, where Muslims are just as likely to be the victims of terrorism as other British and US citizens, we Muslims have an equal stake in fighting extremism. Hundreds of Muslims died on 9/11 and 7/7. But more importantly, given that these acts are carried out in the name of our religion — Islam — we have a greater responsibility not merely to condemn but to confront the extremists. In addition to being the targets of terrorism, Muslims will inevitably be the targets of any backlash.
Given this context, most Muslims will perhaps feel disappointed at some of the comments of those “leaders” who went in to bat on their behalf. Of course self- indulgent bad timing is not the sole preserve of Muslim leaders: David Cameron’s gross misjudgment of the national mood in his criticisms of how the government had failed to keep us safe and secure were just as crass. Cameron’s stance, in undermining the unity required from our leaders on such occasions of national unease,played into the extremists’ hands.
So too, unfortunately, did the comments of some of the “Muslim leaders” who demanded sharia for British Muslims rather than the existing legal system. The call for special public holidays for Muslims was unnecessary, impracticable and divisive. Most employers already allow their staff to take such days out of their annual leave. And what about special holidays for Sikhs, Hindus, Jews? If we amended our laws to accommodate all such requests, then all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put our workplaces and communities back together again.
When it comes to sharia, Muhammad ibn Adam, the respected Islamic scholar, says: “It is necessary by sharia to abide by the laws of the country one lives in, regardless of the nature of the law, as long as the law doesn’t demand something that is against Islam.” It is narrated in the Koran that the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “It is necessary upon a Muslim to listen to and obey the ruler, as long as one is not ordered to carry out a sin.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, no 2796 & Sunan Tirmidhi).
In Britain there are no laws that force Muslims to do something against sharia and Muslims enjoy the freedom to worship and follow their religion, as do all other faiths. Compare Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, a sharia regime where women are forbidden to drive; or Turkey, a secular country where women are forbidden to wear the hijab; or Tunisia, where civil servants are forbidden to wear a beard.
I believe that as a Muslim there is no better place to live than Britain. That doesn’t mean that all in the garden is rosy; often Islamophobia is palpable. But my message is: whether you are white, Asian, black, Muslim, Christian or Jew, if you don’t like where you’re living you have two choices: either you live elsewhere, or you engage in the political process, attempt to create change and ultimately respect the will of the majority.
When Lord Ahmed, the Muslim Labour peer, heard my comments — I said essentially that if Muslims wanted sharia they should go and live somewhere where they have it — he accused me of doing the BNP’s work. He is entitled to his opinion. However, a little honesty, like mine, in this whole debate might just restore trust in politicians and ease the population’s anxieties.
Since I made my remarks my office has been overwhelmed with support. I also know that some Muslims feel uncomfortable, not necessarily because they disagree but because they feel targeted. But what I want to say to my fellow British Muslims is that in this country we enjoy freedoms, rights and privileges of which Muslims elsewhere can only dream. We should appreciate that fact and have the confidence to fulfil the obligations and responsibilities as part of our contract with our country and as dictated by sharia law.
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15436
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 24, 2006 - 1:18 pm: |
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There was a similar story this morning on BBC World News. The hypothesis seemed to be that while Muslims are feeling more isolated in the UK, they are still better off there than in their native countries or even the US. It seemed plausible to me.
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joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 937
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 25, 2006 - 10:23 am: |
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It is a propaganda war, and here is a little proof:
http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 940
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Friday, August 25, 2006 - 6:12 pm: |
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AN AMERICAN STORY:
How Budweiser handled those who laughed at those who died on the 11th of September, 2001...Thought you might like to know what happened in a little town north of Bakersfield, California.
After you finish reading this, please forward this story on to others
so that our nation and people around the world will know about those
who laughed when they found out about the tragic events in New York,
Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon.
On September 11th, a Budweiser employee was making a delivery to a convenience store in a California town named McFarland He knew of
the tragedy that had occurred in New York when he entered the
business to find the two Arabs, who owned the business, whooping and
hollering to show their approval and support of this treacherous attack.
The Budweiser employee went to his truck, called his boss and told
him of the very upsetting event! He didn't feel he could be in that
store with those horrible people. His boss asked him, "Do you think
you could go in there long enough to pull every Budweiser product and
item our beverage company sells there? We'll never deliver to them
again." The employee walked in, proceeded to pull every single
product his beverage company provided and left with an incredible
grin on his face. He told them never to bother to call for a
delivery again. Budweiser happens to be the beer of choice for that
community. Just letting you know how Kern County handled this situation.
And Now The Rest Of The Story:
It seems that the Bud driver and the Pepsi man are neighbors. Bud
called Pepsi and told him. Pepsi called his boss who told him to pull
all Pepsi products as well!!! That would include Frito Lay, etc.
Furthermore, word spread and all vendors followed suit! At last
report, the store was closed indefinitely.
Good old American Passive- Aggressive ••• Whoopin!
Pass this along, America needs to know that we're all working together!
If you can read this... thank a teacher...
if you are reading it in English...THANK A SOLDIER!!!
God Bless America !!
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Bob K
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 12492
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, August 25, 2006 - 6:24 pm: |
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Joel, at least verify your hate speech. I wonder how many of your other postings are similarly flawed.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/budweiser.asp |
Rastro
Citizen
Username: Rastro
Post Number: 3795
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Friday, August 25, 2006 - 10:59 pm: |
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I can't believe anyone would believe that story. As I was reading it it was obviously a fake.
Joel, did you actually believe it, or just think it was a good story? |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 947
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, August 26, 2006 - 5:55 pm: |
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I read it on the web, so it is true.
Just like I read it in the NYT, so it is true.
Or, the picture is from Reuters, so it is true.
Here is a column on "useful idiots," who can't believe anything out of their belief set.
Islam's Useful Idiots PDF Print E-mail
Monday, 07 August 2006
Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non-Muslims: A new generation of “Useful Idiots,” the sort of people Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also lives in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.
Useful Idiots are naïve, foolish, ignorant of facts, unrealistically idealistic, dreamers, willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy, the anarchists, the aspiring revolutionaries, the neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population. Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the “Politically Correct.” He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception.
The Useful Idiot derives satisfaction from being anti-establishment. He finds perverse gratification in aiding the forces that aim to dismantle an existing order, whatever it may be: an order he neither approves of nor he feels he belongs to.
The Useful Idiot is conflicted and dishonest. He fails to look inside himself and discover the causes of his own problems and unhappiness while he readily enlists himself in causes that validate his distorted perception.
Understandably, it is easier to blame others and the outside world than to examine oneself with an eye to self-discovery and self-improvement. Furthermore, criticizing and complaining—liberal practices of the Useful Idiot—require little talent and energy. The Useful Idiot is a great armchair philosopher and “Monday Morning Quarterback.”
The Useful Idiot is not the same as a person who honestly has a different point of view. A society without honest and open differences of views is a dead society. Critical, different and fresh ideas are the life blood of a living society—the very anathema of autocracies where the official position is sacrosanct.
Even a “normal” person spends a great deal more energy aiming to fix things out there than working to overcome his own flaws and shortcomings, or contribute positively to the larger society. People don’t like to take stock of what they are doing or not doing that is responsible for the conditions they disapprove.
But the Useful Idiot takes things much farther. The Useful Idiot, among other things, is a master practitioner of scapegoating. He assigns blame to others while absolving himself of responsibility, has a long handy list of candidates for blaming anything and everything, and by living a distorted life, he contributes to the ills of society.
The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as “Political Islam,” or “Radical Islam,” for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter—the Quran—is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the “real Islam” constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.
Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam because it prefers to believe them. It is less threatening to believe that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and non-political.
But Islam is political to the core. In Islam the mosque and state are one and the same—the mosque is the state. This arrangement goes back to the days of Muhammad himself. Islam is also radical in the extreme. Even the “moderate” Islam is radical in its beliefs as well as its deeds. Muslims believe that all non-Muslims, bar none, are hellfire bound and well-deserve being maltreated compared to believers.
No radical barbaric act of depravity is unthinkable for Muslims in dealing with others. They have destroyed precious statues of Buddha, leveled sacred monuments of other religions, and bulldozed the cemeteries of non-Muslims—a few examples of their utter extreme contempt toward others.
Muslims are radical even in their intrafaith dealings. Various sects and sub-sects pronounce other sects and sub-sects as heretics worthy of death; women are treated as chattel, deprived of many rights; hands are chopped for stealing even a loaf of bread; sexual violation is punished by stoning, and much much more. These are standard day-to-day ways of the mainstream “moderate” Muslims living under the stone-age laws of Sharia.
The “moderate” mainstream of Islam has been outright genocidal from inception. Their own historians record that Ali, the first imam of the Shiite and the son-in-law of Muhammad, with the help of another man, beheaded 700 Jewish men in the presence of the Prophet himself. The Prophet of Allah and his disciples took the murdered men’s women and children in slavery. Muslims have been, and continue to be, the most vicious and shameless practitioners of slavery. The slave trade, even today, is a thriving business in some Islamic lands where wealthy, perverted sheikhs purchase children of the poor from traffickers for their sadistic gratification.
Muslims are taught deception and lying in the Quran itself—something that Muhammad practiced during his life whenever he found it expedient. Successive Islamic rulers and leaders have done the same. Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, for instance, rallied the people under the banner of democracy. All along his support for democracy was not a commitment of an honest man, but a ruse. As soon as he gathered the reins of power, Khomeini went after the Useful Idiots of his time with vengeance. These best children of Iran, having been thoroughly deceived and used by the crafty phony populist-religionist, had to flee the country to avoid the fate of tens of thousands who were imprisoned or executed by the double-crossing imam.
Almost three decades after the tragic Islamic Revolution of 1979, the suffocating rule of Islam casts its death-bearing pal over Iranians. A proud people with enviable heritage is being systematically purged of its sense of identity and forced to think and behave like the barbaric and intolerant Muslims. Iranians who had always treated women with equality, for instance, have seen them reduced by the stone-age clergy to sub-human status of Islamic teaching. Any attempt by the women of Iran to counter the misogynist rule of Muhammad’s mullahs is mercilessly suppressed. Women are beaten, imprisoned, raped and killed just as men are slaughtered without due process or mercy.
The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.
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joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 948
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, August 26, 2006 - 5:56 pm: |
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The author of that is Iranian.
Living elsewhere. |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 965
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 11:43 am: |
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Confronting Islamist Totalitarianism
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/998
On October 22, 2005, the France 2 television talk show Tout le Monde en Parle aired an interview with writer Salman Rushdie and French actor and Islamist Sami Nacéri. Left on the cutting room floor was an ugly incident during taping when Nacéri accused Rushdie of debasing Islam. If an imam asked him to kill Rushdie, Nacéri went on, he would himself shoot the bullet into Rushdie's head. He then pantomimed firing a gun at Rushdie.
Philippe Val, editor of the French left-wing weekly Charlie Hebdo, described the omitted segment in the November 2 issue of the magazine. French reaction was minimal. While some journalists debated whether celebrities made appropriate commentators, there was little discussion of France 2's decision to delete the offending segment.
On February 28, 2006, in response to Nacéri's threat, France 2's censorship, and the decision of several newspapers not to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, twelve prominent Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals issued a manifesto first published on the French website Proche-Orient.info. The translation, replicated below, was later published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. The willingness of prominent thinkers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to stand together suggests that intellectuals recognize the totalitarian nature of Islamism and are determined not to cede terms of the societal debates to Islamists.
—The Editors
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity, and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilizations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism, and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology, which kills equality, freedom, and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
We reject "cultural relativism," which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom, and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia," an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatization of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
Signed:
Salman Rushdie, author, The Satanic Verses
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born Dutch MP
Taslima Nasreen, exiled Bangladeshi writer
Bernard-Henri Levy, French philosopher
Chahla Chafiq, exiled Iranian writer
Caroline Fourest, French writer
Irshad Manji, author, The Trouble with Islam
Mehdi Mozaffari, professor of political science, University of Aarhus
Maryam Namazie, producer, TV International English
Antoine Sfeir, editor, Cahiers de l'Orient
Ibn Warraq, author, Why I Am Not a Muslim
Philippe Val, editor, Charlie Hebdo |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 974
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 3:53 pm: |
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Read Andrew Bostom at Front Page mag today, please:
Forced conversions in Islamic history are not exceptional—they have been the norm, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—for over 13 centuries. Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties—Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi’ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India.
Moreover, during jihad—even the jihad campaigns of the 20th century [i.e., the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War I, the Moplah jihad in Southern India [1921], the jihad against the Assyrians of Iraq [early 1930s], the jihads against the Chinese of Indonesia and the Christian Ibo of southern Nigeria in the 1960s, and the jihad against the Christians and Animists of the southern Sudan from 1983 to 2001], the (dubious) concept of “no compulsion” (Koran 2:256; which was cited with tragic irony during the Fox reporters “confessional”!), has always been meaningless. A consistent practice was to enslave populations taken from outside the boundaries of the “Dar al Islam”, where Islamic rule (and Law) prevailed. Inevitably fresh non-Muslim slaves, including children, were Islamized within a generation, their ethnic and linguistic origins erased. Two enduring and important mechanisms for this conversion were concubinage and the slave militias—practices still evident in the contemporary jihad waged by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government against the southern Sudanese Christians and Animists. And Julia Duin reported in early 2002 that murderous jihad terror campaigns—including, prominently, forced conversions to Islam—continued to be waged against the Christians of Indonesia’s Moluccan Islands.
Given this enduring (and ignoble) historical legacy, it remains to be seen whether contemporary Muslim religious authorities—particularly those within Palestinian society, and affiliated with Hamas or Fatah—will condemn publicly the forced conversions of the kidnapped Fox reporters. Moreover, will they be joined by a chorus of authoritative voices representing the entire Muslim clerical hierarchy—Sunni and Shi’ite alike—from Mecca and Cairo, Qom and Najaf, to the Muslim advocacy groups in the West (such as CAIR in the United States, and the Muslim Council of Britain in England)—unanimous in their condemnation of this hideous practice, and formalized by a fatwa stating as much? Will such Muslim authorities at least recognize the acute predicament of Centanni and Wiig by issuing a fatwa stating that their “conversion”, being under duress, was not bona fide, condemning in advance any Muslim who might now attack these journalists for “apostasy” from Islam?
But remember: "There is no compulsion" in the Koran and Islam is a "Religion of Peace."
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15480
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 4:13 pm: |
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But remember: "There is no compulsion" in the Koran and Islam is a "Religion of Peace."
I guess it depends on how you practice it. Or some might say that if it is compulsory or if someone commits violent acts in the name of Islam, then he's not really practicing the religion.
And that's really the same as other religions, too, isn't it?
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Bob K
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Username: Bobk
Post Number: 12530
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 8:01 am: |
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So Joel, how do you think we should handle setting up the relocation camps for our Muslim citizens? Should we have multiple camps located near areas where there are large Muslim populations or should we ship them all to the Mojave as we did with the Japanese Americans in WWII?
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Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 2004
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 9:00 am: |
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this thread I believe started out as a call to not demonize Islam but instead seems to have become the place where any sort of claim about Islam goes.
The thread truly does demonize Islam.
I wonder if there was a similar thread demonizing Judaism or Christianity what the responses would be. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15488
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 10:16 am: |
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Well, there was a thread which had a lot of outcry about the eruv which the TC approved. That was very distressing. It seemed particularly unneighborly to me, since there are so many Jews living here. It exposed anti-semitism that I really didn't believe existed.
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joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 981
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 1:02 pm: |
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Wait for them to set up camps for us!!!
Or, just be aware of the massive problem, and look for the silver lining, and encourage those to speak up, and protect them.
jd |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15489
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 1:32 pm: |
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Joel, you have a way of speaking to us over a wall with your back turned towards us. In other words, you're not really very direct. So can you give directness a try for a minute, please?
You're afraid they'll set up camps for us, right? So what do you suggest? Do you really think internment camps are a good idea? Or a mass deportation? Try to drop the sarcasm for a minute so I can understand you.
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joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 982
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 2:00 pm: |
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Stop sticking your head in the sand. That is first and foremost the most important step.
Declare once and for that Sunni Islam funded by the Saudis, and its Wahhabi adherents and their mosques and madrassas in this country are to be monitored 24 hours a day for seditious preaching, toss out of this country those who preach our death, [we are at war - we could jail them, but too many in denial would clog up the courts and the media fifth columnists would do the same, so toss them] close our borders for real, except for enhanced scrutiny border crossings, repeal the Immigration laws which give permission to family members of green card holders to piggy back themselves in, stop treating WW IV like a police action, e.g., we are at war.
End funding of the UN, start a new organization, with Australia as its first co-member.
Do you have any suggestions, not just criticisms that this can't be done.
It can.
Lincold suspended habeas corpus.
We will get to that point if a massive terror attack occurs again.
And it will.
jd |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 2412
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 2:09 pm: |
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If I were you, I'd be looking into emigrating to Cuba. They don't have any of these problems. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15492
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 2:49 pm: |
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Thank you for your directness, Joel.
I agree with one point, which is that we must face who our enemies are. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is already friends with the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia, so they define the enemy nebulously and therefore don't have any effective strategy. They employ the strategy of "as long as we are at war with someone, the people will be rallied together against a common enemy." I don't think this is a winning strategy, and he could have taken a lesson from 1984.
I disagree with the rest of what you say, but I appreciate your directness. It is a refreshing change.
But it still doesn't address the fact that there are, as you point out, real enemies, and we know who they are. This means that there are still about 1.8 billion Muslims who are not our enemies. I do not believe in guilt by association. Our nation was founded on the rejection of that concept. Don't you remember that? A criminal is a criminal because of what he does, not who he is. Why don't you accept this? How can anyone enjoy being an American without accepting this? If we don't give all Americans the same rights, then the definition of what defines an American is up for grabs.
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joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 983
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 4:27 pm: |
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First post from a Persian speaking British chap, with the footnotes to follow [the site informed me the post was too long for one tranch to do it.
Why Do Muslims Execute Innocent People?
Islamist Ideology
by Denis MacEoin
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/1000
While often ignored in the Western media, human rights abuses in the Islamic world are a daily occurrence. Both Muslim states and ad hoc religious courts order mutilation and execution, not only of criminals but also of individuals—mainly women—who have not committed anything which would be considered a crime in other societies. In some cases, Shari‘a (Islamic law) tribunals issue death sentences for those acquitted in regular courts.[1] In other cases, religious leaders invoke religion to sanction non-Islamic practices such as honor killings and female genital mutilation.
Original Islamic jurisprudence, however, does not necessarily mandate such severe punishments. In the early twentieth century, it even seemed that the introduction of modern legal codes in Muslim majority countries might ameliorate regular Shari‘a punishments, but in recent decades, traditionalists have pushed a back-to-basics program which has augmented application of Shari‘a punishment. Rather than modifying Islamic practice, many self-described Islamist reformers make matters worse by advocating retrenchment rather than reform.
Unjust Punishment
Many of the crimes for which death is mandated involve sex or honor. While capricious application of Shari‘a punishment is common throughout Muslim majority countries and communities, since the fall of the Taliban and because of the activity of Iranian journalists and bloggers, many of the specific examples which are known in the West come from Iran.
On August 15, 2004, 16-year-old Ateqeh Rajabi, was hanged in public in the northern Iranian town of Neka. Her crime was to have sex with her boyfriend. She had no lawyer, nor could her family find one willing to defend her. The capriciousness of the judge rather than a strict interpretation of the Qur'an contributed to her death. She had talked back to the judge, Haji Reza'i, who later remarked that he would not have ordered her execution had it not been for her "sharp tongue."[2]
In December 2004, Leyla, a 19-year-old girl with a mental age of eight, was sentenced to death for "acts contrary to chastity." The sentencing judge ordered her to be flogged before execution. Her situation was lamentable. When she was eight, her mother forced her into prostitution, letting her be raped repeatedly. She was later sold as a temporary wife (mut'a, sigha), legal in Twelver Shi‘ite law which allows temporary wives to be contracted for set periods ranging from one hour to ninety-nine years. Thirteen-year-old Zhila Izadi also received a death sentence—later commuted—after being impregnated by her older brother.
Other examples abound. In July 2005, Iranian authorities publicly hanged two boys, 18-year-old Ayaz Marhoni and 16-year-old Mahmud Asghari, in the shrine city of Mashhad for homosexual acts. Photographs of the boys with nooses round their necks just before their execution are available online,[3] but never appeared in Western newspapers or on television.
On January 7, 2006, an Islamic court in Tehran passed a death sentence on an 18-year old girl, identified only by her first name, Nazanin. She had stabbed an assailant while fighting off three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece.[4] Reports suggested their attackers were members of the Basij, a radical militia charged with upholding the Islamic Republic's revolutionary principles. Nazanin was aged seventeen at the time of her offence, too young for a death sentence even under Iranian law that states that such sentences for minors should be commuted to five years' imprisonment. In Nazanin's case, the judge ignored extenuating circumstances and applied rigidly the law of retaliation (qisas). Under such a system, a life must be paid for by a life, an eye for an eye, except where the family of the victim is willing to accept blood money or compensation (diya) for lost body parts and organs.[5]
Iran is not the only Islamic country practicing spurious punishment. On April 21, 2005, in Spingul, a valley near Faizabad in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, family members and villagers executed 25-year-old Bibi Amin after she was found in the company of a man to whom she was not married. She was buried to her neck and, for two hours, stoned.[6] There have been similar cases in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and other Muslim countries. Even in Egypt, where Shari‘a law has been modified, men and women are still imprisoned unequally for adultery.[7] That the application of such punishments is widespread and that its perpetrators justify their actions in Islam neither means that a consensus exists among theologians or that such interpretations have been consistent through time.
Qur'anic Attitudes toward Punishment
With only one exception, every chapter of the Qur'an begins with the words Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim, "In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate." While such compassion is lacking in modern application of Shari‘a law, this has not always been the case. Many traditional sources argue for limited punishment. The Sunan of Ibn Maja, one of the six canonical collections, cites a saying by Muhammad that reads, "Do not carry out punishments if you can find a way to avoid them."[8]
This example is echoed by another tradition from the Sunan of Tirmidhi: "Wherever possible, do not inflict punishments (hudud; singular hadd) on Muslims; if there is a way out for someone, let him go. It is better for the ruler (al-imam) to err in forgiveness than for him to err in punishment."[9] According to the twelfth-century jurist and philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), "hadd punishments are suspended in doubtful cases," echoing another hadith to that effect.[10]
Still, in traditional Islam, adultery and fornication (both termed zina') are considered criminal acts worthy of a hadd punishment, which the Qur'an sets at 100 lashes.[11] Adultery itself is a difficult charge to bring under Shari‘a: it requires four adult male witnesses to the penetration; in contrast, only two males (or four females) need witness murder for the charges to stick. Nor is circumstantial evidence sufficient. Pregnancy is not enough to prove that adultery occurred since the law considers that a woman may have been penetrated in her sleep or, according to some scholars, the possibility that an embryo could have gestated for up to five years. The penalty for false accusation of adultery is seventy-five lashes.
That does not mean that Islamic law does not embrace the death penalty for adultery. At some point—often said to have occurred during the rule of the second caliph ‘Umar (r. 634-44)—jurists began to set the punishment for married people as stoning to death based on a verse that had allegedly been dropped from the Qur'an.[12] Stoning is also mentioned in the Hadith, and there is no doubt that Muhammad sanctioned the punishment. However, strict conditions are determined for accusation and punishment. A distinction is made between unmarried and married offenders; inebriation, force, and errors such as intercourse with a woman mistaken for a man's wife or slave girl are mitigating factors while the demand for four eyewitnesses to sexual penetration makes it almost impossible to bring an accusation. It is because of the difficulties of formal adultery charges that many Islamic societies embrace honor killing.
Historically, there were significant differences in the treatment of free men and slaves. Modern Iranian law discriminates even further against religious minorities. The Islamic Republic might execute a non-Muslim man accused of having sexual relations with a Muslim woman, whereas a Muslim man who has sex with a non-Muslim woman is not subject to any penalty.[13]
Despite the potential for leniency in the application of Islamic rules, states acting in the name of religion have applied harsher penalties than traditional religious jurists. The Islamic Republic of Iran ordered Ateqeh Rajabi hanged even though Shari‘a only permits the execution of married adulterers, whereas she was single. At most, she should have received 100 lashes—and, according to many interpretations, these should not be laid on hard.
The hadith literature is not silent on two of the factors relevant to many of the recent applications of capital punishment in the name of Islam for crimes of honor. Tirmidhi relates an incident when a woman was brought to the Prophet, accused of adultery. It transpired that the man had forced her to have intercourse in acknowledgment of which Muhammad refused to have her punished.[14] Young age can also be cause for leniency. Ibn Maja records a statement by a boy who survived the massacre of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza in 627, saying he had been spared the fate of the tribe's men because he had not yet grown pubic hair.[15]
What about a case such as Nazanin's, in which a person was killed? In Islamic law, offenses against the person come under the law of qisas. These offenses amount to five crimes: murder, voluntary manslaughter—such as when an offender sets out to beat a victim but kills him or her in the process, involuntary killing, intentional physical injury, and unintentional injury.
Retaliation—a life for a life—is permissible in the two instances of intentional killing or injury, but even in these cases, the victim's family may waive retribution in return for a set financial payment. In all other cases, only blood money may be demanded. If correct Shari‘a rules were applied, Nazanin would not face a death sentence for an involuntary killing, especially when she had acted in defense of her honor.
Theological Impediments to Reform
So why is there a growing discrepancy between the penalties justified in Islamic jurisprudence and the far more serious punishments applied? Traditional Muslims believe that the Qur'an is immutable. It is not just a sacred text like the Torah or the New Testament but a direct copy of God's word imprinted on the mind of Muhammad via recitation from the Archangel Gabriel. It cannot be rewritten. Indeed, a hadith attributes to Muhammad the saying, "Whosoever disputes a single verse of the Qur'an, strike off his head."[16]
This doctrine has become pernicious for all who attempt a modern understanding of the scripture. Whereas progressive Jewish and Christian scholars and clerics have devised forms of higher criticism that tackle issues of context and period, all efforts to do the same thing with the Qur'an have met with fierce resistance. Several Muslim reformers—notably Pakistani academic Fazlur Rahman (1911-88), Iranian cleric Muhammad Mujtahid-i Shabestari (b. 1936), Iranian philosopher ‘Abd al-Karim Soroush (b. 1945), and the Syrian Muhammad Shahrur (b. 1938)—have tried to develop ways to account for the social, linguistic, and religious environment at the time of the Qur'an's revelation when adjudicating and legislating on matters relevant to the modern world, such as women's rights. Their efforts have pushed the debate in a positive direction, but they are both better understood and better liked in the West than in the Muslim world.[17]
Muslim reactions to such reformist initiatives have been largely hostile and even violent. In the 1960s, a Pakistani religious court sentenced Fazlur Rahman to death.[18] Vigilantes have attacked Souroush on numerous occasions,[19] and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born ex-member of the Dutch parliament;[20] Canadian writer Irshad Manji;[21] and Los Angeles-based psychologist Wafa Sultan, [22] all outspoken critics of Islamic social practice, are in hiding or under guard.
The pressure to reject contextualization of the Qur'an is illustrated by two cases, occurring more than sixty years apart in Egypt. In 1930, a cleric named Muhammad Abu Zayd, published a book of Qur'an exegesis titled Al-Hidaya wa'l-'Irfan fi Tafsir al-Qur'an bi'l-Qur'an, in which he treated concepts such as paradise as metaphors. Other clerics at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the central seat of religious learning and authority in Sunni Islam, condemned him. Rashid Rida' issued a more forceful condemnation, accused the author of being an apostate, and called for his forcible divorce. All copies of the tafsir were collected by the police and destroyed. Clerics who had read it were dismissed from their posts.[23]
In 1992, history repeated itself. Egyptian academic Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd presented research in application for a full professorship at Cairo University. His work argued that the Qur'an had been written in a human language so that men could understand it. Since it was in a specific language, he argued, it was legitimate to read it with reference to our knowledge of seventh-century Arabic and the human world to which it was directed. His arguments created an uproar. Al-Azhar University condemned him. Leaflets and the popular press accused him of heresy. The Egyptian government tried him before a secular court on charges of apostasy. He was declared a heretic (mulhid) and an apostate (murtadd) and became the object of death threats from radical Islamists throughout the country. An Egyptian court ordered that he and his wife be divorced on the grounds that a Muslim woman cannot be married to a non-Muslim, even as he denied ever abandoning his faith. He now teaches at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.[24] That parallel situations would occur sixty years apart illustrates how stifled scholarly discourse is at Al-Azhar.
A particularly flagrant example of academic suppression in a modern Shi‘ite context may be seen in the case of ‘Abdulaziz Sachedina, a prominent Shi‘ite academic, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, and coauthor of Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty.[25] In August 1998, Sachedina, who had received complaints from his local Muslim community about his teaching and writing about Islam, held a meeting in Najaf, Iraq, with grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. In the course of this interview, as recorded in detail by Sachedina, Sistani demanded that he could no longer "express any opinions in matters dealing with Islam, its religion, and its teachings." Prominent among the many theological errors of which Sachedina was accused was his promotion of an irenic, pluralist approach to Judaism and Christianity, which he saw as equals of Islam.[26]
The net result of such incidents is discouragement of serious revisionist work on the Qur'an and the Hadith. Fear for one's life, the safety of one's family, or one's livelihood are powerful disincentives to saying or writing anything controversial. The only arena in which open debate on such matters takes place is in Western academe, but it is likely here that some Muslim academics living in the West and, indeed, some Western scholars of Islam have chosen safer areas in which to carry out research, knowing the risks they now run from a single accusation of defamation.
Qur'anic Challenges
The problem is that, despite the belief that the Qur'an is the immutable word of God, in its current form the book was compiled only during the reign of the Caliph ‘Uthman (644-56) and organized into suras, ranging in length from a few verses to many pages. While the Qur'an was revealed over a period of twenty-two years, the order of compilation was curious: with the exception of the first sura (al-Fatiha), the longest suras come first and the shortest last. Early scholars debated when particular suras, verses, or groups of verses were "sent down." Determining chronology was often basic, all suras being labeled either Meccan or Medinan, based on in which of these two Arabian cities Muhammad had received a particular revelation. Sometimes it was possible to attribute certain passages to a particular incident, such as the Battle of Uhud or a dispute with the Prophet's wives. These asbab an-nuzul (occasions of revelation), insofar as they are reliable, permit a more nuanced picture of how the text developed during Muhammad's lifetime.
One thing is clear: later verses often express a position contrary to earlier ones. For example, early—mainly Meccan—verses express a positive view of Jews and Christians, whereas late ones—all Medinan—follow the souring of relations between the Prophet and both Jews and Christians. By this reckoning, there are late verses that abrogate (termed nasikh) and early verses which are abrogated (termed mansukh).
Verses commanding jihad against non-believers abrogate those of an ecumenical nature, moving from a position of "There is no compulsion in religion"[27] to "Fight those who do not believe in God or the last day, who do not forbid what God and his Prophet forbid, who do not believe in the religion of truth among those who were given the Book [Jews and Christians] until they pay the poll tax (jizya) by their own hands, having been brought low."[28]
The problem is that earlier sections of the Qur'an tend to be more amenable to a modernist interpretation than later ones. Where modern Muslims emphasize the verse decreeing that there is no compulsion in matters of faith, more radical or orthodox scholars trump such citations with nasikh verses overriding moderate interpretations.
What impact does this have on punishment? Qur'anic verses that mention punishments are invariably late but not very detailed. Although the Qur'an always carries greater weight than the hadiths, it is not uncommon to see a hadith cited to support a harsher legal position. Thus, the verse, "There is no compulsion in religion" is outweighed by the tradition according to which the Prophet said, "Whosoever changes his religion, kill him,"[29] which forms a basis for the law of apostasy as it still stands.[30]
The Emergence of Islamic Neo-radicalism
What happened to some strains of Islam to favor the past over the present and glorify black-and-white interpretations of the Qur'an over more nuanced approaches? While the exact answer varies across regions, certain common factors emerge.
In several cases, a puritan form of Islam has either allied itself with a military or political force—for example the Salafi-Wahhabi movement's alliance with the Saud family in Saudi Arabia—or has itself taken political power, as with the early nineteenth-century Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa or, more recently, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's followers in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or, perhaps, the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. In all such cases, the resulting political systems have applied Shari‘a in a harsher form than usual.
In addition, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, there has been a broader struggle between traditionalist and modernizing influences and movements. Growing European influence in Middle Eastern states led to demands for the introduction of Western-style constitutions, educational systems, and laws. Many regional countries adopted modern legal codes modeled on the French, Italian, Swiss, British, or other systems. This represented a great step forward in respect to areas such as family law, tangential women's rights, legal clarity, and modes of punishment.
There were, however, two drawbacks to this brand of modernization. The first was the alienation of the clerical class. Religious leaders are "the learned" (ulema), men who have undergone training as jurists within Shari‘a. Marginalized by the introduction of European criminal codes and the establishment of Western-style courts, divested in many places of their role as educators, and alienated by the overt secularization of many Muslim societies and cultures, the ulema dreamed of a return to basics. They were backed by like-minded lay thinkers, such as Hasan al-Banna (1906-49), a schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential and radicalizing force in several countries in the Middle East and Europe.[31]
The reaction against modernization might have been muted had there been a loose movement for reformation of Shari‘a itself. Mainstream scholars held that it was impossible for modern jurists to challenge or alter the legal precepts set down in the early tenth century by the four main Sunni law schools—Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali. The classical formulation of this precept is that the gates of ijtihad, independent reasoning in matters of religious law, had been closed. The Qur'an—as the immutable word of God—could not be rewritten nor could the records of the Prophet's life and sayings—the other source from which Islamic law derived—be edited or reconsidered.
However, beginning in the late nineteenth century, a number of thinkers argued that, even if the sacred texts could not be altered, it was legitimate to exercise reasoning in order to bring the laws more in line with modern ways of thought and practice. At that time, Muslim attitudes to the West were generally positive. Arab, Iranian, and Turkish political reformers sought to emulate European political systems, science, technology, military know-how, schools, universities, and laws. They argued that Islam could advance by re-configuring itself along Western lines.
Despite this, a small number of intellectuals developed a countervailing trend that emphasized the religious and legal thought of the first three generations of the faith. This became the Salafi movement, derived from the Arabic term salaf (predecessors).[32] Salafi thinkers such as Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905)[33] reexamined the two basic texts, the Qur'an and the body of traditions or hadiths that make up the Sunna, the living record of how the Prophet and his companions behaved and thought. From this emerged a belief that, far from needing to be modernized, Islamic law and, by extension, Muslim life in general, had to return to how it was at the time of the Salaf. Most of the movements Western commentators term "fundamentalist" are Salafi.
While the first modern Salafi thinkers sought reform, later Salafi theoreticians narrowed the debate. Egyptian cleric Muhammad Rashid Rida' (1865-1935) published a periodical, Al-Manar (The Lighthouse), which influenced intellectuals across the Islamic world. His ideas formed a bridge between Salafi reformers and more radical movements such as Banna's Muslim Brotherhood.[34]
These new Salafists focused on improving Muslim morals and what has come to be known as "Shari‘a-mindedness." Sayyid Qutb (1906-66),[35] probably the most influential Islamist thinker of the twentieth century, took this moral emphasis and extended it to include violent action against both non-believers and unfaithful Muslim rulers. He argued that the term al-jahiliya, which had normally been used to define the "Age of Ignorance" that preceded Islam, should now be applied to the present day to the extent that modern society—including Muslim society—had distanced itself from Islam. Just as Muhammad fought a holy war against the forces of paganism in seventh-century Arabia, so, too, true Muslims should fight the barbarism of the modern age. Qutb outlined these ideas in a short book, Ma'alim fi' t-Tariq (Milestones on the Road), based on notes he kept in prison.[36] The text launched the new, radicalized, jihadist style of Salafi thought and activism.
It is this world-view that is echoed today by theorists such as Osama bin Laden and groups such as the Afghan Taliban. They argue that Islam cannot adapt to the changes imposed by history but must remain rigidly faithful to the existing interpretations of scripture, the models laid down by the Prophet and his companions, and the legal rulings developed from these sources by the first generations of legal scholars.
Reform without Reformation
There have been and are a number of reformers working to bring Islam into closer harmony with universal standards of justice, tolerance, pluralism, and human rights. These include Nurcholish Madjid (1939-2005), the founder of a school of Islamic neo-modernism in Indonesia, in which contextualized, independent reasoning in matters of religious law, ijtihad, is put forward as a path to renovation, and radicalism is understood as an obstacle to progress because of its authoritarian and intolerant nature; Mohammed Arkoun, an Algerian thinker, who teaches at the University of Paris III, for whom secularization and modernization are essential elements of Islamic progress; and feminists such as Asra Q. Nomani who have called for major liberalization in the sphere of women's rights.
Others present a liberalizing face to the Western media and academia but retain an essentially conservative position on everything from hijab (veiling) to jihad. This charismatic but, essentially, two-faced trend promotes an image of Islam as protective of human rights while sticking to an agenda in favor of strict Shari‘a limitations to such rights. Two notable figures in this context are Tariq Ramadan and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Ramadan is the Swiss-born grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna. With a broad academic background including Swiss doctorates in philosophy and Islamic studies, and Arabic and Islamic studies qualifications from Al-Azhar University, he has taught at several Western universities, including the University of Fribourg and St. Anthony's College, Oxford. While he is banned from the United States,[37] he has been accepted in Europe as a Muslim intellectual with a reputation for moderation. That said, many French intellectuals describe him as "The Master of Doubletalk" and regard him as an intégriste or fundamentalist. He has argued, for example, that Muslims should enter into mainstream society only to move it closer to Islam; that he accepts Western laws but only so long as they do not oblige him to do something against his religion; that stoning for adultery should be subject only to a moratorium until Muslim clerics discuss the matter; that Muslim women should insist on wearing the veil; that swimming pools should be segregated, and so on.[38] His support for radicals such as Yahya Michot, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, or Sayyid Qutb lays bare an agenda far from that of the moderate he likes to pass himself off to be.
Qaradawi (b. 1926) is another Azharite with an international following. Considered by most Muslims as a "moderate conservative" and lionized by London mayor Ken Livingstone, Qaradawi's moderation on issues such as elections and women's enfranchisement is a thin disguise for radicalism. He has issued fatwas and commented in lectures, television broadcasts, and on the Internet that wives should submit to their husbands; men may beat their wives "lightly;" men and women should mix only to a very limited degree; and women must wear hijab. He has deemed female genital mutilation, flogging of adulterers, and execution of homosexuals and apostates permissible and has endorsed suicide attacks against Israeli civilians or U.S. soldiers and civilians in Iraq. He has also condemned liberal democracies and urged Muslims to vent their anger publicly on issues such as the Danish cartoon controversy.[39]
Some Western governments have relied upon Ramadan, Qaradawi, and others to develop appropriate policies towards Islam and Muslims. Western media have painted them as authorities on Islam, enabling them to speak without an explicit mandate on behalf of Muslims. By drawing media and government attention to themselves while keeping their agendas hidden, they come to overshadow more authentically reformist figures. This problem is compounded by the numerous self-appointed bodies claiming to represent Muslims in Western countries, such as the Council for American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Council of Britain.
None of these individuals have used their prominence to speak out about harsh punishments, the execution of minors, or the stoning of those whom most modern cultures would call innocent women. It is probable that many self-described reformers practice a form of taqiya or religious dissimulation in order to show a moderate face to the West and quite a different perspective to their constituents in the Muslim world.
Indeed, when challenged about the harshness of Shari‘a penalties, many Muslim writers and Islamist politicians state their dislike for the alternative—human rights as defined by the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights"—on the grounds that such agreements are of Western origin, that they will undermine the norms of Islamic societies, and that they are not themselves based on Shari‘a rulings. Some Muslim intellectuals have even argued that human rights do not exist in Islam. In 1985, Sa'id Raja'i-Khurasani, the permanent Iranian delegate to the United Nations, stated that the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which represented secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, could not be implemented by Muslims and did not accord with the system of values recognized by the Islamic Republic of Iran … his country would, therefore, not hesitate to violate its prescriptions."[40] According to Ayatollah Muhammad-Taqi Misbah-Yazdi, a contender for the role of Iranian supreme leader upon the demise or removal of ‘Ali Khamene'i, "Islamic human rights differ from the ‘Declaration of Human Rights.' … Human rights must be Islamic human rights."[41]
Conclusion
There are, then, several reasons why severe punishments and unreasonable judgments continue in parts of the Islamic world and why certain human rights—the freedom to change one's religion, to convert Muslims to another faith, to enjoy full civil rights as a Baha'i, Zoroastrian, Armenian, or Jew, to marry by free choice, to write about controversial religious issues—are nowhere recognized. In the absence of fully secularized educational systems and with the increasing political involvement of groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas, the day when genuine reform arrives in most Muslim countries seems to be as far off as ever.
A hardening of sentiment against the West and an increasing tendency to fall back on conspiracy theories to explain Islamic problems seem to make insistence on tough Shari‘a -mindedness a desirable option for many if only as a weapon to use against perceived Western weaknesses. Desperate not to offend, the West has done little to make issue of abuses such as those promoted by judges like Haji Reza'i. While crimes such as his go unpunished, the continued stoning, hanging, flogging, and even beheading all serve to intimidate Western critics and are, therefore, encouraged by Islamic states and groups.
On a wider scale, a major debate needs to take place between advocates of Islamic or other relativist human rights agendas and supporters of the principle that such rights are, by their very nature, universal and applicable to all people at all times and in all places. Unfortunately, that debate cannot take place openly while there is a threat of violence from those who oppose the notion of human rights as a Western or Zionist evil.
What are the policy implications of this situation for Western countries, the U.N., and international human rights organizations? One is that they should give more genuine support to Muslim reformers, their conferences and publications, and, where appropriate, their teaching positions. Another is to pressure Islamic governments to make arrests when death threats and similar menaces are used instead of open argument. A recent Saudi doctoral thesis listed two hundred names of intellectuals who must be killed while, in May 2006, Osama bin Laden declared open season on all Muslim freethinkers. Neither the Saudi government nor the Islamic establishment elsewhere have moved to counter such provocations.[42]
Human rights issues must be linked more firmly to trade and other agreements. The multiculturalist notion that Muslims may not be criticized for the use of unjust and cruel punishments must be countered. The stigma of political incorrectness is counterproductive. Islamic countries and ordinary Muslims must be given incentives to observe human rights norms within their borders and disincentives to apply the Shari‘a in harsh and unjust ways.
The case of Egyptian democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim is instructive and suggests that outside pressure can work. In 2000, following his criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's anointing of son Gamal as his successor, an Egyptian court arrested Ibrahim on spurious charges involving finance of his nongovernmental organization, the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. The Bush administration responded by withholding nearly $200 million in aid pending Ibrahim's release. The Egyptian government responded by setting him free.
The payoff from support given to positive reform is potentially enormous. If genuinely reformist thinkers are enabled to have an impact within Muslim societies, violence, unjust punishments, and abuse of human rights in the name of religion will decline. In the end, a space for dialogue can only be opened up when intellectual debate joins forces with a determined war on terror—not only terror against Western interests but also against all violence done to Muslims themselves in the name of religion.
Denis MacEoin holds a Ph.D. in Persian studies from the University of Cambridge. He taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University and was for many years an honorary fellow at Durham University. He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University. |
Dave
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 10654
Registered: 4-1997
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 4:30 pm: |
|
Want to end terror? Support some form of justice for Palestinians and get the hell out of the Middle East. Let them work out whatever screwed up governments they want or make their own internal changes for the better. We're being a crap example of a democracy for them right now under the thug-style illiterate leadership of Bush. We have a large, educated, wealthy nation with bountiful natural resources and solid trading partners in the east. No reason why we should be importing foreign hatreds or alliances by messing around where we don't belong and aren't wanted. |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 984
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 4:31 pm: |
|
Denis MacEoin holds a Ph.D. in Persian studies from the University of Cambridge. He taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University and was for many years an honorary fellow at Durham University. He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University.
[1] The Washington Post, May 20, 2006.
[2] Amnesty International U.K., news release, Aug. 24, 2004.
[3] BBC News, July 28, 2005.
[4] Etema'ad (Tehran), Jan. 7, 2006.
[5] For examples from a Shi‘ite perspective, see Ayatullah Sayyid Abulqasim al-Khoei, Islamic Laws of Ayatullah Khoei, trans. Muhammad Fazal Haq (New York: Islamic Seminary Publications, n.d.), ch. 35, pp. 2808, 2814-5.
[6] AdvocacyNet, news bulletin, no. 37, May 23, 2005.
[7] "Punishment for Non-Marital Sex in Islam," Religious Tolerance.org, accessed June 6, 2006.
[8] Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Yazid ibn Maja ar-Rab'i al-Qazwini, Sunan Ibn Maja, Bab al-Hudud, Al-Islam.com, Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Waqf, Missions, and Guidance, Saudi Arabia, accessed July 5, 2006.
[9] Abu ‘Isa Muhammad at-Tirmidhi, Sunan at-Tirmidhi wa huwa al-jami' as-sahih, 4 vols., 2nd ed., ed. ‘A. ‘Abdallatif (Beirut: n.p., 1983) Al-Islam.com, Bab al-Hudud, hadith 2, accessed July 5, 2006.
[10] Ibn Rushd, Bidayat al-Mujtahid, vol. 6, p. 113, cited in Asifa Quraishi, "Islamic Legal Analysis of the Zina Punishment Awarded to Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, in Zamfara, Nigeria," Islam for Today, Jan. 20, 2001.
[11] Qur'an, 24:2.
[12] John Burton, Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, s.v "Abrogation," accessed June 21, 2006; Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, Istitabat al-Murtadin, 82: 816, 817; Ahmad Ibn Hanbal and Musnad al-Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, ed., Samir al-Majzub (Beirut: Maktab al-Islami, 1993), vol. 2, p. 39.
[13] "Discrimination against Religious Minorities in Iran," report to 63rd session of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme (Paris) and Ligue de Défense des Droits de l'Homme en Iran (Geneva), Aug. 2003.
[14] At-Tirmidhi, Sunan, Bab al-Hudud, hadith 22, Al-Islam.com, accessed July 5, 2006.
[15] Ibn Maja, Sunan, Hudud, 14:4:2532.
[16] "Hadith," Ibn Maja, Sunan Ibn I Majah (Lahore, 1995), Arabic with English translation by M. Tufail Ansari, Bab al-Hudud, Al-Islam.com, accessed July 5, 2006.
[17] On these and others, see Suha Taji-Farouki, ed., Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Charles Kurzman, ed., Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
[18] M. Yahya Birt, "The Message of Fazlur Rahman," Association of Muslim Researchers, June 27, 1996.
[19] "Letter to President Rafshanjani," Human Rights Watch, New York, July 22, 1997.
[20] Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Danger Woman," interview with Alexander Linklater, The Guardian (London), May 17, 2005.
[21] Johann Hari, "Islam's Marked Woman: Irshad Manji," The Independent (London), May 28, 2005.
[22] John M. Broder, "For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats," The New York Times, Mar. 11, 2006.
[23] Ami Ayalon, "Egypt's Quest for Cultural Orientation," Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999.
[24] Fauzi M. Najjar, "Islamic Fundamentalism and the Intellectuals: The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 27:2 (2000): 177-200.
[25] Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.
[26] Abdulaziz Sachedina, "What Happened in Najaf?" accessed June 6, 2006.
[27] Qur'an, 2:256.
[28] Qur'an, 9:29.
[29] "Hadith," cited in Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, Istitabat al-Murtadin, 68:2:1.
[30] For an Iranian view of the law on apostasy, see, Sayf Allah Sarami, Ahkam-i murtad az didgah-i Islam va huquq-i bashar, in Tahqiqat-i andisha-yi Islami series, vol. 4 (Tehran: Markaz-i Tahqiqat-i Istratizhik-i Riyasat-i Jumhuri, 1997).
[31] Lorenzo Vidino, "The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 25-34; The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 3, s.v. "Muslim Brotherhood," comprising the following articles: Nazih N. Ayubi, "An Overview," pp. 183-7; Denis J. Sullivan, "Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt," pp. 187-91; Philip S. Khoury, "Muslim Brotherhood in Syria," pp. 191-4; Beverley Milton-Edwards, "Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan," pp. 194-7; Gabriel R. Warburg, "Muslim Brotherhood in the Sudan," pp. 197-201.
[32] The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 3, Emad Eldin Shahin, s.v. "Salafiyah."
[33] ‘Uthman Amin, Muhammad ‘Abduh, trans. Charles Wendell (Washington: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953), pp. 1-103.
[34] Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ‘Abduh (London: Oxford University Press, 1933); Malcolm Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).
[35] Ahmad Moussalli, Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993).
[36] Sayyid Qutb, Ma'alim fi ‘t-tariq (Cairo: Dar as-Shuruq, 1980).
[37] The Guardian, Dec. 17, 2004; Daniel Pipes, "Why Revoke Tariq Ramadan's U.S. Visa?" The New York Sun, Aug. 27, 2004.
[38] Caroline Fourest, Frère Tariq: Discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan (Lyon, France: Lyon Mag' Hors Serie, 2004).
[39] "The Qaradawi Fatwas," The Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 78-80; The Daily Telegraph (London), Feb. 3, 2006; Lamia Radi, "Qaradawi: Prophet Cartoons Is (sic) War Waged against Us," Middle East Online, Mar. 23, 2006.
[40] See Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, p. 8.
[41] Quoted in Ann Elizabeth Mayer, "Islamic Rights or Human Rights: An Iranian Dilemma," Iranian Studies, Summer/Fall 1996, p. 294.
[42] "Saudi Doctorate Encourages the Murder of Arab Intellectuals," Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Special Dispatch Series, no. 1070, Jan. 12, 2006; "To Kill a Muslim Freethinker," FrontPage Magazine, May 3, 2006; Aluma Dankowitz, "Arab Intellectuals: Under Threat by Islamists," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis, no. 254, Nov. 23, 2005; Aluma Dankowitz, "Accusing Muslim Intellectuals of Apostasy," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis, no. 208, Feb. 18, 2005. |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 2021
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 4:45 pm: |
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can anybody teach joel dranove how to post a damn link to a website?
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15493
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 5:05 pm: |
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Apparently not.
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3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 373
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 7:49 pm: |
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Some food for thought, but no real answers:
The Reactionary Utopian
August 15, 2006
NATION-BUILDING AND ISLAM
by Joe Sobran
"If anyone denies a verse of the Koran," says a
verse of the Koran, "it is permissible to behead him."
Not exactly promising for interfaith understanding, is
it?
I came across that in a book by a Jesuit priest
published in 1963, long before today's tensions between
Islam and the West. When I cited it to a liberal friend,
he commented that it may be due to Islam's early struggle
for survival against heavy odds, not applicable to Islam
today.
Well, that may explain the origins of such verses,
and for most Muslims they may be mere vestiges, as the
fiercer passages of the Old Testament are for most Jews
today. But whatever gave rise to them in the first place,
they were written into the sacred text and there they
still stand.
And more than a thousand years later many believers
still take them very literally. It's no use explaining to
such folk that the Prophet may have written them when in
a foul mood. Whatever he wrote is, according to Islam,
eternally true. If it seems savage to unbelievers, well,
the will of Allah is inscrutable. Sentimental (Western)
public opinion and human reason mean nothing. The
believer regards them with utter contempt.
Some people still take the Old Testament's more
problematic words literally too, though, oddly enough,
they are more apt to be Protestant Zionists than Jews.
Holy books are always subject to explosive
interpretations, never more so than now. The Middle East
has many states, but few of them seem to be blue states.
Even to call Islam a "religion" may be misleading,
because the modern West separates the sacred and the
secular so completely that hardly anything remains
sacred. Religion has become a mere compartment of human
existence, excluded from public life. Islam recognizes no
such separation. Everything belongs to Allah, and woe to
the unbeliever.
This is a formula for mutual incomprehension and
endless conflict. Western policymakers and diplomats have
traditionally left religion to theologians, so recent
developments have caught them flat-footed.
You can't reduce something as huge as Islam to a few
handy quotations, but we had better recognize that its
view of the world has little in common with, say,
Anglicanism. To take only one symptom, we seldom hear of
Anglican suicide bombers. If such creatures exist at all,
they aren't normative for their coreligionists, and they
find little encouragement in even the most incendiary
parts of the Book of Common Prayer.
The West's response to militant Islam tends to be
alarm and horror. It hardly has categories to describe
it, so it falls back on such inadequate terms as
"terrorism" and "Islamofascism," which make about as much
sense as "Islamovegetarianism." In fact, such words don't
get you very far at all. Fascism was a brief and
superficial thing compared with the vast and ancient
thing that is Islam; it flared out after a few violent
years, in a way Islam is most unlikely to do.
How, then, to deal with the faith of a billion
people, which we have only recently paid any attention
to? More cautiously, obviously, than our rulers have done
so far, barging into the Middle East with plans of
conquest, alias "democracy" (complete with equal rights
for women!). We offer to supplant their old traditions
with our latest fads, and then we are disappointed when
they resist.
Back in 2000, candidate George W. Bush scoffed at
nation-building, in the wise realization that a nation
isn't something you "build." The Communists used to speak
of "building a new society," but they succeeded only in
destroying most of the old one. How did Bush manage to
forget what he once knew?
I have no idea, but forget it he did, and his
"global democratic revolution" is (or was; he has muted
this theme lately) a close equivalent of the Communist
project that survives, after a fashion, only in Cuba. If
you would see his monument, go to Baghdad and look around
you. The Iraq war has made the Vietnam war look like a
smooth operation.
Bush and his team have failed to distinguish between
the superficial evil of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship,
which was easily toppled, and the abiding reality of an
Islamic society, which doesn't welcome reform by
unbelievers. By now they must be learning the difference.
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060815.shtml
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joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 987
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 10:10 pm: |
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If you want the links, I will post them.
By the way, the glib "superficial evil' phrase is insulting to the million dead ones, unaware they were only superficially dead.
jd |
Nohero
Supporter
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 5775
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 10:14 pm: |
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I know I wrote that I'd try to ignore this thread in the hope that it would fade away, but that obviously isn't going to happen.
Having said that, the latest article from one of the hate sites, quoted above, purports to be based on a verse of the Koran. Funny thing is, there does not seem to be a verse of the Koran that says that.
The rest of the article is nonsense, as well, imho.
Couldn't you guys find better things to do than to continue to fling this trash onto the message board? |
sbenois
Supporter
Username: Sbenois
Post Number: 15657
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 11:05 pm: |
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I believe that this is the section (and verse in bold) being referred to:
The Accessions
[8.11] When He caused calm to fall on you as a security from Him and sent down upon you water from the cloud that He might thereby purify you, and take away from you the uncleanness of the Shaitan, and that He might fortify your hearts and steady (your) footsteps thereby.
[8.12] When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
[8.13] This is because they acted adversely to Allah and His Apostle; and whoever acts adversely to Allah and His Apostle-- then surely Allah is severe in requiting (evil).
[8.14] This-- taste it, and (know) that for the unbelievers is the chastisement of fire.
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sbenois
Supporter
Username: Sbenois
Post Number: 15658
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 11:07 pm: |
|
KOA,
Please define what some form of justice for the Palestinians would look like.
And who is supposed to offer it. |
Nohero
Supporter
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 5778
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 11:17 pm: |
|
Thank you for making my point. The article used a phrase which was "sorta, kinda" like something that could be found in the Koran, but which changed the meaning and the context of the text it was allegedly based on. Since you found that text, then you could find that it is not about killing anybody who is not a Muslim. It's apparently about war, which is a subject which turns up in the scriptures of various faiths, unfortunately. |
sbenois
Supporter
Username: Sbenois
Post Number: 15660
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 11:24 pm: |
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Whooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Time out! You've got the wrong guy!!
I have a hard enough time digesting Matzoh Charlotte so there's no way I'm getting involved in figuring out what anything in the Bible or the Koran means.
In fact, about 15 years ago some "scholars" came to me and asked if I would fund a new venture that they wanted to Sbenois Religious Interpretations Inc.
I kicked those guys out of the office and told them to never come back. |
Dave
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 10657
Registered: 4-1997
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 11:58 pm: |
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What would it look like? Probably a huge sushi place with conveyor belt service. |
3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 374
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 7:09 am: |
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Nohero,
Can you provide a definition of "hate site" other than something that you disagree with and can't refute?
Cheers |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 990
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 11:13 am: |
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Truthful sites are hate sites.
More truth:
August 30, 2006
Netherlands: Politician Facing Islamic Threats Gets No Campaign Security Help
Geert WildersBefore Ayaan Hirsi Ali left Holland to work in America, she shared one thing in common with another member of the Dutch parliament, Geert Wilders. Both were recipients of open death threats from Muslims. When the film-maker Theo van Gogh was killed in a street by Islamist Mohamed Bouyeri on November 2, 2004, a note was pinned to his chest with a knife. This note threatened Hirsi Ali and Wilders with death.
At the end of March this year, there had been a total of 121 recorded death threats made against Wilders and Ali.
Wilders, like Hirsi Ali, had been forced to go into hiding since van Gogh's murder, and only emerges into the public eye when accompanied by bodyguards. Like Hirsi Ali, Wilders had been a member of parliament, representing the Liberal Party, or VVD. However, he resigned from the party in late 2004 because of his opposition to Turkey gaining accession to the European Union.
With elections soon coming up, Wilders has founded his own party, the Party for Freedom (pvdV). But he has had to cancel a recent campaign meeting which was planned in the town of Holten yesterday, because his bodyguards said that it was unsafe. SImilarly, he has been forced to abandon a meeting in Friesland, for the same reasons.
Expatica reports that WIlder's bodyguards insist that all people attending any meetings must firstly pass through an electronic gate, which detects metal objects. To hire just one of these for one night costs 1,000 Euros ($1,283), and Wilders does not have the funds to afford these.
He told 'De Volkskrant' newspaper: "We don't have that. We are a small party. This means the end of my campaign."
He has requested assistance from the Justice Ministry, but they have refused to help. A spokesman has said that parties should be responsible for their own security.
Parliament has already supported the notion of security for Mr Wilders' campaign. Frans Weisglas, the parliament chairman, has said: "We believe the government must ensure that everyone can conduct a campaign in all freedom. Money should not be an obstacle."
This month, the broadcaster TROS cancelled an appearance by Geert Wilders because of the high costs of security. Now Mr Wilders is hoping that the Justice Minister himself, Piet Hein Donner, will intervene to allow security funding.
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/002852.html |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 991
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 11:17 am: |
|
23 truths:
SOUTHERN VIOLENCE
23 Yala banks hit by bomb blasts
Yala - Muslim militants launched 23coordinated time bomb attacks at commercial banks in this southern province Thursday, killing at least one man and severely injuring at least four bank customers, police said.
The bombs, mostly left on bank counters and some in ATM booths at the banks, were detonated mostly by clocks between 11:30 to 11:35 am. Twenty six people suffered minor injuries.
Police said militants dressed in student uniformed carried bombs hidden in folders, books and plastic banks and left them on counters where customers wrote bank slips.
The attacks prompted all banks in the province to close its business for a day and at least five schools decided to close and released students home.
The attacks were carried out in five districts - 11 in Muang, six in Betong, 2 in Yaha, 2 in Bannang Sata and 2 in Raman.
Police said most of the injured were those who came in to draw cash from ATM machines.
Most of the bombs were hidden in thick books, which pages carved out or in women handbags.
The killed was identified as Major Sanuchart Srithong, a retired army officer.
Police sources said two Muslim youths have been arrested after police checked tape from security cameras of ATM booths and saw them planting the bombs.
In Muang district, 11 banks were attacked. They were Government Savings Bank (GSB), Bank of Ayudhya (BAY), Krungthai Bank (KTB), two branches of Islamic Bank, Kasikorn Thai Bank, Siam City Bank (SCIB), Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), Thai Military Bank and Siam Commercial Bank (SCB).
In Betong, the BAAC branch, SCB branch, Kasikorn Thai branch, GSB branch and KTB branch were attacked. Another bomb was defused in time at the Bangkok Bank.
In Yaha, the GSB branch and BAAC branch were attacked.
In Bannang Sata, the KTB and BAAC branches were attacked.
In Raman, the KTB and BAAC branches were hit by the bombs.
A source from the Siam City Bank in Yala downtown said an official received a phone call, saying a bomb had been planted near the manager's room.
The caller told the bank to evacuate its employees immediately but the bomb exploded shortly after the phone was hung up.
A bank official was injured on his arm and bank customers ran for their life after the explosion, the source said.
Sources from security agencies said they have received a tip-off that the militants would launch coordinated attacks in a few days but they expected the attacks would be carried out on Friday.
Somsak Thisarn, the manager of SCB Yala branch, said the Yala Banker Association resolved to have all banks in Yala closed for a day.
Sanya Suwanpho, chairman of the Yala Teachers Federation, said some schools decided to close for fear that militants would shift attacks to schools after the banks.
He said parents and teachers had learnt that the militants would launch attacks on August 31 to mark the formation of the Bersatu terrorist umbrella group.
Lt Gen Ongkorn Thongprasom, commander of the Fourth Army Area, said all army forces in Yala had been deployed to control the situation shortly after the attacks.
The Nation
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/08/31/headlines/headlines_30012441.php |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 994
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 12:29 pm: |
|
Top 10 Reasons Islam Might Not Be a Religion of Peace
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=23438&catcode=13 |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 2030
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 12:33 pm: |
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it would have been a better article if he counted the reasons down from 10 to 1. Otherwise thanks for making it a link and not a cut and paste. |
Dave
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 10664
Registered: 4-1997
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 12:35 pm: |
|
Ok, the hate speech ends on MOL today. |
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