From Creeping Sharia:
‘Islamic Circle of North America’ seeks Islamic super-state governed by sharia law
Posted on December 31, 2010 by creeping
Hand Book Shows ICNA’s True Goals via IPT News
The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is preaching a global Caliphate and Islamic Shari’a law over America to its members, according to the 2010 ICNA Member’s Hand Book. This is a very different message than the group’s public outreach efforts, and contradicts claims that the organization is a tolerant, mainstream Islamic group.
As the hand book spells out, the organization’s ultimate goal is “the Establishment of Islam” as the sole basis of global society and governance. It also encourages members to deceive people in its proselytizing campaign to help fulfill this goal. This aim is one that ICNA has been actively pursuing as the group has set its sights on America’s constitutional separation of religion and state.
It’s not the first example of radicalism by one of America’s largest Muslim organizations. ICNA’s magazine has featured interviews with terrorist leaders in Pakistan, called on youth to fight abroad in Kashmir, and honored like-minded extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and South Asia’s Jamaat-e-Islami. Concerns have also been expressed about 5 young members of the group’s Virginia mosque, who were arrested and convicted on terrorism charges after attempting to link up with and fight for Pakistani terror groups in December 2009.
As the hand book explains, ICNA doesn’t just believe that religion is a private affair. “Establishment of the Religion” extends beyond the individual and family and into the society, state, and world. “These words [Establishment of the Religion] include not only practicing the religion in individual and collective life and propagating its true teaching to others, but also striving to make this Deen [religion] a way of life for all,” the hand book reads.
ICNA’s charter is even more explicit. It calls for the “establishment of the Islamic system of life” in the world, “whether it pertains to beliefs, rituals and morals or to economic, social or political spheres.”
For ICNA, this means being the American branch of a global phenomenon that they refer to as the ‘Islamic Movement.’ The 2010 Hand Book notes, branches of this movement “are active in various parts of the world to achieve the same objectives. It is our obligation as Muslims to engage in the same noble cause here in North America.”
Working in an ‘Islamic Movement’ culminates in an Islamic super-state, the Caliphate, the hand book says. Believers have an obligation to strive to reestablish a collective body of Muslims worldwide, organized into the super-state under the direction of a Caliphate and Islamic law. The group wants “the united Muslim Ummah [community] in a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah in accordance with the laws of shari’ah.”
Read it all at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2373/hand-book-shows-icna-true-goals
Friday, December 31, 2010
Hate Crimes Against Jews On The Rise
From The American Spectator:
5:28 PM (1 hour ago)Hate Crimes Against Jews in U.S. on the Risefrom The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog by Aaron GoldsteinWhile I don't want to end the year on a down note I would like to draw your attention to a disturbing trend.
It seems that incidences of anti-Semitism are on the rise in this country. According to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Jews were targeted for hate crimes more frequently than any other group. In 2009, of 37% of all hate crimes committed in the Empire State were directed against Jews. With regard to hate crimes motivated by religious affiliation, Jews were targeted 85%. Most of the hate crimes directed against Jews were crimes against property (presumably synagogues and Jewish community centers) although more than half the incidents involved threats and assault against Jews. To put this figure into perspective, Muslims in New York State were targeted 1.6% of the time. While the report notes that such figures are underreported within the Muslim community one still cannot ignored the vast statistical differential.
It is also hardly an isolated trend. While hate crimes in Los Angeles County decreased overall in 2009, anti-Semitic vandalism rose nearly 50% from 2008. So while Jews were targeted 88% of the time, Muslims were targeted 3% of the time. Yet Los Angeles City Council saw fit to pass a resolution condemning Islamophobia while making no mention of the far more significant increase in incidents of anti-Semitism.
The FBI hate crime statistics tell a similar story. Jews were the targets of 71.9% of all religious hate crimes reported in the U.S. last year. Conversely, Muslims were the target of 8.4% of religious hate crimes. Interestingly, when Israel is criticized for its actions the word "disproportionate" or "disproportionately" are often used. Well, given that Jews comprise just over 2% of the U.S. population one must then conclude that Jews are "disrproportionately" targeted where it concerns crimes committed against people and their property because of religious affiliation.
Now unlike Whoopi Goldberg (who while appearing on The O'Reilly Factor in November dismissed the fact that Jews are more frequent targets of hate in this country than Muslims) I am not trying to trivialize hate crimes that have occurred against Muslims in this country. Far from it. Anyone stupid enough to commit vandalism against a mosque or an Islamic community center or wantonly accosts, threatens or assaults someone simply because they are Muslim deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Yet we do ourselves a disservice to pretend this country is awash in Islamophobia. Nor for that matter is this country rife with anti-Semitism. Outside of Israel, the United States is probably the least anti-Semitic nation on earth and I think most Americans would like it to stay that way.
That said I am fully supportive of being vigilant against attacks towards American Muslims and their property. But it is clear to me that at least for the time being we need to direct greater attention and resources towards combating anti-Semitism in the U.S.
5:28 PM (1 hour ago)Hate Crimes Against Jews in U.S. on the Risefrom The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog by Aaron GoldsteinWhile I don't want to end the year on a down note I would like to draw your attention to a disturbing trend.
It seems that incidences of anti-Semitism are on the rise in this country. According to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Jews were targeted for hate crimes more frequently than any other group. In 2009, of 37% of all hate crimes committed in the Empire State were directed against Jews. With regard to hate crimes motivated by religious affiliation, Jews were targeted 85%. Most of the hate crimes directed against Jews were crimes against property (presumably synagogues and Jewish community centers) although more than half the incidents involved threats and assault against Jews. To put this figure into perspective, Muslims in New York State were targeted 1.6% of the time. While the report notes that such figures are underreported within the Muslim community one still cannot ignored the vast statistical differential.
It is also hardly an isolated trend. While hate crimes in Los Angeles County decreased overall in 2009, anti-Semitic vandalism rose nearly 50% from 2008. So while Jews were targeted 88% of the time, Muslims were targeted 3% of the time. Yet Los Angeles City Council saw fit to pass a resolution condemning Islamophobia while making no mention of the far more significant increase in incidents of anti-Semitism.
The FBI hate crime statistics tell a similar story. Jews were the targets of 71.9% of all religious hate crimes reported in the U.S. last year. Conversely, Muslims were the target of 8.4% of religious hate crimes. Interestingly, when Israel is criticized for its actions the word "disproportionate" or "disproportionately" are often used. Well, given that Jews comprise just over 2% of the U.S. population one must then conclude that Jews are "disrproportionately" targeted where it concerns crimes committed against people and their property because of religious affiliation.
Now unlike Whoopi Goldberg (who while appearing on The O'Reilly Factor in November dismissed the fact that Jews are more frequent targets of hate in this country than Muslims) I am not trying to trivialize hate crimes that have occurred against Muslims in this country. Far from it. Anyone stupid enough to commit vandalism against a mosque or an Islamic community center or wantonly accosts, threatens or assaults someone simply because they are Muslim deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Yet we do ourselves a disservice to pretend this country is awash in Islamophobia. Nor for that matter is this country rife with anti-Semitism. Outside of Israel, the United States is probably the least anti-Semitic nation on earth and I think most Americans would like it to stay that way.
That said I am fully supportive of being vigilant against attacks towards American Muslims and their property. But it is clear to me that at least for the time being we need to direct greater attention and resources towards combating anti-Semitism in the U.S.
Spain: It Is Absolutely Necessary To Accept Islamic Values As European Values
From Winds of Jihad:
Spain: “it is absolutely necessary to accept Islamic values as European values”
by sheikyermami on December 31, 2010
Absolutely necessary. Why, imam? Why must we adopt “Islamic values?”
“Islamic Values” like stoning for adultery, amputation for theft, polygamy, concubinage, child-marriage, slavery, the subjugation of women, and all the other stipulations of the Sharia?
Can anyone tell me what the reconquista was all about?
Buenas Noches, Espagna!
Noureddine Ziani, Moroccan imam:
Europeans should replace the term “Judeo-Christian” with term “Islamo-Christian” when describing Western Civilization.
Spain Goes on Mosque-Building Spree
Madrid Mosque
Churches Forced to Close (Hudson New York)
The city of Barcelona, widely known as a European Mecca of anti-clerical postmodernism, has agreed to build an official mega-mosque with a capacity for thousands of Muslim worshipers. The new structure would rival the massive Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, currently the biggest mosque in Spain. An official in the office of the Mayor of Barcelona says the objective is to increase the visibility of Muslims in Spain, as well as to promote the “common values between Islam and Europe.”
The Barcelona mosque project is just one of dozens of new mosques that are in various stages of construction across Spain. Overall, there are now thirteen mega-mosques in Spain, and more than 1000 smaller mosques and prayer centers scattered across the country, the majority of which are located in Catalonia in northeastern Spain.
The Muslim building spree reflects the rising influence of Islam in Spain, where the Muslim population has jumped to an estimated 1.5 million in 2010, up from just 100,000 in 1990, thanks to massive immigration. The construction of new mosques comes at a time when municipalities linked to the Socialist Party have closed dozens of Christian churches across Spain by way of new zoning laws that several courts have now ruled discriminatory and unconstitutional. It also comes at a time of growing anti-Semitism in Spain.
(With Muslims comes Jew-hatred…)
The Barcelona mosque project was announced during a weeklong seminar titled “Muslims and European Values,” jointly sponsored by the European Council of Moroccan Ulemas [Muslim religious scholars], based in Brussels, and the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers in Catalonia, based in Barcelona. A representative of the Barcelona mayor’s office who attended the conference told the Madrid-based El País newspaper that the municipality would get involved in the mosque project because “although religion pertains to the private realm, this does not mean it does not have a public role.”
The idea to build a mega-mosque funded by Spanish taxpayers comes after Noureddine Ziani, a Barcelona-based Moroccan imam, said the construction of big mosques would be the best way to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Spain. “It is easier to disseminate fundamentalist ideas in small mosques set up in garages where only the members of the congregation attend, than in large mosques that are open to everyone, with prayer rooms, cafes and meeting areas,” Ziani told the Spanish news agency EFE. He also said European governments should pay for the training of imams, which would be “a useful formula to avoid radical positions.”
The Barcelona mosque would be that city’s answer to the six-story, 12,000 square meter (130,000 square feet)Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, which opened in 1992 and is one of the biggest mosques in Europe. It was paid for by the government of Saudi Arabia, as was the €22 million ($30 million) Islamic Cultural Center in Málaga, a small city in southern Spain that is home to almost 100,000 Muslims. (The center’s website includes politically correct “news,” with headlines such as “Christian Palestine under Zionist Occupation” and “Julian Assange Victim of the Empire of Evil.”)
Saudi Arabia, which also built the “great mosques” in the Spanish cities of Marbella and Fuengirola, has been accused of using the mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Spain to promote the Wahhabi sect of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism rejects all non-Wahhabi Islam, any dialogue with other religions and any opening up to other cultures. By definition, it also rejects the integration of Muslim immigrants into Spanish society.
Not surprisingly, the Saudi government officially supports the Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative sponsored by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which borrows heavily from the Dialogue of Civilizations concept promoted by Islamic radicals in Iran in the 1990s — and the initiative calls for the West to negotiate a truce with Islamic terrorists on terms set by the terrorists.
In December 2000, the Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid was expelled from the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (FEERI) to “frustrate the attempts of Saudi Arabia to control Islam in Spain.” Most Muslim immigrants in Spain are from the Maghreb (especially Morocco and Algeria) or Pakistan; analysts say their low standards of living and low levels of education make them particularly susceptible to the Islamist propaganda promoted by Saudi Arabia.
Elsewhere in Spain, residents of the Basque city of Bilbao were recently surprised to find their mailboxes stuffed with flyers in Spanish and Arabic from the Islamic Community of Bilbao asking them for money to build a 650 square meter mosque costing €550,000 ($725,000). Their website says: “We were expelled [from Spain] as Moriscos in 1609, really not that long ago. … The echo of Al-Andalus still resonates in all the valley of the Ebro [ie Spain]. We are back to stay, Insha’Allah [if Allah wills it].”
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of Spain ruled by Muslim conquerors from 711 and 1492. Many Muslims believe that the territories they lost during the Spanish Reconquista still belong to them, and that they have a right to return and establish their rule there – a belief based on the Islamic precept that territories once occupied by Muslims must forever remain under Muslim domination.
The Moriscos, descendants of the Muslim population that converted to Christianity under threat of exile in 1502, were ultimately expelled from Spain by King Philip III in 1609. Muslim leaders say Spain could right the wrong by offering Spanish citizenship to the Muslim descendants of the Moriscos as an “apology and acknowledgement of mistakes” made during the Spanish Inquisition.
In Córdoba, Muslims are demanding that the Spanish government allow them to worship in the main cathedral, which had been a mosque during the medieval Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus and is now a World Heritage Site. Muslims hope to recreate the ancient city of Córdoba as a pilgrimage site for Muslims throughout Europe. Funds for the project to turn “Córdoba into the Mecca of the West” are being sought from the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, and Muslim organizations in Morocco and Egypt.
In Granada, a city in southern Spain that was the last Muslim stronghold of Al-Andalus to capitulate to the Roman Catholic kings in 1492, a muezzin now calls Muslims to prayer at the first mosque to be opened in the city since the Spanish Reconquista. The Great Mosque of Granada “is a symbol of a return to Islam among the Spanish people and among indigenous Europeans,” says Abdel Haqq Salaberria, a spokesman for the mosque. “It will act as a focal point for the Islamic revival in Europe,” he says. It was paid for by Libya, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
In Lleida, a town in northeastern Spain where 29,000 Muslims make up 20% of the population, the local Islamic association Watani recently asked Moroccan King Mohammad VI for money to build a mosque in the center of town. Local Muslims are incensed that the municipality gave them land to build a mosque on the outskirts of town and not in the city center. Although the municipality gave the land more than three years ago, the local Muslim community has refused to apply for a formal license: it is demanding a more “dignified location for the Muslim community to worship.”
In Zaragoza, the fifth-largest city in Spain, the 22,000-strong Islamic community has been negotiating the purchase of an abandoned Roman Catholic grade school for €3 million. In September, however, a group of 200 teenage anarchist squatters took over the property (a seemingly normal occurrence in Spain), but a local judge has refused to remove them for “security” reasons. The local imam is now demanding a “big and visible location” for a mosque: many Muslims view the city as “theirs” and they want a way to show it.
Meanwhile, the Madrid-based ABC newspaper reports that more than 100 mosques in Spain have radical imams preaching to the faithful each Friday. The newspaper says some imams have established religious police that harass and attack those who do not comply with Islamic law. ABC also reports that during 2010, more than 10 Salafist conferences were held in Spain, compared to only one in 2008.
Salafism is a branch of revivalist Islam that calls for restoring past Muslim glory by re-establishing an Islamic empire across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe. Salafists view Spain as a Muslim state that must be reconquered for Islam.
At the same time, Noureddine Ziani, the Moroccan imam, says it is absolutely necessary to accept Islamic values as European values. He also says that from now on, Europeans should replace the term “Judeo-Christian” with term “Islamo-Christian” when describing Western Civilization.
Tragic. Devastating.
Spain: “it is absolutely necessary to accept Islamic values as European values”
by sheikyermami on December 31, 2010
Absolutely necessary. Why, imam? Why must we adopt “Islamic values?”
“Islamic Values” like stoning for adultery, amputation for theft, polygamy, concubinage, child-marriage, slavery, the subjugation of women, and all the other stipulations of the Sharia?
Can anyone tell me what the reconquista was all about?
Buenas Noches, Espagna!
Noureddine Ziani, Moroccan imam:
Europeans should replace the term “Judeo-Christian” with term “Islamo-Christian” when describing Western Civilization.
Spain Goes on Mosque-Building Spree
Madrid Mosque
Churches Forced to Close (Hudson New York)
The city of Barcelona, widely known as a European Mecca of anti-clerical postmodernism, has agreed to build an official mega-mosque with a capacity for thousands of Muslim worshipers. The new structure would rival the massive Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, currently the biggest mosque in Spain. An official in the office of the Mayor of Barcelona says the objective is to increase the visibility of Muslims in Spain, as well as to promote the “common values between Islam and Europe.”
The Barcelona mosque project is just one of dozens of new mosques that are in various stages of construction across Spain. Overall, there are now thirteen mega-mosques in Spain, and more than 1000 smaller mosques and prayer centers scattered across the country, the majority of which are located in Catalonia in northeastern Spain.
The Muslim building spree reflects the rising influence of Islam in Spain, where the Muslim population has jumped to an estimated 1.5 million in 2010, up from just 100,000 in 1990, thanks to massive immigration. The construction of new mosques comes at a time when municipalities linked to the Socialist Party have closed dozens of Christian churches across Spain by way of new zoning laws that several courts have now ruled discriminatory and unconstitutional. It also comes at a time of growing anti-Semitism in Spain.
(With Muslims comes Jew-hatred…)
The Barcelona mosque project was announced during a weeklong seminar titled “Muslims and European Values,” jointly sponsored by the European Council of Moroccan Ulemas [Muslim religious scholars], based in Brussels, and the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers in Catalonia, based in Barcelona. A representative of the Barcelona mayor’s office who attended the conference told the Madrid-based El País newspaper that the municipality would get involved in the mosque project because “although religion pertains to the private realm, this does not mean it does not have a public role.”
The idea to build a mega-mosque funded by Spanish taxpayers comes after Noureddine Ziani, a Barcelona-based Moroccan imam, said the construction of big mosques would be the best way to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Spain. “It is easier to disseminate fundamentalist ideas in small mosques set up in garages where only the members of the congregation attend, than in large mosques that are open to everyone, with prayer rooms, cafes and meeting areas,” Ziani told the Spanish news agency EFE. He also said European governments should pay for the training of imams, which would be “a useful formula to avoid radical positions.”
The Barcelona mosque would be that city’s answer to the six-story, 12,000 square meter (130,000 square feet)Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid, which opened in 1992 and is one of the biggest mosques in Europe. It was paid for by the government of Saudi Arabia, as was the €22 million ($30 million) Islamic Cultural Center in Málaga, a small city in southern Spain that is home to almost 100,000 Muslims. (The center’s website includes politically correct “news,” with headlines such as “Christian Palestine under Zionist Occupation” and “Julian Assange Victim of the Empire of Evil.”)
Saudi Arabia, which also built the “great mosques” in the Spanish cities of Marbella and Fuengirola, has been accused of using the mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Spain to promote the Wahhabi sect of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism rejects all non-Wahhabi Islam, any dialogue with other religions and any opening up to other cultures. By definition, it also rejects the integration of Muslim immigrants into Spanish society.
Not surprisingly, the Saudi government officially supports the Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative sponsored by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which borrows heavily from the Dialogue of Civilizations concept promoted by Islamic radicals in Iran in the 1990s — and the initiative calls for the West to negotiate a truce with Islamic terrorists on terms set by the terrorists.
In December 2000, the Islamic Cultural Center in Madrid was expelled from the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (FEERI) to “frustrate the attempts of Saudi Arabia to control Islam in Spain.” Most Muslim immigrants in Spain are from the Maghreb (especially Morocco and Algeria) or Pakistan; analysts say their low standards of living and low levels of education make them particularly susceptible to the Islamist propaganda promoted by Saudi Arabia.
Elsewhere in Spain, residents of the Basque city of Bilbao were recently surprised to find their mailboxes stuffed with flyers in Spanish and Arabic from the Islamic Community of Bilbao asking them for money to build a 650 square meter mosque costing €550,000 ($725,000). Their website says: “We were expelled [from Spain] as Moriscos in 1609, really not that long ago. … The echo of Al-Andalus still resonates in all the valley of the Ebro [ie Spain]. We are back to stay, Insha’Allah [if Allah wills it].”
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of Spain ruled by Muslim conquerors from 711 and 1492. Many Muslims believe that the territories they lost during the Spanish Reconquista still belong to them, and that they have a right to return and establish their rule there – a belief based on the Islamic precept that territories once occupied by Muslims must forever remain under Muslim domination.
The Moriscos, descendants of the Muslim population that converted to Christianity under threat of exile in 1502, were ultimately expelled from Spain by King Philip III in 1609. Muslim leaders say Spain could right the wrong by offering Spanish citizenship to the Muslim descendants of the Moriscos as an “apology and acknowledgement of mistakes” made during the Spanish Inquisition.
In Córdoba, Muslims are demanding that the Spanish government allow them to worship in the main cathedral, which had been a mosque during the medieval Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus and is now a World Heritage Site. Muslims hope to recreate the ancient city of Córdoba as a pilgrimage site for Muslims throughout Europe. Funds for the project to turn “Córdoba into the Mecca of the West” are being sought from the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, and Muslim organizations in Morocco and Egypt.
In Granada, a city in southern Spain that was the last Muslim stronghold of Al-Andalus to capitulate to the Roman Catholic kings in 1492, a muezzin now calls Muslims to prayer at the first mosque to be opened in the city since the Spanish Reconquista. The Great Mosque of Granada “is a symbol of a return to Islam among the Spanish people and among indigenous Europeans,” says Abdel Haqq Salaberria, a spokesman for the mosque. “It will act as a focal point for the Islamic revival in Europe,” he says. It was paid for by Libya, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
In Lleida, a town in northeastern Spain where 29,000 Muslims make up 20% of the population, the local Islamic association Watani recently asked Moroccan King Mohammad VI for money to build a mosque in the center of town. Local Muslims are incensed that the municipality gave them land to build a mosque on the outskirts of town and not in the city center. Although the municipality gave the land more than three years ago, the local Muslim community has refused to apply for a formal license: it is demanding a more “dignified location for the Muslim community to worship.”
In Zaragoza, the fifth-largest city in Spain, the 22,000-strong Islamic community has been negotiating the purchase of an abandoned Roman Catholic grade school for €3 million. In September, however, a group of 200 teenage anarchist squatters took over the property (a seemingly normal occurrence in Spain), but a local judge has refused to remove them for “security” reasons. The local imam is now demanding a “big and visible location” for a mosque: many Muslims view the city as “theirs” and they want a way to show it.
Meanwhile, the Madrid-based ABC newspaper reports that more than 100 mosques in Spain have radical imams preaching to the faithful each Friday. The newspaper says some imams have established religious police that harass and attack those who do not comply with Islamic law. ABC also reports that during 2010, more than 10 Salafist conferences were held in Spain, compared to only one in 2008.
Salafism is a branch of revivalist Islam that calls for restoring past Muslim glory by re-establishing an Islamic empire across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe. Salafists view Spain as a Muslim state that must be reconquered for Islam.
At the same time, Noureddine Ziani, the Moroccan imam, says it is absolutely necessary to accept Islamic values as European values. He also says that from now on, Europeans should replace the term “Judeo-Christian” with term “Islamo-Christian” when describing Western Civilization.
Tragic. Devastating.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Multi-Culturalism Vs. Morality And National Survival
From The American Thinker:
December 28, 2010
Multiculturalism vs. Morality and National Survival
By Pieder Beeli
For the sake of analysis, let's consider a hypothesis: The texts of Islam are a terror manual, and the Prophet of Islam is the world's terror-commander.
For the purposes of this article, this is only an unsubstantiated hypothesis. But let's entertain the hypothesis and see some possible consequences in our political culture.
Clearly, the more physically benign behavior of moderate Muslims appeals to the egalitarian sensibilities of the multiculturalists. The multiculturalists -- who cannot stomach the thesis that Islam is evil -- look to resurrect a morally palatable picture of Islam by any means possible. While epistemologically, Islam should be defined by its texts and its Prophet -- whom Koran 33:21 identifies as an excellent example of conduct -- the multiculturalists are only too willing to sacrifice epistemological primacy for their "good" of declaring Islam just as virtuous and legitimate as any other religion out there.
In other words, multiculturalists look for any good -- or even merely the avoidance of some bad -- anywhere in the neighborhood of Islam, and when they find it, presto! Islam itself is declared morally virtuous.
If Islam were a religion of terror, such interplay between moderate Muslims and Western multiculturalists would be lethal. Moderate Muslims would present a moral veneer of Islam which multiculturalists would use to prohibit the moral legitimacy of Islam from being challenged. Reflexive declarations of "Islamophobe!" upon those challenging the multiculturalists' creed would serve to prevent or inhibit the West from ideologically attacking Islam and depriving the jihadists of their noble self-perception.
While it is obvious that one should not be tolerant of evil, to the multiculturalist, the highest virtue is tolerance, and especially tolerance of Islam. Standing prominently in Obama's speeches, including the "A New Beginning" speech in Cairo and his September 11 "Day of Unity and Renewal" speech, are references to "tolerance." One such statement on the passing of Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi praises Tantawi -- who called Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs" -- as "a voice for faith and tolerance." Would Obama so eulogize a member of the KKK who said that black people are "descendants of apes and pigs"?
By the magic of multiculturalism, the once "self evident [truth] ... that all men are created equal" has been superseded.
According to a Department of Homeland Security recently declassified report, "[A signature of r]ightwing extremism in the United States ... [is] hate-orient[ation] (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups)." Even though the Islamic world's Jew-hatred is clearly the greatest inspiration to racism today, the word "Islam" or "Muslim" is nowhere mentioned in the document.
It seems that instead of our academic a priori "Islam is evil" hypothesis, the U.S. government has adopted an a priori "Islam is good" hypothesis...and runs with it.
But not just political theory is overthrown by multiculturalism; mathematics is, too. Given that Muslims constitute around 20% of the global population and that 27 of the 28 FBI most wanted terrorists are foreign Muslims, mathematically, Muslims are -- by very conservative estimates -- over one hundred times more likely to commit an act of terror against the U.S. than are non-Muslims. But the equipoise nature of multiculturalism apparently operates on a higher level of mathematics, enabling Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to say in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre that Nidal Hasan "does not, obviously, represent the Muslim faith."
Political theory, mathematics, and yes, even war are hijacked by multiculturalism. Citing that one does not war against a tactic, but an ideology, the Obama administration wisely criticized the Bush administration for the label "War on Terror." But in saying "our enemies are al Qaeda and their allies who are trying to kill us," Obama replaces the tactic of "terror" with the tactic of "killing." Whereas Bush led the quixotic "War on Terror," Obama leads the quixotic "War on Killing."
The Obama White house forwarded that the ideological objective in "al Qaeda's case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate." But isn't this objective shared by most countries of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)? For that matter, isn't it the objective of the U.N. to provide some sort of supranational political domination to achieve their ends? How, then, is it that when al-Qaeda pursues the end of a global caliphate, al-Qaeda is bad, but when the OIC attempt to do so, the Obama administration assists them?
According the DHS report, "Rightwing extremism in the United States ... reject[s] federal authority in favor of state or local authority." In other words, DHS is going to war against the Tenth Amendment.
The Obama administration has no objective ideological criterion by which it distinguishes al-Qaeda and the Taliban from any other organization. But identifying and attacking the ideology of your opponent is the first and primary task of war. The administration's clearest statement of ideological warfare has been against the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.
Is the U.S. ideological campaign countering terrorism more interested in exempting Islam from ideological and moral scrutiny -- so as to protect delicate Islamic sensibilities -- than in engaging in meaningful ideological warfare? Indeed, what is the meaning of the phrase "to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic" if those making this oath are unwilling to consider whether or not a certain ideology seeks to put those of us who "[do not] hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger" under subjugation "until they pay the Jizya [tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Koran 9:29, Yusef Ali translation)?
Clearly, it would be unfair to say a priori that Islam is evil. Such an assertion would itself be evil. But despite our multiculturalist proclivities, perhaps it is no less evil to say a priori that Islam is not fundamentally evil. Even then-Senator Obama once said, "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason."
Nearly ten years after 9/11, it just might be time to start a debate on the matter. Resolved: the texts of Islam are a terror manual, and the Prophet of Islam is the world's terror-commander. Given both the disproportionate representation of Muslims on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list and the mantra of American Muslims -- who assure us of the compatibility of critical thinking, self-examination, and moral virtue with Islam -- one might logically, but naïvely, think such a debate would be welcomed by the Islamic community.
Based on the above recent hypocritical, incoherent, treasonous, and racist remarks from the White House, it seems that some critical thinking is long overdue. If we cannot even entertain debate about the moral character of Islam, then the war is already over.
Pieder Beeli, Ph.D. (Physics) is a homeschooling father of five beautiful children. His work has been published at WorldNetDaily.com.
December 28, 2010
Multiculturalism vs. Morality and National Survival
By Pieder Beeli
For the sake of analysis, let's consider a hypothesis: The texts of Islam are a terror manual, and the Prophet of Islam is the world's terror-commander.
For the purposes of this article, this is only an unsubstantiated hypothesis. But let's entertain the hypothesis and see some possible consequences in our political culture.
Clearly, the more physically benign behavior of moderate Muslims appeals to the egalitarian sensibilities of the multiculturalists. The multiculturalists -- who cannot stomach the thesis that Islam is evil -- look to resurrect a morally palatable picture of Islam by any means possible. While epistemologically, Islam should be defined by its texts and its Prophet -- whom Koran 33:21 identifies as an excellent example of conduct -- the multiculturalists are only too willing to sacrifice epistemological primacy for their "good" of declaring Islam just as virtuous and legitimate as any other religion out there.
In other words, multiculturalists look for any good -- or even merely the avoidance of some bad -- anywhere in the neighborhood of Islam, and when they find it, presto! Islam itself is declared morally virtuous.
If Islam were a religion of terror, such interplay between moderate Muslims and Western multiculturalists would be lethal. Moderate Muslims would present a moral veneer of Islam which multiculturalists would use to prohibit the moral legitimacy of Islam from being challenged. Reflexive declarations of "Islamophobe!" upon those challenging the multiculturalists' creed would serve to prevent or inhibit the West from ideologically attacking Islam and depriving the jihadists of their noble self-perception.
While it is obvious that one should not be tolerant of evil, to the multiculturalist, the highest virtue is tolerance, and especially tolerance of Islam. Standing prominently in Obama's speeches, including the "A New Beginning" speech in Cairo and his September 11 "Day of Unity and Renewal" speech, are references to "tolerance." One such statement on the passing of Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi praises Tantawi -- who called Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs" -- as "a voice for faith and tolerance." Would Obama so eulogize a member of the KKK who said that black people are "descendants of apes and pigs"?
By the magic of multiculturalism, the once "self evident [truth] ... that all men are created equal" has been superseded.
According to a Department of Homeland Security recently declassified report, "[A signature of r]ightwing extremism in the United States ... [is] hate-orient[ation] (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups)." Even though the Islamic world's Jew-hatred is clearly the greatest inspiration to racism today, the word "Islam" or "Muslim" is nowhere mentioned in the document.
It seems that instead of our academic a priori "Islam is evil" hypothesis, the U.S. government has adopted an a priori "Islam is good" hypothesis...and runs with it.
But not just political theory is overthrown by multiculturalism; mathematics is, too. Given that Muslims constitute around 20% of the global population and that 27 of the 28 FBI most wanted terrorists are foreign Muslims, mathematically, Muslims are -- by very conservative estimates -- over one hundred times more likely to commit an act of terror against the U.S. than are non-Muslims. But the equipoise nature of multiculturalism apparently operates on a higher level of mathematics, enabling Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to say in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre that Nidal Hasan "does not, obviously, represent the Muslim faith."
Political theory, mathematics, and yes, even war are hijacked by multiculturalism. Citing that one does not war against a tactic, but an ideology, the Obama administration wisely criticized the Bush administration for the label "War on Terror." But in saying "our enemies are al Qaeda and their allies who are trying to kill us," Obama replaces the tactic of "terror" with the tactic of "killing." Whereas Bush led the quixotic "War on Terror," Obama leads the quixotic "War on Killing."
The Obama White house forwarded that the ideological objective in "al Qaeda's case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate." But isn't this objective shared by most countries of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)? For that matter, isn't it the objective of the U.N. to provide some sort of supranational political domination to achieve their ends? How, then, is it that when al-Qaeda pursues the end of a global caliphate, al-Qaeda is bad, but when the OIC attempt to do so, the Obama administration assists them?
According the DHS report, "Rightwing extremism in the United States ... reject[s] federal authority in favor of state or local authority." In other words, DHS is going to war against the Tenth Amendment.
The Obama administration has no objective ideological criterion by which it distinguishes al-Qaeda and the Taliban from any other organization. But identifying and attacking the ideology of your opponent is the first and primary task of war. The administration's clearest statement of ideological warfare has been against the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.
Is the U.S. ideological campaign countering terrorism more interested in exempting Islam from ideological and moral scrutiny -- so as to protect delicate Islamic sensibilities -- than in engaging in meaningful ideological warfare? Indeed, what is the meaning of the phrase "to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic" if those making this oath are unwilling to consider whether or not a certain ideology seeks to put those of us who "[do not] hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger" under subjugation "until they pay the Jizya [tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Koran 9:29, Yusef Ali translation)?
Clearly, it would be unfair to say a priori that Islam is evil. Such an assertion would itself be evil. But despite our multiculturalist proclivities, perhaps it is no less evil to say a priori that Islam is not fundamentally evil. Even then-Senator Obama once said, "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason."
Nearly ten years after 9/11, it just might be time to start a debate on the matter. Resolved: the texts of Islam are a terror manual, and the Prophet of Islam is the world's terror-commander. Given both the disproportionate representation of Muslims on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list and the mantra of American Muslims -- who assure us of the compatibility of critical thinking, self-examination, and moral virtue with Islam -- one might logically, but naïvely, think such a debate would be welcomed by the Islamic community.
Based on the above recent hypocritical, incoherent, treasonous, and racist remarks from the White House, it seems that some critical thinking is long overdue. If we cannot even entertain debate about the moral character of Islam, then the war is already over.
Pieder Beeli, Ph.D. (Physics) is a homeschooling father of five beautiful children. His work has been published at WorldNetDaily.com.
Mind-Slaughter
From The American Thinker:
December 28, 2010
Bill O'Reilly's Mindslaughter
By Andrew G. Bostom
It is somewhat ironic that immensely popular Fox News host Bill O'Reilly epitomizes willful blindness to Sharia, or Islamic Law, encroachment in the US. Mr. O'Reilly has been pilloried by the left for both his undeniably accurate statements that the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on 9/11/2001 were committed by Muslims and, more broadly, his commonsensical recognition of the global plethora of jihad-related "Muslim problems" outside the U.S.
Nonetheless, Mr. O'Reilly is in lockstep with his media and political antagonists when it comes to glib, ignorant denial regarding the pervasive support for Sharia by mainstream Islamic religious organizations, and Muslim religious leaders, in America.
Mr. O'Reilly's uninformed statements illustrate the contemporary equivalent of what Robert Conquest, the preeminent scholar of Soviet Communist totalitarianism, appositely characterized as "mindslaughter" -- a brilliantly evocative term for delusive Western apologetics regarding the ideology of Communism and the tangible horrors its Communist votaries inflicted. Conquest, in his elucidation of Western vulnerability to totalitarian ideologies, wrote that democracy itself is "far less a matter of institutions than habits of mind" -- the latter being subject to constant "stresses and strains." He then notes the disturbingly widespread acceptance of totalitarian concepts amongst the ordinary citizens of pluralist Western societies.
Many in the West gave their full allegiance to these alien beliefs. Many others were at any rate not ill disposed towards them. And beyond that there was...a sort of secondary infection of the mental atmosphere of the West which still to some degree persists, distorting thought in countries that escaped the more wholesale disasters of our time.
But Conquest evinces no sympathy for those numerous "Western intellectuals or near intellectuals" of the 1930s through the 1950s whose willful delusions about the Soviet Union "will be incredible to later students of mental aberration." His critique of Western media highlights a tendency which has persisted and intensified over the intervening decades and through to the present.
O'Reilly's personal see-no-Sharia-mindslaughter was displayed vividly when he offered to wield a hammer on behalf of the Ground Zero Mosque project. His statement revealed a basic ignorance of mosque promoter Feisal Rauf's expressed ideology, including the imam's Sharia-based conception of "peace" itself -- more accurately, a global Pax Islamica. Subsequently, O'Reilly has reiterated his brazen -- albeit clueless -- denial of aggressive Sharia promotion in the U.S. He hectored courageous victims of Sharia-promoting jihadism such as Brigitte Gabriel and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser on this specific point ("They are not getting anywhere in the U.S. ... The Muslim Brotherhood is making no inroads in the U.S.") and later repeated this empty-headed pronouncement as a putative "rebuttal" to Dr. Monica Crowley's concern about stealth jihadism:
But that [Sharia-promoting stealth jihadism] hasn't taken root here. There is no evidence of that. Western Europe is a whole different story. You'd have to prove it to me that it's happening here. And I haven't seen that. ... [Y]ou've got to show me the hard data.
As I pointed out earlier, there is nothing "nuanced" about Imam Feisal Rauf's belief in the primacy of Sharia in society -- any society -- despite its permanent advocacy of jihad and dehumanizing injunctions on non-Muslims and women.
Rauf, in his 2004 "What's Right With Islam" -- released in Malaysia as "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Da'wah From the Heart of America Post-9/11" -- asserts that the U.S. is in a state of "readiness" for the Sharia: "The American political structure is Shariah compliant, for a state inhabited predominantly by Muslims neither defines nor makes it synonymous with an Islamic state."
And Rauf also charts how the U.S. could evolve toward what is clearly his ultimate goal -- an Islamic State -- beginning with a parallel Sharia judiciary. However, it is Rauf's earlier 1999 "Islam: A Sacred Law: What Every Muslim Should Know About Sharia" which makes unmistakably clear both the triumphal basis for his pious Muslim desire to impose Islamic law and the far-reaching effects of this application.
Pace witless, apologetic assessments by non-Muslim public intellectuals and talking heads, such as Bill O'Reilly, irrespective of their political ideology, Imam Rauf's unabashed support for a holistic application of Sharia reflects the prevailing attitudes -- and goals -- of the U.S. Muslim community. Confirmatory evidence of this widespread, dangerous American Muslim phenomenon abounds, despite being almost universally and willfully ignored -- from ominous polling data to jihad funding trial revelations and the content of more banal Muslim litigation proceedings, mosque surveillance reports, analyses of Islamic education institutions and their Muslim schoolchildren's textbooks, the issuance of obscurantist "fatwas" (Islamic legal rulings) by the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, and finally, an open declaration by one of America's largest mainstream Muslims organizations, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), in its 2010 ICNA Member's Hand Book, calling for the (re)creation of a global Muslim Caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law in America. Salient details from these illustrative examples include the following:
•Data (compiled here) from an April 2001 survey performed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) revealing that 69% of American Muslims in America affirmed that it was "absolutely fundamental" or "very important" to have Salafi (i.e., fundamentalist Islamic) teachings at their mosques, while 67% of respondents agreed with the statement "America is an immoral, corrupt society." Another poll conducted in Detroit area mosques during 2003 found that 81% of the respondents endorsed the application of the Sharia where Muslims constitued a majority.
•An internal Muslim Brotherhood statement dated May 22, 1991, whose contents were revealed during the Texas Holy Land Foundation jihad-terrorism funding trial. Written by an acolyte of the Brotherhood's major theoretician, lionized Qatari cleric, popular Al-Jazeera television personality, and head of the European Fatwa Council Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the document, entitled "An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America," is indeed self-explanatory:
The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.
•The Mapping Shariah Project's initial findings from one hundred mosques randomly selected across the U.S. testing the hypothesis that Sharia adherence within mosques (including, among many other factors, gender separation, clothing, male facial hair, jewelry, strictness on alignment shoulder-to-shoulder during prayer, etc.) would correlate with incitement to jihadism, revealed the following:
- 75% of the mosques are Sharia-adherent (on a scale of 1-10, they are 7 or higher).
- 25% of the mosques were very low Sharia-adherent (1-2 on the scale).
- The correlation between Sharia-adherence and the use of literature calling for violence against the infidel and apostate and jihad was 0.9 -- an almost 1:1 relationship.
- In most mosques where this violent literature was found, the imam actively encouraged the Mapping Shariah Project's researcher posing as a new attendee to study this violent material.
•A provisional inquiry by the Public Policy Alliance uncovered seventeen instances in eleven states of American judges accepting "input" from Sharia in rendering judgments, including an odious, widely publicized New Jersey ruling that upheld Sharia-sanctioned marital rape. Appellate court intervention was required to reverse this ruling in July 2010 -- Western legal norms prevailing over the Sharia -- with the presiding judge soberly concluding that the Muslim husband's "conduct in engaging in nonconsensual sexual intercourse was unquestionably knowing, regardless of his view that his [Islamic] religion permitted him to act as he did." Completely ignored at the time of these New Jersey proceedings was the fact that marital rape is not recognized as criminal -- i.e., it is sanctioned by a fatwa of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (see below)!
•Investigations of textbooks widely used in the New York city area Islamic schools, as well as the Islamic Saudi Academy of Fairfax, Virginia, which discovered the inculcation of Sharia supremacism, including sacralized disparagement and hatred of non-Muslims, especially Jews. When questioned for the March 30, 2003 NY Daily News story on New York area Islamic school textbooks, Yahiya Emerick, head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, defended the language in these books, denying that they were inflammatory. Emerick opined:
Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don't feel embarrassed to say that ... [The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It's telling kids that we have our own tradition.
•The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), whose mission statement maintains the organization was "founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America...AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation's laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities," is accepted as such by the mainstream American Muslim community. Notwithstanding this mainstream acceptance, including uncritical endorsement of its recent seventh annual American conference in Houston (October 15-18, 2010) to train American imams, AMJA has issued rulings which sanction the killing of apostates, "blasphemers" (including non-Muslims guilty of this "crime"), and adulterers (by stoning to death). Furthermore, these rulings condone marital rape.
•Finally, as reported by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), one of the largest mainstream U.S. Muslim organizations, in its 2010 ICNA Member's Hand Book, openly acknowledges being the American branch of a global jihadist phenomenon referred to as the "Islamic Movement." The 2010 Hand Book observes that branches of this movement "are active in various parts of the world to achieve the same objectives. It is our obligation as Muslims to engage in the same noble cause here in North America." These efforts will culminate in the (re)creation of a transnational Islamic superstate, the Caliphate, under the Sharia.
... the united Muslim Ummah [community] in a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah in accordance with the laws of shari'ah.
The appropriate concluding question, in light of this mountain of disturbing evidence, might be "What is to be undone?" -- invoking ideals and motivations directly opposed to the Leninist mantra. We must promote the Sharia educational and anti-Sharia advocacy resources provided, in particular, by the Center for Security Policy under the aegis of the indefatigable Frank Gaffney.
As a tenacious fighter against both Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, historian Karl Wittfogel (d. 1988) was optimistic that "[a] new insight that is fully perceived, convincingly communicated, and daringly applied may change the face of a military and political campaign. It may change the face of a historical crisis."
Identifying and vociferously rejecting the encroachment of Islamic Sharia is the apposite "insight" for our era applying Wittfogel's paradigm.
Wittfogel concluded his great 1957 work on pre-modern Eastern totalitarianism, Oriental Despotism -- A Comparative Study of Total Power, with what remain defining questions for free Western societies confronting Islamic totalitarianism more than a half century later. Wittfogel ultimately cites Herodotus, the West's first true historian, to remind us of the most appropriate -- and courageous -- inspiration:
Ultimately, the readiness to sacrifice and the willingness to take the calculated risk of alliance against the total enemy depend upon the proper evaluation of two simple issues: slavery and freedom.
The good citizens of classical Greece drew strength from the determination of two of their countrymen, Sperthias and Bulis, to resist the lure of total power. On their way to Suza, the Spartan envoys were met by Hydarnes, a high Persian official, who offered to make them mighty in their homeland, if only they would attach themselves to the Great King, his despotic master. To the benefit of Greece-and to the benefit of all free men-Herodotus has preserved their answer. "Hydarnes," they said, "thou art a one-sided counselor. Thou has experience of half the matter; but the other half is beyond thy knowledge. A slave's life thou understandest; but, never having tasted liberty, thou canst not tell whether it be sweet or no. Ah! Hadst thou known what freedom is, thou wouldst have bidden us fight for it, not with spear only, but with the battle-axe."
December 28, 2010
Bill O'Reilly's Mindslaughter
By Andrew G. Bostom
It is somewhat ironic that immensely popular Fox News host Bill O'Reilly epitomizes willful blindness to Sharia, or Islamic Law, encroachment in the US. Mr. O'Reilly has been pilloried by the left for both his undeniably accurate statements that the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on 9/11/2001 were committed by Muslims and, more broadly, his commonsensical recognition of the global plethora of jihad-related "Muslim problems" outside the U.S.
Nonetheless, Mr. O'Reilly is in lockstep with his media and political antagonists when it comes to glib, ignorant denial regarding the pervasive support for Sharia by mainstream Islamic religious organizations, and Muslim religious leaders, in America.
Mr. O'Reilly's uninformed statements illustrate the contemporary equivalent of what Robert Conquest, the preeminent scholar of Soviet Communist totalitarianism, appositely characterized as "mindslaughter" -- a brilliantly evocative term for delusive Western apologetics regarding the ideology of Communism and the tangible horrors its Communist votaries inflicted. Conquest, in his elucidation of Western vulnerability to totalitarian ideologies, wrote that democracy itself is "far less a matter of institutions than habits of mind" -- the latter being subject to constant "stresses and strains." He then notes the disturbingly widespread acceptance of totalitarian concepts amongst the ordinary citizens of pluralist Western societies.
Many in the West gave their full allegiance to these alien beliefs. Many others were at any rate not ill disposed towards them. And beyond that there was...a sort of secondary infection of the mental atmosphere of the West which still to some degree persists, distorting thought in countries that escaped the more wholesale disasters of our time.
But Conquest evinces no sympathy for those numerous "Western intellectuals or near intellectuals" of the 1930s through the 1950s whose willful delusions about the Soviet Union "will be incredible to later students of mental aberration." His critique of Western media highlights a tendency which has persisted and intensified over the intervening decades and through to the present.
O'Reilly's personal see-no-Sharia-mindslaughter was displayed vividly when he offered to wield a hammer on behalf of the Ground Zero Mosque project. His statement revealed a basic ignorance of mosque promoter Feisal Rauf's expressed ideology, including the imam's Sharia-based conception of "peace" itself -- more accurately, a global Pax Islamica. Subsequently, O'Reilly has reiterated his brazen -- albeit clueless -- denial of aggressive Sharia promotion in the U.S. He hectored courageous victims of Sharia-promoting jihadism such as Brigitte Gabriel and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser on this specific point ("They are not getting anywhere in the U.S. ... The Muslim Brotherhood is making no inroads in the U.S.") and later repeated this empty-headed pronouncement as a putative "rebuttal" to Dr. Monica Crowley's concern about stealth jihadism:
But that [Sharia-promoting stealth jihadism] hasn't taken root here. There is no evidence of that. Western Europe is a whole different story. You'd have to prove it to me that it's happening here. And I haven't seen that. ... [Y]ou've got to show me the hard data.
As I pointed out earlier, there is nothing "nuanced" about Imam Feisal Rauf's belief in the primacy of Sharia in society -- any society -- despite its permanent advocacy of jihad and dehumanizing injunctions on non-Muslims and women.
Rauf, in his 2004 "What's Right With Islam" -- released in Malaysia as "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Da'wah From the Heart of America Post-9/11" -- asserts that the U.S. is in a state of "readiness" for the Sharia: "The American political structure is Shariah compliant, for a state inhabited predominantly by Muslims neither defines nor makes it synonymous with an Islamic state."
And Rauf also charts how the U.S. could evolve toward what is clearly his ultimate goal -- an Islamic State -- beginning with a parallel Sharia judiciary. However, it is Rauf's earlier 1999 "Islam: A Sacred Law: What Every Muslim Should Know About Sharia" which makes unmistakably clear both the triumphal basis for his pious Muslim desire to impose Islamic law and the far-reaching effects of this application.
Pace witless, apologetic assessments by non-Muslim public intellectuals and talking heads, such as Bill O'Reilly, irrespective of their political ideology, Imam Rauf's unabashed support for a holistic application of Sharia reflects the prevailing attitudes -- and goals -- of the U.S. Muslim community. Confirmatory evidence of this widespread, dangerous American Muslim phenomenon abounds, despite being almost universally and willfully ignored -- from ominous polling data to jihad funding trial revelations and the content of more banal Muslim litigation proceedings, mosque surveillance reports, analyses of Islamic education institutions and their Muslim schoolchildren's textbooks, the issuance of obscurantist "fatwas" (Islamic legal rulings) by the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, and finally, an open declaration by one of America's largest mainstream Muslims organizations, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), in its 2010 ICNA Member's Hand Book, calling for the (re)creation of a global Muslim Caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law in America. Salient details from these illustrative examples include the following:
•Data (compiled here) from an April 2001 survey performed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) revealing that 69% of American Muslims in America affirmed that it was "absolutely fundamental" or "very important" to have Salafi (i.e., fundamentalist Islamic) teachings at their mosques, while 67% of respondents agreed with the statement "America is an immoral, corrupt society." Another poll conducted in Detroit area mosques during 2003 found that 81% of the respondents endorsed the application of the Sharia where Muslims constitued a majority.
•An internal Muslim Brotherhood statement dated May 22, 1991, whose contents were revealed during the Texas Holy Land Foundation jihad-terrorism funding trial. Written by an acolyte of the Brotherhood's major theoretician, lionized Qatari cleric, popular Al-Jazeera television personality, and head of the European Fatwa Council Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the document, entitled "An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America," is indeed self-explanatory:
The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.
•The Mapping Shariah Project's initial findings from one hundred mosques randomly selected across the U.S. testing the hypothesis that Sharia adherence within mosques (including, among many other factors, gender separation, clothing, male facial hair, jewelry, strictness on alignment shoulder-to-shoulder during prayer, etc.) would correlate with incitement to jihadism, revealed the following:
- 75% of the mosques are Sharia-adherent (on a scale of 1-10, they are 7 or higher).
- 25% of the mosques were very low Sharia-adherent (1-2 on the scale).
- The correlation between Sharia-adherence and the use of literature calling for violence against the infidel and apostate and jihad was 0.9 -- an almost 1:1 relationship.
- In most mosques where this violent literature was found, the imam actively encouraged the Mapping Shariah Project's researcher posing as a new attendee to study this violent material.
•A provisional inquiry by the Public Policy Alliance uncovered seventeen instances in eleven states of American judges accepting "input" from Sharia in rendering judgments, including an odious, widely publicized New Jersey ruling that upheld Sharia-sanctioned marital rape. Appellate court intervention was required to reverse this ruling in July 2010 -- Western legal norms prevailing over the Sharia -- with the presiding judge soberly concluding that the Muslim husband's "conduct in engaging in nonconsensual sexual intercourse was unquestionably knowing, regardless of his view that his [Islamic] religion permitted him to act as he did." Completely ignored at the time of these New Jersey proceedings was the fact that marital rape is not recognized as criminal -- i.e., it is sanctioned by a fatwa of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (see below)!
•Investigations of textbooks widely used in the New York city area Islamic schools, as well as the Islamic Saudi Academy of Fairfax, Virginia, which discovered the inculcation of Sharia supremacism, including sacralized disparagement and hatred of non-Muslims, especially Jews. When questioned for the March 30, 2003 NY Daily News story on New York area Islamic school textbooks, Yahiya Emerick, head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, defended the language in these books, denying that they were inflammatory. Emerick opined:
Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don't feel embarrassed to say that ... [The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It's telling kids that we have our own tradition.
•The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), whose mission statement maintains the organization was "founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America...AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation's laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities," is accepted as such by the mainstream American Muslim community. Notwithstanding this mainstream acceptance, including uncritical endorsement of its recent seventh annual American conference in Houston (October 15-18, 2010) to train American imams, AMJA has issued rulings which sanction the killing of apostates, "blasphemers" (including non-Muslims guilty of this "crime"), and adulterers (by stoning to death). Furthermore, these rulings condone marital rape.
•Finally, as reported by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), one of the largest mainstream U.S. Muslim organizations, in its 2010 ICNA Member's Hand Book, openly acknowledges being the American branch of a global jihadist phenomenon referred to as the "Islamic Movement." The 2010 Hand Book observes that branches of this movement "are active in various parts of the world to achieve the same objectives. It is our obligation as Muslims to engage in the same noble cause here in North America." These efforts will culminate in the (re)creation of a transnational Islamic superstate, the Caliphate, under the Sharia.
... the united Muslim Ummah [community] in a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah in accordance with the laws of shari'ah.
The appropriate concluding question, in light of this mountain of disturbing evidence, might be "What is to be undone?" -- invoking ideals and motivations directly opposed to the Leninist mantra. We must promote the Sharia educational and anti-Sharia advocacy resources provided, in particular, by the Center for Security Policy under the aegis of the indefatigable Frank Gaffney.
As a tenacious fighter against both Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, historian Karl Wittfogel (d. 1988) was optimistic that "[a] new insight that is fully perceived, convincingly communicated, and daringly applied may change the face of a military and political campaign. It may change the face of a historical crisis."
Identifying and vociferously rejecting the encroachment of Islamic Sharia is the apposite "insight" for our era applying Wittfogel's paradigm.
Wittfogel concluded his great 1957 work on pre-modern Eastern totalitarianism, Oriental Despotism -- A Comparative Study of Total Power, with what remain defining questions for free Western societies confronting Islamic totalitarianism more than a half century later. Wittfogel ultimately cites Herodotus, the West's first true historian, to remind us of the most appropriate -- and courageous -- inspiration:
Ultimately, the readiness to sacrifice and the willingness to take the calculated risk of alliance against the total enemy depend upon the proper evaluation of two simple issues: slavery and freedom.
The good citizens of classical Greece drew strength from the determination of two of their countrymen, Sperthias and Bulis, to resist the lure of total power. On their way to Suza, the Spartan envoys were met by Hydarnes, a high Persian official, who offered to make them mighty in their homeland, if only they would attach themselves to the Great King, his despotic master. To the benefit of Greece-and to the benefit of all free men-Herodotus has preserved their answer. "Hydarnes," they said, "thou art a one-sided counselor. Thou has experience of half the matter; but the other half is beyond thy knowledge. A slave's life thou understandest; but, never having tasted liberty, thou canst not tell whether it be sweet or no. Ah! Hadst thou known what freedom is, thou wouldst have bidden us fight for it, not with spear only, but with the battle-axe."
If Muslims Were Treated Like Christians In America...
From Jihad Watch:
If Muslims were treated like Christians in America...
Pointing out a glaring and largely unnoticed double standard. "If Christians Were Treated Like Muslims," by Gary Bauer in Human Events, December 28:
[...] If Muslims were treated like Christians in America, Muslims would have to tolerate the defamation of their holiest images in our national museums, acts which would be called "artwork" -- and, if particularly provocative, even given taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. They would also have to accept Korans being burned and thrown into toilets, which instead of inciting worldwide outrage and retribution would provoke a collective shrug of the shoulders.
If Muslims were treated like Christians, Muslims would be mocked by late night TV talk show hosts and lampooned in crude cartoon parodies. If Christians were treated like Muslims, conspicuous Christianity would be celebrated by our elites as a sign of our diversity and open-mindedness, not disparaged as an embarrassment, a nuisance and a breach of the law.
If Christianity were treated like Islam, our students would be taught a white-washed version of Christian history, with the troubling bits miscast or omitted from textbooks and lesson plans.
If Christianity were treated like Islam, if an evangelical Christian committed an evil act in the name of his faith, he would be portrayed in the media as a deviation from, not a personification of, the Gospel message. Meanwhile, our political and media elites would hasten to assure the public that evangelical Christianity is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of evangelical Christians do not support terrorism.
If Christianity were treated like Islam in America, our president, a professed Christian, would proudly attend Christian-themed dinners and events while skipping Ramadan dinners, not vice versa. And Muslim politicians would go out of their way to assure people that their faith would not affect their policy-making.
If Christianity were treated like Islam, Christmas and Easter would be publicly celebrated for what they are -- the signature events of Christianity, marking the birth and the death and Resurrection of Christ -- not stripped of all their theological meaning and transformed into secular holidays devoted to crass consumerism.
If Christians were treated like Muslims, NASA would be tasked with reaching out to Christians and recognizing their faith's profound achievements and contributions to science, math and engineering, instead of being told to make Muslims feel good about their rather meager scientific accomplishments.
If Christians were treated like Muslims, the Catholic Church's stances on sex, contraception and human life would be revered as welcome departures from our over-sexed, self-obsessed culture, not condemned as a cause of disease and death in the less-developed world. And if Muslims were treated like Christians, the application of Sharia law around the world would be met not with stony silence but with the outrage it deserves.
If Christians were treated like Muslims in America, amusement parks would celebrate "Christian Family Day," (Six Flags recently celebrated "Muslim Family Day"), and Christians would be asked to embrace, not set aside, their religious convictions at the door when they entered the public square. Meanwhile, Muslim imams, not Christian pastors, would fear hate crimes lawsuits for preaching orthodox views of sexuality and sin.
The notion that American Muslims face discrimination, even to the point of violence, is often posited by America's elites. But that idea evaporates under scrutiny. Remarkably few hate crimes are reported against Muslims (fewer than one-eighth those against Jews). What's more, Muslim immigration to America has risen sharply since September 11, 2001, and Muslims thrive, economically and educationally, once they arrive.
In fact, it is Christians, not Muslims, who increasingly encounter cultural elites who are hostile to their beliefs and values....
Posted by Robert on December 29, 2010 4:49 AM
If Muslims were treated like Christians in America...
Pointing out a glaring and largely unnoticed double standard. "If Christians Were Treated Like Muslims," by Gary Bauer in Human Events, December 28:
[...] If Muslims were treated like Christians in America, Muslims would have to tolerate the defamation of their holiest images in our national museums, acts which would be called "artwork" -- and, if particularly provocative, even given taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. They would also have to accept Korans being burned and thrown into toilets, which instead of inciting worldwide outrage and retribution would provoke a collective shrug of the shoulders.
If Muslims were treated like Christians, Muslims would be mocked by late night TV talk show hosts and lampooned in crude cartoon parodies. If Christians were treated like Muslims, conspicuous Christianity would be celebrated by our elites as a sign of our diversity and open-mindedness, not disparaged as an embarrassment, a nuisance and a breach of the law.
If Christianity were treated like Islam, our students would be taught a white-washed version of Christian history, with the troubling bits miscast or omitted from textbooks and lesson plans.
If Christianity were treated like Islam, if an evangelical Christian committed an evil act in the name of his faith, he would be portrayed in the media as a deviation from, not a personification of, the Gospel message. Meanwhile, our political and media elites would hasten to assure the public that evangelical Christianity is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of evangelical Christians do not support terrorism.
If Christianity were treated like Islam in America, our president, a professed Christian, would proudly attend Christian-themed dinners and events while skipping Ramadan dinners, not vice versa. And Muslim politicians would go out of their way to assure people that their faith would not affect their policy-making.
If Christianity were treated like Islam, Christmas and Easter would be publicly celebrated for what they are -- the signature events of Christianity, marking the birth and the death and Resurrection of Christ -- not stripped of all their theological meaning and transformed into secular holidays devoted to crass consumerism.
If Christians were treated like Muslims, NASA would be tasked with reaching out to Christians and recognizing their faith's profound achievements and contributions to science, math and engineering, instead of being told to make Muslims feel good about their rather meager scientific accomplishments.
If Christians were treated like Muslims, the Catholic Church's stances on sex, contraception and human life would be revered as welcome departures from our over-sexed, self-obsessed culture, not condemned as a cause of disease and death in the less-developed world. And if Muslims were treated like Christians, the application of Sharia law around the world would be met not with stony silence but with the outrage it deserves.
If Christians were treated like Muslims in America, amusement parks would celebrate "Christian Family Day," (Six Flags recently celebrated "Muslim Family Day"), and Christians would be asked to embrace, not set aside, their religious convictions at the door when they entered the public square. Meanwhile, Muslim imams, not Christian pastors, would fear hate crimes lawsuits for preaching orthodox views of sexuality and sin.
The notion that American Muslims face discrimination, even to the point of violence, is often posited by America's elites. But that idea evaporates under scrutiny. Remarkably few hate crimes are reported against Muslims (fewer than one-eighth those against Jews). What's more, Muslim immigration to America has risen sharply since September 11, 2001, and Muslims thrive, economically and educationally, once they arrive.
In fact, it is Christians, not Muslims, who increasingly encounter cultural elites who are hostile to their beliefs and values....
Posted by Robert on December 29, 2010 4:49 AM
The BBC: All Islam Needs Is Public Relations
From Winds of Jihad:
BBC: All Islam Needs Is PR
by sheikyermami on December 30, 2010
From the ROP:
So far this Christmas, Religion of Peace devotees have bombed a church in the Philippines, blown up 45 flood refugees waiting in line for Western food aid, plotted to bomb a Christmas tree lighting in Oregon and a recruitment center in Maryland, massacred 86 innocents in attacks onNigerian churches, plotted to poison American food buffets, implant bombs in human bodies, and slaughter civilian populations in Holland,London and a newspaper office in Denmark… and even set off the first suicide blast in Sweden, which was intended for Christmas shoppers.
Resistance is useless, infidels: PR will correct your islamophobic perceptions, (or else….!)
Note: when reality beats the peace of Islam, PR-campaigns are needed to adjust the sheeple to the new reality. The future dhimmies shall not wake up to the imminent Islamization……
The German ‘revert’, former MTV presenter Kristiane Backer, is trained well in Islam’o'prop, she already sounds like an imam (actually more like a brainwashed drone). (PI has more, if you can find an article in English, please sent it in!)
Islam needs more PR: P 1
Islam needs more PR, part 2
How would you like to be the PR agent for this guy?
His name is Hasan Malik: what a coincidence!
Suitcase killer Hasan Malik
Yahoo News, NEW YORK, N.Y. - Authorities say a man already on probation has admitted killing a woman whose body was found in a suitcase on a New York City street. He claimed she attacked him first.
Hassan Malik was held without bail after his arraignment Tuesday on a murder charge.
His lawyer says the 55-year-old Malik was about to start a job as a drug counsellor.
BBC: All Islam Needs Is PR
by sheikyermami on December 30, 2010
From the ROP:
So far this Christmas, Religion of Peace devotees have bombed a church in the Philippines, blown up 45 flood refugees waiting in line for Western food aid, plotted to bomb a Christmas tree lighting in Oregon and a recruitment center in Maryland, massacred 86 innocents in attacks onNigerian churches, plotted to poison American food buffets, implant bombs in human bodies, and slaughter civilian populations in Holland,London and a newspaper office in Denmark… and even set off the first suicide blast in Sweden, which was intended for Christmas shoppers.
Resistance is useless, infidels: PR will correct your islamophobic perceptions, (or else….!)
Note: when reality beats the peace of Islam, PR-campaigns are needed to adjust the sheeple to the new reality. The future dhimmies shall not wake up to the imminent Islamization……
The German ‘revert’, former MTV presenter Kristiane Backer, is trained well in Islam’o'prop, she already sounds like an imam (actually more like a brainwashed drone). (PI has more, if you can find an article in English, please sent it in!)
Islam needs more PR: P 1
Islam needs more PR, part 2
How would you like to be the PR agent for this guy?
His name is Hasan Malik: what a coincidence!
Suitcase killer Hasan Malik
Yahoo News, NEW YORK, N.Y. - Authorities say a man already on probation has admitted killing a woman whose body was found in a suitcase on a New York City street. He claimed she attacked him first.
Hassan Malik was held without bail after his arraignment Tuesday on a murder charge.
His lawyer says the 55-year-old Malik was about to start a job as a drug counsellor.
Jihad In Russia: Radicals Killing "Moderate" Muslims
From Winds of Jihad:
Russia Jihad: the radicals are eliminating the moderates….
by sheikyermami on December 30, 2010
Eliminating the ‘moderates’ seems to be a small matter to those who like their Islam straight up. More proof that Islam is a criminal organization that leaves the Mafia dead in the dirt:
Quran 4:95-96 Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of God with their goods and their persons. God hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). For Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
Almost fifty imams and muftis killed in North Caucasus by Wahabis
Some of Moscow’s 2.5 million Muslim soldiers
Moscow, December 29, (Interfax - via ZIP) Renowned islamologist Roman Silantyev cited statistics according to which about fifty Islamic spiritual leaders were killed in the North Caucuses for fighting against Wahhabism.
“Almost 50 people were killed. These people could have formed a big muftiat,” he said in the The Faith and the World program on the Voice of Russia radio.
According to the islamologist, there are few such people left in Russia: “they are killed almost every month, losses is some muslim boards are irreplaceable, the greater number of people who were able to actively fight against Wahhabism have been killed.”
“Others are demoralized and stopped opposing or just deserted to the enemy. The situation is critical,” Silantyev believes.
He is satisfied that Russian authorities ordered to give security guards to Muslim spiritual leaders in the North Caucasus, “or we can just stay without allies.”
Russia Jihad: the radicals are eliminating the moderates….
by sheikyermami on December 30, 2010
Eliminating the ‘moderates’ seems to be a small matter to those who like their Islam straight up. More proof that Islam is a criminal organization that leaves the Mafia dead in the dirt:
Quran 4:95-96 Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of God with their goods and their persons. God hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). For Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
Almost fifty imams and muftis killed in North Caucasus by Wahabis
Some of Moscow’s 2.5 million Muslim soldiers
Moscow, December 29, (Interfax - via ZIP) Renowned islamologist Roman Silantyev cited statistics according to which about fifty Islamic spiritual leaders were killed in the North Caucuses for fighting against Wahhabism.
“Almost 50 people were killed. These people could have formed a big muftiat,” he said in the The Faith and the World program on the Voice of Russia radio.
According to the islamologist, there are few such people left in Russia: “they are killed almost every month, losses is some muslim boards are irreplaceable, the greater number of people who were able to actively fight against Wahhabism have been killed.”
“Others are demoralized and stopped opposing or just deserted to the enemy. The situation is critical,” Silantyev believes.
He is satisfied that Russian authorities ordered to give security guards to Muslim spiritual leaders in the North Caucasus, “or we can just stay without allies.”
Fear Of Islam Is Not Islamophobia
From Winds of Jihad:
Fear of Islam is not “Islamophobia”
by sheikyermami on December 30, 2010
Tim Blair:
THE LEFT’S FAVOURITE CONSERVATISM
When it comes to Islam, it’s only fear that keeps them quiet.
Noting the stunning growth of Islam in Britain – from 1,647,000 followers in 2001 to 2,869,000 this year, according to one estimate; from 870,000 in 2004 to 2,422,000 in 2008, according to another – Damian Thompson asks:
How will the rapid growth of a conservative religion totalitarian ideology affect British social attitudes towards women’s rights, marriage, divorce, homosexuality and abortion?
Imagine how vocal would be the left if, say, Catholicism experienced a similar expansion. When it comes to Islam, it’s only fear that keeps them quiet.
Just a reminder from the ‘tiny minority of excremists:’
So far this Christmas, Religion of Peace devotees have bombed a church in the Philippines, blown up 45 flood refugees waiting in line for Western food aid, plotted to bomb a Christmas tree lighting in Oregon and a recruitment center in Maryland, massacred 86 innocents in attacks on Nigerian churches, planned to poison American foodbuffets and implant bombs in human bodies, plotted the slaughter of civilians in Holland, London and a newspaper office in Denmark… and even set off the first suicide blast in Sweden,
which was intended for Christmas shoppers.
More offerings from the ‘Religion of Peace’
al-Qaeda Suicide Bomber Murders Mosul Police Chief…
Pal-Arab Family Sends Mentally Ill Boy to Be Shot by IDF…
NY Musel- Man Murders Woman in ‘Self-Defense’, Stuffs in Suitcase…
UK: Immigration Policy: Muslim Population Up 74% in 9 Years…
WikiLeaks revelation: 1 in three British Muslim students back killing for Islam and 40% want Sharia law
Fear of Islam is not “Islamophobia”
by sheikyermami on December 30, 2010
Tim Blair:
THE LEFT’S FAVOURITE CONSERVATISM
When it comes to Islam, it’s only fear that keeps them quiet.
Noting the stunning growth of Islam in Britain – from 1,647,000 followers in 2001 to 2,869,000 this year, according to one estimate; from 870,000 in 2004 to 2,422,000 in 2008, according to another – Damian Thompson asks:
How will the rapid growth of a conservative religion totalitarian ideology affect British social attitudes towards women’s rights, marriage, divorce, homosexuality and abortion?
Imagine how vocal would be the left if, say, Catholicism experienced a similar expansion. When it comes to Islam, it’s only fear that keeps them quiet.
Just a reminder from the ‘tiny minority of excremists:’
So far this Christmas, Religion of Peace devotees have bombed a church in the Philippines, blown up 45 flood refugees waiting in line for Western food aid, plotted to bomb a Christmas tree lighting in Oregon and a recruitment center in Maryland, massacred 86 innocents in attacks on Nigerian churches, planned to poison American foodbuffets and implant bombs in human bodies, plotted the slaughter of civilians in Holland, London and a newspaper office in Denmark… and even set off the first suicide blast in Sweden,
which was intended for Christmas shoppers.
More offerings from the ‘Religion of Peace’
al-Qaeda Suicide Bomber Murders Mosul Police Chief…
Pal-Arab Family Sends Mentally Ill Boy to Be Shot by IDF…
NY Musel- Man Murders Woman in ‘Self-Defense’, Stuffs in Suitcase…
UK: Immigration Policy: Muslim Population Up 74% in 9 Years…
WikiLeaks revelation: 1 in three British Muslim students back killing for Islam and 40% want Sharia law
Re-Making A Religion
I disagree with the title, in that I believe Islam is a system of political and social control and suppression, and not a religion. Its very name, submission, says it all....
From Middle East Forum:
Q&A: Remaking a Religion
Interview with Daniel Pipes
by Marvin Olasky
World
January 15, 2011
http://www.danielpipes.org/9252/remaking-a-religion
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Daniel Pipes founded the Middle East Forum in 1994. The author of 12 books, with a Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history, he is the most prominent American scholar of radical Islam; even CBS said he was "years ahead of the curve" in identifying the radical threat.
Many people associate Islam with terrorism, but you also examine a long-term threat that would be peaceful but transformative. In this country, mostly because of 9/11, we focus on terrorism, but in Europe the discussion is much more about immigration and culture. They say, "Unless we make changes, our civilization will disappear." Demographics, culture, and religion may make Europe an extension of North Africa, with attractions like the Mosque of Notre Dame in Paris.
In part that's because non-Muslim Europeans have few children, Muslims have many? There are three factors. First, demography: Women on average need to have 2.1 children to maintain a population, but in Europe right now it's about 1.4, one-third fewer children than are needed. The second factor is religion: the weakening of Christianity. Factor three is multiculturalism: no sense that your own culture is special, something worth fighting for and defending. Muslims have many children. They also immigrate. They have a distinct sense of the superiority of their civilization.
Do you agree with those who say Europe is finished? I disagree. Non-Muslims still constitute 95 percent of Europe and have it within their means to say no to Islamization—and that's what they're doing. Parties that did not exist or had insignificant existence 10-20 years ago are now potently saying no. There are two options: Eurabia, or "No." Which way? It's too early to predict.
How exactly do they say no? That's the question, I don't know how exactly, but I would expect protracted civil conflict, expulsions, use of force. It's not going to be pretty. I can't give you precise scenarios, but Europe has within its history and its potential the prospect of pretty nasty treatment of Muslims.
Would the Netherlands be the leading edge of "No"? Yes, that is the country to watch. It looks like one-third of the government will be made up of an anti-Islamic bloc. What impact do they have? How will others respond? This is all to be seen.
How do the cartoon wars play into this? Were Islamists showing they would prevent anyone from speaking out against them? In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini put out an edict against Salman Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses, in which Rushdie made fun of various Islamic sanctities. There was strong rejection of the edict: The U.S. Senate voted unanimously for a resolution asserting the right to write whatever you want. Well, 21 years later, people are being threatened and the Senate is not responding. Before 1989 anyone could write or draw whatever they wanted about Islam. Now if you do this, you are taking your life in your hands. If those of us who critique Islam and Muhammad are not allowed to speak or are intimidated from speaking, Islamists prevail: Islam walks in and who's to stop them? The real issue here is: Are we allowed to defend our civilization or not?
If current trends in the United States continue, what will be the situation in 2020? Increased deference to Islamic law. Look at Britain: Polygamy is legal so long as you contract the polygamist marriage in a place where it's legal (say, Morocco). The legal codes accommodate multiple marriages. Welfare and inheritance legal codes separate what wife No. 1 gets and what wife No. 2 gets. That has not happened in the United States, but about four years ago, in Brooklyn, two husbands with multiple wives, and a number of the wives and children, were killed in a fire. The mayor went to pay condolences—it was routine. No one blinked an eye about these polygamists in New York. Contrast that with American treatment of Mormons in the 19th century: furious rejection of polygamy.
So will we have polygamy in the United States by 2020? The debate over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque saw the emergence and mobilization of a resistance to Islamization that hitherto I haven't seen. It could well mean the beginning of a pushback.
Should we accept small accommodations—say, faucets outside an airport terminal for Muslim cab drivers to wash their feet—as an example of American pluralism and tolerance? Yes. We have chapels on military academies, with the ground given by the government and the chapel built with private money. It's an arrangement that works. Why not the same here?
What about the cab drivers and passengers with alcohol? The Minneapolis Airport had another initiative: Cab drivers were refusing to transport anyone carrying liquor. The airport solution was to create two lines, one where liquor is OK and the other where it's not. That might seem like an acceptable accommodation, but think about what this implies: liquor today, but maybe a ham sandwich tomorrow, or a woman with a sleeveless dress. If it's cab drivers today, it could be bus drivers tomorrow and then air captains the next day . . . so the whole plane doesn't take off because someone has a ham sandwich? No. This is U.S. application of Shariah law. I'm happy to report that the airport authorities told the cab drivers that if they wanted to drive taxis they would have to take whoever came along.
You've written that radical Islam is the problem and that "modern Islam" is the solution.* What is modern Islam? Modern Islam is an anti-Islamist Islam. I'm told that modern Islam is like the unicorn, much discussed but never seen—but its supporters do exist. You see Muslims all over arguing against Islamism, but they're not a movement and they're not coherent or organized with a follower and money. It needs deep thinkers—interpreters of the Quran and other sacred scriptures—along with activists and politicians.
So, defeat Islamism with secularized Islam? Work toward a form of Islam that is modern, moderate, neighborly. That is something that only Muslims can do, but we who are not Muslims can help by encouraging the anti-radicals and discouraging the radicals.
Comparing Islam and Christianity—Christianity is a religion of peace with a founder, Christ, who is clearly a person of peace. In Islam, though, Muhammad was often a warrior. Is the basis of Islam naturally warlike after its founder? The basis of Islam is warlike, but that doesn't mean it has to be warlike.
Is the "modern Islam" you want a move away from the core of Islam? It is reinterpreting Islam. The Islamist interpretation that's so dominant now was barely visible when I got into this field in the 1960s. Now it's dominant. If it can grow, then it can get smaller. We need to help it to get small.
In Christianity, you can always point to the person of Christ. In Islam, you can't move toward peace by pointing to the person of Muhammad. Fair enough, but the person of Muhammad for Muslims is not the equivalent of Jesus Christ but the equivalent of Saint Paul. Muslims have made him into almost a Jesus-like figure but that is not inherent in the religion.
But people in the United States can readily draw cartoons of any kind in relation to Christ, or Paul. If it is not a part of Islam to make Muhammad so significant, why is any criticism of him a capital crime in some places? Yes, in Pakistan regulation 295-C asserts that if you assault the prophet, you should be executed. It is a reality, but it doesn't have to be that way. Over the centuries the idea took hold that Muhammad was a perfect man—but we can rethink this. This is what I was getting at about reinterpreting the scriptures—it doesn't have to be that way.
* DP note: This should be: "that radical Islam is the problem and that 'moderate Islam' is the solution."
From Middle East Forum:
Q&A: Remaking a Religion
Interview with Daniel Pipes
by Marvin Olasky
World
January 15, 2011
http://www.danielpipes.org/9252/remaking-a-religion
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Daniel Pipes founded the Middle East Forum in 1994. The author of 12 books, with a Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history, he is the most prominent American scholar of radical Islam; even CBS said he was "years ahead of the curve" in identifying the radical threat.
Many people associate Islam with terrorism, but you also examine a long-term threat that would be peaceful but transformative. In this country, mostly because of 9/11, we focus on terrorism, but in Europe the discussion is much more about immigration and culture. They say, "Unless we make changes, our civilization will disappear." Demographics, culture, and religion may make Europe an extension of North Africa, with attractions like the Mosque of Notre Dame in Paris.
In part that's because non-Muslim Europeans have few children, Muslims have many? There are three factors. First, demography: Women on average need to have 2.1 children to maintain a population, but in Europe right now it's about 1.4, one-third fewer children than are needed. The second factor is religion: the weakening of Christianity. Factor three is multiculturalism: no sense that your own culture is special, something worth fighting for and defending. Muslims have many children. They also immigrate. They have a distinct sense of the superiority of their civilization.
Do you agree with those who say Europe is finished? I disagree. Non-Muslims still constitute 95 percent of Europe and have it within their means to say no to Islamization—and that's what they're doing. Parties that did not exist or had insignificant existence 10-20 years ago are now potently saying no. There are two options: Eurabia, or "No." Which way? It's too early to predict.
How exactly do they say no? That's the question, I don't know how exactly, but I would expect protracted civil conflict, expulsions, use of force. It's not going to be pretty. I can't give you precise scenarios, but Europe has within its history and its potential the prospect of pretty nasty treatment of Muslims.
Would the Netherlands be the leading edge of "No"? Yes, that is the country to watch. It looks like one-third of the government will be made up of an anti-Islamic bloc. What impact do they have? How will others respond? This is all to be seen.
How do the cartoon wars play into this? Were Islamists showing they would prevent anyone from speaking out against them? In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini put out an edict against Salman Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses, in which Rushdie made fun of various Islamic sanctities. There was strong rejection of the edict: The U.S. Senate voted unanimously for a resolution asserting the right to write whatever you want. Well, 21 years later, people are being threatened and the Senate is not responding. Before 1989 anyone could write or draw whatever they wanted about Islam. Now if you do this, you are taking your life in your hands. If those of us who critique Islam and Muhammad are not allowed to speak or are intimidated from speaking, Islamists prevail: Islam walks in and who's to stop them? The real issue here is: Are we allowed to defend our civilization or not?
If current trends in the United States continue, what will be the situation in 2020? Increased deference to Islamic law. Look at Britain: Polygamy is legal so long as you contract the polygamist marriage in a place where it's legal (say, Morocco). The legal codes accommodate multiple marriages. Welfare and inheritance legal codes separate what wife No. 1 gets and what wife No. 2 gets. That has not happened in the United States, but about four years ago, in Brooklyn, two husbands with multiple wives, and a number of the wives and children, were killed in a fire. The mayor went to pay condolences—it was routine. No one blinked an eye about these polygamists in New York. Contrast that with American treatment of Mormons in the 19th century: furious rejection of polygamy.
So will we have polygamy in the United States by 2020? The debate over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque saw the emergence and mobilization of a resistance to Islamization that hitherto I haven't seen. It could well mean the beginning of a pushback.
Should we accept small accommodations—say, faucets outside an airport terminal for Muslim cab drivers to wash their feet—as an example of American pluralism and tolerance? Yes. We have chapels on military academies, with the ground given by the government and the chapel built with private money. It's an arrangement that works. Why not the same here?
What about the cab drivers and passengers with alcohol? The Minneapolis Airport had another initiative: Cab drivers were refusing to transport anyone carrying liquor. The airport solution was to create two lines, one where liquor is OK and the other where it's not. That might seem like an acceptable accommodation, but think about what this implies: liquor today, but maybe a ham sandwich tomorrow, or a woman with a sleeveless dress. If it's cab drivers today, it could be bus drivers tomorrow and then air captains the next day . . . so the whole plane doesn't take off because someone has a ham sandwich? No. This is U.S. application of Shariah law. I'm happy to report that the airport authorities told the cab drivers that if they wanted to drive taxis they would have to take whoever came along.
You've written that radical Islam is the problem and that "modern Islam" is the solution.* What is modern Islam? Modern Islam is an anti-Islamist Islam. I'm told that modern Islam is like the unicorn, much discussed but never seen—but its supporters do exist. You see Muslims all over arguing against Islamism, but they're not a movement and they're not coherent or organized with a follower and money. It needs deep thinkers—interpreters of the Quran and other sacred scriptures—along with activists and politicians.
So, defeat Islamism with secularized Islam? Work toward a form of Islam that is modern, moderate, neighborly. That is something that only Muslims can do, but we who are not Muslims can help by encouraging the anti-radicals and discouraging the radicals.
Comparing Islam and Christianity—Christianity is a religion of peace with a founder, Christ, who is clearly a person of peace. In Islam, though, Muhammad was often a warrior. Is the basis of Islam naturally warlike after its founder? The basis of Islam is warlike, but that doesn't mean it has to be warlike.
Is the "modern Islam" you want a move away from the core of Islam? It is reinterpreting Islam. The Islamist interpretation that's so dominant now was barely visible when I got into this field in the 1960s. Now it's dominant. If it can grow, then it can get smaller. We need to help it to get small.
In Christianity, you can always point to the person of Christ. In Islam, you can't move toward peace by pointing to the person of Muhammad. Fair enough, but the person of Muhammad for Muslims is not the equivalent of Jesus Christ but the equivalent of Saint Paul. Muslims have made him into almost a Jesus-like figure but that is not inherent in the religion.
But people in the United States can readily draw cartoons of any kind in relation to Christ, or Paul. If it is not a part of Islam to make Muhammad so significant, why is any criticism of him a capital crime in some places? Yes, in Pakistan regulation 295-C asserts that if you assault the prophet, you should be executed. It is a reality, but it doesn't have to be that way. Over the centuries the idea took hold that Muhammad was a perfect man—but we can rethink this. This is what I was getting at about reinterpreting the scriptures—it doesn't have to be that way.
* DP note: This should be: "that radical Islam is the problem and that 'moderate Islam' is the solution."
Why Muslims Must Look Into The Mirror
From AIFD and The New York Post:
The following commentary by M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD Founder and President appeared in print and online today at this link at the New York Post. Dr. Jasser discusses the opportunity which the proposed hearings on American Muslim radicalization pose for American Muslims as we look back at the lessons of 2010.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/why_muslims_must_look_in_the_mirror_g6HY8SYPEtYo8gHubxnNhI
Updated: Thu., Dec. 30, 2010, 4:39 AM
Why Muslims must look in the mirror
By M. ZUHDI JASSER
Last Updated: 4:39 AM, December 30, 2010
Posted: 10:51 PM, December 29, 2010
If 2010 was the year America finally woke up to political Islam's ne farious reach on US soil, with luck 2011 will be the year we launch an offensive against it. One way to begin that process is through hearings that Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, plans to hold on American Muslim radicalization.
Attention to this issue offers an opportunity for American Muslims to confront the radicalization problem and provide solutions -- as only they can.
My group, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, believes these hearings will shed light on the diversity of American Muslims, giving our community a chance to step from behind the veil of Muslim victimization and address head-on the need for long-overdue ideological reforms.
Alas, the announcement of the hearings has triggered heated denunciations by groups like ISNA, CAIR and MPAC, which try to deny and obfuscate the connection between "political Islam," or Islamism, and terror.
This year, the debate on the development of the Ground Zero mosque brought the discussion of political Islam to the front page of every newspaper. While raucous at times, it provided an opportunity for Muslims who don't toe the line of American Islamist organizations to present an alternative vision for American Muslims -- one based in American values and Muslim reform.
Unfortunately, political correctness still too often dominates incidents involving Islamists. This year, the Pentagon released a report on Maj. Nidal Hasan's Fort Hood attack, titled "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood." The report was intended to convey to military commanders whatever lessons were learned from the incident, so as to prevent similar attacks in the future. Yet it never mentioned the word Islam or Muslim. Nowhere to be found was any dissection of Hasan's slide into militant Islamism or of his relationship with his homegrown jihadist mentor, Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki.
Meanwhile, President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg used the Ground Zero mosque controversy to tell the more than 70 percent of Americans who oppose the mosque that they were either wrong or confused. Discourse over recent arrests of jihadists in Portland and Baltimore focused on Islamist claims of FBI entrapment, rather than overdue introspection and calls for reform. Worries of Muslim victimization still rule the day.
Our national inability to discuss religious issues honestly is keeping American Muslims from having to accept the reforms needed to defeat political Islam and bring our faith into modernity. The victimization mantra feeds more Muslim isolation and radicalization.
A recent global study by the Pew Research Center showed that Muslims are aligning themselves more and more with Islamism. Of course, most major American Muslim groups, such ISNA, CAIR and MPAC, were built on some strand of that ideology. But knowing where most American Muslims fall in the spectrum of Islamism-vs.-liberalism, as King hopes to find out in his hearings, would be a key step toward counterradicalization.
The fact is, we can't go into 2011 without a discernable strategy on how to defeat Islamist radicalization. House hearings on Muslim radicalization would only be the first step toward finally crafting a US offensive against political Islam.
Again, only liberty-minded Muslims working from within Muslim communities can counter the narrative of Muslim victimization. But America needs to be unashamed of taking the side of those Muslims who advocate reform against political Islam.
In 2011, more Americans need to understand that jihadism is a natural by-product of a political Islam that is incompatible with Western secular democracies based in liberty. America is at war with theocratic Muslim despots who seek the imposition of sharia and don't believe in the equality of all before the law, blind to faith. They detest the association of religious freedom with liberty.
We need a coordinated national strategy of offense that gives Muslim youth an Islamic counternarrative, that defends liberty and that separates mosque and state.
The idea of the Islamic state must be left for history. It is time to help usher in a modern era for Islam and Muslims. Our national security depends on it.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and a former US Navy lieutenant commander, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. info@aifdemocracy.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following commentary by M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD Founder and President appeared in print and online today at this link at the New York Post. Dr. Jasser discusses the opportunity which the proposed hearings on American Muslim radicalization pose for American Muslims as we look back at the lessons of 2010.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/why_muslims_must_look_in_the_mirror_g6HY8SYPEtYo8gHubxnNhI
Updated: Thu., Dec. 30, 2010, 4:39 AM
Why Muslims must look in the mirror
By M. ZUHDI JASSER
Last Updated: 4:39 AM, December 30, 2010
Posted: 10:51 PM, December 29, 2010
If 2010 was the year America finally woke up to political Islam's ne farious reach on US soil, with luck 2011 will be the year we launch an offensive against it. One way to begin that process is through hearings that Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, plans to hold on American Muslim radicalization.
Attention to this issue offers an opportunity for American Muslims to confront the radicalization problem and provide solutions -- as only they can.
My group, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, believes these hearings will shed light on the diversity of American Muslims, giving our community a chance to step from behind the veil of Muslim victimization and address head-on the need for long-overdue ideological reforms.
Alas, the announcement of the hearings has triggered heated denunciations by groups like ISNA, CAIR and MPAC, which try to deny and obfuscate the connection between "political Islam," or Islamism, and terror.
This year, the debate on the development of the Ground Zero mosque brought the discussion of political Islam to the front page of every newspaper. While raucous at times, it provided an opportunity for Muslims who don't toe the line of American Islamist organizations to present an alternative vision for American Muslims -- one based in American values and Muslim reform.
Unfortunately, political correctness still too often dominates incidents involving Islamists. This year, the Pentagon released a report on Maj. Nidal Hasan's Fort Hood attack, titled "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood." The report was intended to convey to military commanders whatever lessons were learned from the incident, so as to prevent similar attacks in the future. Yet it never mentioned the word Islam or Muslim. Nowhere to be found was any dissection of Hasan's slide into militant Islamism or of his relationship with his homegrown jihadist mentor, Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki.
Meanwhile, President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg used the Ground Zero mosque controversy to tell the more than 70 percent of Americans who oppose the mosque that they were either wrong or confused. Discourse over recent arrests of jihadists in Portland and Baltimore focused on Islamist claims of FBI entrapment, rather than overdue introspection and calls for reform. Worries of Muslim victimization still rule the day.
Our national inability to discuss religious issues honestly is keeping American Muslims from having to accept the reforms needed to defeat political Islam and bring our faith into modernity. The victimization mantra feeds more Muslim isolation and radicalization.
A recent global study by the Pew Research Center showed that Muslims are aligning themselves more and more with Islamism. Of course, most major American Muslim groups, such ISNA, CAIR and MPAC, were built on some strand of that ideology. But knowing where most American Muslims fall in the spectrum of Islamism-vs.-liberalism, as King hopes to find out in his hearings, would be a key step toward counterradicalization.
The fact is, we can't go into 2011 without a discernable strategy on how to defeat Islamist radicalization. House hearings on Muslim radicalization would only be the first step toward finally crafting a US offensive against political Islam.
Again, only liberty-minded Muslims working from within Muslim communities can counter the narrative of Muslim victimization. But America needs to be unashamed of taking the side of those Muslims who advocate reform against political Islam.
In 2011, more Americans need to understand that jihadism is a natural by-product of a political Islam that is incompatible with Western secular democracies based in liberty. America is at war with theocratic Muslim despots who seek the imposition of sharia and don't believe in the equality of all before the law, blind to faith. They detest the association of religious freedom with liberty.
We need a coordinated national strategy of offense that gives Muslim youth an Islamic counternarrative, that defends liberty and that separates mosque and state.
The idea of the Islamic state must be left for history. It is time to help usher in a modern era for Islam and Muslims. Our national security depends on it.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and a former US Navy lieutenant commander, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. info@aifdemocracy.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ham, And Other Troublesome Topics In Class
From Islamist Watch:
Ham and Other Troublesome Topics in Class
by David J. Rusin • Dec 30, 2010 at 12:21 pm
http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2010/12/ham-and-other-troublesome-topics-in-class
Send RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Muslims are free not to eat pork products, but must they be protected from hearing about them? Yes, according to one high school student in Spain who was distressed by a geography lesson:
The teacher was lecturing normally on the different climates of the planet and used the Granada town of Trevélez as an example of a cold, dry climate. As an anecdote, the teacher recounted that just such a climate was conducive to the curing of hams. Then the student asked the teacher not to speak of hams since the subject offended him as a Muslim.
In a bizarre video, the student explains how talk of ham so traumatized him that he cannot get out of bed. He also accuses the teacher of telling him to leave Spain, which the educator denies. The family went so far as to lodge a complaint with police, but a clear-minded prosecutor quickly shelved it. "There is not even the minimal indication of any type of crime," he said, describing the teen's attitude as "abusive, sectarian, capricious, and inadmissible."
Regardless, one can add ham to the list of topics known to upset some Muslims in Western classrooms, sparking demands either to change the syllabus or to exempt adherents of Islam from certain academic requirements. Among the subjects causing strife through mere discussion:
The Holocaust. Muslim resistance has led to capitulations. In the Netherlands, "a fifth of history teachers in the four major Dutch cities have had to deal with not being able to or rarely bringing up the Holocaust because Muslim students in particular have difficulties with it." In Germany, "out of fear of the students' reactions, many of the teachers avoid teaching this chapter of history." Similar claims have emerged from the UK.
Mideast history. A new study has found that teachers in French public schools face pressure from students and parents who object to lessons on France's war in Algeria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Evolution. While Darwin inspires objections in French classrooms, British teachers have been accused of "bending over backwards" to placate Muslim pupils.
Select medical topics. A 2007 article reports that in the UK, "some Muslim medical students are refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases because they claim it offends their religious beliefs."
Of course, these problems are only compounded in "un-Islamic" classes such as music and swimming, which move beyond discourse and mandate the active participation of students.
The prescription? Enforce equal rights and responsibilities for all, but grant no group special privileges. José Reyes Fernández, the Spanish boy's teacher, puts it this way: if "there are 30 students … one of them must adapt to the 29 others, and not the 29 others to the one."
Ham and Other Troublesome Topics in Class
by David J. Rusin • Dec 30, 2010 at 12:21 pm
http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2010/12/ham-and-other-troublesome-topics-in-class
Send RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Muslims are free not to eat pork products, but must they be protected from hearing about them? Yes, according to one high school student in Spain who was distressed by a geography lesson:
The teacher was lecturing normally on the different climates of the planet and used the Granada town of Trevélez as an example of a cold, dry climate. As an anecdote, the teacher recounted that just such a climate was conducive to the curing of hams. Then the student asked the teacher not to speak of hams since the subject offended him as a Muslim.
In a bizarre video, the student explains how talk of ham so traumatized him that he cannot get out of bed. He also accuses the teacher of telling him to leave Spain, which the educator denies. The family went so far as to lodge a complaint with police, but a clear-minded prosecutor quickly shelved it. "There is not even the minimal indication of any type of crime," he said, describing the teen's attitude as "abusive, sectarian, capricious, and inadmissible."
Regardless, one can add ham to the list of topics known to upset some Muslims in Western classrooms, sparking demands either to change the syllabus or to exempt adherents of Islam from certain academic requirements. Among the subjects causing strife through mere discussion:
The Holocaust. Muslim resistance has led to capitulations. In the Netherlands, "a fifth of history teachers in the four major Dutch cities have had to deal with not being able to or rarely bringing up the Holocaust because Muslim students in particular have difficulties with it." In Germany, "out of fear of the students' reactions, many of the teachers avoid teaching this chapter of history." Similar claims have emerged from the UK.
Mideast history. A new study has found that teachers in French public schools face pressure from students and parents who object to lessons on France's war in Algeria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Evolution. While Darwin inspires objections in French classrooms, British teachers have been accused of "bending over backwards" to placate Muslim pupils.
Select medical topics. A 2007 article reports that in the UK, "some Muslim medical students are refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases because they claim it offends their religious beliefs."
Of course, these problems are only compounded in "un-Islamic" classes such as music and swimming, which move beyond discourse and mandate the active participation of students.
The prescription? Enforce equal rights and responsibilities for all, but grant no group special privileges. José Reyes Fernández, the Spanish boy's teacher, puts it this way: if "there are 30 students … one of them must adapt to the 29 others, and not the 29 others to the one."
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Iraqis Pack Church That Was Scene Of Massacre Despite Threats Of More Violence
From The American Thinker:
December 26, 2010
Iraqis pack church that was scene of massacre despite threats
Rick Moran
One thing for sure; in order to practice your Christian faith in Iraq or just about anywhere else in the Middle East, you have to have the courage of the early martyrs who took to heart the notion that "Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Hundreds of Christians packed Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation church for Christmas on Saturday, defying threats of attacks less than two months after militants massacred worshippers and priests there.
Security was extremely tight, with forces armed with pistols and assault rifles guarding the area and a 10-foot high (three-metre) concrete wall topped with gleaming razor wire surrounding the church.
All cars entering the area were searched, and worshippers were patted down twice before being allowed into the church.
The mood was sombre after an October 31 attack claimed by Al-Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq in which gunmen stormed the church, leaving two priests, 44 worshippers and seven security personnel dead.
The church, which was filled with more than 300 worshippers, still bears signs of the attack, its walls pockmarked from bullets and the destroyed wooden pews replaced with plastic and metal chairs.
The attack has left many reeling.
To persevere and maintain one's faith in the face of such unspeakable horror is a tribute to the ability of man to endure much in the name of one's religion.
Posted at 10:27 AM
December 26, 2010
Iraqis pack church that was scene of massacre despite threats
Rick Moran
One thing for sure; in order to practice your Christian faith in Iraq or just about anywhere else in the Middle East, you have to have the courage of the early martyrs who took to heart the notion that "Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Hundreds of Christians packed Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation church for Christmas on Saturday, defying threats of attacks less than two months after militants massacred worshippers and priests there.
Security was extremely tight, with forces armed with pistols and assault rifles guarding the area and a 10-foot high (three-metre) concrete wall topped with gleaming razor wire surrounding the church.
All cars entering the area were searched, and worshippers were patted down twice before being allowed into the church.
The mood was sombre after an October 31 attack claimed by Al-Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq in which gunmen stormed the church, leaving two priests, 44 worshippers and seven security personnel dead.
The church, which was filled with more than 300 worshippers, still bears signs of the attack, its walls pockmarked from bullets and the destroyed wooden pews replaced with plastic and metal chairs.
The attack has left many reeling.
To persevere and maintain one's faith in the face of such unspeakable horror is a tribute to the ability of man to endure much in the name of one's religion.
Posted at 10:27 AM
Sweden: Muslims Forcing Jews To Flee, Now Coptic Christians, Too
From Bare Naked Islam:
First they came for the Jews and the Swedes did nothing…
Now they (Muslims) are coming for the Coptic Chrstians and the Swedes will do nothing. We know what comes next.
Islam in Europe–The Gothenburg Coptic Christian church in Agnesberg was closed down after receiving an internet threat. The threat was vague, but the Swedish security service was called in. There are about 400 Coptic families in Sweden, most living in the Stockholm area. The community in Gothenburg has about 200 members.
On Christmas Eve the community’s pastor, Father Shenouda, was visited by four police officers who said that there were calls on the internet for what the police called ‘activities’ against certain Christian churches in Europe.
Father Shenouda contacted his community members and told them that Sunday’s mass was canceled. The church is closed for up to two weeks, to enable the police to look for possible bombs. The Coptic Christmas Eve is on Jan. 6th, and they hope to be able to use the church by then.
Police spokesperson Jan Strannegård did not want to say more about the threat or what security measure the police have taken in response. Strannegård didn’t say whether the threat originated in Egypt.
Half of all Jews have already left Malmo because of the Muslim violence against them
RELATED STORIES/VIDEOS:
sweden-death-of-a-nation
First they came for the Jews and the Swedes did nothing…
Now they (Muslims) are coming for the Coptic Chrstians and the Swedes will do nothing. We know what comes next.Islam in Europe–The Gothenburg Coptic Christian church in Agnesberg was closed down after receiving an internet threat. The threat was vague, but the Swedish security service was called in. There are about 400 Coptic families in Sweden, most living in the Stockholm area. The community in Gothenburg has about 200 members.
On Christmas Eve the community’s pastor, Father Shenouda, was visited by four police officers who said that there were calls on the internet for what the police called ‘activities’ against certain Christian churches in Europe.
Father Shenouda contacted his community members and told them that Sunday’s mass was canceled. The church is closed for up to two weeks, to enable the police to look for possible bombs. The Coptic Christmas Eve is on Jan. 6th, and they hope to be able to use the church by then.
Police spokesperson Jan Strannegård did not want to say more about the threat or what security measure the police have taken in response. Strannegård didn’t say whether the threat originated in Egypt.
Half of all Jews have already left Malmo because of the Muslim violence against them
RELATED STORIES/VIDEOS:
sweden-death-of-a-nation
Answering Khaled Abou El Fadl; Pan-Arabism's Death Rattle; Birth Tourism; Declining Muslim Birth-Rates In The West; Slavery In Muslim Countries
From Danile Pipes.org:
Answering Khaled Abou El Fadl
by Daniel Pipes
December 24, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/12/answering-khaled-abou-el-fadl
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
"Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside" blares the headline of a talk announced for Nov. 3 by the Center for Near East Studies at UCLA, "Lecture and Extended Q&A with Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, Moderated by Professor Asli Bali. Please join us for an informed discussion about Shariah and its role and impact in the West."
I, sadly, could not make it to the "informed discussion." Fortunately, however, the center posted an audio version of the talk by Abou El Fadl, a professor whom I have repeatedly criticized.
Announcement of "Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside" by Khaled Abou El Fadl.
For a Campus Watch report on the lecture as a whole, see "UCLA's Professor of Fantasy" by Cinnamon Stillwell and Eric Golub. They pay particular attention to Abou El Fadl's false statements about Robert Spencer and Steven Emerson – that's the "fantasy" in the title. His falsehoods about them are so egregious, they deserve to get Abou El Fadl sacked.
He also mentions me repeatedly in the course of his lengthy, rambling, and self-indulgent meander. First, he wonders whether my colleagues and I even matter:
The various discourses that we find by the Steven Emersons, the Robert Spencers, the Daniel Pipes's, the countless "watch" folks, the Jihad Watch folks – various pseudo-experts on whatever they wish to be experts on. Does it make a difference? Does it actually have a concrete effect in any form or context?
Oddly, Abou El Fadl avoids replying to his own question but, obviously, his devoting a whole talk to us strongly suggests we do make a difference.
Second, he distorts our shared hope that moderate Muslims will arise to challenge the Islamist hegemony:
at the same time that the Daniel Pipes's, the Robert Spencers, the Steven Emersons, the Glenn Becks … say "Well, in order for Muslims to prove to us that Islam can change, is capable of changing, we need to see a virtual civil war between the moderates and the others—extremists, militants, whatever you want to call them … something akin to a religious civil war in the Muslim world." At the same time, they often point to any inter-Muslim violence as evidence of the failure of these people as a people.
For the record: We hope that moderate Muslims will challenge Islamists in the realm of ideas, not by starting a religious war or engaging in violence.
Third, Abou El Fadl gets personal, referring to my lengthy 2004 analysis of his work titled "Stealth Islamist: Khaled Abou El Fadl." What I mean by "stealth," he replies
does not necessarily mean that all Muslims are stealth agents, but, rather, stealth in the sense of sleeper cells, that Muslims, just being in the right set of elements, environmental elements, the right set of circumstances, and they will come into contact with this essential core of their faith and therefore, immediately become prone to turning jihadi or violent.
No, that's another distortion: My article does not suggest that Abou El Fadl is a sleeper agent who might engage in terrorism; it argues that he is an Islamist posing as a moderate.
Finally, he mangles what I wrote in a 1990 article and reminisces that
when Pipes wrote this in the 1990s, I actually recall, I was giving a lecture at Irvine and there were a few professors attending the lecture and when I read this quote—in conversation with two professors afterward, they were basically saying "You're exaggerating. No one takes Pipes seriously; he's insane. Your concern about a statement like this shows your own cultural anxieties about fitting in as an immigrant [from Egypt]," blah, blah, blah. At the time, I have to admit, I thought "Well, maybe they have a point." But the Pipes-type discourse … was reserved and more civil than the discourses after 9/11. 9/11 presents a watershed moment where remarkably it becomes open season.
Comment: How interesting that Abou El Fadl, even as he distorts my message and calls me names, belatedly and reluctantly appreciates my "reserved and more civil" position opposition to Islamism, as opposed to all of Islam. (December 24, 2010)
Related Topics: Daniel Pipes autobiographical, Islamic law (Shari'a), Middle East studies
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pan-Arabism's Death Rattle
by Daniel Pipes
October 13, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/10/pan-arabism-death-rattle
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
A recent poll conducted by Near East Consulting (of a random sample of 900 Palestinians over the age of 18 in East Jerusalem the West Bank, and Gaza) asked how Palestinians identify themselves.
61 percent identify as "Muslims first"
20 percent as "Palestinians first"
15 percent as "'human beings first"
3 percent as "Arabs first."
Comment: Even after the decades, for someone like me who came to the Middle East in the age of Gamal Abdel Nasser, these numbers still surprise. (October 13, 2010)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Are you coming … to give birth?"
by Daniel Pipes
August 22, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/08/are-you-coming-to-give-birth
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
I arrived today in New Zealand and noted that the "Passenger Arrival Card" asks the usual questions about one's identity, purpose for travel, money carried – as well as this one: "Are you coming to New Zealand … to give birth?"
Comment: This is the wave of the future, a way of pre-empting the phenomenon of anchor babies. (August 22, 2010)
Related Topics: Immigration
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Declining Muslim Birthrates in the West
by Daniel Pipes
July 26, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/07/declining-muslim-birthrates-in-the-west
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
It's by now well established that Muslim birthrates in many majority-Muslim countries are cascading down: total fertility rate is under replacement (2.1 children per woman) in such countries as Uzberkistan, Lebanon, Algeria, and Iran.
In addition, that same pattern also holds for Muslims living in some Western countries. Here is information on the phenomenon as it becomes available:
Denmark: From the Islam in Europe blog:
A long-time trend of fewer births among immigrants means that their birthrate is now lower than for ethnic Danes. While Danish women have 1.9 children on average, non-Western immigrant women have 1.6. … The birthrate among immigrant women has been cut by more than half since 1993, when the average woman had 3.4 children, twice as many as Danish women did.
(July 26, 2010)
Related Topics: Demographics, Middle East patterns
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slavery in Muslim-Majority Countries
by Daniel Pipes
July 21, 2010
updated Dec 24, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/07/slavery-in-muslim-majority-countries
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
In which Muslim-majority countries does slavery remain a problem? Here's an alphabetical listing of this phenomenon, with additions as appropriate:
Afghanistan: Mostly concerns boys.
Mauritania: Slavery remains a major institution.
Pakistan: Mostly a rural phenomenon.
Saudi Arabia: Despite a 1962 law banning the practice, it remains in place. A leading theologian even states that to reject Shar'i slavery is not to be a Muslim.
Sudan: Chattel slavery returned in force with civil war in the 1990s.
Yemen: As in Saudi Arabia – a 1962 legal abolishment has not been fully effective.
Also of note is the devshirme-like institution found in such widely separated countries as Pakistan and Senegal. (July 21, 2010)
Answering Khaled Abou El Fadl
by Daniel Pipes
December 24, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/12/answering-khaled-abou-el-fadl
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
"Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside" blares the headline of a talk announced for Nov. 3 by the Center for Near East Studies at UCLA, "Lecture and Extended Q&A with Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, Moderated by Professor Asli Bali. Please join us for an informed discussion about Shariah and its role and impact in the West."
I, sadly, could not make it to the "informed discussion." Fortunately, however, the center posted an audio version of the talk by Abou El Fadl, a professor whom I have repeatedly criticized.
Announcement of "Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside" by Khaled Abou El Fadl.
For a Campus Watch report on the lecture as a whole, see "UCLA's Professor of Fantasy" by Cinnamon Stillwell and Eric Golub. They pay particular attention to Abou El Fadl's false statements about Robert Spencer and Steven Emerson – that's the "fantasy" in the title. His falsehoods about them are so egregious, they deserve to get Abou El Fadl sacked.
He also mentions me repeatedly in the course of his lengthy, rambling, and self-indulgent meander. First, he wonders whether my colleagues and I even matter:
The various discourses that we find by the Steven Emersons, the Robert Spencers, the Daniel Pipes's, the countless "watch" folks, the Jihad Watch folks – various pseudo-experts on whatever they wish to be experts on. Does it make a difference? Does it actually have a concrete effect in any form or context?
Oddly, Abou El Fadl avoids replying to his own question but, obviously, his devoting a whole talk to us strongly suggests we do make a difference.
Second, he distorts our shared hope that moderate Muslims will arise to challenge the Islamist hegemony:
at the same time that the Daniel Pipes's, the Robert Spencers, the Steven Emersons, the Glenn Becks … say "Well, in order for Muslims to prove to us that Islam can change, is capable of changing, we need to see a virtual civil war between the moderates and the others—extremists, militants, whatever you want to call them … something akin to a religious civil war in the Muslim world." At the same time, they often point to any inter-Muslim violence as evidence of the failure of these people as a people.
For the record: We hope that moderate Muslims will challenge Islamists in the realm of ideas, not by starting a religious war or engaging in violence.
Third, Abou El Fadl gets personal, referring to my lengthy 2004 analysis of his work titled "Stealth Islamist: Khaled Abou El Fadl." What I mean by "stealth," he replies
does not necessarily mean that all Muslims are stealth agents, but, rather, stealth in the sense of sleeper cells, that Muslims, just being in the right set of elements, environmental elements, the right set of circumstances, and they will come into contact with this essential core of their faith and therefore, immediately become prone to turning jihadi or violent.
No, that's another distortion: My article does not suggest that Abou El Fadl is a sleeper agent who might engage in terrorism; it argues that he is an Islamist posing as a moderate.
Finally, he mangles what I wrote in a 1990 article and reminisces that
when Pipes wrote this in the 1990s, I actually recall, I was giving a lecture at Irvine and there were a few professors attending the lecture and when I read this quote—in conversation with two professors afterward, they were basically saying "You're exaggerating. No one takes Pipes seriously; he's insane. Your concern about a statement like this shows your own cultural anxieties about fitting in as an immigrant [from Egypt]," blah, blah, blah. At the time, I have to admit, I thought "Well, maybe they have a point." But the Pipes-type discourse … was reserved and more civil than the discourses after 9/11. 9/11 presents a watershed moment where remarkably it becomes open season.
Comment: How interesting that Abou El Fadl, even as he distorts my message and calls me names, belatedly and reluctantly appreciates my "reserved and more civil" position opposition to Islamism, as opposed to all of Islam. (December 24, 2010)
Related Topics: Daniel Pipes autobiographical, Islamic law (Shari'a), Middle East studies
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pan-Arabism's Death Rattle
by Daniel Pipes
October 13, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/10/pan-arabism-death-rattle
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
A recent poll conducted by Near East Consulting (of a random sample of 900 Palestinians over the age of 18 in East Jerusalem the West Bank, and Gaza) asked how Palestinians identify themselves.
61 percent identify as "Muslims first"
20 percent as "Palestinians first"
15 percent as "'human beings first"
3 percent as "Arabs first."
Comment: Even after the decades, for someone like me who came to the Middle East in the age of Gamal Abdel Nasser, these numbers still surprise. (October 13, 2010)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Are you coming … to give birth?"
by Daniel Pipes
August 22, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/08/are-you-coming-to-give-birth
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
I arrived today in New Zealand and noted that the "Passenger Arrival Card" asks the usual questions about one's identity, purpose for travel, money carried – as well as this one: "Are you coming to New Zealand … to give birth?"
Comment: This is the wave of the future, a way of pre-empting the phenomenon of anchor babies. (August 22, 2010)
Related Topics: Immigration
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Declining Muslim Birthrates in the West
by Daniel Pipes
July 26, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/07/declining-muslim-birthrates-in-the-west
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
It's by now well established that Muslim birthrates in many majority-Muslim countries are cascading down: total fertility rate is under replacement (2.1 children per woman) in such countries as Uzberkistan, Lebanon, Algeria, and Iran.
In addition, that same pattern also holds for Muslims living in some Western countries. Here is information on the phenomenon as it becomes available:
Denmark: From the Islam in Europe blog:
A long-time trend of fewer births among immigrants means that their birthrate is now lower than for ethnic Danes. While Danish women have 1.9 children on average, non-Western immigrant women have 1.6. … The birthrate among immigrant women has been cut by more than half since 1993, when the average woman had 3.4 children, twice as many as Danish women did.
(July 26, 2010)
Related Topics: Demographics, Middle East patterns
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slavery in Muslim-Majority Countries
by Daniel Pipes
July 21, 2010
updated Dec 24, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/07/slavery-in-muslim-majority-countries
Send Comment RSS Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.
In which Muslim-majority countries does slavery remain a problem? Here's an alphabetical listing of this phenomenon, with additions as appropriate:
Afghanistan: Mostly concerns boys.
Mauritania: Slavery remains a major institution.
Pakistan: Mostly a rural phenomenon.
Saudi Arabia: Despite a 1962 law banning the practice, it remains in place. A leading theologian even states that to reject Shar'i slavery is not to be a Muslim.
Sudan: Chattel slavery returned in force with civil war in the 1990s.
Yemen: As in Saudi Arabia – a 1962 legal abolishment has not been fully effective.
Also of note is the devshirme-like institution found in such widely separated countries as Pakistan and Senegal. (July 21, 2010)
Merry Christmas Wishes From Jihad Watch
From Jihad Watch:
Merry Christmas to all Christian Jihad Watchers
The Byzantine icon above is the work of the 16th-century iconographer Theophanes the Cretan. Many Muslims around the world today would consider it offensive and insulting to Islam. Muslims in the Balkans just a few years ago have entered churches and destroyed icons like this one for precisely that reason.
How does this icon insult Islam? In many ways, including these:
1. It depicts human beings, which violates the traditional Islamic prohibition of images and would be considered idolatrous and blasphemous on its face.
2. It depicts Jesus not as a Muslim prophet, as this does:
Instead, it depicts Jesus in the traditional Christian manner, as the incarnate Son of God: his halo reads ο ων, the One Who Is, a title of divinity derived from the name of God that God gives to Moses in Exodus 3:14), in violation of the oft-repeated Qur'anic injunction that Allah has no Son (4:171; 9:30; 25:2; 39:4; 72:3; etc. etc.).
3. In line with #2, it depicts what Muslims would consider to be idolatry, as the holy child's mother kneels and adores him.
4. In the beam or spear coming from heaven down to the child in the cradle, it depicts the activity of the Divine in the world, assuming the doctrine of the Trinity, which is rejected somewhat imprecisely in Qur'an 4:171 and 5:116.
5. The cradle resembles a casket, foreshadowing the core and heart of Christianity, the redemptive death of Christ, which is denied in Qur'an 4:157.
Now, whether you are a Christian or not, and whether or not you believe all or any of these things, the question that is before us with particular urgency this Christmas is whether or not people should be allowed to believe these things freely, without being brutalized or discriminated against, if they live in, say, Iraq, or Egypt, or Pakistan, or Gaza, or Indonesia, and whether free people of all creeds and perspectives should defend their right to do so.
In those countries, as well as in the Philippines and Nigeria where jihad attacks just took place today, Christians are being kidnapped, imprisoned, wrongly arrested, beaten, and murdered not because of anything they have done, but because they have dared to believe some of the things I have adumbrated above -- beliefs that are considered blasphemous in authoritative Islam. And it is hardly better elsewhere in the Islamic world: nowhere in majority-Muslim countries today do people who believe these things enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims.
We see this at Jihad Watch every day. We see jihadists attacking Christians with increasing fury. We also see the world largely yawning and indifferent as all this goes on. Christianity is a large and multifaceted thing, with so many different and various manifestations, but in the mind of the opinion makers of the West it is Western, white, suburban, wealthy, comfortable, oppressive, and oppressing. Christians are, in the little dramas that play out in mainstream media stories every day, a bit cracked, a bit sinister, a bit dangerous, a bit grasping, and sometimes fanatically jingoistic and xenophobic. They are never victims. Muslims, by contrast, are in the daily mainstream media playlets always cast as non-Western, nonwhite, poor, wise, serene, and oppressed. (The Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan have recently been featured repeatedly in these roles.)
And so when it comes to the specter of non-Western, nonwhite Christians being persecuted by Muslims, the mainstream media's circuitry explodes. They can't handle it. They have no paradigm for doing so. It violates every rule in their playbook. So they either ignore it or mask the identity and/or motives of the perpetrators, and try to cast the focus elsewhere.
And so remember this Christmas: those Christians who are being persecuted in Iraq, and the Philippines, and Nigeria, and Egypt, and Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Islamic world, are standing in your place. The jihadis would just as soon attack you as well, and will eventually if they get the chance. Remember that the Islamic supremacist program has you on its list. You may not be a Christian. You may not be a Jew. You may not be a Hindu. You may not wish to pay attention to the jihad at all. But the jihad is universal, and relentless. And you are on its list.
So this Christmas, may all of us whose conversion, subjugation, or death is envisioned by the adherents of Sharia stand together. Let us stand together as Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, secularists, what have you, and stand up against those who would kill us or subject us to institutionalized discrimination because they find our beliefs offensive.
For be assured: if we do not stand together, they will prevail. And if they prevail, then all the richest manifestations of the unfettered human spirit, from Theophanes the Cretan above to the fashioners of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, from the Hagia Sophia to the temple of Keshava Rai at Mathura, from the works of Socrates and Aristotle to those of Moses Maimonides and Dante Alighieri and Winston Churchill and Oriana Fallaci, will be trampled into the mud, destroyed, exploded, ruined, effaced. We will all be the poorer. Our children will be the poorer.
It is time to fight for our life.
Merry Christmas to all Christian Jihad Watchers who celebrate the Feast on this day.
Posted by Robert on December 25, 2010 5:44 AM
Merry Christmas to all Christian Jihad Watchers
The Byzantine icon above is the work of the 16th-century iconographer Theophanes the Cretan. Many Muslims around the world today would consider it offensive and insulting to Islam. Muslims in the Balkans just a few years ago have entered churches and destroyed icons like this one for precisely that reason.
How does this icon insult Islam? In many ways, including these:
1. It depicts human beings, which violates the traditional Islamic prohibition of images and would be considered idolatrous and blasphemous on its face.
2. It depicts Jesus not as a Muslim prophet, as this does:
Instead, it depicts Jesus in the traditional Christian manner, as the incarnate Son of God: his halo reads ο ων, the One Who Is, a title of divinity derived from the name of God that God gives to Moses in Exodus 3:14), in violation of the oft-repeated Qur'anic injunction that Allah has no Son (4:171; 9:30; 25:2; 39:4; 72:3; etc. etc.).
3. In line with #2, it depicts what Muslims would consider to be idolatry, as the holy child's mother kneels and adores him.
4. In the beam or spear coming from heaven down to the child in the cradle, it depicts the activity of the Divine in the world, assuming the doctrine of the Trinity, which is rejected somewhat imprecisely in Qur'an 4:171 and 5:116.
5. The cradle resembles a casket, foreshadowing the core and heart of Christianity, the redemptive death of Christ, which is denied in Qur'an 4:157.
Now, whether you are a Christian or not, and whether or not you believe all or any of these things, the question that is before us with particular urgency this Christmas is whether or not people should be allowed to believe these things freely, without being brutalized or discriminated against, if they live in, say, Iraq, or Egypt, or Pakistan, or Gaza, or Indonesia, and whether free people of all creeds and perspectives should defend their right to do so.
In those countries, as well as in the Philippines and Nigeria where jihad attacks just took place today, Christians are being kidnapped, imprisoned, wrongly arrested, beaten, and murdered not because of anything they have done, but because they have dared to believe some of the things I have adumbrated above -- beliefs that are considered blasphemous in authoritative Islam. And it is hardly better elsewhere in the Islamic world: nowhere in majority-Muslim countries today do people who believe these things enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims.
We see this at Jihad Watch every day. We see jihadists attacking Christians with increasing fury. We also see the world largely yawning and indifferent as all this goes on. Christianity is a large and multifaceted thing, with so many different and various manifestations, but in the mind of the opinion makers of the West it is Western, white, suburban, wealthy, comfortable, oppressive, and oppressing. Christians are, in the little dramas that play out in mainstream media stories every day, a bit cracked, a bit sinister, a bit dangerous, a bit grasping, and sometimes fanatically jingoistic and xenophobic. They are never victims. Muslims, by contrast, are in the daily mainstream media playlets always cast as non-Western, nonwhite, poor, wise, serene, and oppressed. (The Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan have recently been featured repeatedly in these roles.)
And so when it comes to the specter of non-Western, nonwhite Christians being persecuted by Muslims, the mainstream media's circuitry explodes. They can't handle it. They have no paradigm for doing so. It violates every rule in their playbook. So they either ignore it or mask the identity and/or motives of the perpetrators, and try to cast the focus elsewhere.
And so remember this Christmas: those Christians who are being persecuted in Iraq, and the Philippines, and Nigeria, and Egypt, and Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Islamic world, are standing in your place. The jihadis would just as soon attack you as well, and will eventually if they get the chance. Remember that the Islamic supremacist program has you on its list. You may not be a Christian. You may not be a Jew. You may not be a Hindu. You may not wish to pay attention to the jihad at all. But the jihad is universal, and relentless. And you are on its list.
So this Christmas, may all of us whose conversion, subjugation, or death is envisioned by the adherents of Sharia stand together. Let us stand together as Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, secularists, what have you, and stand up against those who would kill us or subject us to institutionalized discrimination because they find our beliefs offensive.
For be assured: if we do not stand together, they will prevail. And if they prevail, then all the richest manifestations of the unfettered human spirit, from Theophanes the Cretan above to the fashioners of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, from the Hagia Sophia to the temple of Keshava Rai at Mathura, from the works of Socrates and Aristotle to those of Moses Maimonides and Dante Alighieri and Winston Churchill and Oriana Fallaci, will be trampled into the mud, destroyed, exploded, ruined, effaced. We will all be the poorer. Our children will be the poorer.
It is time to fight for our life.
Merry Christmas to all Christian Jihad Watchers who celebrate the Feast on this day.
Posted by Robert on December 25, 2010 5:44 AM
Jihad Attacks Threatened Against "The Un-Believer And Christian Countries Celebrating Christmas"
From Jihad Watch:
Jihad attacks threatened against "the unbeliever and Christian countries celebrating Christmas"
"The Zero Hour has arrived" for the forces of rage and hate. More on this story. "'Jihadist' issues Christmas bombing threat," from AFP, December 24:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A "jihadist" in an audiotaped threat said fireworks displays will set off terrorist bombs in countries celebrating Christmas, the SITE monitoring group said.
The recording, titled "The Zero Hour has arrived" and directed to "the unbeliever and Christian countries celebrating Christmas," lasts one minute, three seconds and bears the voice of a member of the Shumukh al-Islam forum, said the US-based monitor.
The speaker, according to SITE, said that failure to heed warnings to cease bloodshed in Muslim countries would result in attacks....
It also comes amid Nigeria's warning that Al-Qaeda-linked militants were likely planning attacks during the Christmas holiday, and the accidental death of a suicide bomber in Stockholm two weeks ago who apparently intended to kill Christmas shoppers.
His "accidental death" came as he was trying to explode a jihad bomb in a crowded area.
Posted by Robert on December 25, 2010 1:04 PM
Jihad attacks threatened against "the unbeliever and Christian countries celebrating Christmas"
"The Zero Hour has arrived" for the forces of rage and hate. More on this story. "'Jihadist' issues Christmas bombing threat," from AFP, December 24:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A "jihadist" in an audiotaped threat said fireworks displays will set off terrorist bombs in countries celebrating Christmas, the SITE monitoring group said.
The recording, titled "The Zero Hour has arrived" and directed to "the unbeliever and Christian countries celebrating Christmas," lasts one minute, three seconds and bears the voice of a member of the Shumukh al-Islam forum, said the US-based monitor.
The speaker, according to SITE, said that failure to heed warnings to cease bloodshed in Muslim countries would result in attacks....
It also comes amid Nigeria's warning that Al-Qaeda-linked militants were likely planning attacks during the Christmas holiday, and the accidental death of a suicide bomber in Stockholm two weeks ago who apparently intended to kill Christmas shoppers.
His "accidental death" came as he was trying to explode a jihad bomb in a crowded area.
Posted by Robert on December 25, 2010 1:04 PM
Obama Condemns Suicide Bombing In Pakistan That Killed Muslims, Says Nothing About Christians Killed By Muslims In Nigeria And The Philippines
From Jihad Watch:
Obama condemns Pakistan suicide bombing
Has he condemned the Christmas jihad attacks in Nigeria and the Philippines? Or is it only a matter of national interest when Muslims get killed? "US President Obama condemns Pakistan suicide bombing," from the BBC, December 25:
US President Barack Obama has condemned as "outrageous" Saturday's deadly suicide bomb attack on a town in north-western Pakistan.
A female bomber killed at least 43 people in the attack on a large crowd receiving food aid in Khar in the Bajaur region.
The town is in tribal areas close to the Afghan border - a Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold.
People displaced by fighting had been getting food at a distribution centre.
Saturday's bombing was the latest in a string of recent attacks in Pakistan's north-west.
Taliban claim
"I strongly condemn the outrageous terrorist attack in Khar, Pakistan," President Obama said.
"Killing innocent civilians outside a World Food Programme distribution point is an affront to the people of Pakistan, and to all humanity," he said....
Posted by Robert on December 25, 2010 3:01 PM
Obama condemns Pakistan suicide bombing
Has he condemned the Christmas jihad attacks in Nigeria and the Philippines? Or is it only a matter of national interest when Muslims get killed? "US President Obama condemns Pakistan suicide bombing," from the BBC, December 25:
US President Barack Obama has condemned as "outrageous" Saturday's deadly suicide bomb attack on a town in north-western Pakistan.
A female bomber killed at least 43 people in the attack on a large crowd receiving food aid in Khar in the Bajaur region.
The town is in tribal areas close to the Afghan border - a Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold.
People displaced by fighting had been getting food at a distribution centre.
Saturday's bombing was the latest in a string of recent attacks in Pakistan's north-west.
Taliban claim
"I strongly condemn the outrageous terrorist attack in Khar, Pakistan," President Obama said.
"Killing innocent civilians outside a World Food Programme distribution point is an affront to the people of Pakistan, and to all humanity," he said....
Posted by Robert on December 25, 2010 3:01 PM
Nigeria: Pastor Killed In Front Of His Church; Other Churches Targeted In Arson Rampage
From Jihad Watch:
Nigeria: Pastor killed in front of his church, other churches targeted in arson rampage
Still more jihadist violence to report against Nigerian churches on Christmas Eve. "Christmas Eve tragedy: Serial blasts, arson in Jos, Borno," by Moses Gbande and Gbenga Akinkugbethe for the Nigerian Compass, December 25:
While the world prepared for the celebration of Christmas yesterday, the residents of Jos, in Plateau State, and Maiduguri, in Borno State were thrown into tears, blood and death .
At least four successive bomb explosions rocked Jos, killing no fewer than 30 people, while suspected members of the Boko Haram sect unleashed mayhem on Maiduguri.
More recent reports indicated seven bombs.
No fewer than two people were feared killed in Maiduguri.
The explosions in Jos, which began around 7:30 pm, occurred at different intervals with the fourth one recorded some few minutes after 9pm.
The blasts sent many people scampering for safety. It occurred at a major area in the Jos metropolis but at different locations.
According to witnesses, the first blast was in front of a popular Catholic Church at Gada Biu which is barely a kilometre to the Plateau State Police Command's headquarters.
The other blasts sites are also within this vicinity but they were not concentrated. [...]
The situation was further aggravated by security agents who were shooting heavily and sporadically. This caused further tension and panic among the already shell-shocked and traumatised public who further took to their heels almost aimlessly.
There was no explanation for the shooting by the members of the security outfits.
This would not be the first time government forces were caught underprepared by jihadists.
Distress calls to the four hot lines of the State Command Police were neither acknowledged nor answered.
In Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, pandemonium reigned as people suspected to be members of the Boko Haram religious group went on the rampage torching churches and structures believed to be owned by Christians.
A pastor of the Baptist Church , Rev. Bulus T. Narya, was confirmed killed at the front of his church at the Alamderi Dala area of the city and the place of worship was set ablaze.
Also, the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) was said to be on fire as at press time.
And like in Jos, security agents were also reportedly shooting sporadically, a situation which forced many of the residents to stay in-doors in self-imposed curfew.
Sources informed the Nigerian Compass on Saturday that the security agencies had a prior knowledge of yesterday's attack by the Boko Haram sect which necessitated the beefing up of security around all the churches in the city.
It was learnt that the intelligence report by the State Security Service (SSS) had it that the attack would take place on Christmas eve. However, despite the seeming preparedness of the security agencies, suspected members of the dreaded sect still struck.
At least one local official questioned the level of preparedness, and how seriously security forces took the threats in Jos.
Meanwhile, the Plateau State government has called for calm.Posted by Marisol on December 26, 2010 12:04 AM
Nigeria: Pastor killed in front of his church, other churches targeted in arson rampage
Still more jihadist violence to report against Nigerian churches on Christmas Eve. "Christmas Eve tragedy: Serial blasts, arson in Jos, Borno," by Moses Gbande and Gbenga Akinkugbethe for the Nigerian Compass, December 25:
While the world prepared for the celebration of Christmas yesterday, the residents of Jos, in Plateau State, and Maiduguri, in Borno State were thrown into tears, blood and death .
At least four successive bomb explosions rocked Jos, killing no fewer than 30 people, while suspected members of the Boko Haram sect unleashed mayhem on Maiduguri.
More recent reports indicated seven bombs.
No fewer than two people were feared killed in Maiduguri.
The explosions in Jos, which began around 7:30 pm, occurred at different intervals with the fourth one recorded some few minutes after 9pm.
The blasts sent many people scampering for safety. It occurred at a major area in the Jos metropolis but at different locations.
According to witnesses, the first blast was in front of a popular Catholic Church at Gada Biu which is barely a kilometre to the Plateau State Police Command's headquarters.
The other blasts sites are also within this vicinity but they were not concentrated. [...]
The situation was further aggravated by security agents who were shooting heavily and sporadically. This caused further tension and panic among the already shell-shocked and traumatised public who further took to their heels almost aimlessly.
There was no explanation for the shooting by the members of the security outfits.
This would not be the first time government forces were caught underprepared by jihadists.
Distress calls to the four hot lines of the State Command Police were neither acknowledged nor answered.
In Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, pandemonium reigned as people suspected to be members of the Boko Haram religious group went on the rampage torching churches and structures believed to be owned by Christians.
A pastor of the Baptist Church , Rev. Bulus T. Narya, was confirmed killed at the front of his church at the Alamderi Dala area of the city and the place of worship was set ablaze.
Also, the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) was said to be on fire as at press time.
And like in Jos, security agents were also reportedly shooting sporadically, a situation which forced many of the residents to stay in-doors in self-imposed curfew.
Sources informed the Nigerian Compass on Saturday that the security agencies had a prior knowledge of yesterday's attack by the Boko Haram sect which necessitated the beefing up of security around all the churches in the city.
It was learnt that the intelligence report by the State Security Service (SSS) had it that the attack would take place on Christmas eve. However, despite the seeming preparedness of the security agencies, suspected members of the dreaded sect still struck.
At least one local official questioned the level of preparedness, and how seriously security forces took the threats in Jos.
Meanwhile, the Plateau State government has called for calm.Posted by Marisol on December 26, 2010 12:04 AM
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Islamic Supremacist Pseudo-Academic Khaled Abou El Fadl Lies About Sharia, "Freedom" Fighters
From Jihad Watch:
Islamic supremacist pseudo-academic Khaled Abou El Fadl lies about Sharia, freedom fighters
In "UCLA's Professor of Fantasy" in the American Thinker, December 24, Cinnamon Stillwell and Eric Golub expose one of the most egregious academic liars and Islamic apologists on the scene today: Khaled Abou El Fadl, who a few years back said he was willing to "risk his reputation" on his prediction that there would be anti-Muslim hate crimes because of the Crusades movie Kingdom of Heaven (there weren't, of course; so much for his reputation):
The Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at the University of California, Los Angeles and the UCLA School of Law's Journal for Islamic and Near Eastern Law co-sponsored a lecture (podcast available here) last month by Khaled Abou El Fadl, chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program, with the vague title "Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside."
The flyer for the lecture promised "an informed discussion about Shariah and its role and impact in the West," yet Abou El Fadl delivered neither. Instead, his audience of 35 -- comprising mostly seniors and left-wing students -- witnessed a meandering, repetitive lecture that had little or nothing to do with the stated premise. Indeed, despite acknowledging the growth of Westerners' interest in Shariah in the wake of 9/11, Abou El Fadl expressed surprise that an intelligent person would find it a remotely interesting topic: "It's exciting for me, but it's rarely exciting for people who do not relish medieval legal discourses ... to say the least it's a rather odd position to suddenly find Shariah jumping into public discourses in the West."
What is odd is why more Middle East studies professors don't relish the opportunity to condemn the medieval practices sanctioned by Shariah -- stonings, beheadings, honor killings, and execution for apostasy, for starters.
Instead, Abou El Fadl spent over fifteen minutes describing alleged acts of violence worldwide against Muslims by non-Muslims, a trend he ascribed to "the effect of the Islamophobic hate tract."
When he did get around to discussing Shariah, it was only to claim that its detractors were motivated by bigotry:
We look at the history of anti-Islamic discourse, particularly in my field, a discourse in which Shariah is flattened to be a symbol of barbarism. ... This is what Edward Said responded to in his famous book, Orientalism. I describe it as a civil anti-Muslim discourse.
Actually, most of its critics merely want to stay alive, for it turns out that barbarism does indeed come with the territory.
In what would come to constitute the bulk of his lecture, Abou El Fadl launched into a litany against what he called a "frenzy of self-appointed experts" -- individuals who have dared to criticize Shariah and who have opposed its implementation in the West:
[There is] a battle over the authority, legitimacy -- in academia, especially -- over who gets to speak for Shariah in the West. ... The various discourses that we find from the Steven Emersons, the Robert Spencers, the Daniel Pipes, countless 'watch' folks, the Jihad Watch folks -- various pseudo-experts on whatever they wish to be experts on. ... The idea is these people [Muslims] don't even respect each other's lives, so how can you expect them to respect anyone else's life? Now this fundamental message of Islam, which is argued to have been from the start to this day: one can politely ignore it, but the fact remains that it is a violent, totalitarian, dominating ideology.
In fact, it's the apologist discourse emanating from the Abou El Fadls of the world that is the "dominating ideology" in universities across the country.
Abou El Fadl then proceeded to examine quotes by writers he believes exemplifies this alarming "discourse" and to which he attributed "serious consequences" and "challenges to the post-humanist ethos." They included Bruce Bawer, Michael Savage, Mark Steyn, Glenn Beck, and, again, Islam scholar Robert Spencer, who, El Fadl claimed:
[j]ust made $4,000,000 dollars last year. ... A lecture like this with him would cost the sponsors $10,000. Islam bashing is very lucrative. Shariah bashing ... is also extremely lucrative.
To make $4,000,000 at $10,000 per speech would require four hundred speeches per year. When contacted by the authors for comment, Spencer confirmed that "I have never made $4,000,000 in a year, or anything close to it. I have never charged $10,000 for a talk, or anything close to it. Khaled Abou El Fadl is lying outright."
This statement points to Abou El Fadl's making things up -- shocking behavior for a professor of law at a leading research university. And it didn't stop there. Abou El Fadl went on to paraphrase a quote from one of Spencer's books:
Spencer summed it up: 'Sure, there are violent quotes in the Bible, but the difference is Muslims don't have an interpretative tradition.' ... But that's what being a Shariah scholar is all about: an interpretative tradition.
To which Spencer has responded:
I never said that. I said that they don't have an interpretative tradition that mitigates the literal force of the Qur'anic verses inciting to violence. Obviously they have an interpretative tradition; I discuss it at length in several books.
Read it all.
Daniel Pipes responds here, and says that Stillwell and Golub "pay particular attention to Abou El Fadl's false statements about Robert Spencer and Steven Emerson - that's the 'fantasy' in the title. His falsehoods about them are so egregious, they deserve to get Abou El Fadl sacked."
Indeed.
Posted by Robert on December 24, 2010 8:51 AM
Islamic supremacist pseudo-academic Khaled Abou El Fadl lies about Sharia, freedom fighters
In "UCLA's Professor of Fantasy" in the American Thinker, December 24, Cinnamon Stillwell and Eric Golub expose one of the most egregious academic liars and Islamic apologists on the scene today: Khaled Abou El Fadl, who a few years back said he was willing to "risk his reputation" on his prediction that there would be anti-Muslim hate crimes because of the Crusades movie Kingdom of Heaven (there weren't, of course; so much for his reputation):
The Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at the University of California, Los Angeles and the UCLA School of Law's Journal for Islamic and Near Eastern Law co-sponsored a lecture (podcast available here) last month by Khaled Abou El Fadl, chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program, with the vague title "Shari'ah Watch: A View from the Inside."
The flyer for the lecture promised "an informed discussion about Shariah and its role and impact in the West," yet Abou El Fadl delivered neither. Instead, his audience of 35 -- comprising mostly seniors and left-wing students -- witnessed a meandering, repetitive lecture that had little or nothing to do with the stated premise. Indeed, despite acknowledging the growth of Westerners' interest in Shariah in the wake of 9/11, Abou El Fadl expressed surprise that an intelligent person would find it a remotely interesting topic: "It's exciting for me, but it's rarely exciting for people who do not relish medieval legal discourses ... to say the least it's a rather odd position to suddenly find Shariah jumping into public discourses in the West."
What is odd is why more Middle East studies professors don't relish the opportunity to condemn the medieval practices sanctioned by Shariah -- stonings, beheadings, honor killings, and execution for apostasy, for starters.
Instead, Abou El Fadl spent over fifteen minutes describing alleged acts of violence worldwide against Muslims by non-Muslims, a trend he ascribed to "the effect of the Islamophobic hate tract."
When he did get around to discussing Shariah, it was only to claim that its detractors were motivated by bigotry:
We look at the history of anti-Islamic discourse, particularly in my field, a discourse in which Shariah is flattened to be a symbol of barbarism. ... This is what Edward Said responded to in his famous book, Orientalism. I describe it as a civil anti-Muslim discourse.
Actually, most of its critics merely want to stay alive, for it turns out that barbarism does indeed come with the territory.
In what would come to constitute the bulk of his lecture, Abou El Fadl launched into a litany against what he called a "frenzy of self-appointed experts" -- individuals who have dared to criticize Shariah and who have opposed its implementation in the West:
[There is] a battle over the authority, legitimacy -- in academia, especially -- over who gets to speak for Shariah in the West. ... The various discourses that we find from the Steven Emersons, the Robert Spencers, the Daniel Pipes, countless 'watch' folks, the Jihad Watch folks -- various pseudo-experts on whatever they wish to be experts on. ... The idea is these people [Muslims] don't even respect each other's lives, so how can you expect them to respect anyone else's life? Now this fundamental message of Islam, which is argued to have been from the start to this day: one can politely ignore it, but the fact remains that it is a violent, totalitarian, dominating ideology.
In fact, it's the apologist discourse emanating from the Abou El Fadls of the world that is the "dominating ideology" in universities across the country.
Abou El Fadl then proceeded to examine quotes by writers he believes exemplifies this alarming "discourse" and to which he attributed "serious consequences" and "challenges to the post-humanist ethos." They included Bruce Bawer, Michael Savage, Mark Steyn, Glenn Beck, and, again, Islam scholar Robert Spencer, who, El Fadl claimed:
[j]ust made $4,000,000 dollars last year. ... A lecture like this with him would cost the sponsors $10,000. Islam bashing is very lucrative. Shariah bashing ... is also extremely lucrative.
To make $4,000,000 at $10,000 per speech would require four hundred speeches per year. When contacted by the authors for comment, Spencer confirmed that "I have never made $4,000,000 in a year, or anything close to it. I have never charged $10,000 for a talk, or anything close to it. Khaled Abou El Fadl is lying outright."
This statement points to Abou El Fadl's making things up -- shocking behavior for a professor of law at a leading research university. And it didn't stop there. Abou El Fadl went on to paraphrase a quote from one of Spencer's books:
Spencer summed it up: 'Sure, there are violent quotes in the Bible, but the difference is Muslims don't have an interpretative tradition.' ... But that's what being a Shariah scholar is all about: an interpretative tradition.
To which Spencer has responded:
I never said that. I said that they don't have an interpretative tradition that mitigates the literal force of the Qur'anic verses inciting to violence. Obviously they have an interpretative tradition; I discuss it at length in several books.
Read it all.
Daniel Pipes responds here, and says that Stillwell and Golub "pay particular attention to Abou El Fadl's false statements about Robert Spencer and Steven Emerson - that's the 'fantasy' in the title. His falsehoods about them are so egregious, they deserve to get Abou El Fadl sacked."
Indeed.
Posted by Robert on December 24, 2010 8:51 AM
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)