Muslims Against Sharia praise the courage of Lars Vilks, Ulf Johansson, Thorbjorn Larsson and the staff of Nerikes Allehanda and Dagens Nyheter and condemn threats issued by Abu Omar Al Baghdadi and the Islamic State of Iraq. Muslims Against Sharia will provide a payment of 100,000kr (about $15,000) for the information leading to capture or neutralization of Abu Omar Al Baghdadi.
Muslimer mot Sharia berömmer Lars Vilks, Ulf Johansson, Torbjörn Larsson och övriga anställda på Nerikes Allehanda och Dagens Nyheter för deras tapperhet och fördömer hotet från Abu Omar Al Baghdadi och Islamistiska Iraq. Muslimer mot Sharia betalar 100 000 SEK (ca 15 000$) för information som leder till gripande eller oskadligörande av Abu Omar Al Baghdadi.
If someone wants to donate money for the bounty, please visit http://www.reformislam.org/support/. When making a donation, please make a note: for Al Baghdadi bounty. We will add the amount on top of 100,000kr. If the bounty is not paid for any reason, you will have an option of a refund.
Clarification:
"capture or neutralization of Abu Omar Al Baghdadi" means "capture or neutralization of Abu Omar Al Baghdadi or whomever uses the pseudonym."
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
27 comments:
Your bravery is appreciated.
Thank you for posting a comment on Another War-on-Terror Blog.
I'm not sure that I would characterize Mr. Vilk's recent actions as displaying "courage," but you have good reason for using that term.
These are interesting, and, I believe, distressing times in the history of Islam.
As I responded on my blog, the spike:
Now there’s an organisation I’d join, if I were Muslim. You do your faith credit.
I think it was Voltaire who said: “I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
I wish you the best of luck in your efforts. I've held the belief for some time that the problem is not Islam, the problem is Islamism, and just the fact that your organization exists supports my theory.
Well Chief....Good Luck with all that...... you realize of course you have a time limit to accomplish your goal of reforming the violence out of Islam.
The clock is ticking on your fellow adherents committing a sufficiently violent act that threatens the continuity of western civilization and requires us to respond with finality.... And I'm afraid there is no physical way you're going to be able to beat that deadline.
First off....Why is your home office in Nebraska? You should move it to Saudi Arabia, Tehran, or the Tribal agencies of Pakistan.....thats where the problems originate. How are you going to reform something you're afraid to even face down in person?
Secondly, even if you were to achieve a 99% success rate.....that wont be enough to keep you all from burning for the actions of that 1%, because that 1% will hide like cowards amongst the reformed moderates.
Eric, there is a huge difference between Islam (a religion) and Islamism (a political ideology bent on world domination). Unfortunately, most people do not understand that difference. We are glad you do.
Redneck Texan, Nebraska is the best place for NGO headquarters, just as Delaware is the best place for corporate headquarters. There are standard packages that include registered agents and Nebraska has the lowest prices. As for moving to a country that has no freedom of the press and is ruled and/or populated by Islamic fundamentalists, you do that. We are trying to reform Islam in the West. While Western governments and corporations are pumping billions of dollars into Saudi Arabia and Iran, we stand no chance of reforming anything there.
Redneck, we all have to hope there is an alternative to all out war, this is after all what the extremists want.
Groups like this deserve our support.
I for one wish them every success.
Sirs/Mesdames:
Thank you for replying to my “Islamophobia is Justified” commentary on Rule of Reason. It quite startled me that you not only praised the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks and his colleagues, but also countered with your own bounty on the head of Abu Omar Al Baghdadi (obviously an alias of the contrivance of the coward who hides behind it).
I printed out your Muslims against Sharia Manifesto to read more closely and to compose some commentary on it. You are to be commended for taking the position on Sharia law that you have – that it must be completely abolished – and I agree with many of the points in the Manifesto, if not entirely with their style of expression, then in spirit, especially in regard to religious privacy, outdated practices, words and phrases, and especially with your endorsement of free expression of in terms of depicting Mohammad. I particularly liked your characterization of terrorists as “homicidal zombies’; a more accurate description of them I have not encountered elsewhere.
All that, together with your condemnation of Muslims who murder Muslims and non-Muslims in the name of Islam, certainly deserves recognition of your courage and honesty, and you have mine.
You posed a very interesting question in the Manifesto. After citing the possible (and likely) corruption of the Bible over the centuries (if not expedient inventions of great parts of it by the Church), you ask: “Could it be possible that the Koran itself was corrupted by Muslims over the last thirteen centuries?”
I’m sure you are aware of the abrogation issue concerning the Koran, and if you or Muslim scholars attempt to reform Islam, this will be a major and I think insurmountable hurdle. It is my understanding that the earlier sections of the Koran and Hadith reveal a sort of “kinder, gentler” Mohammad who did not call for war against all unbelievers. I would probably agree with some historians who aver that these sections were calculated merely to win him allies among non-Muslims during his campaign to conquer the Arabian Peninsula. There is no other accounting for their content other than that they are a form of taqiya. Later sections of the Koran abrogate or supplant the earlier ones, however, and these contain the homicidal and belligerent injunctions that fundamentalists cite to sanction jihad.
Another issue I think you or your scholars would face would be retaining Islam’s purported “peaceful” identity, so reforming it would prove to be a daunting but nevertheless insoluble and impossible task.
If you performed a theological and textual vivisection on the written corpus of the religion – that is, managed to “reform” it by excising all its objectionable injunctions, leaving only its more “benign” aspects – could you could still call it “Islam”? What would be left would be a collection of unconnected, disparate rules and sentiments with no system at all. It might be a more pacific creed, akin to the Amish or Quaker, but would it still retain the identity you wanted to preserve? I don’t think it would. You would need to call it by another name.
My final remarks concern faith. Muslims, like Christians, Jews and other religionists, have “faith” in the existence of a supreme being, and that what such a being commands or prescribes as moral is true and right. Of this, all religionists are “certain.”
Now, there is a crucial difference between faith and certainty. You exhibit certainty about the existence, for example, of your car keys, that the laws of cause and effect will enable you to unlock the car door with them, and that the laws of physics will cause them to start the engine. Your certainty is grounded in reality. You don’t even think about it, or need to think about it. Reality and your certainty about it are the given.
You exhibit faith when you believe, without so much as an iota of proof, in the existence of a supernatural being who has never appeared to anyone in history, but whose existence is merely asserted by priests, mullahs or other professional mystics. Apocryphal anecdotes about this being comprise all the sacred texts of all the religions, all of them claiming at some point that this being spoke to or appeared before or somehow manifested his existence to a variety of prophets, seers, saints and so on.
But all of these assertions are merely legends that offer no supporting evidence to substantiate them other than what long-dead, shadowy monks and the like recorded. A pile of unsubstantiated written assertions does not make a truth, no matter how many millions of words or thousands of pages are devoted to “proving” it. Nor do millions of people believing in a thing make it a fact or a truth.
But, you are asked (or told) to accept this “truth” on faith. In short, you are expected to treat the unreal as real. Further, you are not permitted to think about or doubt or question what you are expected to believe. You are not to apply reason to the subject. Even further, you are expected, under pain of sin or punishment, to conduct your life according to a chaos of arbitrary rules and injunctions – pacific or not – purportedly authored by a being – call him Allah, God, Siva, Brahma, Vishnu, or Wontonka – evidence of whose existence you have not a shred, except for the assertions or say-so of a hierarchy of witch doctors.
As you have probably concluded, I am an atheist. I was raised in the Catholic faith, but I could never take it seriously, because every one of its tenets contradicted the evidence of my senses and my nature as a thinking, volitional being, and my senses and my mind and my nature are engineered to deal with reality, not with some fictive other-worldly realm. Every human being is so engineered, without exception, and nature did the engineering or “designing,” not a ghost. If reason cannot be applied to an issue, in this instance, the existence of a supreme being, call him what you will, if it is excluded from any discussion of the subject, then I see no reason to concern myself with the question.
But, you might ask, as so many Christians and Jews do, what about the “first cause”? What about the “beginning”? The cosmologies of the various religions, including Islam’s, are ludicrous, fantastic and metaphysically impossible. I think that most men suffer from a kind of mental block, or absorb it from our semi-rational culture, that stops them from accepting the axiom that existence exists. Period. So they become nominally “faithful” or agnostic.
The concept of a “first cause” or “beginning” is a logical fallacy that beggars metaphysical validation, and is subject to an endless reductio ad absurdum argument. Did existence come into existence when Allah or God or Vishnu snapped his fingers or just “wished” it, and if existence didn’t exist before that, where did this being reside if matter and nothingness did not exist before he did, and where did he come from, and why is his supernatural realm always beyond human perception and comprehension? And so on. It is a matter deserving an essay far longer than my remarks here. Aristotle and Ayn Rand have done a better job of exploding that concept than I could ever attempt.
As a primitive form of philosophy, I do not think any religion is “great.” It has caused so much misery, suffering, horror and destruction in man’s history. And because it has attracted so much attention lately, I find Islam especially repellent for its degrading rituals, prohibitions and virulent anti-mindedness. I don’t like seeing men bowing to a ghost or throwing pebbles at a rock in defiance of another ghost.
Faith and reason are incompatible and antithetical means of living, but most men commit the error of compartmentalizing them to avoid facing the issue. They know that doing the hokey-pokey while reciting a doggerel won’t cause their car keys to work, but they’ll do much the same thing believing it will make a morality work.
Because your Manifesto exhibited a quantum of reason, as did your response to my Islamophobia commentary, I thought it earned a reciprocal reply, which is the best kind of respect I can offer. However, I do not wish to debate this subject at any length, but hope you accept my observations in the spirit in which they are offered.
Dear sparrowhawk,
Muslims Against Sharia is an educated group, but we neither pretend nor consider ourselves to be Islamic scholars. Neither we assume to be able to convince everyone that our course is the right one. Some people consider our measures blasphemy or shock therapy; some consider that we do not go far enough. We see ourselves as Muslim humanists who attempt to align our religion with humanistic standards of the Third Millennia. We know that our project is not perfect, but we hope it will evolve and become the force that would save Islam from internal collapse of destruction from the outside.
As for you being an ex-Catholic, we are sorry that you lost your faith, but God still loves you, as long as you don’t go around blowing up innocent people.
So.. If I decide to go and get this "Abu Omar Al Baghdadi" guy, what do you need as proof he is "neutralized"? Do I send you his head? And in that case, what is the adress?
Jón Helgi,
Let us know when you have the head; we'll tell you what to do with it.
Have you considered the legal ramifications of a US based organization putting a bounty on the head of a foreign national?
Cause if its legal.....
Start bringing me the heads of Muslims.
.... I hereby put a $1.49 a head bounty on every Muslim caught burning the American Flag.
$5.75 for each Islamic Cleric's tongue.
$2.79 for each fat Muslim bitch caught dancing in the street while ululating after an attack on America....video proof required for payment.
For all other Muslims we can negotiate a price per ton on delivery.
We are not aware of any laws criminalizing bounties for information leading to capture or neutralization of a terrorist. The United States government itself offers said bounties in the amounts far greater than ours.
The latter part of your comment reeks of extreme bigotry. Apparently you are too ignorant to understand the difference between Muslims and Islamic fundamentalists. Not every Islamic cleric is spewing anti-Western hatred and not every Muslim dances with joy when America is attacked. While we consider capital punishment a bit extreme for fag-burning or displaying joy after attacks on America, we believe that those actions deserve some form of punishment. What is unsettling that you are not calling for a head of some fat Christian bitch that calls WTC victims “little Eichmanns” or burns American flag. Last time we checked none of the flag-burning cases that made their way through American court system involved Muslim. Is flag desecration by a Muslim is more offensive than flag desecration by a Jew? Please, enlighten us. Your comment looks like you don’t really care what happens to America as long as it is not done by Muslims, but we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and an opportunity clarify your point of view.
stay away from me and my blog.... A Muslim is a terrorist!! duh! Read the Koran! Now leave me the hell alone!!
slightlydramatic,
We are shocked, stunned and amazed how ugly you are inside.
"Muslims Against Sharia has left a new comment on your post "Artist recieves death threats from al-qaida":
Muslims Against Sharia praise the courage of Lars Vilks, Ulf Johansson, Thorbjorn Larsson and the staff of Nerikes Allehanda and Dagens Nyheter and condemn threats issued by Abu Omar Al Baghdadi and the Islamic State of Iraq. Muslims Against Sharia will provide a payment of 100,000kr (about $15,000) for the information leading to capture or neutralization of Abu Omar Al Baghdadi.
Muslimer mot Sharia berömmer Lars Vilks, Ulf Johansson, Torbjörn Larsson och övriga anställda på Nerikes Allehanda och Dagens Nyheter för deras tapperhet och fördömer hotet från Abu Omar Al Baghdadi och Islamistiska Iraq. Muslimer mot Sharia betalar 100 000 SEK (ca 15 000$) för information som leder till gripande eller oskadligörande av Abu Omar Al Baghdadi.
Muslims Against Sharia
Defend Freedom of Speech - Support Sweden!"
you seriously believe I would post this garbage on my site. I take this personally as a threat and will be contacting the FBI.
and funny how as soon as I got your comment someone hacked into my account saying I was from Aphganistan. Hey.... wonder if it was you??? You people are always trying to find a way to reason to kill someone for whatever reason. you disgust me.
And I am shocked stunned and amazed at how ignorant you are on the inside!
You frighten me!! Now go away!!
I am shocked stunned and amazed that you call yourself a reformist yet seek a bounty for the death of another human. I am shocked stunned and amazed that you do not have the manhood to post all of my replies... I am shocked stunned and amazed that you continue to harrass me.
Post my real comments
Do the words "SOLICITATION OF MURDER FOR HIRE" mean anything to you?
slightlytraumatic,
You're not only ugly inside, you are also pretty stupid.
"I take this personally as a threat and will be contacting the FBI."
Please let us know how long did it take the FBI to stop laughing.
From a post on slightlytraumatic's blog:
"I carry a gun permit and if my life is ever threatened I will defend myself"
Just out of curiosity, what are you gonna do? Show me your permit and scare the crap out of me with your picture?
That's a classic! If you don't have anything intelligent to say... and you are speaking to a woman, just start calling her names and insulting her femininity.... thusly calling her ugly. How about a grown up response?
"Do the words "SOLICITATION OF MURDER FOR HIRE" mean anything to you?"
You must be pretty dumb to equate the bounty on terrorist head with murder for hire. But we've already established that, haven't we?
"thusly calling her ugly"
Didn't we call you ugly on the inside? That means your soul is ugly, not your appearance, so you really should not be offended since your appearance seem to be the only important thing to you.
Also, isn't it "slightly" misleading to claim "they do not have the gonads to put my REAL comments on their page" when, in fact, every one of your comments is published on our blog and none of our (original) comments is published on yours?
We at http://www.theamericanjingoits.blogspot.com truly hope that your efforts are sucessful! As Islam stands now it is NOT a religion of peace as the history of 1500 years have proven even today.
We have invited you to post on our blog site but no one has responded to the invitations sent. Maybe you will consider a change of mind?
Mike,
Please re-send the invitation to info@reformislam.org
Post a Comment