1. Barbarians kill as West drifts
August 25, 2007 - Salim Mansour, Toronto Sun There comes a point at which diminishing returns on most issues begin to go negative. Such a point in denouncing Islamist terrorism and equally the Muslim majority's silence against this menace was reached sometime ago. As Islamist terrorism, however despicable, became mundane occurrence in the daily news cycle, the deafening silence of Muslims -- except for lonely voices of feeble opposition -- has given credence to growing numbers of non-Muslims that Islam is as much a religion of peace as the Klanmen's politics is an expression of multiculturalism. But there is another side to this abject reality. The Muslim majority's silence is greatly compounded by the appeasement mentality in the West of the mainstream liberal-left media, politicians trolling for ethnic votes and bureaucrats running public institutions.
An evidence of this comes from Scotland. Theodore Dalrymple, a retired physician and prolific writer, in New York's City Journal reports: "In an effort to ensure that no Muslim doctors ever again try to bomb Glasgow Airport, bureaucrats at Glasgow's public hospitals have decreed that henceforth no staff may eat lunch at their desks or in their offices during the holy month of Ramadan, so that fasting Muslims shall not be offended by the sight or smell of their food. Vending machines will also disappear from the premises during that period." It is as if more diversity training for public officials, more accommodation of demands made by fundamentalist Muslims, greater willingness to self-flagellate for sins long past of western colonialism, more policing of what might be politically incorrect speech and writing about Islamists or Saudi Arabia's official cult (Wahhabism) of bigotry masquerading as a world religion, will somehow mysteriously translate into taming suicide-bombers and their masters to reciprocate kindly to the liberal-left sensibilities of people in the West. Dalrymple observes stories such as the one from Scotland tell us something about how civilizations commit suicide -- they "collapse not because the barbarians are so strong, but because they themselves are so morally enfeebled." What do barbarians do? Kill indiscriminately as in the recent Aug. 14 massacre in northern Iraq reported by the New York Post with the headline "Savages Kill 175 in Iraq Bombings." Four trucks were exploded west of Mosul -- Iraq's third largest city in the Kurdish north -- in an area predominantly inhabited by Yazidis, a people practising pre-Islamic faith. The toll of dead and wounded among this poor dwindling minority living at the edge of the Iraqi society far exceeds the numbers first reported.
This savagery is the work of al-Qaida associates preparing more predictable bombings ahead of the mid-September report in Washington to be given by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. BOMBINGS AND OPINION There is now a pattern in al-Qaida bombings arranged to influence American public opinion during key moments in public policy debates and general elections. But the liberal-left media, such as the New York Times, remains fixated with faulting the Bush administration for the savagery of Islamists while providing oxygen to apologists of terror spinning their endless refrain of "root cause" being oil and Israel for violence originating in the Middle East. How morally enfeebled, as Dalrymple opines, is the West? Imagine the uproar denouncing any suggestion that the mainstream liberal-left media, in appearance at least, is treasonously on side with the newest enemies of freedom and democracy. Source: http://www.islamicpluralism.org/articles/2007a/070825drift.htm 2. Europe placates foes of freedom31st January 2009 - Salim Mansour Europe, or a significant segment of Europe, unfailingly discloses its frequent willingness to appease totalitarian foes of freedom.
In modern times Europe gladly has served as a cradle of fascism on the right, communism on the left and in between all sorts of variations of the two, joined at the hip with a common blood-soaked bigotry directed at Jews.
Since 9/11, and despite Muslim terrorists striking on European soil, that segment of Europe ready to appease any totalitarian assault on freedom has contorted itself to accommodate the Islamist agenda. The latest evidence of this is the Amsterdam Court of Appeal's decision to prosecute Geert Wilders, an elected member of the Dutch Parliament, for hate speech offending Islam and Muslims.
Wilders is the most daring critic of the Islamist assault on Holland, and Europe, since the murder of Theo van Gogh in November 2004 by a self-confessed Muslim fanatic of Moroccan origin, and the marginalization in Dutch politics of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born critic of Islam.
What brings Wilders into legal trouble with Dutch jurists is the 15-minute video he produced last year on Islam titled Fitna. In this short film Wilders juxtaposed verses from the Koran with passages from Hitler's rant, Mein Kampf, and urged Muslims to push for reform by removing "hate-filled" verses from their sacred text.
I do not share Wilders' views on the Koran, or on Islam, and I would be quite prepared to engage him if an opportunity presented itself. But I categorically disagree with the Amsterdam Court of Appeal's decision to prosecute him on the grounds of hate speech, thereby abridging the principle of free speech, for expressing his views on the Koran.
It is ironic that the announcement to prosecute Wilders comes on the eve of the 20th anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's notorious incitement (fatwa) to murder Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born writer, for his satirical novel The Satanic Verses.
Khomeini's incitement was an opening salvo in the Islamist agenda to silence any critic, Muslim or non-Muslim, of Islam and Arab-Muslim history.
Following Khomeini's directive to murder, Farag Foda -- a courageous and brilliant Egyptian critic of fundamentalist Muslims and Islam -- was gunned down in Cairo in April 1992. However Foda's compatriot and winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in literature, Naguib Mahfouz, survived a knife assault by Islamists in 1994.
Islamist effort to silence critics is part of a larger agenda for the full and unreformed imposition of Sharia -- laws derived from the Koran and codified in the first millennium of the Christian era -- within the Arab-Muslim world, and its acceptance by governments in Europe and North America to enable Muslims residing in the West to live by a pre-modern legal code.
'DEFAMATION'
This push is backed by the 57-member Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) at the UN to combat "defamation of religions" under the international human rights code for the purpose of judicially silencing critics of Islam and Muslims.
The prosecution of Wilders, as the Dutch judges contort themselves to do the bidding of the OIC, will warm the hearts of Islamists everywhere. But Europe and the West could not be more warned of what embracing the Islamist agenda means than taking full measure of the Arab-Muslim world turned into a cultural wasteland by the unremitting Islamist assault on civilization.
 Veteran radical Islamist and hatemonger Salam Al-Marayati, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, has used a television encounter with U.S. Congressmember Brad Sherman (D-Ca) as an opportunity to denounce the Center for Islamic Pluralism and other moderate Muslim groups with whom Congressman Sherman has consulted, as “not mainstream.” That is, Al-Marayati has called for the exclusion of CIP and others from participation in the American public discourse. CIP above reproduces and attaches a press release issued by Cong. Sherman, and a television transcript of the encounter.
CIP notes first that this is, of course, the same Salam Al-Marayati who informed the Los Angeles public on a radio talk show in the afternoon of September 11, 2001 that Israel could be responsible for that day’s horrors, because, according to him, “this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories, so that [Israelis] can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.” Such charges, in the mouth of Al-Marayati, represent “mainstream” Muslim ignorance and conspiratorialism.
In reality, MPAC, not CIP, is outside the mainstream of American society. Attacks on CIP would not otherwise be forthcoming, whether by demagogues like Al-Marayati, or by James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, who recently assailed CIP Executive Director Stephen Suleyman Schwartz in a periodical issued in Amman, Jordan
[see www.jordantimes.com/?news=9966 ]
or by Muslim Brotherhood acolytes [see www.ikhwanweb.com/Article.asp?ID=15647&LevelID=1&SectionID=98].
CIP further points out that Al-Marayati compulsively engages in two habits that are inappropriate in American interfaith discourse. First, neither Al-Marayati nor MPAC nor any other of the radical Islamist groups that dominate American Sunni public life has the right to dictate to American elected officials with whom they should meet or consult. We have never heard of Christian or Jewish groups demanding that one or a group of them should have sole responsibility for dialogue with public officials, and denouncing others as “not mainstream.”
Al-Marayati and his cohort understand nothing whatever about the American compact for interfaith relations. In American religious life, numbers seldom outweigh intellect: CIP would be pleased to succeed to the role of such minoritarian groups as the Moravian Brethren, the early Unitarians, or the Seventh Day Adventists. One Albanian Orthodox leader who came to America, Theofan Stilian Noli, changed the whole history of his people; two generations later the blessed Baba Rexheb Beqiri introduced Bektashi Sufism to the U.S. and preserved its traditions in the face of Communist terrorism. America has always allowed small religious groups to flourish, often with impact far beyond their narrow ranks. Similarly, the Jewish maskilim were once a handful, but profoundly reoriented Jewish thought. Outside the monotheistic faiths, the same has been true of once-obscure Buddhist trends.
Even Al-Marayati and his cadre represent a small group taking advantage of the broad American platform. Others like him also abuse the term “mainstream” in the Muslim context. We do not consider MPAC “mainstream.” MPAC does not reflect the religious traditions of Ahl as-Sunna wa’al Jama’at (the consensus of Sunnis) or Ahl ul-Beyt (Shias). Rather, it is a political pressure group that promotes hateful smears. For Al-Marayati and MPAC, it is clear that “mainstream” means only those American Muslims who have gained the support of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Hezbollah and other radical regimes and movements, and have imposed themselves as an ideological caste directing American Muslims.
CIP was founded by American Muslims prominent in active defense of the Balkan Muslims from aggression, in support for stable Turkish Islam, and in clear adherence to the precepts of the Sunni consensus and the moderate Shia marjae. It has been joined and assisted by distinguished shaykhs, outstanding journalists and scholars, and community activists. CIP’s intellectual output is professional and authoritative. CIP cooperates with established civil and religious institutions in the U.S. and other countries. CIP also promotes respect and cooperation with Christian and Jewish leaders. CIP calls for adherence and obedience to the laws of Western countries in which Muslims live. These are the characteristics that define “mainstream” thought in Islam, not approval by extremist ideologues.
CIP points out that CIP and other moderate organizations are bringing new faces to the forefront of discussion while Al-Marayati and his crew continue to promote a long-usurping cadre of Islamist bigots. MPAC does not change. CIP is constantly improving, expanding, and providing a platform for new personalities.
May Allah subhana’watala protect all believers from the intrigues of such hypocrites, speculators, slanderers, and those who divert Muslims, in particular, from the path of religion to that of ideology. This we ask in the week approaching the Holy Month of Ramadan, alhamdulillah.
Center for Islamic Pluralism
Washington, DC
U.S. Midwest
U.S. West Coast
U.S. Southeast
London, England
Koln, Germany
Iraq
Saudi Arabia
Balkans
And other locations, with more to come, insha'allah! Source: CIPCenter For Islamic Pluralism
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 Salam Al-Marayati
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
 By Jay Tolson Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U. S. efforts to identify and support moderate voices within the Islamic world have been inconsistent and fumbling. Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that the long-term success in fighting terrorism will depend far more on the result of Islam's own internal debate than on the outcomes of the fighting in either Iraq or Afghanistan. To the extent that it can influence that debate, the next U. S. administration might consider paying closer attention to followers of the Sufi tradition, a mystical and philosophical current within Islam. ("Sufi" itself as a term may have derived from the Arab word for wool, in reference to the simple, rough cloak worn by early Muslim ascetics). In his new book, The Other Islam: Sufism and Global Harmony, Stephen Schwartz, a journalist and executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, D.C., argues that Sufism "offers the clearest Muslim option for reconciliation between the Judeo-Christian and Islamic worlds, as well as fulfillment of the promise that Islam shall be a religion of peace." U. S. News spoke with the author, himself a convert to Islam. Read more ...Source: U.S. News & World Report
 It is one thing to stand against the excesses of Islam and to level well deserved criticism. And it fair to say that there are sects of triumphalist Islam with which we are at war. They include Wahhabi / Salafi Islam, Deobandi Islam, and Khomeinist Shia'ism. For lack of a better term, I will refer to them as the Islamists. It is another thing entirely to lump all of Islam under a single banner with the Islamists. It is like lumping all of Christianity under the banner of a single sect. But finding the dividing line is not easy - and indeed, the line is deliberately muddled by many Islamist organizations such as CAIR and MCB operating freely in the West. When those who would alter and evolve their religion stand up to be counted, such as Zhudi Jasser, they are most vehemently attacked by Muslim organizations in the West. But what is worse is that they are largely ignored by the MSM. Thus, when I stumble upon organizations clearly decicated to a vision of Islam contra to that of Islamists, I try to point them out and urge my readers, few though they may be, to fully suport them. And such, it would appear, is the Center for Islamic Pluralism, which includes on its website a weekly "Wahhabi Watch." And for example, here is a recent column by CIP's Canadian Director Salim Mansur, "Middle East Indebted to Bush," that appeared in the Toronto Sun on January 12, 2008. Read more ...Source: Wolf Howling
 |
|
|
Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved.
E-mail: info AT ReformIslam.org
|
|
|
Posts
