What’s Liberating about Islam?

“What’s liberating about Islam is that one is spared from having to think.”

This, essentially, is how a woman explained to me the change that had taken place in her life since her conversion to Islam.

Since then, I’ve thought about her many times, especially because at that time I didn’t know very much about Islam. Now I’ve learned more, have gotten to know many more Muslims, and just begun to worry about her lack of thought.

When she explained what was liberating about Islam, it amounted, more or less, to the following: “There are rules for everything. I’m spared from having to think. I just have to learn the rules, and then act. So I know that I’m doing the right thing. It’s liberating.”

To me, it sounded as if she had entered her second childhood. She was an adult, but had freed herself of responsibility for her actions. Responsibility lay elsewhere. Later, to be sure, her explanation caused me a good deal of unease, mainly because I have become acquainted with a number of the rules she lives by.

When she decided to become a Muslim, it was a free choice, but having made that choice she is not free to choose which Islamic rules she will follow and which she will not.

I have since mentioned her attitude to other Muslim women, and to a large extent they shared it. But these are women who were born into Muslim families, and who thus face another “challenge,” as they call it: namely, the family.

The “family” in question, however, is not a standard-issue Western family consisting of mom, dad, and two kids, but rather an extended family that includes father and mother, their five children, plus the father’s siblings and their offspring, plus the mother’s siblings and their offspring, and, as time goes by, the spouse’s equally sprawling clan. And then there’s the “community,” in which it isn’t necessarily people’s national origin that shapes their identity (there is, for example, a great difference between a Pakistani from a big city and one from a rural village), but rather the sheer fact that they are Muslims.

If, in such a context, you don’t follow the established rules, you have enough to fight against. In addition, these are collectivist cultures, so the struggle that you need to undertake is not an individual one; everything you say or do involves others in the family – it affects other people than oneself.

The responsibility lies in the rules, and a violation of them, or an attempt to redefine them, will have consequences for the rules themselves.

More at FPM

This piece originally appeared on the website of Human Rights Service, www.rights.no, and has been translated from the Norwegian by Bruce Bawer.

I was sold to Lashkar by my father: Mumbai attacker Kasab

Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist of the group of ten sent by the Pakistan based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba to attack Mumbai, says his father essentially sold him into the group.

Kasab, who was part of the pair that killed 50 and wounded more than 100 at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the city's main railway station, makes the suggestion in tapes included in a new documentary, "Terror in Mumbai" airing on HBO on Thursday.

Snatches of cellphone conversations - many never heard before - between the gunmen and their controllers in Pakistan, as well as video footage of the police with Kasab were aired on Sunday in a preview of the documentary by narrator Fareed Zakaria in his GPS programme on CNN.

One of the tapes of Kasab's interrogation points to how he got involved with the LeT terror group:

Kasab: He said, "These people make loads of money and so will you. (Inaudible) We'll have money, we won't be poor any more. Your brothers and sisters can get married. Look at these guys living the good life. You can be like them," he said.

Unidentified Male: Your dad said this?

Kasab: Yes. So, I said, "Fine, whatever."

Unidentified Male: What does he do for a living?

Kasab: He used to sell yogurt and potato snacks in the street.

Unidentified Male: How much did they give you? Did they put it in your account?

Kasab: There is no account. They gave it to my dad.

Unidentified Male: How much did they give him?

Kasab: I don't know. Maybe (ph) a few hundred thousand.

In another tape, Kasab recalls how the terrorist group was trained.

Police: How long were you in training?

Kasab: Three months. There were 24 or 25 in our class.

Police: Where were the people from?

Kasab: They don't tell you. I only knew about one. He said he was from Lahore. He became my friend.

Police: Didn't they allow you to speak to each other?

Kasab: We were forbidden to speak to each other. It was very strict. The proper training where they say, "This boy is ready now" - that only takes three months. That's it.

Police: Did you ever ask, "Won't I feel pity for the people I'm killing?"

Kasab: I did, but he said you have to do these things if you're going to be a big man and get rewarded in heaven.

Police: So you came here for jihad? Is that right?

Kasab: (crying) What jihad?

Police: It's no use crying. Tell me the truth. Is that right or no?

Kasab: You wouldn't understand.

Locked in a bathroom at Mumbai's Trident Oberoi hotel, another young Pakistani terrorist named Fahadullah knew the end was near. He was out of food, water, energy and ammunition, and could hear the steady stream of police gunshots getting closer.

He and nine other terrorists were winding down from a gruesome, 36-hour killing spree through the city, and he was talking on the phone to a handler far away in Pakistan.

"You mustn't let them arrest you, remember that," the controller insisted.

"Fahadullah, my brother, can't you just get out there and fight?"

Fahadullah could not. "I am out of grenades," he weakly offered.

"Be brave, brother. Don't panic. For your mission to end successfully, you must be killed. God is waiting for you in heaven."

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/I-was-sold-to-Lashkar-by-my-father-Kasab/H1-Article1-476915.aspx

Understanding Islamic People rather than Islam & dealing with them

Understanding Islamic Culture Vital in Dealing With Its Problems
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 1:59 PM - Tawfik Hamid

In an Op-Ed published Aug. 27 in the New York Times, Thom Shanker mentioned that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has written a intense critique of government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world. The critique comes as the United States is widely believed to be losing ground in the war of ideas against extremist Islamist ideology.

The issue is particularly relevant as the Obama administration orders fresh efforts to counter militant propaganda, part of its broader strategy to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Mullen wrote in the critique, to be published by Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal.

Members of Congress also have also expressed concern about the government’s programs for strategic communication, public diplomacy, and public affairs. Both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have raised questions about the Pentagon’s programs for strategic communication — and about how money is spent on them.

Understanding Islamic culture and types of Muslims is vital to develop effective strategic communication approaches.

A simplistic visual analysis of Islamic culture can be illustrated using five concentric circles that represent categories.

The outer circle consists of "cultural Muslims," who follow their religion in a somewhat superficial manner. They consider their religion a part of their culture, but do not necessarily read much about their faith or practice their religion actively. Islam simply forms a framework identity for the social activities they engage in or identify with.

The second circle is occupied by "ritual Muslims" who mainly practice the five pillars of Islam and are against violent edicts of Shariah laws (such as stoning adulteries and killing apostates).

The third circle represents "theological Muslims," who study in greater depth Islamic texts and are interested in implementing Shariah law to replace the secular law of the land. This group can represent major threat to values of liberty and the stability of the free world once their percentage exceeds certain threshold in the society.

The fourth circle represents "radical Muslims" who accept and promote using force to subjugate others to their beliefs.

The final and innermost smallest circle represents terrorists, who represent only a very small fraction of Islamic society but who are ready to sacrifice their lives to attack others and have the potential to do major harm.

Our ultimate goal must be to transition terrorists through the various stages, or circles on the bull’s eye, so that they leave the center and reside in the circles closer to the periphery. In addition, we must prevent the transition of individuals from outer circles towards the center.

This suffocation type strategy of the most inner circle is important to achieve a viable long term solution.

Based on the former analysis we need to tailor our strategic communications to suit each group as follows:

 Cultural Muslims: Simple logic and working with this group to promote common values of humanity can work effectively to win hearts and minds of this group.
 Ritual Muslims: Showing compassion, respect of word, and giving care is extremely effective tool to win this group to our side against the extremists.
The state department can play an important role in strategic communications with these two groups.
 Theological Muslims: Respectful critique of the violent edicts of Shariah law is important to deal with this group as on one hand ignoring such violent aspects will only allow the growth of violent and radical believes in the society and, on the other hand, disrespectful critique create irrational emotional response (such as anger) rather than a sane rational constructive response. The government should not be directly involved in this form of critique. Other organizations or groups can contribute to this part of the strategic communications.
 Radical Muslims: Tactics to create a state of psychological defeat are vital to weaken this group as traditional diplomatic approaches are interpreted by them as weakness and thus aggravate the problem of Islamism. U.S. Intelligence agencies can play major role in this part.
 Terrorists: One of the crucial ways to deal with this group is to prove to them that their acts of terror or suicide bombing bring the opposite of what they want to achieve. This can create strong deterring message that can weaken them psychologically and makes many of them think twice before launching an attack.

Parameters to characterize each of the above groups (or Muslim categories) are needed to be able to:

 Understand the structure of different Islamic societies
 Measure the degree of radicalization within Muslim communities
 Evaluate the effect of anti-radicalization measures used by governments to solve the problem of radical Islam. The more we shift toward center and away from the periphery, the less effective our measures to weaken Islamic Radicalism are, and vice versa.

Dealing with Islamism phenomenon without addressing the above mentioned Muslim categories is a primitive approach that does not allow us to deal with the problem effectively.

Dr. Tawfik Hamid is the author of "Inside Jihad." He was a former associate of Dr. al-Zawahiri (second in command of al-Qaida) and currently he is a reformer of Islam. To know more about Hamid please visit www.tawfikhamid.com. Hamid's writings in this blog represent only his thoughts and not the views of the institute where he works.
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.newsmax.com/tawfik_hamid/islam_muslim_terrorists/2009/09/02/255554.html

Culture of Cruelty. Disturbingly graphic evidence surfaces of the vicious torture common even in "moderate" Arab regimes.

By Daniel Pipes

Some of the bravest and most distinguished analysts from the Middle East emphasize that region’s culture of cruelty. Kanan Makiya titled his 1994 book about Arabs Cruelty and Silence. Fouad Ajami writes about Beirut being “lost to a new reign of cruelty,” about Iraq’s “plunder and cruelty and sectarian animus,” and about the region’s “cruelty, waste, and confusion.”

That cruelty, usually at a remove from outsiders, became cinematically vivid on April 22, 2009, when ABC News aired a tape of a prince from the United Arab Emirates sadistically torturing an Afghan merchant he accused of dishonesty. No less instructive were the passive reactions of his government and of American officials. The story reveals much and is worth pondering:

In Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s largest and most powerful emirate, the Nahyan family has long ruled and dominated. After the 2004 death of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who had ruled the emirate since its independence in 1971, his long-restrained 22 royal sons and grandsons reveled in their new-found freedom of action. One of them in particular, Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a younger brother of Abu Dhabi’s current ruler and president of the seven-member United Arab Emirates federation, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (b. 1948), went crazy. “It’s like you flipped a switch and the man took a wrong turn in his life and started getting violent,” comments Bassam Nabulsi, 50, of Houston, Texas, a native of Lebanon and former business associate of Issa’s. Read more ...

Source: FrontPage MagazineIssa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Latest recipient of The Face of Evil Award

Muslim Women in U.S. Struggle to Balance Western Freedoms and Islamic Culture

By Ruth Ravve

DEARBORN, Mich. — The "call to prayer" is a sound heard five times a day in this city, but this is not the Middle East. It’s Dearborn, Michigan — which has the largest Arab-American population in the U.S.

Like other immigrant groups, many came here years ago in search of a better life. In the past few decades, the auto industry needed workers, so Michigan became a top destination.

Over time, thousands of the Muslim faithful from around the world settled here, opening shops and restaurants and turning Dearborn into a heavily Muslim-influenced community, replete with mosques in every section of town and traditional foods from places like Pakistan and Syria.

But while there are plenty of comforts from their home countries, Muslim women say they’re constantly caught balancing their lives between the freedoms they have in Western culture and the restrictions they face from religious and societal pressure. They worry about whether they’re following the habits of "a good Muslim woman."

Zeinab Fakhreddine, a Lebanese-American woman raised in Dearborn, walks down the street wearing a traditional two-piece suit and a Muslim headscarf, called a hijab. The scarf covers her hair and tightly frames her face. She says the hijab was designed as a way to honor women in Islam, by concealing their beauty.

In her community, she says, so many women are dressed this way, nobody looks twice at her. "It's kind of like a comfort zone in Dearborn, but when you leave here, it kind of becomes very different."

Outside Dearborn, it's a different story.

Despite the fact that Islamic groups are growing in major cities in the U.S., many Muslim women living here say assimilating into Western culture is still very difficult.

Many of the immigrant women come to the United States from Muslim countries where they have few rights. Women are not allowed to drive cars or keep their own passports in Saudi Arabia, for example. It is very difficult for a woman to go to school or even leave her home without a male relative escorting her in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In fact, life for Muslim women in the U.S. is so different that they say they're not sure whether to accept the sudden opportunities they have here, or reject them for fear that it doesn't fit within their religious followings.

"In our religion it's forbidden to listen to music and there’s some areas that we stay away from ... because we don’t listen to music," said Fakhreddine.

Also under Islam, it's acceptable for a man to have up to four wives at a time. While that's illegal in the United States, Islamic leaders say the religion designates the man as the head of the household.

"The big decisions are from the husband. Actually, we have to discuss everything with them," says Umia Mustafa, who moved here from Pakistan 10 years ago, after her parents arranged her marriage to a Pakistani man already living here.

She says in her religion, no matter where it’s practiced, there's no question who is in charge.

And sometimes clashes of cultures can have deadly consequences.

Last month, Buffalo resident Aasiya Hassan, 37, was found decapitated after she had been complaining to police about domestic violence. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, was charged with the crime.

While Muslim leaders caution against stereotypes and point out that domestic violence happens in all cultures, some women's rights leaders worry that Islam is being used to justify violence against women.

"The typical Muslim man, they always are very overprotective, they're very controlling over the women. They're not allowed to do this, they're not allowed to do that," says 23-year-old Fai Oman, who was born in Yemen.

She says she feels lucky to be living in the West because she has more freedom and security than she would have in her home country.

Taking on Western viewpoints and a less traditional look makes Oman stand out in the typical female Muslim community. She dresses in jeans and a low-cut sweater. Her dark hair is highlighted with blonde streaks, and her eyes are colored with bright blue shadow.

Some Islamic leaders fear women like Oman will become more common and that Western culture will have too much influence over generations of Muslim women who grow up and live in America.

"It does worry me because it's improper behavior [that] does lead to ... harm to the female," said Yemen native Sakainah Faleh, a teacher who tutors young Muslim girls in the proper ways of Islam.

She's concerned about Muslim women straying too far from the religion, she says.

But Muslim leaders like Amina Aharif, from the Council on American Islamic relations (CAIR), say that with so many women coming here from multiple Muslim countries, there are already different viewpoints and traditions influencing them.

Each comes to the United States with her own versions of cultural and religious practices, she adds.

"Just like America is a melting pot for people from all over the world, it is a melting pot for Muslims from all over the world," said Aharif. "It is such a diverse community."

Source: FoxNews

Arabs must decide - to stop Hamas

By Farid Ghadry

During this Israeli campaign to silence the terror of Hamas, one can discern two voices coming out of the Middle East against or in support of the Gaza operations.

The boisterous voices are those of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah leader, who a few days ago, verbally attacked Egypt's leadership for not standing by Gazans by opening the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. The attack was unprecedented in scope and intensity because it just fell short of asking Egyptians to overthrow the rule of Mubarak. It did, however, heighten anger amongst the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt enough to incite them to rise against their own government.

Other noises come from Damascus and Iran, where the "resistance" has its center of gravity. Both Assad and Ahmadinejad know that a Hamas defeat is their defeat. Those two have incited the Arab street in a show of force and complicity with extremism. And while many believe the fate of Hamas parallels the fate of Hizbullah, reality is that short of a total defeat of Hamas, not to exclude regime change, Palestinians and Israelis will continue to suffer the consequences of an election that brought them more misery than they imagined on that fateful day: January 23, 2006.

On the other side, the majority of voices approving of the Israeli campaign are those who have remained quiet or convoluted in their objections. Many Arab leaders, intellectuals, businesspeople, and even commoners from Iraq to Lebanon, from Egypt to Morocco, from Bahrain to Yemen, believe that Hamas represents deformity of an Arab civilization, one that is in dire need of an overhaul by existing homegrown leadership in Palestine, Syria and Iran capable of that solemn responsibility.

Many ask why fellow Arabs would support the destruction of Hamas and Hizbullah. The answer is simple. Both organizations, in addition to the rule in Damascus and Iran, represent everything that is wrong in the Middle East today: Morally weak organizations or states seeking revenge, extolling resistance, and abetting violence against those who have surpassed us in knowledge and technology.

Hamas, Hizbullah must be destroyed.

Our only chance, as a civilization that invented Algebra and helped usher advances in medicine, astronomy, and literature during an era of co-existence with the west, is to re-create that co-existence. How could we do that if ignorance is our guide and violent men are our leaders? Witness co-existence by the fact that Algebra was invented by al-Jabr just about the same time the Jewish King Omri founded Samaria.

How could Arabs and Muslims help their societies if their program for progress is built upon violence? When was the last time Hamas or Hizbullah issued their 5-year plan to improve the lives of their followers? It will never happen because the failed leadership of both organizations seeks power instead of duty, money instead of benevolence, and longevity in both instead of renewal for the good of their people.

Hizbullah and Hamas must be destroyed and the regimes in Damascus and Tehran must be changed for all Arabs and Farsi people to survive and prosper in an ever evolving world timed in nanoseconds and propagating through quantum physics. Their poisonous rhetoric of violence feeding a frenzied mass of ignorant Arabs leaning on their extreme religion to honor their incapacity to compete with the West is destroying future generations of hopeful saviors of our culture and traditions.

We Arabs must be the ones to stop Hamas and Hizbullah, rather than support their demonic and twisted logic of resisting development, enlightenment, and progress of the region. Even when development and enlightenment stare them in the face, their instinct is to destroy them pretending to safeguard their honor, the mechanics of which supersede all else including a happy life of fulfillment and accomplishments.

So while we abhor violence of all kind, Israel's campaign against Hamas must continue to the bitter end not only for the sake of peace but also to help Arabs realize they have a choice: Destroy like Gaza or develop like Dubai. Will this happen soon? Maybe not, but if a wake-up call and a nudge, once in a while, to pierce through the fog of deceit perpetrated by Syria and Iran is what it takes to see the light, then we stand by the West and Israel in the only hope that an Arab Renaissance in the Levant may actually have a chance of resurrection.

Farid Ghadry is the President of the Reform Party of Syria, a leading US-based opposition group to the rule of Assad and “resistance” in the Levant

Source: ICJS Online