Muslim World Must Stop Double Standards
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - Tawfik Hamid The story of Rifqa Bary, who recently escaped from her father in Ohio for fears of being killed after converting from Islam to Christianity (which would be in accordance with Shariah law), has raised important issues about the Muslim world and has drawn attention to how the Muslim world deals with apostates. Under normal circumstances, the lives of apostates in the Muslim world are threatened, and they are usually subject to humiliation and disrespect from their society. For example, the following innocent people and thinkers were either killed or received death threats in accordance with the Redda law, which prescribes the killing of apostates: - The Egyptian thinker Farag Fouda, who was declared an apostate by al-Azhar scholar Mohammed al-Ghazali and shot to death in his office on June 8, 1992, by two Islamic fundamentalists. - Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Taha was killed on the government’s authority on Jan. 18, 1985. Read more: http://www.newsmax.com/tawfik_hamid/rifqa_bary_muslim_obama/2009/09/23/263871.html
 A Palestinian writer is calling out what he sees as a double standard among Arabs and Muslims. Little, if any, outrage or condemnation is expressed when Palestinians kill other Palestinians in political fighting, as has happened at least 700 times since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007. But if Palestinians die from Israeli actions, even in response to a terrorist attack, the outrage can last years, writes Ahmad Abu Matar, who lives in Sweden. The Middle East Media Research Institute has posted a translation of most of Abu Matar's essay here. The murder of a Muslim woman in Germany provides a contemporary example. "What about the hundreds of murders perpetrated every month in the Arab countries under the false pretext of 'preserving [family] honor?' In most of these cases, a young woman is murdered by her brother or some other [male] relative. He declares it openly, and the women of the neighborhood, as well as the victim's family, greet him with sweets and cries of joy. Who writes or demonstrates against this [phenomenon]? Autopsies have revealed that over 95% of the girls murdered this way are virgins, which means that there was no 'violated honor' to cry over [in the first place]." The identity of the murderer shouldn't matter, Abu Matar argues. Someone was killed. He also cites a series of examples of Arab and Muslim states seizing and occupying the land of other countries, in some cases that continue today. Yet there's no outcry against those occupations. Many Arabs, including Palestinians, supported Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein when his army took over Kuwait in 1991. Even the Persian Gulf saw Iran occupy three islands of the United Arab Emirates in 1971, but "Nobody ever mentions them." In fact, some Arabs defend Iran as more cultured and advanced. "Using the same skewed logic, someone could make the unpatriotic claim that Israel – advanced, cultured and democratic – has a greater claim to Palestine than the struggling Palestinian people, who cause themselves more casualties than the [Israeli] occupation causes them. This, despite the fact that, according to common sense and international law, occupation is occupation, regardless of the identity and [cultural] level of the people whose land has been occupied." It's a provocative and bold article that should generate discussion. Source: IPT BlogArabs & Muslims re. Palestinians
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Tarek Fatah: Muslim Double Standards
Posted: July 09, 2009, 10:00 AM by NP Editor
This week, more than 100 Muslims have died and thousands more have been arrested in China. Yet not a peep of protest has been heard on the streets of Cairo, Karachi or Tehran. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it seems, is too busy imprisoning and herding Iranian Muslims to jail to hear the outcry in Xinxiang, while Egyptian religious leader, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has also ignored the persecution of the Uighurs. China, after all is the trusted ally of the Arab world.
This is not the first time the so-called ummah has shrugged off the massacre of fellow Muslims. During Kosovo’s war with Serbia, Islamists depicted Kosovar Muslims not as victims, but as American agents. More recently, the genocide of Darfuri Black Muslims at the hands of the Arab janjaweed militia and the Sudanese government has passed unnoticed by the larger Islamic world.
My friend, the Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy explained this phenomenon: “Many Muslims only pay attention when America and Israel behave badly.” If Israel invaded western China, she mused, maybe the rest of the Muslim world would wake up, cry foul and protest.
It is worth noting that on Monday, thousands of Egyptians did come out in Alexandria to protest … but not against the Chinese government. Their anger was directed at Germany, where a racist hate-monger had murdered Marwa Sherbini, an Egyptian woman (a crime that I wrote about in Wednesday’s Post).
The Muslim demonstrators in Alexandria shouted a bizarre chant to express their anger. “There is no god but God, and the Germans are the enemies of God,” they screamed. The chant is a twist on the Muslim oath and declaration of faith, “There is no god, but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”
But where were these protesters when, on Dec. 30, 2005, hundreds of Egyptian riot police stormed through a makeshift refugee camp in central Cairo to clear it of 2,500 Darfuri Muslims, beating to death 28 people, among them women and children? Were those lives less valuable than the life of Marwa Sherbini?
Yesterday in the Post, I wrote that Sherbini’s “murder will prove to be manna from heaven” for the Islamists. They, I argued, would use it “as the ultimate symbol of the West’s ‘war against Islam,’ and to fuel the propaganda that Muslims are victims.”Unfortunately, I was correct. Within hours, the tragedy was being held up as symbolic of the West’s hostility toward Muslims. The Canadian Islamic Congress led the charge, accusing the Canadian media of “intentionally” ignoring the news of Sherbini’s murder. Read all here: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/09/tarek-fatah-no-muslim-outcry-over-battered-uighurs.aspx Moreover, no one seems to be looking for the murderer of another Muslim girl. Neda Agha-Soltan was shot dead in Tehran by the Iranian government-backed militia. No one protested her death in the Muslim world outside Iran, nor asked for her killer to be brought to justice. Why? Perhaps because her killer was a fellow Muslim.
The question remains: Will Muslims come out to the streets and chant, “There is no god but God and the Iranian government is the enemy of God”? National Post Tarek Fatah is author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. Currently, he is working on his second book on the roots of Jewish-Muslim friction, to be published by McClelland & Stewart in the fall of 2010. Fatah is also co-host of Strong Opinions, an afternoon talk show on CFRB 1010 in Toronto. H/T: PosteDeVeille.ca
 By P. David Hornik In the same week that President Barack Obama said it would “not [be] productive [for] the U.S. president [to be seen as] meddling in Iranian elections,” Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman reportedly told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that “Everywhere people are born, people die, and we cannot accept a vision of stopping completely the settlements. We have to keep the natural growth.” Clinton, for her part, “reiterated that the U.S. viewed a total settlement freeze as an ‘important and essential’ step toward achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.” In other words, “natural growth”—whether or not the population of a settlement would, say, increase over the course of a year because fifty babies had been born within its confines—remained an issue on the table between the U.S. and Israel. Meanwhile, a poll found only 6% of Jewish Israelis saying the Obama administration was pro-Israeli and 50% saying it was more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli. Read more ...Source: FPMBarack Obama
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 By Herbert London One might assume that standards which prevail on one part of the globe might be applied equally to another part of the world. One might assume as well that what is good for the goose might be good for the gander. Well you might assume that, but in contemporary life you would be wrong. Some behavior tacitly and vehemently accepted by radicals within the Islamic community is rejected when applied by others. According to erstwhile president Jimmy Carter, Israeli checkpoints on the Gaza border designed to forestall terrorism are an example of “apartheid.” However, the former president has not said a word about Saudi Arabian policy that bars non-Muslims from Mecca and from holding Saudi citizenship. Any criticism of the Koran such as the Geert Wilders’ film Fitna is greeted with a fatwa and a variety of death threats. But Muslim claims that Christians are polytheists and infidels and Jews are the progeny of apes and pigs -- comments routinely made in many mosques -- are presumably protected by free speech provisions. Read more ...Source: Human Events
 By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury In recent years, many of the Muslim nations although are continuing to term those who participated in the war in Afghanistan as terrorists, in the state-owned and private media, Afghan warriors are continued to be termed as 'Mijahid' [member of Holy War]. Mujahid is originally, "someone who struggles". The term has, even in Arabic, taken on meanings that are specifically religious, or in particular, military or paramilitary, or both. Muslim nations, irrespective of their geological locations, language or culture, consider armed militants in Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan and other parts of the world as members of Holy War. Some nations, including Bangladesh have recently accepted the fact that, those fought in Afghan war are terrorists. Despite this recent change in strategy, there is no change in the official terminology of those militants who continue to be in the fields of militancy. Bangladesh´s present so-called secularist government also considers Afghan, Palestine, Kashmir etc militants as Mujahids. Dhaka, under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina looks for excellent relations with India, United States and rest of the non-Muslim world. But, they possibly fail to realize the fact that, by terming Kashmiri or Afghan or Palestinian militants as Members of Holy War, they in fact, prove to be un-dependable and dubious. Read more ...Source: American Chronicle
 In response to the sweeping condemnation in the Arab and Muslim world of Israel's actions in Gaza, and the calls to prosecute Israeli leaders for war crimes, liberal Arab writers have accused the Arabs and Muslims of hypocrisy. The liberal website www.elaph.com has published two articles in this vein, by Egyptian liberal Kamal Ghobrial and by Kuwaiti liberal Fahker Al-Sultan. Both writers point out that the Arab and Muslim world is quick to express outrage over atrocities and human rights violations when Arabs or Muslims are victimized by non-Muslims, but turns a blind eye - or even condones the violations - when the victims are non-Muslims, or when Muslims prosecute their own brothers, as happened in Saddam's Iraq and is happening today in Darfur. The writers argue that this double standard stems from the problem of hatred for the other, and especially towards Jews. Al-Sultan emphasizes the role of the traditional Islamic mentality - and of political Islam, which exploits this mentality - in promoting inflexible xenophobic and antisemitic attitudes. Read more ...Source: MEMRI
Jihadists have lately been complaining about what they perceive as a double standard in the response by Muslim scholars to the jihad in Gaza versus their response to jihad activity elsewhere. They point out that many scholars express unqualified support for the jihad in Palestine - especially for Hamas' resistance efforts in Gaza - but at the same time, these very same scholars condemn the jihad of Al-Qaeda, and even issue fatwas against it. This complaint is set out in a booklet recently posted on Islamist forums, titled "Buzugh Al-Fajr Bil-Muhajir Al-'Ash" (The Break of Dawn: 10 Arguments). The author, who calls himself "Abu Hazam Al-Salafi," presents 10 arguments explaining and demonstrating this double standard, which, he emphasizes, is applied especially by the Saudi clerics and scholars. More ...Source: MEMRI
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