Norwegian Muslims
form a protective ring of peace around a synagogue after a Muslim attack on
a synagogue in Denmark
The person who organized it
said "I hate Jews" in the past. Many of the thousand Muslims looked
like ethnic Norwegians. They
were also protesting Islamophobia.
The song, "Yeh Hum Naheen," is Urdu for "This is Not Us,"
and was turned from an idea into a YouTube video
by Waseem Mahmood and his sons, Khurrum and Khaiyyam.
"This story that is being spread in our names is a lie �
The name by which you know us we are not" are the lyrics.
(wnd 8/11/07)
While
there are peaceful Muslims, there is no peaceful Islam
Gregory Davis
(interview frontpagemag.com 8/14/07)
It is a tragic
mistake to lump all Muslims with the forces of darkness. Moderate, enlightened,
free-thinking Muslims do exist.
Daniel Pipes,
The Clash to End All Clashes?,
National Review Online 2/7/2006
What's
happened of late is that many Americans have come to the conclusion that there
is no such thing as moderate Islam, all Islam is the enemy. I can understand
that. Especially if one started looking at this topic only after 9/11.
Beheadings, Jihad, Honor Killings of women, it's an unpleasant picture. But I
who have been in this field since the late 60s who has lived in the Middle East
who have seen another side of Islam can tell you that it's not all like that. It
need not be like that that there are plenty of Muslims who don't want to live
under Islamic law who don't endorse this. It's that they're quiet They're
cautious they're fearful. They need to be emboldened... Daniel
Pipes at UC Irvine 1/31/2007
Yes, there are moderate Muslims. But are they essentially akin
to �cafeteria Catholics,� who conveniently pick and choose which practices they
want to take from their religion, while ignoring the more stringent, or
�outdated� ones? In other words, is Islam itself moderate? Or is it, if taken
literally, an inherently violent faith incompatible with modernity and Western
values?
Erick Stakelbeck,
My Year
Inside Radical Islam, frontpagemag.com 3/8/2007
Individual Moslems may show splendid
qualities...but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development
of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. (Sir Winston Churchill, The River War, Vol. II, pp. 248-50,
London: Longman, Green & Co., 1899)
Sarah Zuabi is a very brave Muslim women who has publicly
stated that she loves the state of Israel. She is in danger of her life
from other Muslims because of her saying that. A video of her is embedded below.
Here is another video with Ms. Zoabi.
Miss Iraq took a selfie with Miss Israel and had to flee Iraq
as a result. She says that Ilhan Omar is spreading the very Shariah that
she fled from. She says that there are good Muslims want to reform Islam.
A video of her speaking is embedded below.
Dalia Al-Aqidi ran against Ilhan Omar. She is
against the bad things Ilhan is doing. Here is Dalia's campaign ad.
Abdol
Hossein Sardari was an Iranian Muslim who instead of fleeing France when the
Nazis took over stayed in the Iranian consulate and saved Jews from the
Nazis. To protect
Iranian Jews living in France, Sardari crafted a brilliant, if surreal,
historical argument. He reached out to Nazi officials and claimed that Iranian
Jews – whom he called Jugutis – were not racially Jewish in the sense defined by
the Nuremberg Laws. He argued they were Mosaics, which he defined as Persians
who followed the teachings of Moses but remained ethnically and racially Aryan.
Without the authorization of his government – which had been invaded by the
British and Soviets and was no longer paying his salary – Sardari began issuing
blank Iranian passports. He stayed in occupied Paris at great personal risk,
using his own funds to keep the consulate running. He issued over 500 Iranian
passports, but the impact was much larger. Each passport was often used for an
entire family, and many were given to non-Iranian Jews as well. By providing
these documents, he granted the holders the protection of a neutral state. When
the Gestapo came knocking, a Persian passport was a shield that turned a target
of the regime into a protected foreign national.
When I argue with my friends
against Islamic immigration into the West one comment I have heard is that they
know nice Muslim people. One thing we need to keep in mind is that being
nice does not preclude having dangerous beliefs that aren't nice. Hunter
Stuart wrote about how
nice the Palestinians were that he met. He
wrote:
I spent close to six weeks
visiting Nablus and Ramallah and Hebron, and even the Gaza Strip. I met some
incredible people in these places; I saw generosity and hospitality unlike
anywhere else I�ve ever traveled to. I�ll be friends with some of them for the
rest of my life. But almost without fail, their views of the conflict and of
Israel and of Jewish people in general was extremely disappointing. First of
all, even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100
percent of Israel ‒ not just the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West
Bank... They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion (of the
Jews).
Hunter Stuart started his
journalistic career in Israel as very pro-Palestinian and hostile to Israel.
One thing that changed his mind was the violent attacks by Palestinians that
kept him texting his wife to see if she was OK. Another was when he was
almost killed by a mob of Palestinians yelling Yehud who changed their mind when
he said "ana mish yehud" (I am not Jewish) and explained that he was an American
who loves Palestinians.
Yes there were a lot of very
nice Palestinians but that didn't prevent mobs from trying to kill him and from
endangering his wife.
There are
Muslims who are good from the perspective of the West. From the Muslim
perspective many who we see as bad are good. Those Muslims who commit acts
of violence believe they are doing good. A Saudi explained how as part of
their desire to promote virtue and prevent vice Muslims blew up things. He
said: (Rafaeli, N.,
A Saudi
Glastnost, Frontpagemag.com 10/19/05)
Why did they [who were responsible for the
terrorist acts in Riyadh] wave the banner of jihad? The answer is this: ibn
Taymiya... said... that if the ruler does not observe the commandment of
promoting virtue and preventing vice, this obligation is incumbent upon the
clerics... it is these words that are the real problem. We must stop
cajoling and say: These words are a mistake, and a true disaster, that leads
to anarchy, and a threat to national unity, and the return to al-jahiliyya,
because anyone who thinks himself a cleric will try to remove everything he
considers vice. Anyone who thinks music is forbidden will blow up stores
that sell tapes; anyone who thinks smoking a narghila [hookah] is forbidden
will blow up the shops offering them for sale, and so on. This is no
exaggeration; the day is not far off when they will open fire on satellite
dishes.
Saudi journalist Abdulhameed Al-Ghobain has been interviewed numerous times by
both the international media and Israeli television. �Saudi Arabia seeks
good relations with Israel and the Jewish people and a fair, just, lasting, and
prosperous peace for the region. Some call it �normalization�; I call it common
sense,� Al-Ghobain wrote inIsrael
Hayom. Al Ghobain was
arrested by the Saudis and faces 10 years in jail.
The New York Post reported on
December 12 how a Muslim, Hassan Askari, came to the assistance of a Jew, Walter
Adler. (Jew's
Subway Hero a Muslim):
It all began when Adler, his girlfriend,
Maria Parsheva, and two other pals boarded the subway at Canal Street bound
for Brooklyn and someone in another group wished them "Merry Christmas."
Adler and his pal Angelica Krischanovich responded: "Happy Hanukkah."
Apparently, those were fighting words.
"They just came at us so fast. The first thing that came into my mind was,
'Yeah, this is going to be violent,' " said Parsheva, 20.
One of the group immediately hiked up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of
Christ.
"He said, 'Happy Hanukkah, that's when the Jews killed Jesus,' " said Adler.
The group of about 14 men and women then allegedly began taunting Adler and
his pals as "dirty Jews" and "Jew bitches."
Amid a huge scrum, Askari jumped in.
"I'm bleeding all over the place, there's lots of people, they're fighting
with Hassan still, and I'm like, why isn't anyone else doing anything?"
Adler said.
He pulled the emergency brake right before entering the DeKalb Avenue
station.
Police came aboard and arrested 10 people, charging six with assault and
four with unlawful assembly.
A Muslim woman came to the defense of a
Jewish man and his son on the London tube. A man was reading
antisemitic statements from Christian texts to a Jewish passenger and his little
boy. The text is:
Revelation 3:9 - Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say
they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them worship before
your feet, and to know that I have loved you.
Unfortunately for Jews there is anti-semitic
hatred embedded in both the Christian and Islamic religions. The Muslim
women argued with the man and pointed out that there was a child involved. The video of the incident is embedded below.
Perhaps the best example of a good
Muslim country is Senegal where Muslims coexist peacefully with Christians and
even
celebrate Christmas. That may be because Muslims in Senegal have
become secularized. According to an
article in the Union Leader 12/25/05:
Senegal is a peaceful oasis among some
strife-torn neighbors. It's a budding
democracy under the motto "one people, one goal,
one faith," but doesn't decree which faith that
should be. Secularism elsewhere may mean
the freedom not to celebrate a religious
holiday. In Senegal many interpret it to mean
they should celebrate all of them.
"Here in Senegal, it's a secular country.
Everyone wants to buy cakes and gifts. We
respect Christians and they respect us," says
Fatou Mata, 40, a mother of two.
And
she faces the yuletide pressures familiar to
parents everywhere: "If my kids don't have a
present on Christmas, they'll cry."
Despite being occupied by
Italy and then Germany, Albania not only protected its Jewish population but
offered
refuge to Jews from elsewhere in the region�and this is a country with a
Muslim majority.
An Iranian Muslim diplomat
went to great lengths to
save Jews from the Nazis.
When Jews were expelled from
Spain they fled to the Ottoman empire. Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman
Empire, learning about the expulsion of Jews from Spain, dispatched the Ottoman
Navy to bring the Jews safely to Ottoman lands, mainly to the cities of
Thessaloniki (currently in Greece) and İzmir (currently in Turkey).
Immanual Aboab, a Portuguese Jewish scholar claimed that Bayazid II asserted
that �the Catholic monarch Ferdinand was wrongly considered as wise, since he
impoverished Spain by the expulsion of the Jews, and enriched Turkey.�
Turkey today is becoming radicalized and its leader Erdogan makes anti-Jewish
statements but there was a time when Turkey was kind to the Jews.
James Woolsey
gave a
speech in February 2006 in which he said:
There are millions of good and decent
Muslims in the world. If you want to have an interesting speaker, sometime
invite Sheik Kabanni from Detroit, the head of the Sufis in the United
States, an absolutely wonderful man. His followers are far from what you
would see in some of the organizations like the Counsel of American-Islamic
Relations and the Islamic Society of North America. Those organizations
leaning toward the Wahhabi view of things tend to ostracize Sheik Kabanni
and his Sufis and keep them on the sidelines, because they�re far too
moderate from the point of view of those who lean in a Wahhabi direction.
Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a former extremist
Muslim told Andrea Jacobs in an interview (frontpagemag.com
10/24/2006) that
I am morally obligated to help Muslims
understand the Koran in a peaceful manner. Enabling Muslims to live in
harmony with the rest of the world is far more important to me than my life.
I always say that in certain times in history, there are people who stand
against evil. I am honored to be among them.�
He also warned her about the hostility of the
extremism of U.S. Muslims. He told her:
�Ask Muslim kids what they think about
Jews. Kids do not lie. They will tell you what they are being taught. If
they say, �Jews are nice people and we can live with them in harmony,� I
will be the first person to congratulate their parents. But I assure you, if
you ask Muslim kids living in the US what they think of Jews, you will be
shocked.�
He warned that you can't trust Muslims when they
say how peaceful they are. He said:
Do not give them a chance to blame the
world for their own actions. They know how to play with the words. I know,
because I was one of them.
�For example, a Nazi can say Nazism is peaceful. But if they don�t denounce
the Holocaust or the killing of Jews, what they say means nothing.� Dr.
Hamid proceeds to offer his method for cracking the fundamentalist Islamic
code.
The Koran contains verses that command us
to subjugate or murder non-Muslims in order to create Islamic rule. On the
other hand, the Koran teaches preciousness of human life. How can a logical
person believe that those diametrically opposed concepts came from the same
source? How could Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate be the
source of "kill [infidels] them wherever you find them"? The only logical
explanation is that the Koran has been corrupted over the centuries, and all
we want to do is to revert it as close as possible to the original.
It's interesting that other Muslims
argue that the Jews and the Christians corrupted the word of God.
We often hear of Palestinian parents who are proud of their
child suicide bomber but when a 9 year old Palestinian boy, Amin Salhuth, died in a
traffic accident, his family decided to offer his heart lungs, kidneys and liver to those
who needed them including Jews. Amin's uncle explained
For us, there is no difference between Jews and Arabs
Yunis Owaidah is
one of the few Palestinian Arab who's not afraid to admit that he is a
"collaborator" with Israel (Jerusalem Post 10/6/04). On the contrary, the
63-year-old father of 12 even boasts of the fact that he has been collaborating with
Israel since 1967.
"I've saved the
lives of many innocent people," Owaidah said in an interview at his home in the
Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras el-Amud. "If saving the lives of innocent civilians
means that I'm a traitor, so be it."
Oweidah, who has two
wives and 46 grandchildren, has also been the target of several attempts on his life.
An e-mail and a telephone message for the office of the Palestinian Observer
Mission to the United Nations were not immediately returned Thursday evening.
He moved to Ras el-Amud,
where he purchased a small piece of land and built a new home. Most of his neighbors have
since been boycotting him and his family. "Their children still refuse to play with
my children," he said.
Ali Mahmoud Ali Shafi
is a Palestinian Arab who lived in the West Bank town of Qalqilya from 1948,
when the state of Israel was created, until 1994, when he moved to Haifa. Before
moving to Israel, he helped the Israeli security services prevent terrorist
attacks on its citizens, it says.
In September 2001, he returned to Qalqilya so his daughter could
visit her grandmother, and members of the Palestinian security service entered
their house and asked him to accompany them to their headquarters for 10
minutes, the lawsuit says.
When he arrived at the headquarters, he was stripped, handcuffed
and beaten, and hot salt water was poured onto his wounds. He escaped when
Israel Defense Forces soldiers passed through town, scaring his guards. He
sued the Palestinian authorities, saying he was tortured after he helped Israel
prevent terrorist attacks on its citizens by Palestinian militants.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan says Ali Mahmoud
Ali Shafi was kidnapped on September 22, 2001, in Palestinian
Authority-controlled territory and tortured for six months.
Mithal al-Alusi,
the descendent of a famous family of Sunni religious judges, has been attacked
four times--and both his sons murdered--by terrorists, precisely because he has
sought to work with Iraqis of other faiths and to make peace with all of Iraq's
neighbors, including Israel. Al-Alusi is an unusually brave man, and has not
quit. (David, Frum,. A Sunni Hero in Iraq, American Enterprise Institute For
Public Policy Research, 8/30/05)
Ishmael Khaldi is a Muslim bedouin who speaks at
campuses around the world in defense of Israel. His web site is http://www.ishmaelkhaldi.com/mambo/
Professor Khaleel Mohammed, Assistant Professor at
the department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, publicly argues that
the Koran says that Israel belongs to the Jews.
Walid Shoebat was Muslim a terrorist in the PLO who
became a Christian and who says that:
"I realized everything I had been taught
about Jews was a lie."
He is now is an outspoken advocate for Israel (IsraelNationalNews.com 4/1/05).
Another pro-Israel Arab, Salma Abdallah, had the courage to say that:
"The Palestinian refugee problem and
the escalation of the Palestinian situation [are] largely the fault of the Arab world, not
Israel,"
Salma said that:
"Palestinians from all over the world
have contacted me, and told me that they wanted to say the same things, but didn’t
have the courage to speak out. I was surprised that I received such a positive response to
something that was largely denied by other Arabs."
Nonie Darwish is a Muslim who was inculcated as
a child with the teachings of hatred in the Palestinian-Arab schools of Gaza; she is now
an activist for Israel and the Jewish people. You can hear her speak by clicking
on part 1and moving the
slider to 22:50 to skip the unrelated first 23 minutes of the audio. You can
hear the second part by clicking on part 2.
Tawfik Hamid was a member of
Jemaahia Islamia who used to pray together with Alzawaherri, the number 2 leader
of Al Qaeda. After a few months he developed his own Islamic sect
that was peaceful and promoted love to every human being irrespective of his or
her religion. He started to preach in Mosques to promote his message of peace
and as a result became a target of many fanatics who threatened his life. He
said: "As a Muslim, I am willing to speak out against the hate filled Islamic
Fundamentalism that prevails in the world today," His web site is
http://www.thamid.com.
Jamal Miftah had a column published
in the Tulsa World Newspaper in October 29, 2006, against the exploitation of
Muslims in general and Muslim youth in particular by terrorist organizations
like Al Qaeda. He told
frontpage what happened next.
"On the night of November 18th 2006 I went
my mosque to offer my last prayer of the day (Ishaa prayer). After the
prayers and a small lecture by one of the member of IST, I was meeting and
chatting with other members of society when the Imam of the mosque, Ahmad
Kabbani, approached me and said to me that I should be ashamed for writing
the article.
I asked him what was wrong with the article. He replied it was anti-Islamic.
I replied that I had more understanding of Islam than him and there was
nothing wrong or anti Islamic in my article, to which he responded loudly by
calling me anti- Muslim and that he will pray to Allah to straighten me out.
I told him to keep his prayers to himself and walked out of the prayer hall
along with Khan Muhammad Zareef. I was standing in the hall way with Zarref
Khan and another member of the community, Mr. Ibraheem (who is Muazan of the
mosque) and talking.
At this time Houssam Elsouessi approached me along with two other Arabs. He
started accusing me in a very loud voice of being anti-Islamic and
anti-Muslim with the very apparent motive of inciting other members of the
community against me. One of his companions waved his shoe at my face and
said that I was a traitor and no better then his shoes, while Houssam kept
calling me anti-Muslim and almost pushed me to the wall.
He told that I could no longer come to the mosque... On November 19th,
2006 Houssam Elsouessi sent a message to me through Khan Muhammad Zareef,
telling me that he had obtained a restraining order against me from entering
the mosque... On the night of November 20th, 2006 the mosque leadership,
including Houssam and others, discussed my article after Ishaa prayer and
said to everyone that if they saw me inside the mosque that they should
immediately call police and have me thrown out of the mosque."
There are Palestinian Arabs who have
come out against the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza. Worldnetdaily
interviewed some of them (Palestinians,
Gaza Evacuation Bad For Us wnd.com, 7/20/05).
Fhaud, 63, a greenhouse
supervisor, said he has grown attached to his Jewish employers.
"I've known my boss since he
was a kid and I worked for his father," he said. "Some workers here
have known three generations of Jewish families. I was invited to all the bar
mitzvahs and weddings."
Mahmoud, who works in the same
greenhouse, said, "I don't want the disengagement to go through. Not just
because I'll lose a job, but because I'll lose friends."
Mahmoud said he thinks the Gaza
withdrawal is immoral. "The Jews who live here didn't do anything wrong.
They were put here by a lot of help from the Israeli government, and told they
would stay forever," he said. "Now the Israeli government wants to
rip them out. It's not right."
Salah Uddin Shoaib
Choudhury is a Muslim journalist who wrote articles that urged his nation of
Bangladesh to recognize Israel, and engage in interfaith dialogue. He also
condemned terrorism and radical Islam. This was a very courageous thing to
do and he was arrested for espionage. He was released 17 monthes later
thanks to the intervention of Rep. Mark
Kirk, R-Ill. (Muslim
Journalist Freed From Prison, wnd.com 5/4/05)
The late Abdul
Haq who was killed by the Taliban in his heroic attempt to rally support against them
was a Muslim. A lawyer by the name of Mohammed saw POW Jessica Lynch being slapped
around by her captors and became outraged. He said he walked 6 miles to alert
Marines of Lynch's whereabouts because "a person, no matter his nationality, is a
human being." Using Mohammed's information, Army Rangers and Navy SEALS led a
daring nightime rescue mission on Wednesday April 2, 2003, to rescue her. Mohammed
"is an extremely courageous man," said Lt. Col. Rick Long, spokesman for the 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force (New York Post 4/4/03). Another Mohammed, Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23 year old Muslim medical research student and NYPD cadet was on his way to
his research job at Rockefeller University when the Islamic terrorists crashed planes into
the World Trade Center. He immediately changed his route and raced to the burning
towers to help. His body was found at the site.
In the Red Zone I dedicate an
entire chapter to the most memorable Iraqi I encountered: a beautiful Shia woman
named Nour. She works for a major NGO in the southern city of Basra, where she’s helping Iraqis learn the
fundamentals of democracy (because her life is under threat by religious extremists, I
can’t reveal her last name or the NGO’s identity). I spent several weeks
with Nour, crisscrossing Basra,
interviewing everyone from religious radicals to tribal leaders, newspaper editors to the
families of Christian wine merchants murdered by Islamic terrorists. Along the way,
she saved me from at least one potentially dangerous scrape with mysterious
“intelligence agents” who detained me one morning in my hotel.
Young, intelligent, vivacious, Nour is
the embodiment of what liberated Iraq
could become. But the more I came to know her, the more I discovered how difficult her
life had been. She had suffered beatings from her brothers, imprisonment by
Saddam’s secret police, the murder of her fianc�, and today, along with the daily
tensions of war, she experiences constant harassment by thuggish Iraqi men who thrive on
humiliating and intimidating women. And yet she is determined to stay in Iraq and fight for women’s rights and
democracy. One thousand Nours set loose in Iraq would transform the country overnight; I just pray the one I met survives.
Kenneth Levin in an article titled
Ignoring the Good Guys wrote (frontpagemag.com
9/9/05):
Said Al-Din Ibrahim has campaigned for
open and transparent elections in Egypt, criticized the absence of basic
freedoms, and urged an end to the abuse of Egypt�s large Coptic Christian
population. Ibrahim was arrested in 2000 and sentenced to seven years in
jail. He was released in 2002 and two years later was a key participant in a
Cairo conference of reformists calling for religious as well as political
liberalization and promotion of an Islamic reformation to counter the spread
of radical Islam.
Kuwaiti author and teacher Ahmed Al-Baghdadi has attacked the politics of
tyranny that dominates the Arab world and taken to task Arab artists for
being intimidated by their governments and not using their art for social
and political criticism. Earlier this year, he joined several other Kuwaiti
educators and intellectuals in criticizing Kuwait�s Islamic education
curricula for purveying an extremism that helps foster religiously-inspired
violence. Baghdadi complained that current teaching, "focus[es] on the Jihad
verses and the war verses [of the Koran] and... that the infidel must be
cursed." Baghdadi has repeatedly advocated education reform and
liberalization.
Tunisian human rights activist Muhammud Bechri has urged an Arab secular
response to Islamism and has complained that, instead, "Arab/Islamic
governments are rather colluding with the Islamists, hoping that
anti-Western diatribes will help deflect the attack of the masses from their
own failures." But Bechri also recognizes that secular alternatives are not
necessarily panaceas and notes that Islamism is not the only murderous
ideology popular in the Arab world. He points to the other of what he calls
"the twin fascisms of Islamism and pan-Arabism" as likewise an ideological
engine of mass murder. Bechri sees pan-Arabism at work in the Sudanese Arab
genocidal campaign against the Muslim but black population of Darfur and in
the wider Arab world's indifference and silence.
The Free Muslims Against
Terrorism are petitioning the UN Security Council and the United States government to
establish an international tribunal to prosecute religious leaders, including clerics who
issue “fatwas” which are religious opinions, edicts, rulings and conclusions
that incite violence and justify the use of terrorism. (frontpagemag.com
11/30/04, Holding Islamic Preachers Accountable)
Joel Mobray wrote an article
titled Islamic
Hall of Shame ( frontpagemag.com 5/27/05) that
The leaders of every other major Muslim
organization shunned the march and declined to take a public stand against
terrorism and extremism.
At the march, human rights activist Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi
gave a speech warning about the nuclear threat Iran poses to the world and
criticized the appeasement policies of the West towards Iran. He said
(Standing Up At the Muslim March Against Terror, frontpagemag.com
5/18/05):
The
Islamic regime�s rapid deployment of nuclear weapons has also become a huge
and looming threat to the world. On May 13, the regime once again faked out
the world, promising to stop enriching Uranium. And the Europeans once again
believed this. Now they are essentially giving Iran more time to construct its doomsday machines on
the sly. These weapons, whose technology and materials come from North Korea,
China, Russia, Germany, Pakistan and Libya, will be inevitably used against
the West and its� allies. They will be used against anyone who dares stand
in the Islamists� way...
A
suicide bomber who killers innocent civilians is indeed committing terrorism.
But terrorism is also perpetrated in a more subtle way. For instance, by
defending the status quo in the Middle East, and by advocating appeasement and engagement with
tyrants, Western politicians and media are, in effect, condoning terrorism.
Kamal Nawash, who apparently is a
member of Free Muslims Against Terrorism wrote an article titled My Fellow Muslims:
Wake Up, (frontpagemag.com 2/23/05) after Muslims reacted to a Freedom House
investigation that found extremist Islamic literature in American mosques by accusing
Freedom House of Muslim bashing. In the article Mr. Nawash argued that Muslims need
to stop blaming imaginary Jewish conspiracies and take the lead in the fight against
Muslim extremism.
Although only 50
people showed up to a Muslim demonstraton against Terrorism, over ten thousand
Muslims came to a rally across from the White House that denoucned the Jews and
supported Hamas and Hezbollah.
Fatwas have been issued by
some Muslim Western organizations against terrorism. (Fatwa
Frenzy, Weekly Standard, 8/18/05) The problem as Mamoun Fandy, a fellow at the Baker
Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, put it is that: "A fatwa
from Brooklyn or the National Press Club--that's not where Muslims go to get
their fatwas."
Talal El Khatib is a patriotic Arab American
who joined the U.S. military. He did this inspite of the lack of support in the
American Arab community for his doing so. His father Moufid, whose country Kuwait
was liberated by Americans from Iraq, told reporters Jeff Seidel and Richard Johnson that:
(Father Deals with
Tension Over Son's Role in Military, Detroit Free Press, 2003)
"None of the Arab guys come to say hi or
good luck or wish you the best," Moufid says. "They feel my son is Arab. He is
from the Middle East. He is not supposed to be in the U.S. Army."
Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani is a courageous
foe of radical Islam who at a State Department open forum had the courage to warn America
that 80% of the mosques in the United States have been taken over by Islamic radicals.
Muslim human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the
2003 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her work fighting for democracy and the rights of
women and children, the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to receive the accolade.
She was jailed by Iran's Muslim government for doing so.
Irshad Manji is a practicing Moslem who grew up in
Canada and who had the courage to expose the problems of Islam in her book "The
Trouble with Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change". She calls
herself a "Muslim refusenik," a phrase she borrowed from Soviet Jews. She
explained (The Jewish Week 4/16/04):
That doesn't mean I refuse to be a Muslim; it simply
means that I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of Allah.
According to the New York Post (1/18/04)
WHEN Irshad Manji was 11 years old, already clad in a
white chador for modesty, she began asking questions during her Saturday madrassa classes.
"Why can't girls lead prayer?"
"Why would the prophet Muhammad have commended his army to kill an entire Jewish
tribe when the Koran supposedly came to him as a message of peace?"
Her irate teacher wouldn't give her answers and instead told her to read the Koran. When
she tried to look elsewhere for help, the school did everything it could to keep her out
of its library, where women didn't belong.
According to the Jewish Week (4/16/04)
Her book is also deeply personal, and she recounted her
early experience in a madressa or Islamic religious school: Because she asked too many
questions, namely about anti-Semitism and the role of women, she was expelled at age 14.
Irshad Manji when speaking about her book said:
I appreciate that every faith has its share of
literalists, Christians have their Evangelicals, Jews have the ultra-Orthodox. For
God's sake, even Buddhists have fundamentalists. But what this book hammers home is
that only in Islam is literalism mainstream
Daniel Pipes in his article "Voices
of Islam" (New York Post 9/23/03) about moderate Muslims and what happens when they
speak out told what happened to Irshad Manji after she wrote the book:
For her efforts, Manji has been called "self
hating," "irrelevant," "a Muslim sellout" and a
"blasphemer." She is accused of both "denigrating Islam" and
dehumanizing Muslims.
This outpouring of hostility prompted Manji to hire a
guard and install bullet proof glass in her house.
There are Muslims who support Irshad Manji but
they are afraid to so publicly. Ms. Manji says that she has been gratified by the
support she has been receiving from Muslims around the world, particularly women and young
people - most of whom can't speak publicly out of fear.
In April 2005 the Islamic Society of Rutgers University held an election.
This was a cover for imposing a Wahabi controlled organization on the Muslims of
Rutgers. A Rutgers student, Fatima Agha, had the courage to speak out
against this. (frontpagemag.com
5/18/05)
Saudi journalist Mansur al-Nuqaydan is a
Muslim who favors Taqarub (rapprochement between Muslims and non-Muslims). This
noble aspiration predictably created hostility among his fellow Saudis. Al-Khudayr a
Saudi cleric accused al-Nuqaydan of apostasy and of having committed the crimes of
"secular humanism" and "scorn for religion, its rites, and devout
people." He and other Saudi clerics were especially offended by al-Nuqaydan's
conviction that:
We need an Islam reconciled with the other, an Islam
that does not know hatred for others because of their beliefs or their inclinations.
We need a new Reformation, a bold reinterpretation of the religious text so that we
can reconcile ourselves with the world.
On the basis of this expression of
Taqarub he was sentenced to death, with the edict posted publicly on al-Khudayr's web site
(The Saudi Paradox, Michael Doran Foreign Affairs Jan/Feb 2004).
Ali Al-Dumaini,
Abdullah Al-Hamed and Matruk Al-Faleh are Saudi academics who called for a
constitutional monarchy, an independent judiciary and freedom of speech.
They were arrested on March 2004 and sentenced from 6 to 9 years for sowing
dissent. (The
Washington Times 5/16/05)
According to the Washington Times (Saudi Promises 4/21/04)
Twelve Saudi men had the courage to sign a petition asking the House of Saud to adopt a constitutional monarchy featuring women's
rights, religious freedom and freedom of the press. They also requested the implementation
of local elections and planned to establish a human rights committee independent of the
Saudi government.
To date, three of the reformers
— former university professors Abdullah Al Hamed and Metrouk Alfaleh and poet Ali
Dumaini — remain in prison, while the others have been released under conditions that
they cannot leave Saudi Arabia or talk to the media. They were also required to sign a
letter of retraction vowing to cease from campaigning for reform.
Mohammad Al-Harbi, a high
school teacher in the Saudi town of Ein Al-Juwa who taught chemistry felt it his
duty: (The
Saudi State vs. the Anti-Terror Teacher, frontpagemag.com 11/23/05)
"to enlighten his students and
warn them of terrorism and its consequences. He went to great lengths by
talking to students, hanging anti-terrorism signs around the school and
speaking against terrorism.� That seems to have upset some Islamic
studies teachers at the school. When al-Harbi went so far as to post an
antiterrorism article by a Saudi columnist on the school bulletin board, it
was �ripped off and torn to pieces.� Al-Harbi told Arab News that the
Islamic teachers would �visit students in their homes, encouraging them to
disobey [him] and calling him names.�
Students who failed the monthly
chemistry test were convinced by Islamic studies teachers to file a lawsuit
against Al-Harbi which included allegations that Al-Harbi said good things about
the Jews and the Bible and prevented students from washing their hands for
prayer and was himself a student of witchcraft...
The Saudi Education Ministry removed
Al-Harbi from his teaching job and transferred him to an administrative post in
a government education office. Al-Harbi has been sentenced to three years
in jail and 750 lashes to be administered in a public market.
Akbar Ahmed chair of
Islamic Studies at the University of Washington D.C. and two of his students,
Frankie and Hailey traveled to India and spoke with radical extremists there.
He wrote about his trip (Talking Can Stop Hate, American Association of Retired
Persons Magazine, March and April 2007):
During our trip, Frankie and
Hailey were the first Americans that many people had ever met. The
effect was often startling; the stereotypes about Americans were replaced by
real people. I spoke often on our trip of the friendships I enjoy with
Jews, Christians and Muslims. I spoke of how inspired I am by my
friend Judea Pearl, who lost his only son, reporter Daniel Pearl, in a
brutal and senseless killing in Pakistan - and who has used this tragedy as
a bridge to reach out to Muslims. And yet few Americans in the Muslim
world go beyond their high-security walls to meet merchants or cabdrivers.
Imagine the impact if a high-profile American visited an ordinary Muslim at
his home. Imagine the cultural and psychological barriers that would
vanish...
No one experienced a more
radical change in thinking than Aijaz, the scholar from Deoband who had so
forcefully defended Osama bin Laden.
After our initial visit, Aijaz
accompanied us for the next week to many of our meetings in Delhi. He
had arranged some of these himself, such as a visit to the headquarters of
Jamat-i-Islami, the orthodox Islamic party of South Asia. Aijaz
listened to my speeches about my American friends, both Jews and Christians.
At every forum, he heard me emphasize the need for dialogue and
understanding as a Koranic duty. And he would have long conversations
with Hailey, Frankie, and Hadi Mubarak, a Brookings Institution research
assistant who had joined us. (Although Aijaz was initially reserved
about speaking directly with women, he opened up to them after a few days in
the field.) These were likely the first Americans he had met, and
certainly the first he had spoken with for such long periods of time.
He could now put a human face on the "American barbarians." Here were
Americans who listened to his opinions and discussed them....
Toward the end of our visit,
Aijaz approached me and said he would like to translate my book Islam Under
Siege. this was an astonishing shift for him. The book discusses
the need to create trust between societies through dialogue and
understanding-a far different theme than that of Aijaz's book on jihad.He
could now relate to Americans and even Israelis because they were
ultimately human. His anger and ignorance were checked. And by
translating the book, he will spread these ideas over a vast network of
madrassahs and mosques.
During their trip Muslims who had been
very anti-American became friendly to them.
Hailey later wrote:
We must approach the world not
from the position of fear, as I have done before this trip, but from that of
love and friendship. If two Americans with their professor can make
such a difference, what can a whole nation do with the power of compassion
and dialogue?"
David Ouelette wrote in frontpagemagazine
(9/28/04) about Muslims who have had the courage to face reality and speak out against
radical Islam. He wrote:
In the aftermath of
the Beslan tragedy, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor of the London daily Al-Sharq
Al-Awsat, wrote under the headline “The Painful Truth is that All of the Terrorists
are Muslims” that “Islam has suffered an injustice at the hands of the new
Muslims. We will only be able to clear our reputation once we have admitted the clear and
shameful fact that most of the terrorist acts in the world today are carried out by
Muslims.” (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, September 4, 2004)
* Under the title
“Butchers in the Name of Allah,” Khaled Hamad Al-Suleiman wrote in the Saudi
government daily Okaz: “The propagandists of Jihad succeeded in the span of a few
years in distorting the image of Islam, while the enemies of Islam did not succeed in
doing this [even] in the course of hundreds of years. They turned today's Islam into
something having to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent
civilians and exploding people.” (Okaz, September 5, 2004)
* Columnist Bater
Wardam, wrote in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour that “It is always easy to flee to
illusions and to place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist
organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists, and on American intelligence, but we all know
that this is not the case and that those who murder innocent civilians in Iraq after
having kidnapped them, those who turned civilian airplanes into destructive bombs, those
who exploded trains crowded with innocent civilians and those who fired on children in a
school in Ossetia - they came from our midst. They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast,
grow beards, demand the wearing of veils, and call for the defense of Islamic
causes.” (Al-Dustour, September 5, 2004)
* Author and
journalist Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi wrote in Rezqar that “If the Arabs had today a
well-burnished mirror in which they can see themselves, and if they had the requisite
courage to look in it, they would be stricken by fear and panic at the sight of
themselves. The image [would be] that we have become the most terrorist nation and the
greatest spillers of blood in the world.” (www.rezqar.com, August 14, 2002)
* More recently yet,
Syrian scholar Mundir Badr Haloum wrote in the Lebanese daily Al-Safir: “Islam is in
the names of all of the organizations that decapitate using knives, all the while saying
the Fatiha [the first chapter of the Koran, said as a prayer] before the slaughter (...)
Indeed, we as Muslims produce terrorism, succor it, and praise it. We condemn it only when
forced to. Motivated by considerations of power, interests, and diplomacy, we wear a
pained expression on our faces but in our hearts we rejoice at the brilliant success - a
large number of casualties.”
* Journalist and
former Kuwaiti communications minister Dr. Sa'ad bin Tefla said on Jordanian television:
“Slaughter, destructive abuse, anarchy, and bloodshed in no way resemble Jihad
according to Shari'a and resistance. These are anarchy and terrorism [and not Jihad ], and
they are indications of frustration and of a culture of collective suicide reminiscent of
whales (...) I maintain that we are all responsible for this culture, and that Zionism and
imperialism have nothing to do with it (...) I maintain that there is, unfortunately, a
culture of violence that existed before the Americans came to Iraq and the Gulf, even
before the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and before the American occupation of
Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Unfortunately
there are many Muslims, who condemn those who speak the truth about terrorism and Islam.
After Canadian media conglomerate’s (CanWest) inserted of the word
“terrorist” in Reuters news stories concerning groups such as Hamas and the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades the Canadian branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR-CAN), the Canadian Arab Federation and the National Council on Canada-Arab
Relations, called on the Canadian Senate to investigate CanWest’s editorial
policy. According to David Ouelette
Arab and Muslim lobbies in North
America agitate racism accusations at those journalists and media enterprises objective
enough to call a cat a cat
One example of how there are both moderate and
radical Muslims was both the opposition and support among Muslims for the nomination of
Daniel Pipes by President Bush to the United States Institute of Peace. While
radical Muslim organizations such as CAIR and the Arab American Anti-Discrimination
Committee opposed his appointment, Tashbih Sayyed, president of the US Council for
Democracy and Tolerance, said:
Bush won my heart that he is serious about fighting
terror and fostering a more peaceful world when he nominated Daniel Pipes... He goes the
extra mile to distinguish between Islam, which he respects, and its militant form.
On April 25, 2004, an Arizona physician named Zuhdi Jasser the head
of the American Islamic Forum For Democracy organized America's first rally against
terrorism. The Muslim community of Phoenix is estimated at 50,000 persons; Jasser worked strenuously to reach out to
the Valley Council of Imams, Valley mosques and major Valley Islamic organizations.
Daniel Pipes wrote in an article titled Moderate Muslims March in Phoenix (frontpagemag.com
4/30/04) about the poor turnout to the rally as follows:
The number of Muslims, I heard, was between 30 and 100 persons. Most
participants were not Muslim but (the ArizonaRepublicrecounts)
“people like MichaelFischer, 18, of Glendale, who wanted
to denounce the stereotyping of Muslims; and GraceClark of Apache Junction, who wanted to promote peace.” .. very few Muslims did show up. And those who did held up “peace” and
“anti-war” signs, not anti-terror or anti-Islamist signs.
In 2007 a group of Imam's
decided to frighten passengers on an airline. Passengers and the flight
crew say the imams were disruptive, did not take assigned seats, asked for
seat-belt extensions they didn't need, loudly criticized the war in Iraq and
President Bush, and shouted about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The men were
escorted off Flight 300 to Phoenix, handcuffed briefly, searched and questioned
for several hours by airport police and members of the Joint Terrorism Task
Force. The Imam's sued the airline and said they would sue other people as
well. Dr. Jasser said that his group will raise money for the legal fees
of the any of these people if they were sued. From where they will raise
this money is the question that enters my mind if they can raise it at all.
According to the Washington Times 3/21/07
Gerry Nolting, whose Minnesota law firm
Faegre & Benson LLP is offering to represent passengers for free, says the
judicial system is being "used for intimidation purposes" and that it is
"just flat wrong and needs to be strongly, strongly discouraged."
"As a matter of public policy, the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]
presently tells traveling passengers to report suspicious behavior as part
of its homeland security program," Mr. Nolting said. "This has nothing to do
with race or ethnicity, but trying to intimidate and discourage reporting of
suspicious behavior and [also discourage] the promotion of safe travel."
On the other hand in Germany there was a
rally of 20,000 Muslims carrying banners that read "not in our name" and
"terrorism is a crime against humanity." This happened several months after the
killing of Van Gogh and after national broadcast station ZDF taped Islamic fascists in a
Berlin mosque saying, "Those Germans - those atheists - what good can they do us,
since they are unbelievers, they can only burn in hell." (New York Sun 12/21/04)
On May 27, 04, Washington's
Wardman Park Marriott Hotel hosted the second annual convention of American Shia Muslims,
organized by the Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA). The majority of those
attending support the Coalition's operations in Iraq even against rebel Shia leader
Moktada al-Sadr. (Weekly Standard, May 31, 04).
The organization Muslim WakeUp! writes in its description of itself
that it
seeks to bring together Muslims
and non-Muslims in America and around the globe in efforts that celebrate cultural and
spiritual diversity, tolerance, and understanding. Through online and offline media,
events, and community activities, Muslim WakeUp! champions an interpretation of Islam that
celebrates the Oneness of God and the Unity of God’s creation through the
encouragement of the human creative spirit and the free exchange of ideas, in an
atmosphere that is filled with compassion and free of intimidation, authoritarianism, and
dogmatism. In all its activities, Muslim WakeUp! attempts to reflect a deep belief in
justice and against all forms of oppression, bigotry, sexism, and racism.
That may be but a lot of the opinions on
the web site are slanted in the direction of hostility toward the war on terror.
Nine days after Kenneth Bigley, a
62-year-old civil engineer was taken hostage by Islamic terrorists prominent Muslims from
Britain courageously flew to Iraq to plead for his release.
"I believe and always maintain hope in the mercy of Allah," said Daud Abdullah,
a member of the two-man team from the Muslim Council of Britain.
"We are hopeful that Mr. Bigley is alive and that we will be able to exert some
influence with those who hold him hostage," Abdullah said (New York Post 9/26/04).
Steven Emerson in his book American Jihad has a
chapter on heroic Muslims who have opposed and exposed the growing fundamentalist Islamic
threat to the United States. There are Moslems who oppose terrorism who have the
courage to speak out.(Israel National News April 14 02) Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, a
leading Muslim religious thinker and secretary-general of the Italian Muslim Association,
has called on Prime Minister Sharon to continue his military campaign against Yasser
Arafat until the latter is "executed or jailed." Palazzi stated specifically
that he asks Sharon to continue the operation "against the boss of terror until the
day when the Egyptian criminal Abdel Ra'uf al- Kobdah [a.k.a. Yasser Arafat]" is
neutralized for good. Moderate Muslim leaders in Italy issued
a document arguing that
the Palestinians are desecrating the true Islam .
Unfortunately the majority of Muslims are not
as moderate as Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi. Nonie
Darwish wrote an article called the Islamic Muzzle (frontpagemag.com 4/2/04)
about how Muslims from the University of California at Santa Barbara's Muslim Student
Association opposed him. She wrote:
Those who demonstrated against Sheikh Palazzi's
presentation could have learned from his message against terrorism. Many U.S. politicians
say that Islam is a religion of peace, but I sadly felt that the Muslim students at UCSB
rejected the courageous message of peace offered by Professor Sheikh Palazzi.
In November 2003, courageous moderate Muslims in New
Zealand tried to block the radical Al Qaeda supporting Al Haramain organization from
setting up a Wahabi school in New Zealand and from gaining control of the Christchurch
Mosque. (The Rocking of the
Dome, Investigate, Nov 03)
Sarah Nasser, a courageous Muslim woman
from Canada, openly supports the right of Israel to exist (The Canadian Jewish News 12/18/03).
As a result she has received a lot of verbal abuse and a group of Canadian Arab
students went so far as to tell her that she doesn’t have a right to exist. She
travelled around the West Bank and Jerusalem and had the courage to say that :
I saw that Palestinians had cars and homes and [I realized] that
parts of Canada were worse than even the most downtrodden parts of the West Bank. It
confirmed my views that members of the Muslim community were misrepresenting what was
going on.
Zainab Al Zuweij is another courageous
Muslim woman who fought against Saddam Hussein and who created an organization called The American Islamic Congress which promotes
tolerance and peace. Her remarkable story
was published by the New Republic. Another, perhaps even more courageous woman
Shahnaz Bukhari, is the founder and head of the Progressive Women's Association in
Pakistan which protects abused women, raises awareness of
their plight, and pushes for legal and societal reform. One of the ways Muslim men kill
women in Pakistan is by pretending they accidentally got burned by their stoves.
According to the Civic Courage
web site:
Mrs. Bukhari campaigns against the systematic
oppression of women, and particularly against so-called "honor killings,"
especially "chula deaths" (accidental stove deaths). An Amnesty International
report of 17 April 2002 describes 160 women burned to death and 540 suicides in Karachi
alone in 2000.
PWA has collected data showing that, from March 1994 to March 2003, more than 5,000 women
in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area (an area covering a 200 mile radius) have been doused in
kerosene and set alight by family members. Less than 1% survived. These "stove
deaths" are essentially never successfully prosecuted; the conviction rate is barely
4%. Since 1987, the PWA has dealt with more than 15,000 cases, involving wife beating,
child abduction, honor killings, incest, the trafficking of women and children, and rape.
Mrs. Bukhari has suffered death threats, warnings, and abuse in the course of her work. In
the spring of 2002, the PWA shelter was raided and shut down, while Mrs. Bukhari was
accused of "abetting an attempt to commit adultery" and was tried under
traditional Federal Sharia (Islamic) law.
Wafa
Sultan is a former Muslim who had tremendous courage when she spoke with Al
Jazeera about what's wrong with Islam. She can be seen on TV by clicking
here and a
transcript of her speaking can be viewed by clicking
here.
Michael Savage interviewed Mr. Aziz Al-Taee, Chairman of the
Iraqi American Council on April 12, 2003 (The New Face of
Islam). Mr. Aziz argued that there are many moderate Muslims in Islam. He
said:
I have to say all Iraqis
today are thankful to the American people and I think they will rebuild the economy of
Iraq, without any doubt. I still hear voices saying "Oh the Shi'as and Sunnis are
going to fight." Well as a Shi'a (75% of the population), I can tell you not only
will we have a democratic and free Iraq, but we will have a state based on the rule of law
and will be the best ally of the United States in that area...
I can tell you one thing
that the Shi'a Muslims in Iraq who are 75% of the population; they denounce Al-Qaeda. We
are trying to reclaim Islam from the Wahabi cult and terrorist Bin Laden. We do not
believe in suicide bombing and all of that; it is against Islam.
Although Mr. Aziz makes
this argument, when U.S. forces mounted an assault on Sadr, thousands of Shiites took to
the streets in Basra and a Baghdad district to protest. According to the (New York
Post 8/13/04) the protesters chanted
"Long live Sadr. America
and Allawi are infidels."
This chant is very
significant. The main problem these Iraqis have with Americans are that they are
infidels. Intolerance of the infidel is one of the main problems with many
religions, but in this century it is much more widespread and severe among Muslims than in
other mainstream religions.
After Hurricane Katrina, countries
all over the world pledged aid to the United States including Muslim countries.
Qatar pledged $100 million in humanitarian assistance Saturday to help Americans
recover from Hurricane Katrina, heading a list of more than a dozen countries
joining an outpouring of support.
They added to the more than 50 countries who had made pledges by the end of the
day Friday.
�In these difficult circumstances, the people and the government of the state of
Qatar would like to assure the people of the United States of its support and
desire to assist the people in the affected area along the United States Gulf
Coast,� said a statement from the oil-rich Persian Gulf state�s embassy.
�Please accept our solidarity as well as our heartfelt condolences for the
tragic loss of so many precious lives,� the statement said.(Qatar
Offers 100 Million in Aid, 9/3/05). This same Qatar funds Hamas.
Asia Bibi is a Christian
woman who made the mistake of drinking water from the same cup as Muslims.
Muslims targeted her religion she defended it and was accused of blasphemy and
sentenced to death in Pakistan. Salman Taseer the governor of Punjab
expressed opposition to the blasphemy law. His guard
shot him to death.
About 2,000 Muslim volunteers helped victims of
Hurricane Katrina at the city's downtown convention center Sunday, the fourth
anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.(Breitbart.com Muslim Groups Help
Hurricane Victims, 9/11/05)
In contrast,
the director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of
Endowment�s Research Centre, Mohammed Yussef Al Mlaifi said to the daily Al
Siyassa:
�When the satellite
channels reported on the scope of the terrifying destruction in America
(caused by) this wind, I was reminded of the words of Prophet Muhammad
(peace be upon him): �The wind sends torment to one group of people, and
sends mercy to others.� �I do not think � and only Allah knows � that this
wind, which completely wiped out American cities in these days, is a wind of
mercy and blessing. It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and
evil that Allah has sent to this American empire,�
�But how strange it is that after all the tremendous American achievements
for the sake of humanity, these mighty winds come and evilly rip (America�s)
cities to shreds? Have the storms joined the Al Qaeda organisation?�
He also cited a passage he
found in the Holy Quran:
�The disaster will
keep striking the unbelievers for what they have done, or it will strike
areas close to their territory, until the promise of Allah comes to pass,
for, verily, Allah will not fail in His promise.�
Many
Muslim sites on the internet made similar statements (Bloggers hail soldier sent
by God, Times of Oman, 9/5/2005)
One way
to get a list of the good Muslims is to find which Muslims have a fatwa out
against them. A list of Christians and Muslims on a Muslim hit list can be
seen by clicking
here.
The main question
being addressed by this web site is whether Islam promotes peace or war and
terrorism. I have given examples of good Muslims above and will give many examples
of bad ones below. Does the fact that there are both good and bad Muslims not
indicate that Islam has nothing to do with promoting terrorism? One would expect
that if Islam was the cause of Islamic terrorism then all Moslems would be
terrorists. One could argue that the bad Muslims have a distorted interpretation of
Islam, and the good Muslims have the correct interpretation and that it is not Islam that
is to blame for the atrocities committed in the name of Islam but rather faulty
interpretations of facist terrorists hijacking Islam for their own purposes. This is
an explanation that many well meaning people including President Bush would like to
believe. Their reasoning probably goes something like this.
If we believe that Islam is
responsible for the mass murder of Americans on September 11, then that could promote
hatred of the billions of Muslims on the planet and war with them and we certainly don't
want that. It must be that Islam was hijacked by misguided radicals who
misinterpreted Islam.
The problem with arguing that a
belief would promote conflict and therefore we should not believe it is that the truth or
falsity of a belief does not depend on whether it will make us hostile or affectionate to
another group. The consequences of a belief do not determine whether it is true or
not. In addition the consequences of believing the truth are always better than the
consequences of believing a lie. If Islam is the problem we need to address that
problem and not ignore it and hope it goes away.
There is another
possibility and that is that the Islamic terrorists are interpreting Islam correctly and
that peaceful Moslems are interpreting it incorrectly.
A former Salafi Muslim, Tawfik Hamid who believed
in the violent passages of the Koran discussed them with a few Sufi clerics who
suggested that one �should be good and peaceful to all mankind� and that �the
understanding of the violent verses will be clarified on the day of judgement.�
Tawfi Hamid wrote that:
� these views were not based on rigorous Islamic eschatology, however, or on
an objective analysis of the religious books. They merely embodied a
desired perception of Islam. My secular parents offered the same tolerant
perspective, insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. But for me both
responses were unsatisfactory because they suffered from the same problem --
they were not theologically grounded. "
If
we believe the benevolent interpretation is wrong why say it? Why
antagonize peaceful Moslems by criticizing their religion? Why argue that their
religion leads to war when they say their religion is peaceful? The answer to this
question can be found by asking another question which is, are Muslims in general more
prone to be violent to non-believers than non-Muslims? If they are than their
religion promotes violence. How do we evaluate how radical or moderate
Muslims are in general. A web page that addresses this question is called The
Paranoia Indicator of Islamic Radicalism. How do we determine if Islam
is a religion of peace?
Can we simply listen to Muslims who say their religion is peaceful? Some
Muslims who say that their religion is peaceful may not believe that their religion is
peaceful but may simply say that to protect themselves.
The following is a list of
good Muslims from Frontpage Magazine
