Posted on 10/17/2003 11:58:54 PM PDT by PsyOp
Islamic Intolerance
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1523320/posts
Anti-Semitism is rife. In 2002, Egyptian TV aired a program based on the vastly discredited turn of the last century Russian "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which has observant Jews making Passover matzot with the blood of Gentiles. In Iran, a popular TV series depicts "Zionists" kidnapping Palestinian children and harvesting their organs for profit. The Palestinians also have no qualms about depicting Jews in despicable roles in their official textbooks. Jews are allegedly descended from apes and pigs and the most noble thing that a Palestinian can do is to rid the world of this pestilence.
In a 2005 TV appearance, Palestinian imam Ibrahim Madiras declared that , "Jews are a cancer". Later, he preached that, "Muslims will kill the Jews...and rejoice in Allah's victory." Astoundingly, current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has also claimed that, "The Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in order to drive the survivors to Palestine."
Lunitic mohammadian for later bump
Such an attitude not only belies the Brotherhood's true attitude towards women, but it also highlights the two languages they use: one with Egyptian or Muslim journalists and another with Western journalists. Akef would never have told a Western journalist she was "naked."
Before the 1970s, she explained, "Muslim immigrants who came to the United States would build a store-front mosque somewhere. Then, since the 1970s, the Saudis have been approaching these mosques and telling them it wasn't proper for the glory of Islam to build such small mosques."
For many Muslims, it seemed the Saudis were offering a free mosque. However, Barsky believes for each mosque they invested in, the Saudis sent along their own imam (teacher-cleric).
"These [immigrants] were not interested in this [Wahhabi] ideology, and suddenly they have a Saudi imam coming in and telling them they're not praying properly and not practicing Shari'a [Islamic law] properly." This Saudi strategy was being carried out "all over the world, from America to Bangladesh," with the Saudis investing $70-80 billion in the endeavor over three decades.
Fighting them on the beaches (in Australia) bump!
"Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which Nation assumes the role of the standard bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State."
--Sayeed Abdul A'la Maududi, Jihad in Islam
Muslim advocates express exasperation with Pipes, who has long been at odds with such groups as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization that models itself after the NAACP. "We have consistently disassociated Islam from terrorism," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the council, which last year organized a yearlong antiterrorism publicity campaign called "Not in the Name of Islam."
Much of the debate centers on who is defined as a moderate and who is an extremist.
UCLA's Abou El Fadl, who calls himself a moderate, says he is unwelcome in many mosques because of his opposition to the Saudis. But Pipes has called him a "stealth Islamicist" because he supports Islamic law. Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, an Islamic convert and Pipes ally who heads the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, complains that many Muslims judge one another's faith based on political ideology, rather than theological issues. "It's about being an angry, oppressed minority," he said.
Extremism a challenge for Muslims ("It's a Muslim thing," "You wouldn't understand.")
My own theory is that Islam was and is a gigantic scam to promote tourism in Mecca.
You may be right. He probably owned that piece of desert where the meteor hit and had to figure out a way to turn a profit off of it.
LOL! I love it when people actually take time to study this sad excuse of a religion.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20051203.htm
Conversion losses
By Irfan Husain
MEET Sanno Amra and his wife Champa: a middle-aged Hindu couple. They live in a small, simple but spotlessly clean home in Karachi’s Punjab Colony.
Until six weeks ago, they lived with their five children, reasonably content with their lot. Sanno worked as a chauffeur, and his wife cooked for a family. On October 18, their lives suddenly fell apart: Champa returned home from work to discover that her three oldest daughters were missing — Reena (21), Usha (19) and Rima (17) had seemingly vanished without a trace. This is any parent’s worst nightmare, but the couple’s woes had only begun.
After searching frantically for the girls, they went to the local police station where the SHO put them off without registering a case. A couple of days later, they met the deputy superintendent of police for Clifton. This proved to be the only bright spot in the entire tragic episode, for DSP Raza Shah went out of his way to help. He forced his subordinates to file an FIR, and his intervention was invaluable in ensuring the safety of the parents. And just for the record, the MQM ‘sector-in- charge’ also lent them his organisation’s support.
On October 22, a police FIR for kidnapping was duly prepared, naming three young men from the neighbourhood as the principal suspects. Immediately, Sanno and his wife started getting threats from their neighbours. Earlier they had never had any problems, although they were the only Hindu family in a predominantly Muslim locality. But now, the same people were pressuring them to remove the names of the local boys from the FIR.
Within days, they received a package by courier containing three identical affidavits signed by their daughters, stating that they had converted to Islam of their own free will. The declaration concluded: “That since my parents are Hindu and after conversion of my religion, it is not possible for me to live and pass my life in Hindu system/society [sic] and therefore, I have decided to live separately...”
According to their affidavits, the girls (now calling themselves Afshan, Anam and Nida) were living in the hostel of the Madarsa Taleem-ul-Quran, and were being instructed by a local moulvi. On November 10, a court order directed the police and the administrators of the seminary to arrange a meeting between the girls and their parents.
When Sanno and Champa finally met their daughters, they were shocked to see that they were in burqas that concealed them from head to toe, leaving only their eyes uncovered. The eyes of the youngest girl were bloodshot from weeping. At this supposedly private meeting, a dour woman was present throughout as were a moulvi and a couple of cops. In subdued voices muffled by heavy fabric, the girls said they wanted to stay where they were.
Understandably, the parents are convinced that their daughters were under pressure. In fact, they simply cannot come to terms with the notion that their children have not only abandoned them, but also the faith they grew up in. As far as they are concerned, their daughters have been brainwashed. Interestingly, the girls have cited “religious channels on TV” as the reason for their conversion.
Since their daughters left, Sanno and Champa have not returned to their jobs. They stay at home with Suraj and Arti, their young son and daughter and wait for news. Apart from their neighbours, they have also been isolated by their own community. According to Sanno, other Hindus look down on them because of their girls’ apparent conversion. Face, that most pernicious of Asian values, has been lost.
I spoke to DSP Raza Shah and asked him if in his opinion, any pressure had been brought to bear on the girls. He was sure it had been a voluntary conversion, adding that it was very possible that neighbours might have influenced them. The parents are clear that their daughters never watched TV in their presence, nor did they ever discuss the possibility of a conversion. According to Vijay, a relative, twenty girls from the Hindu community had converted to Islam in the last five years.
Talking to the parents in their simple home, I could feel their pain and their distress. “We just sit and stare at each other”, Sanno said. “For us, life is over.” Above all, they want the certainty of the knowledge that their daughters did not abandon them voluntarily. They went back to the madressah recently where they were refused access to their daughters. “Even if they have become Muslims, we are still their parents,” Champa said tearfully. The moulvi at the madressah, instead of being sympathetic, invited Sammo and Champa to convert as well.
What the stricken parents are looking for is closure: once they are satisfied that their daughters will never come home again, they will learn to live with their grief. But for this to happen, they want the girls to be moved to neutral ground like the Edhi orphanage where they can meet them without the coercive presence of moulvis and cops. But this request has been turned down by a judge.
Vijay has shared the family’s tribulations, and is understandably bitter. “Mr Jinnah had promised the minorities equal rights and protection. But it seems his promises were buried with him,” he maintains. Given the spate of conversions, some voluntary, some forced, the insecurity among the minorities, especially among Sindhi Hindus, is understandable.
Even if most of these conversions are not at gunpoint, they still take place in an overpowering environment of religiosity. Religious programmes on every private and public TV channel must leave an imprint on young minds. The need to conform at school and college where religion casts a constant shadow, must exert a subtle influence on non-Muslim students. And in a society based on faith, the minorities have been marginalized to the point where they are tempted to convert simply to get ahead in life.
But Sammo and Champa are not concerned with the larger issues regarding the place and fate of the minorities in Pakistan. All they want is justice. For them this involves being able to spend time alone with their beloved daughters, free from pressure and coercion, and to satisfy themselves that they took this drastic step on their own. Surely in a state that aspires to General Musharraf’s oft-touted ideal of ‘enlightened moderation’, this should not be too much to ask for.
But our enemies view the world differently. Their perspective is of an older vintage. “The ordinary theme and argument of all history is war,” observed Sir Walter Raleigh in the early 17th century. Wishing that were no longer true does not make it so.
Our enemies know this grim truth: War has never become obsolete
* I recall how any possibility that the Beltway sniper attacks were connected with terrorism was dismissed. It turned out they were carried out by two Muslims.
* I recall how a July 4 shooting attack on an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles International Airport by an Egyptian Muslim was characterized as not connected with terrorism.
* I recall the would-be bomber arrested at the Oklahoma University football game a few months ago that had no connection to terrorism.
* I recall there just couldn't possibly have been a Mideast connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.
* I recall how TWA Flight 800 just blew up for no particular reason after takeoff from New York.
NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, June 15, 2002
WASHINGTON – What exactly is it that makes people such as suspected "dirty bomber" Abdullah al Muhajir turn to Islamic extremism? According to sociologists of religion and theologians, it is the search for security and structure in their lives.
Al Muhajir, a Puerto Rican born in New York as Jose Padilla, is under arrest for allegedly plotting to detonate a "dirty" nuclear device somewhere in the United States. He is thought to be in league with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, which nicknamed him the "The Immigrant."
Ironically, this moniker fits into the typology of converts to Islam that Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, a German sociologist of religion, has developed after field studies in the United States and her own country.
Muslim Criminals: Largest Body of Converts in U.S.
Padilla converted to Islam while in jail. He therefore belongs to the largest body of converts in the United States. According to National Association of Muslim Chaplains, between 10 and 20 percent of the 1.5 million criminals in American penitentiaries identify themselves as Muslim.
Most are black men, some Hispanic. More than 30,000 blacks embrace this faith behind bars every year.
Wohlrab-Sahr, who teaches at the University of Leipzig and has spent a research year at Berkeley, has labeled one group of converts "symbolic emigrants." These are people who feel stigmatized or alienated by their own culture, she explained in a telephone interview.
"They emigrate culturally, often without leaving their country," she continued. Thus from the perspective of Islam, they would be religious immigrants. If this applies to al Muhajir, his al-Qaeda nickname would indeed be appropriate.
Perhaps John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" raised in upper-crust, liberal Marin County, Calif., could be classified that way too, although the Leipzig professor entered the caveat that she would have to study both cases before making an assessment.
'Tolerance'!
Even Torquato Cardilli, the Italian ambassador to Saudi Arabia who became a Muslim last fall, may be called a symbolic immigrant who found the new culture he took on more welcoming than his own. He praised its "dignity, hospitality, tolerance, kindness and relaxation."
But al Muhajir might also come under another rubric Wohlrab termed "methodization of life conduct." It includes people whose lives had gone into a tailspin and require discipline and structure.
'Simplistic Clarity'
"The simplistic clarity of some aspects of this religion appeals to certain elements in society, " agreed Hillel Fradkin, a Jewish specialist on Islam and president of Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
In a similar vain, Boston University sociologist Peter L. Berger told UPI, "There are indeed many people who are susceptible for the claims of religious certainty offered by Islam and other groups defining themselves as absolute."
Trying to Link Christians to Muslim Terrorists
Berger named Mormonism as one of these groups. Leipzig's Wohlrab added Protestant fundamentalist Christian denominations to this category.
A third category of converts identified by Wohlrab seems less significant in evaluating the al Muhajir and Walker cases: the type she called "implementation of honor" in the realm of sexual and gender relations and morality.
Women, and some men, confused "by the course of changing gender arrangements" rank among this particular group of nominal "Christians" and others embracing Islam.
Surprisingly, theological considerations rarely play a major part in most conversions, even though most converts say they did. "The Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity is often mentioned," Wohlrab said, "but you would have to be a theological virtuoso to change your religion for this reason.
"More likely, they come up with this as an afterthought, when the deed is done and they have received some instruction in their new faith. But in general, people don't switch from Christianity to Islam as a result of their in-depth study of systematic theology."
Gone Slumming
Some did, of course, especially in the past. There were English eccentrics such as Sir Archibald Hamilton, a relative of the British royal family, who died in 1939.
At a stretch, the most educated man in German history, poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, might have been considered a closet Muslim, though that's highly unlikely.
A German Islamic group called Weimar, after the German town where Goethe worked as a grand duke's cabinet minister, claims the illustrious wordsmith might have converted because he mentioned the prophet Muhammad in his poetry and organized readings of the Koran in his sovereign's palace.
But Goethe connoisseurs retort that, given his concupiscent lifestyle, the poet wouldn't have lasted long as a Muslim. On the other hand, studying the Koran, Arabic literature and language were not uncommon pursuits by the educated classes of Goethe's highly cultured era.
But there exists a list of prominent and theologically learned converts. It includes an African Lutheran archbishop, a Methodist minister, a Coptic priest, a Russian Orthodox archpriest and a Pentecostal elder.
However, by and large statements by converts about their former and their present beliefs tend to prove Wohlrab's theory that these were merely afterthoughts.
For example, Ali Selman Benoist, a French physician who left Catholicism for Islam, posted this statement on the Internet: One "point which moved me away from Christianity was the absolute silence which it maintains regarding bodily cleanliness."
Failure of Christian Clergy?
Clearly, he has never read the Old Testament, which to Christians is as much Holy Scripture as the New Testament. Sighed Johannes Richter, a Leipzig theologian, "The church has but itself to blame if people are moving away from their own faith traditions.
"Many of our clergy have failed to explain these traditions well. So people become fascinated by an alien religion. But that's all right. It means that we have to double our efforts to succeed on the religious marketplace."
Confidently, Richter this former regional bishop, added, "If we do it right we have nothing to fear; we are competitive."
Copyright 2002 by United Press International.
bump
“We don’t shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world”, he added.
"So if the Koran is based on cribbed together writings and dubious other religious texts, this really casts doubt on the divine source. Some people (yes, anti-Muslims) have suggested that Mohammed had epileptic fits, and his own mother had declared him possessed by a devil. Regardless of these claims, it seems highly suspect to find castigation of an enemy uncle and a confirmation that an adopted son should divorce his wife so that Mo’ can marry her in it’s suras. This seems way too convenient to just happen to fit in with Mo’s mindset, for surely if God really wanted such a thing, he could have just willed it?
"Consider something like sura 33:36 which states, ‘….when allah and his messenger have decided an affair…’ and goes on to say you shouldn’t question it. Well how convenient for him that god has Mo’ for a partner to help decide things!"
Then he expressed the imperialistic aims of Islam by issuing warnings to nations that would be “erased:” “Allah is almighty . . . We must prepare the ground for the army of Allah that is coming ac¬cording to [divine] predestination. We must prepare a foothold for them. Allah is willing for this unjust state of Israel to be erased. The unjust state, the United States, will be erased. The unjust state, Britain, will be erased.”
"...The list of hypocrisies could be expanded. The locus classicus, of course, is bin Laden's fanciful fatwas. Oil pumped for $5 a barrel and sold for $70 is called stealing resources. Tens of millions of Muslims emigrating to the United States and Europe, while very few Westerners reside in the Middle East, is deemed "occupying our lands." Israel, the biblical home of the Jews, and subsequently claimed for centuries by Persians, Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Ottomans, and English is "occupied by crusader infidels" — as if the entire world is to accept that world history began only in the seventh century A.D.
"The only mystery is not how bizarre the news will be from the Middle East, but why the autocratic Middle Easterners feel so confident that any would pay their lunacy such attention.
"The answer? Oil and nukes — and sometimes the two in combination.
"By any economic standard, most states in the Middle East — whether characterized by monarchy, Baathism, dictatorship, or theocracy — have floundered. There are no scientific discoveries emanating from a Cairo or Damascus. It is tragic and perhaps insensitive, but nevertheless honest, to confess that the contemporary Arab world has lately given the world only two new developments: the suicide-bomb belt and the improvised explosive device. Even here there is a twofold irony: The technology for both is imported from the West. And the very tactic arises out of a desperate admission that to fight a conventional battle against a Westernized military without the cover of civilian shields, whether in Israel or Baghdad, is tantamount to suicide.
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