Posted on 06/21/2004 7:18:14 PM PDT by auzerais
Beheadings cause Muslims grief
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religious Affairs Editor
BORDEAUX, France, Jun. 21 (UPI) -- European specialists on Islamic affairs fear that the beheadings of Americans and other foreigners in the Middle East will trigger a severe anti-Muslim backlash.
"These barbaric acts have been catastrophic for the prospects of Muslims in France," said Bruno Guiderdoni, one of the country's foremost Koran scholars. "A discernable shift has occurred in public attitudes," he said. "Its most dangerous aspect is a new hostility even among the once-liberal French intellectuals against our religion."
Two years ago, a three-judge panel cleared bestselling author Michel Houellebecq of inciting racial hate for describing Islam as "the most stupid religion." Later he explained: "I have never displayed the least contempt for Muslims. But I have as much contempt as ever for Islam."
Last fall, Claude Imbert, founder and editor in chief of the newsmagazine Le Point, declared: "To be honest, I am somewhat hostile to Islam. I am not embarrassed to admit that."
To Guiderdoni, such blunt remarks from members of the intellectual elite are alarm signals. To observers it seems that Europeans no longer buy into statements of disassociation by prominent Islamic leaders such as Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of Muslim Faith.
Boubakeur said: "Islam is not a religion that beats women, kills kids and desires the death of the West. What shocks the French is ... even more of a shock to us." Muslim extremists have by now beheaded three Americans and are threatening an abducted South Korean and a European -- possibly German -- journalist with a similar fate. This comes on top of the slaughter of thousands of women and children in Algeria, once an integral part of France, a few years ago, and the persecution of Christians in the Sudan and Muslim-controlled northern states of Nigeria.
Says Guideroni, who is also research director of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, "Our image is disastrous." It is so because of the popular acuity of a "divided Koran" on issues such as human rights and interfaith tolerance, says Christine Schirrmacher, head of the Institute on Islamic Affairs in Bonn Germany. On the one hand, the Muslim Holy Book counsels a broad-minded attitude toward other faiths, insists Sheikh Mohammed Mohammed Ali, a Shiite Muslim scholar who is currently running for a seat in the new Iraqi assembly.
On the other hand, the Koran clearly advises the faithful to slay and main infidels: "Strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them" (Surah 8:12).
In a telephone call from Baghdad, Ali explains that under religious law decapitation is only permissible if approved by a ranking scholar whose role would then be comparable to that of the Supreme Court of the United States. "Nobody in al-Qaida has this competence. None has even ever attended an Islamic university or similar institution."
But then who in the Islamic world possesses such indisputable authority? According to Schirrmacher, it is one of Islam's most troubling problems that it lacks hierarchies, bishops or councils comparable to the leaderships of Christianity. In other words, al-Qaida acts as its own court sentencing people for "murder" on the basic assumption that in the current conflict -- as in the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis - nobody is innocent.
That is to say, just as all Israelis are presumed "guilty" because they have or will have children serving in the army, so do Americans "aid and abet" the slaughter of Muslims by paying taxes or, as in the case of the slain American hostage Paul Johnson, working with helicopters that might be used against Muslims.
As Guiderdoni sees it, his moderate "European" form of Islam ranks among the first casualties of this barbarian way of thinking. "The radical Islamists accuse us of treason, while Christians and others see us as wolves in sheep's clothing. They distrust us now. They are more and more convinced that all we are trying to do is to lull Westerners into believing that Islam is harmless."
This leaves the field to radical Islam, Guiderdoni fears. "The West no longer accepts that we have something to contribute. There is no longer any space for moderation."
This is an extremely serious situation, Guiderdoni and Germany's Schirrmacher agree, because it leaves Christian partners in the interfaith dialogue in a lurch. In France, lay members of the Catholic and Protestant churches are increasingly turning against what they see as gullible bishops and senior pastors kowtowing to Muslim interlocutors not truly interested in theological exchange.
In Germany, resentment is building against church and state authorities dialoguing almost exclusively with radicals and entrusting newly endowed chairs of Islamic studies at the nation's universities to their fanatical branch of the Muslim faith.
"Add to this the public perception of Muslim immigrants as an arrogant, close-knit community whose members will not learn our language but always act as if our state owes them something," says Schirrmacher. "God forbid terrorism will strike here as it has in the United States, Spain or the Middle East! I dread to ponder the consequences."
Islam is, as Islam does.
1 - ""These barbaric acts have been catastrophic for the prospects of Muslims in France," said Bruno Guiderdoni, one of the country's foremost Koran scholars. "
More 'victimology' CRAP, where muslims won't condemn or change, but mourn their own situation.
Pathetic evidence of a pathetic religion.
I hope the terrorists find the French muslims ""God forbid terrorism will strike here as it has in the United States, Spain or the Middle East! I dread to ponder the consequences."
31 "Bush should lob 10 nukes in 10 desolate areas of muslim countrys."
"You must hit what you are shooting at or you will be laughed at."
WRONG - You must target/hit THEM, or they will think, it was Alah's will that they not be killed, and continue to fight.
MEANWHILE the Jihadist psycho killer Muslims can find plenty of material in Koran/Hadith to justify beheadings, terror, mutilation of corpses, car bombings, suicide bombings, killing Christians and Jews.
What good can come from a religion (kult actually) founded by a murderer, assassin, pedophile, thief? Muhammad was also prone to periods of hallucinations when he received (according to Mo' of course) his revelations from Allah, a bogus pagan deity anyways.
If one assumes that the Qur'an is the product of a man's mind, then one would expect it to reflect some of what was going on in the mind of the man who "composed" it. In fact, certain encyclopedias and various books clam that the Qur'an was the product of hallucinations that Muhammed underwent. If these claims are true - if it indeed originated from some psychological problems in Muhammed's mind - then evidence of this would be apparent in the Qur'an. Is there such evidence?
Radiation is the cure.
They did, to the tune of over a Billion dollars a year, and it is called whahabiism. Moderate Islam is the one you have your gun on, Radical Islam is the one that has you in its sights.
BUMP
In other words, if the backlash hadn't hurt the Muslims in France, they would be just okey-dokey.
I thought the same thing.
Islam is a cancer. It is time for a cure.
Good analogy. The problem is that, especially in France, the necessary cure is so extreme -- comparable to amputating a cancer-ridden limb. The cancer isn't as advanced in the US because, percentage, there aren't as many Muslims.
But what's the alternative -- the cancer consuming the host and killing it.
A sincerely moderate Muslim is simply someone who is moderately Muslim -- someone who ignores, or is ignorant of, much of the Koran and Hadiths. He might say, for example, that the more bloodthirsty parts of the Koran and Hadiths refer to Mohammed's situation in a particular time and place, not as a model for perpetuity. The problem is, how many Muslims agree with him?
Boo-hoo. More "we're really the victims" whining from the same people that probably screamed "Jihad! Death to America!" when the US removed one of the greatest killers of Muslims ever.
Exactly!
gee i found something i can hate more than muslims.
human waste scum sucking mohomad FRENCH MUSLIMS.
DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Saudi Arabia should be forced to behead all the prisoners that the terrorists wanted released. Do it in the public square and ensure that it is televised worldwide!
What about a hot wind blowing south of the border? Say, 15 million degrees?
Tolerance is a virtue -- to a point. In this case, why should we tolerate those who seek by any and all means necessary to wipe our civilization off the map? It's a sign of decadence, not virtue, to tolerate our mortal enemies.
Muslims are at war with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans and even godless Chi-Coms. That's most of the world. They really are asking for it, big time.
A Flipping Men!
How about causing people to jump out of tall buildings
Please sit quietly while I fly your airplane into the same tall building.
How about fracturing innocent women and children from the explosives planted in public places.
How about soldiers slaughtered by truck mounted islamokazies
running into their unprotected barracks.
How about airliners falling out of the sky when flown by or destroyed by the followers of mohammed
How about islam killing its own indiscriminately as it attempts to kill the infidel.
Oh there is more, much much more, but you get the idea already, I'm just trying to help.
Und?
These poor folks have been whining since the days of Jacob and Esau. As Jacob blessed Esau, "And by the sword shalt thou live,...and in verse 41 of Genesis 27 And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob. Not much has changed in the intervening years.
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