One friend, who has since left the country, used to sleep in his clothes in case he was arrested. He didn't want to appear on television in his pajamas, Irshaid said. Like This
Posted on 10/14/2004 8:06:06 PM PDT by Pikamax
Discouraging Outlook for Muslims As Ramadan Begins, Many Say Sentiment Against Them Is Hardening By Caryle Murphy Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 15, 2004; Page B01
One recent Saturday night, about 50 Muslim scholars filed into a classroom at George Mason University's Arlington campus to hear the keynote address of their three-day conference on Islam and modernity. They had to watch it on a DVD.
The speaker, Geneva-based Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan, could not attend in person because his U.S. visa had been revoked. Yet to those in the audience, his moderate words sounded like the kind of message U.S. officials would applaud. He urged a serious dialogue on the "universal values" shared by Islam and the West and added, "We should not blame the West for our problems."
"I was sad more than anything else," Shahed Amanullah, a Georgetown University graduate student attending the conference, said of the decision to bar Ramadan from entering the country.
"There's a level of perfection expected of Muslims that is almost impossible to meet," he added. "People don't pay attention to the content of what we say. They look for a reason to mistrust us."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
After a nuke attack on a US city most of them will have to leave. Those left will have to give up all external signs of their faith including the veils, death shrouds, blue bags, beards, little hats and arabic writing.
Kids, this is what cultism does to your thought process.
The outlook for Nazis was discouraging after June 1944.
No, we don't have "to look for a reason to mistrust" Muslims. We are missing two towers, 3000 citizens, and have seen the beheading videos. How stupid do you think we are???
No. We're only asking that you vigorously denounce beheadings to begin with.
The only meeting of these people I want to hear about is their meeting with their home countries upon their permanent departure from the USA. Islam has nothing to contribute to our country except risk.
Well, Shakespeare said "the guilty flee where none pursueth".
People would trust ordinary muslims more if they took an active stance against the terrorism propagated by their brethren. Until they do that it will be very difficult for people to embrace Islam (and Muslims in general) when it appears as if many at some level support the atrocious acts of the terrorists.
Well if they want to change my attitude they need to do a couple things. First is they all need to publicly, loudly and continually denounce terrorism. Secondly, they need to give up OBL, if he is still alive. And they need to stop killing innocent people for no other reason than they don't like them, to put it simply. Then I will have a change of heart, maybe.
If Shakespeare said it, he was quoting the Bible...
Proverbs 28:1 - The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, But the righteous are bold as a lion.
No, we look at what you do. Talk's cheap.
We stopped paying attention when we learned that the koran teaches you to lie. Yours is not an honorable religion.
I don't know Tariq Ramadan, and it's entirely possiblel that the bureaucrats have refused a visa to the wrong guy.
But the fact that he delivered a "moderate" message to a bunch of American academics means nothing.
Muslims have always been taught to speak out of both sides of their mouths, to say one thing to their fellow religionists and another to infidels. Lying to infidels is not considered wrong.
Yes, it is bad times for Muslims, and it will probably get worse. Thousands of bombings, murders of women and children, beheadings, and calls for violence are giving them bad PR. Deservedly so. They have no one to blame but themselves. In fact the tolerance of most Americans for Muslims in this country is pretty remarkable, all things considered. How well would American guests be treated in an Arab country if Americans had been responsible for thousands of atrocities against Arabs around the world?
It's not every day that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revokes a visa issued to a Swiss-national scholar scheduled to teach at one of America's premier universities. But this has just happened, and it's a good thing too.
The Swiss scholar is Tariq Ramadan. He is Islamist royalty – his maternal grandfather, Hasan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood, probably the single most powerful Islamist institution of the twentieth century, in Egypt in 1928. Tariq is a Swiss citizen because his father, Sa‘id Ramadan, also a leading Islamist, fled from Egypt in 1954 following a crackdown on the brotherhood. Sa‘id reached Geneva in 1958, where Tariq was born in 1962.
Thanks to his pedigree and his talents, Tariq has emerged as a significant force in his own right. Symbolic of this, Time magazine in April named him one of the world's top hundred scientists and thinkers. And so, when Notre Dame University went looking for a Henry R. Luce professor of religion, conflict and peacebuilding, it unsurprisingly settled on Mr. Ramadan.
Its offer was made and accepted by the beginning of 2004; a work visa followed in February. Mr. Ramadan bought a house, found schools for his four children, and dispatched his personal effects to South Bend, Indiana. He was supposed to start teaching a few days ago.
But on July 28, just nine days before the Ramadans were to leave for America, Mr. Ramadan was informed that the Department of Homeland Security had revoked his work visa. A DHS spokesman, Russ Knocke, later explained this had been done in accord with a law that denies entry to aliens who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity." The revocation, Mr. Knocke added, was based on "public safety or national security interests."
Of course, Mr. Ramadan dismisses the revocation as "unjustified" and due to "political pressure." He even blames me for the DHS decision.
What's up? The DHS knows much more than I do, but it is not talking. A review of the press, however, gives an idea of what the problem is. Here are some reasons why Mr. Ramadan might have been kept out:
And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien:
Then there is the intriguing possibility, reported by Olivier Guitta, that Osama bin Laden studied with Tariq's father in Geneva, suggesting that the future terrorist and the future scholar might have known each other.
Ramadan denies all ties to terrorism, but the pattern is clear. As Lee Smith writes in The American Prospect, he is a cold-blooded Islamist whose "cry of death to the West is a quieter and gentler jihad, but it's still jihad."
These reasons explain why Americans should thank DHS for keeping Tariq Ramadan out of America.
"There's a level of perfection expected of Muslims that is almost impossible to meet,"
Perfection? Oh, yes.
1. Try not to behead anyone, while shouting allah akbar.
2. Try not to massacre any kindergartners today.
3. Use airplanes as "transportation".
4. Use backpacks to carry books.
5. Stop coveting my goat.
6. Don't beat your wife / mother / daughter / etc.
7. Try to get through breakfast without blaming Jews for something.
8. Resist the urge to martyr yourself every five minutes.
Yea, I can see how we expect too much of muslims.
Muslims have some reason to be worried. The more the American public, formerly more or less ignorant about the tenets of Islam, learn about the religion and its founder, the more disturbed they become. The Q'uran does not hold up well under examination by the Western eye.
> "There's a level of perfection expected
> of Muslims that is almost impossible to meet,"
Let's see, we expect them to:
1. Not strap explosive belts around themselves and blow up civilians.
2. Not hijack planes and fly them into densely populated buildings.
3. Not chop innocent peoples' heads off.
Yup, must be tough to have to live up to those high standards.
But help is on the way! Under Kerry's "Just a horrible nuisance" policy, he'll be more realistic and relax expectations, accepting that most will do at least one or two of these things - it's OK, it's just a horrible nuisance, it's something we can live with (or, as the case may be, die with). Of course, some Muslims will still feel discriminated against when they realize they can't do both 1 and 2 in the same lifetime.
That's the problem...Ordinary muzlims support the terror..That's why they don't take a stand against it...Muzlims hate Jew and Christians to the point that their bible tells them to kill all of us and the rest of the infidels (those who will not bow down to islam)...We don't need any more excuses for these terrorists...
One friend, who has since left the country, used to sleep in his clothes in case he was arrested. He didn't want to appear on television in his pajamas, Irshaid said. Like This
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