Posted on 01/05/2005 1:39:03 AM PST by leight
When an Algerian refugee arrives in New Zealand with suspected terrorist links the average citizen is likely to wonder what exactly is the truth. New Zealand has such a fellow called Ahmed Zaoui.
He arrived without a passport from Vietnam about two years ago (having traveled there from Malaysia) and was found by the New Zealand Refugee Review Authority to be a genuine refugee. Since then he has been in gaol for about two years before the New Zealand Supreme Court released him in December of last year into the custody of a Catholic order.
The New Zealand government is still dithering, as a government appointee considers whether Zaoui is a threat to national security. If so he would be deported to “somewhere”. It appears no country is keen to have him. Zaoui claims if he is returned to Algeria, or even Islamic Malaysia, his life will be in certain danger.
Zaoui was an elected Member of Parliament in the GIS Islamist party, which won an initial election in Algeria in the 1990’s. The party was prevented from further securing its place as a national government and many were killed by the Algerian military. Zaoui fled Algeria for Europe, where he ended up involved in the exiled GIS party fighting for democracy in Algeria.
One wonders what sort of democracy was intended because the leader of the GIS party was reported to have said that he believed in the ballot box, but “once” only. Not a long-term recipe for democracy and freedom you might think! Anyway the leader of the GIS party was released from gaol in July 2003 on the basis he would not be involved in politics.
Zaoui was however linked to Algerian extremist groups and convicted of criminal offences in France and Belgium. He also visited Switzerland with false papers in breach of a Belgium decree. Certainly not your average fearful refugee you might think.
So how does one test the bona fides of a refugee with Islamist political connections such as Ahmed Zaoui? He was apparently an Islamic scholar before getting involved in politics. I think the only way to do so is to look at what he says.
The New Zealand media has made much of Zaoui’s self-proclaimed tolerance, peace, diversity etc, yet his political party apparently had a somewhat intolerant agenda.
Does membership of an Algerian Islamist party that has a policy of “fighting the depraved and licentious”, code for homosexuals and lesbians amongst others, encourage tolerance? Well, Zaoui has an answer for that. He was reported as saying there were various views within the GIS Party and he didn’t share all of them. He was never asked if he would leave the party if it persisted with, for example, the policy just referred to! Okay, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt on that point.
However Zaoui’s only publicised speech in New Zealand, that I am aware of, suggests a man who in my opinion at times will stretch and distort history. The speech(www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?ObjectID=3602175) was delivered in his absence (he was in gaol in October 2004) to an audience of his supporters, none of whom I would suspect knew much if anything about Islam or Christianity.
Zaoui referred to a biased and lopsided Western media approach about matters Islamic resulting in truth as a casualty of ‘this war”. He referred to the beneficiaries of misunderstandings between Islam and the Western world, being the “arms conglomerates and other business predators”(he doesn’t name them). Well, I’m not sure if it is “a war” but I agree truth is at issue and both sides have different perspectives.
I wonder however if the benefits of democracy and particularly the underlying Christian view of a leader’s responsibilities are little understood by the average Muslim in terms of the malaise in the Muslim world particularly in the Middle East.
I may be wrong on this point but here goes. The peculiar feature of Middle Eastern countries, with the obvious exception of the much vilified Israel, is that strong armed leaders rule with little input from the people and tend to have one party arrangements with nepotic regimes such as those in Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, and others.
The Christian perspective is that leaders are to be servants of the people, not the other way round. Jesus explained this to his disciples hundreds of years before the Muslim world exploded with murder and fighting when deciding whom would be the successor to Mohammed.
To be fair non-Islamic regimes around the world can also have the same features but they are also non democratic. The point is that ignoring the teachings of Jesus will invariably have negative effects on the poor and dispossessed, no matter what the ideology behind ruling elites who take the role of lording it over the people.
He also promotes the view that the West prefers secularism rather than democracy in the Western world, using Algeria as an example. The problem with this view of democracy is that Islamic rule invariably creates non-Muslim second-class citizens. Democracy is more than the ballot box and involves religious and individual freedoms and the rule of law.
Even in Malaysia, a “liberal” Islamic state, the printing of and distribution of Bibles in the Malay language is not allowed. One might wonder what are they afraid of?
Zaoui parrots the loopy view that the war on terror is only a deal between the West and Arab dictators to secure cheap oil. As if Islamic terrorism is not taking place in numerous countries that don’t have oil.
Zaoui does point to the selective focus of the Western media on extremist Muslims. A fair point, but this criticism of the Western media can be made in relation to any subject, not just to Islam.
However even this claim merits some comment. The Islamic extremists claim to be true Muslims and can point to the Koran and the behavior of their prophet Mohammed to justify some at least of their actions so what does Islam expect? A sanitised version of Islam and the history of its prophet? That would be simply censorship and since Islam believes in tolerance...
Of course nowhere in the Muslim world does the Muslim media use the same selective views of Western ‘infidels”. How about confession time here!
The one-dimensional approach of both Western and Muslim media does need adjustment but one point has not as yet been made but to me it stands out like a sore thumb. Christianity does not seek or need to suppress the events about Jesus as set out in the New Testament record. It presents a consistently holy and sinless prophet/post resurrection appearances with numerous eyewitnesses to the events that occurred.
However Islamic apologists are usually consistent in their attempts to sanitise aspects of the history of Islam and its prophet Mohammed that are embarrassing to Muslims.
Zaoui also claimed that Islam historically pioneered reciprocal recognition of Judaism and Christianity. This is simply wishful thinking. Islamic armies from the seventh century conquered North Africa, most of the Middle East, Spain and Portugal making Jews and Christians who refused to convert to Islam second-class citizens (dhimmis).
Both Christian Jewish and secular first century historians confirm Jesus’ death. Zaoui would have been honest if he had said the Roman Catholic Church had been blaming the Jews for a murder that had “never” occurred!
Zaoui also refers to the Koran having stories about Jesus and Mary that are not in the Bible. He failed to disclose why these stories are not included in the Bible.
The stories in the Koran, such as Jesus talking in his cradle (speaking in Arabic or Aramaic?), or fashioning live birds from clay, are fables and folktales with no authoritative and historical credibility. They derive from second century apocryphal writings such as the The First Gospel of the Infancy of Christ. These writings were rejected as genuine revelations by the Christian Church. They had no apostolic authority.
He also referred to the need for constructive dialogue with the “people of the book”. Yet even this apparently noble aim hides the dishonesty of some Islamic thinking. It assumes this is a historical designation of all three religions when Zaoui would know it was an original reference by Mohammed to the Jews, who had the Torah, and Christians who had the Old Testament and the New Testament). Mohammed realised that the Arabs had no book and should usefully have one.
No doubt Zaoui as a self proclaimed tolerant person will understand Christians and Jews might find “insulting” Islamic tradition that considers the Torah and Old and New Testaments “corrupted” where the Koran is inconsistent with them. I personally find it an argument of the desperate because there is no evidence of corruption.
Indeed early Islamic scholars did not invent such a theory. It came into vogue much later (once the Bible was translated into Arabic or the Islamic scholars could read the available translations) with the embarrassing revelation that Mohammed’s coming was not referred to in the Bible as the Koran claimed.
Islamic apologists do of course insist that certain verses in Deuteronomy and Isaiah (Old Testament) and the Gospel of John (New Testament) refer to Mohammed but the arguments are weak.
It is amusing that some Islamic scholars claim support for this theory from earlier holy books yet in the same breath maintain that those same holy books have been corrupted! A delightful example is the Gospel of John where a verse refers to God as the Father, anathema to Muslims, yet they claim the reference in the same verse to the Comforter or Helper is to Mohammed. Some intellectual consistency is in order here!
His claim that the Koran contained the names of the prophets of the Old Testament is dreadfully astray. Interestingly, the Biblical prophets the Koran omits include major prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Perhaps his inaccuracies result from English not being his first language. However, what might pass for scholarship in Algeria may not necessarily be the case in New Zealand or elsewhere.
In this respect I am tending to the view that the former common name in the West for Islam of “Mohammedanism” bears revisiting, because the religion of Islam is based squarely on the self-corroborating claims of Mohammed.
I was however pleasantly surprised that Zaoui thought “we must be prepared to set side any resentment at treatment that seems unjust.” That suggests some genuine degree of tolerance.
If the Islamic world could drop its victim mentality and the resultant resentment and bitterness perhaps we could move forward with the dialogue that Zaoui speaks of.
However all in all I am left with nagging doubts about Zaoui’s genuineness as a refugee and peaceful tolerant man.
The nagging question I have is can a man be peaceful when he is not really altogether honest with his audience, or am I asking him to reach a standard of honesty and integrity that none of us can?
Well perhaps the problem for Zaoui is he proclaims himself as a paragon of virtue so I think the burden of proof is upon him to prove otherwise.
His personal videotaping of the signpost to the “Embassy of Palestine” somewhere in Malaysia doesn’t help ...yes, the (perennial) apparent reason for Islamic terrorism in the world - the situation in “Palestine”... I’m still not convinced about the bona fides of Zaoui or any other Islamist political refugee to the West.
So is this a vanity (your own work) or is it quoted from somewhere?
Seems well written and researched in any event.
ping
The New Zealand media has made much of Zaoui’s self-proclaimed tolerance, peace, diversity etc, yet his political party apparently had a somewhat intolerant agenda.
When you are relativist enough to tolerate one moral absolute stand (Islam) but not others (Judeo-Christianity or Confucian view) just because one appears non-Western and the other does not, the only attitude I can think of is contempt.
Yes, some - may be many - of the Islamists in Algeria were killed by the military, but Mr. Zaoui's comrades have killed since 1992 more then 150 thousand their fellow country-men... mainly women, children and old folks.
When you try to use this as argument against release of Zaoui into the community and granting him the right to stay in NZ, the local "good intentions activists" would say: "But he wasn't a member of the military wing of his party, he was just an Islamic scholar and politician!"
I wonder, do they really believe that just Nazis were OK, only the stormtroopers and SS-men were the bad guys?
The other argument Zaoui's supporters in NZ repeat ad nauseam is that he was a member of a party legally elected to the office, so the Algerian military who prevented them from taking power were the villains.
Fanny that the same lamestream media simultaneously celebrated anniversary of Klaus Von Staufenberg's attempted military coup (1944) against legally elected (and with bigger majority then Zaoui's party or NZ Labour could ever dream for) Chancellor and later Fuhrer of Germany Adolph Hitler...
Even fannier is the fact that the discussions I'm speaking about take place only in private since the pinky media doesn't give tribune to anyone except Zaoui's cheerleaders. No serious counter arguments are allowed to appear even on the Letters to editor pages.
So what to do with Zaoui?
Quite in dissonance with the Christian spirit of the original text of this thread, I'll cite an excellent movie on the subject of Islamic terrorism - Rules of Engagement:
Waste the motherf***er!
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