Muslims Wake Up - Response to Freedom House Investigation

Since 1980, the Muslim world has experienced an enormous growth of religious fanaticism and extremism the likes of which Islam has not experienced in its 1,400 years. This movement continues to grow because of the spread of Wahhabi Islam; a sect that used to number no more than one percent of all Muslims, but because of money and technology, has spread to more areas around the world.

Extremism is also growing because of an ideology called political Islam. The basis of political Islam is the rejection of secularism and the belief that the mosque and the state should be completely intertwined. Unfortunately, history has shown that when politics and religion are completely intertwined, disaster results.

Most importantly, extremism in the Muslim world continues to grow because most Muslims are unwilling to admit that we have a problem with extremism and support for terrorism. The response by Muslims to the Freedom House report is not the first time that the Muslim community resorted to denial and accusations of Muslim-bashing when presented with evidence of Muslim culpability.

After September 11, many in the Muslim world chose denial and hallucination rather than face up to the sad fact that Muslims perpetrated the 9/11 terrorist acts. After 9/11, many Muslims, including religious leaders and "intellectuals," blamed 9/11 on a Jewish conspiracy, and went as far as fabricating a tale that 4,000 Jews did not show up for work in the World Trade Center on that day.

Since 9/11, the world has watched in horror as hundreds of schoolchildren were murdered in Russia by Chechen Muslim terrorists. Scores of civilians were murdered by Islamic terrorists in Spanish train bombings. Many others have been murdered in suicide bombings in buses, restaurants and other public places, human beings have been beheaded, two Russian passenger planes were blown out of the sky, and many, many atrocities that are too long to mention. All carried out by Muslims.

With all the evidence that Islam is facing a crisis, one wonders what it will take for Muslims to realize that those who commit mass murder in the name of Islam are not just a few fringe elements. What will it take for Muslims to realize that we are facing a crisis potentially more deadly than the AIDS epidemic? What will it take for Muslims to realize that there is a large, evil movement that is turning what was a peaceful religion into a death cult?

Will Muslims wake up before it is too late? Or will we continue blaming an imaginary Jewish conspiracy and entities like The Dallas Morning News for all our problems? The blaming of all Muslim problems on others is a cancer that is destroying Muslim society. And it must stop.

Muslims must wake up, look inward and put a stop to many of our religious leaders who spend most of their sermons teaching hatred, intolerance and violent jihad. We should not be afraid to admit that as Muslims we have a problem with violent extremism. We should not be afraid to admit that so many of our religious leaders belong behind bars, and not behind a pulpit.

Only moderate Muslims can challenge and defeat extremist Muslims. We can no longer afford to be silent. If we remain silent to the extremism within our community, then we should not expect anyone to listen to us when we complain of stereotyping and discrimination by non-Muslims. We should not be surprised when the world treats all of us as terrorists. And we should not be surprised when we are profiled at airports.

Simply put, not only do Muslims need to join the war against extremism and terror, we need to take the lead in this war.

I was perfectly willing to let you have the last word, but you had to keep at it.

We are confronted with an enemy who hates us and our way of life and believes the answer is to kill us all.

But they act on it. They murder Christians and Jews by the thousands. I believe that Islam is not a religion, but a political ideology, no different than soviet communism. The world, they say, is divided into two camps: The House of Islam, and The House of War.

According to their "holy prophet," infidels (that's you and me) will one day have three choices: convert to Islam; keep our own religion and pay a double tax; or die. It's not politically correct to mention it, it's an objective fact. Since 9/11, I've read about 30 books on their filthy, pagan "religion." I know of what I speak.

Most others believe this is wrong and an affront to our definition of human rights, democracy and God.

Where in the Koran can I find the Mulsim beliefs on democracy and human rights? Just point it out to me, and I'll read it. I know about the passages where men are instructed how to "scourge" their wives, and how jihadists are told to "slaughter the infidel wherever you find them." So, just tell me which suras cover democracy and human rights.

I've had about enough of your moralistic lecturing. You're defending barbarians with no respect for human rights or democracy. Don't lecture me, you sanctimonious piece of garbage.

who thinks there are absolutely no moderate Muslims lives in a world of hate and deception.

Of course there are moderate Muslims. But heck of a lot good they do us when the Jihadists engage in terror. And try to make mega terror on US soil. If Al Qaeda sets off a dirty bomb or nuke here you won't care about moderate Muslims. You'll want to boot them all out if they crash our economy

______________________________http://cweb.jewishworldreview.com/0205/misconceptions.php3
Islam has been a violent and military movement from its beginning. The current attitude of Arab and Islamic countries towards Jews dates back to the life of Mohammed, who conducted 74 military campaigns, 24 of them personally. He unified the Arab tribes with war and assassinated or exiled Jews, therefore setting precedent for the militant and anti-Jewish practices of Islam.

The reason Mohammed was so violently anti-Jewish was because he originally saw himself as a prophet to the Jews, Christians, and pagans of Arabia. In his early reign he instructed his followers to bow down and pray to Jerusalem! The Jews of Arabia rejected him as a Hebrew prophet and he was almost killed in battle with them. He then changed the direction of prayer to Mecca.
Now here are some very critical misconceptions regarding Islam:
1. Islam is a religion of peace, and is not anti-Jewish.
Islam has been a violent and military movement from its beginning. The current attitude of Arab and Islamic countries towards Jews dates back to the life of Mohammed, who conducted 74 military campaigns, 24 of them personally. He unified the Arab tribes with war and assassinated or exiled Jews, therefore setting precedent for the militant and anti-Jewish practices of Islam.

The reason Mohammed was so violently anti-Jewish was because he originally saw himself as a prophet to the Jews, Christians, and pagans of Arabia. In his early reign he instructed his followers to bow down and pray to Jerusalem! The Jews of Arabia rejected him as a Hebrew prophet and he was almost killed in battle with them. He then changed the direction of prayer to Mecca.

I journeyed across Syria from Damascus to Aleppo to the Euphrates River and back to Damascus in 1999. I learned that it was a practice in Syria for Moslem fathers to make their son's swear, "I will kill a Jew before I die." In 1947 Arab mobs in Aleppo devastated the 2,500-year-old Jewish community. Many Jews were killed and thousands of Jews illegally fled Syria to go to Israel. Today there are less than 150 Jews in the entire nation.
2. Islam is just a religion.
Islam has never been just a religion in the traditional sense, in as much as the members of Democracies understand; it has always been a polity; a political organization.

Mohammed's intention was the unification of the Arab tribes and their international expansion. The state and religion are not seen as separate nor can an individual dissent from the Quran. The very word Islam means submission.
Islam is seen as a political organization, which has no boundaries. This was the intent of Mohammed in the establishment of the Umma, the community or brotherhood. Western culture perceives this to be their statement of equality for mankind, but it must be remembered; if you are not Moslem you are not equal.

Muslim-bashing. That's the accusation many of my fellow Muslims now hurl at the various news outlets for their news stories about a Freedom House investigation that found extremist Islamic literature in some leading American mosques.

http://blog.lsinsight.org/
INSIGHT

Faulty Generalizations: Freedom House Cries Wolf
How would the Christian or Jewish communities feel if a research group of some repute visits a dozen of churches or synagogues, finds few books out of several thousands that includes questionable statements about people of other faiths, and then produces a report entitled “Hate Ideology Fills American Churches and Synagogues?” I am sure Christians and Jews would be outraged by such a sloppy and irresponsible conclusion.

This is exactly what the Freedom House has done in a recent publication entitled “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques.” The Freedom House Report confuses two separate questions: (1) are there Muslims who espouse bigoted views? And (2) are these views widespread or are they confined to a minority within the Muslim community? In failing to make this distinction, the Freedom House unfairly smears all mosques and all mosque goers in the United States.

American Muslims are aware of the shallow understanding of Islam that characterizes some of the writings that comes out from Saudi religious scholars. These writings speak more to the peculiar socio-cultural experience, and the lack of meaningful exposure to the rich experience of diverse societies by some Saudi writers, than to Islamic teachings. One of the most known and respected Muslim scholars of the 20th century, the late Muhammad Al-Ghazali, labeled such writings on Islamic law as the “Bedouin jurisprudence,” a decade prior to the critical review wahabism received in recent days. Most American Muslims abhor and reject the bigoted and mean-spirited statements cited in the Report.

I personally experienced such bigotry in Mid 1980s when a group of wahabi-leaning students vigorously protested the inclusion of a Shi’a religious scholar on a panel addressing a large Muslim gathering, and tried to oust me from my position as the president of the Muslim Students Association in Detroit. There design was ultimately defeated by the Association’s general body that rejected their bigoted views.

But to say that Muslims, like any other religious community, have their own bigots is far cry from claiming that hate literature fill all mosques in America, and implying that mosque goers tolerate hate and bigotry. The Freedom House Report fails in making this important distinction.

I was puzzled, as I was going through the report’s findings, as to how can any one who took an introductory course in research methods, let alone professional researchers hired by an organization that sets criteria for deciding who is free and who is not throughout the world. I kept asking myself how could anyone conclude that “Saudi publications on hate ideology fill American mosques” after discovering few copies of Saudi publications in 15 Mosques throughout the nation. There are more than 2000 mosques in the United States. 15 out of 2000 mosques constitute less than 1% of all mosques in the country. How could such insignificant number allow anyone to claim that Saudi hate publications are “spread from coast to coast and now fill the libraries and study halls of some of America’s main mosques.”

Many of the sloppy statements and erroneous conclusions are the result of failing to consult with mainstream Muslim organizations, and neglecting to understand the dynamics within the American Muslim community. The authors of the Report are unable to distinguish between main and obscure mosques in the American Muslim community. King Fahd’s Mosque in Los Angeles is a large and well-endowed mosque, but is hardly representative of LA Muslim community. Mosques that are part of the main stream American Muslim community in LA would include the Islamic Center of Southern Los Angeles, the Islamic Center of Orange County, the Islamic Center for Riverside, but hardly King Fahd’s Mosque.

The Report’s main conclusions are at odd with some of its findings. The Report rightly points out that most American Muslims are “upstanding, law-abiding citizens and neighbors,” and that they “decry the Wahhabi interpretation as being foreign to the toleration expressed in Islam and its injunction against coercion in religion.” The authors do not, however, bother to explain the discrepancy between the reality of the American Muslim community and claims against American mosques. They never discuss the extent to which what they have picked from the shelves reflects the attitudes and values of Mosque goers.

Evidently, the authors of the Freedom House Report never stopped for a second to ask: How has the presence of the Saudi literature impacted the attitudes of the mosque goers? Nor have they considered asking the leaders of the Islamic centers about their views and activities, or how the Saudi material was used. One would think that this is the most reasonable and sensible thing to do in a study that aims at ascertaining the truth and enhancing understanding.

The discrepancy between the Report’s claims and the reality it purports to describe is evident, for example, in the case of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), the Report frequently refers to as the Herndon Mosque. ADAMS is one of the most vibrant mosques, with an active interfaith program, and an exemplary program for developing civic awareness and public service. It has organized, in 2004 alone, more than 20 interfaith meetings, bringing Muslims into friendship and dialogue with people of other faiths, including the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, St. Thomas à Becket Catholic Church, United Christian Parish in Reston, St Annes Church, and Sikh Community, to name just a few. ADAMS regularly invites political candidates running for state and federal office to discuss with the congregation their political agendas, and does that on a non-partisan basis. And ADAMS is one of the few Islamic centers where women play an active role in running the mosque and serve on the Executive Board and the Board of trustees. 5 of the 13 Board of Trustees members are women, and ADAMS vice president is a women.

Do ADAMS’s profile, programs, and activities fit into the alarmist picture painted by the Freedom House Report? Is it fair to confuse mainstream and extreme voices when dealing with American Muslims? Is it acceptable to generalize from the particular? The authors of the Freedom House Report are, sadly, oblivious to these important questions.

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