Posted on 03/13/2005 1:09:06 PM PST by 4.1O dana super trac pak
The way to religious tolerance is through a billboard - or at least that's the idea behind a display for tens of thousands of commuters in North Dallas each day.
It's not a question a lot of people ask themselves on the way to work. But there it is, hanging above westbound LBJ Freeway near Webb Chapel: "Why Islam?"
The sign also offers a Web site address and a toll-free phone number in New Jersey.
"When the call comes in, it transfers to the team of volunteers," said Adnan Fyed of the Islamic Circle of North America. "And those volunteers they will call you back and they pick up the phone at the same time."
"Why Islam?" is a program run by the Islamic Circle of North America to educate anyone who wants to know about the religion. The website offers information on Allah, pilgramages and even audio lectures.
Visitors can also watch a slide show on Ramadan, and are invited to visit a mosque. There's even a chatroom.
"If you go and become a member of the forum, you can go and ask whatever questions you have," Fyed said.
The chat room addresses such topics as suicide bombings, and hating Christians.
With so many hostile ideas out there, the effort aims to help provide the truth about the religion.
The packed parking lot for Friday services at the Islamic Center of Irving shows how much the faith is growing in North Texas. Now with the hotline and the website, members of the community hope to get out the word concerning what Islam is all about.
TxSleuth -- I agree in general about differences btwn D and FW, but on the Islamic front, even the mid cities are showin quite a few burkas. In July 2004 I was in a mall in HEB area. I was stunned to see as many burkas as cowboy hats. Yikes. I haven't lived in the metroplex in 8 years. As a returning visitor, I found the burkas to be one of two head-shaking demographic changes. The other, of course, is the overwhelming reality that English has pretty much seen its day pass for much of the area.
"Regular attendance at church doesn't make you an Evangelical Christian, anymore than regular attendance at school makes you a scholar!"
Does attending a Mosque make you a terrorist?
"Huh? What does the price of a billboard have to do with this?"
What does it have to do with DFW attitudes?
First, Smartaleck, let me tell you all you need to know about me. I don't give a rat's ass about you and I will not be engaging you in discussion. However, I will be kind enough to paint-by-numbers show you how your evangelical post makes you look like an idiot.
The first line of your post contains the clue, but you are too dumb to pick it out. "Police are searching for a motive" Get it yet? Let me spell it out. When a bad individual does somethin like this shooting, police need a motive to figure it out. When a Muslim blows up a mosque while a funeral is happening or kills kids in a school yard. The motive is clear. It is yet another evil Muslim f!!ck doing his thing.
Now run along. Watch for viking kitties.
Fort Worth is a much more rednecked town (in a good way, IMHO) than Dallas---Dallas tries too hard to be "metro" and is very liberal---
OKAY? Now do you both understand where I am coming from?
I live in Arlington which is in the middle of both cities--and there are a few mosques here---one of the men convicted of the FIRST World Trade Center bombing actually lived here in ARlington before he went to New York---
BUT, I have never ever seen a woman in a burqa anywhere that I have shopped or frequented in any way--
My granddaughter has a couple of children in her class that are of middle eastern descent BUT their mothers don't wear burqas, so I am a little confused, FreeRadical about where you saw the people you talk about---
My whole reason for bringing this up is, that I think the redneck mindset that the Fort Worth area has is more indicated by the billboard I talked about, and the Dallas liberalism will be more open to the billboard mention on this thread---
It's not a question a lot of people ask themselves on the way to work. But there it is, hanging above westbound LBJ Freeway near Webb Chapel: "Why Islam?"LOL!
My best buddy lives less than two miles from LBJ Freeway (I-635) and Webb Chapel.
Just 25 minutes from my driveway.
Thanks for the pic of the billboard Rottndog. :^)
I understand your point completely about redneck vs metro. I get it. I lived in the Metroplex many years. An irony, too, is how FW may outshine Dallas on the hi-tone stuff as well with the Kimball museum and the Bass stage. Anyway, I read you loud and clear on D vs FW comparison.
As for the Burkas, I saw them at a Nordstrom Rack store, a nearby shoe warehouse store and in a large mall in that area with Dillards, Ice Rink, Sports Warehouse, etc. I know I know, I'm just describing generica / suburbia, forgive me. I was vacationing, not doing the driving and totally not too worrried about my exact zip code that day. I think it was HEB area if any Metroplex area per se. I remember seeing so many burkas - not dozens, but more than a dozen - that I started comparing that amount to the cowboy hat sightings and I remember it was pretty much a draw. For every cowboy hat there was a burka in the crowds too.
1. Ham.
2. Bacon.
3. Cracklings.
4. Carnitas...
The plan is right on schedule.
First Amendment?
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According to Muhammad’s sacralized biography by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad himself sanctioned the massacre of the Qurayza, a vanquished Jewish tribe. He appointed an "arbiter" who soon rendered this concise verdict: the men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, the spoils to be divided among the Muslims. Muhammad ratified this judgment stating that it was a decree of God pronounced from above the Seven Heavens. Thus some 600 to 900 men from the Qurayza were lead on Muhammad’s order to the Market of Medina. Trenches were dug and the men were beheaded, and their decapitated corpses buried in the trenches while Muhammad watched in attendance. Women and children were sold into slavery, a number of them being distributed as gifts among Muhammad’s companions, and Muhammad chose one of the Qurayza women (Rayhana) for himself. The Qurayza’s property and other possessions (including weapons) were also divided up as additional "booty" among the Muslims, to support further jihad campaigns.
The classical Muslim jurist al-Mawardi (a Shafi’ite jurist, d. 1058) from Baghdad was a seminal, prolific scholar who lived during the so-called Islamic "Golden Age" of the Abbasid-Baghdadian Caliphate. He wrote the following, based on widely accepted interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunna (i.e., the recorded words and deeds of Muhammad), regarding infidel prisoners of jihad campaigns:
“As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)”....Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah." [The Laws of Islamic Governance, trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192. Emphasis added.]
Indeed such odious “rules” were iterated by all four classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence, across the vast Muslim empire.
For centuries, from the Iberian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent, jihad campaigns waged by Muslim armies against infidel Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Hindus, were punctuated by massacres, including mass throat slittings and beheadings. During the period of “enlightened” Muslim rule, the Christians of Iberian Toledo, who had first submitted to their Arab Muslim invaders in 711 or 712, revolted in 713. In the harsh Muslim reprisal that ensued, Toledo was pillaged, and all the Christian notables had their throats cut. On the Indian subcontinent, Babur (1483-1530), the founder of the Mughal Empire, who is revered as a paragon of Muslim tolerance by modern revisionist historians, recorded the following in his autobiographical “Baburnama,” about infidel prisoners of a jihad campaign:
"Those who were brought in alive [having surrendered] were ordered beheaded, after which a tower of skulls was erected in the camp." [The Baburnama -Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, translated and edited by Wheeler M. Thacktson, Oxford University Press,1996, p. 188. Emphasis added.]
Recent jihad-inspired decapitations of infidels by Muslims have occurred across the globe- Christians in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nigeria; Hindu priests and "unveiled" Hindu women in Kashmir; Wall Street Journal reporter, and Jew, Daniel Pearl. We should not be surprised that these contemporary paroxysms of jihad violence are accompanied by ritualized beheadings. Such gruesome acts are in fact sanctioned by core Islamic sacred texts, and classical Muslim jurisprudence. Empty claims that jihad decapitations are somehow "alien to true Islam," however well-intentioned, undermine serious efforts to reform and desacralize Islamic doctrine. This process will only begin with frank discussion, both between non-Muslims and Muslims, and within the Muslim community.
My new tagline.
The above site will tell you just about all you need to know about Islam. It's a site where the followers ask questions of the Imams. Check it out. And no, it''s not a joke site.
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