Posted on 05/05/2005 4:58:01 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
"A UCLA law professor trained in Islam's jurisprudential traditions, Abou El Fadl specializes in exploring Islam's humane and democratic elements. A few years ago, in the brisk "The Place of Tolerance in Islam," he explained why "Islamic" and "tolerant" aren't contradictory, despite terrorists who suggest that Islam stands for nothing but hatred and violence."
Secular Humanism meets Islam.....by way of UCLA law professor trained in Islam's jurisprudential traditions.
Meet al-Taqiyya up close and personal!
Mid-East meets West, by way of UCLA...scat-fest!
Iraqis are getting a crash course in eschewing the mullah flackers.
In Iran 85% want the mullahs out.
With U.S. arms and regional opposition the mullahs will be removed.
Daniel Pipes, whom the president named to the USIP, calls for moderate Islam as the solution to jihadic Islam.
The problem remains that the jihadic Islamists have the upper hand with weapons, state power, and fear in many parts of the world.
Whatever tools and weapons which exist must be used to fight them.
Thank you for the broader definition of Taqiyya.
Many posters may not be aware of this convenient allowance given to followers of TROP.
WHAT IF THE MUSLIMS WIN? (snip)
http://www.hindutva.org/3rdworldwar.html
1) Our role-models would be cruel war-mongers who would keep having bloody fights with each other even after the entire world population is converted to Islam.
This is based on the observed fact today that a majority of the Muslims (who take to the streets) across many countries, lionize and idolize extremists and war-mongers like Bin Laden but not progressive and constructive reformers like Ataturk, Nasser, Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, former King Amanullah of Afghanistan, etc.
2)We would be living in theocratic dictatorship all across the world. There would be no democracy, no elections and no public accountability for any act. The only arbiter would be the Quranic prescriptions for all times in the future.
This is so since today most of the Muslim majority countries cannot sustain democracies. Except Turkey, and Egypt, no Muslim majority country has a sustained democratic tradition. But most Muslim populations look up upon Islamic dictatorships or monarchies.
The list of such theocratic dictatorships would include Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan (despotic monarchies), Syria, Iraq, Chad, (dictatorships) Iran (nominal democracy under strain from clerics), Kuwait (nominal democracy under emirate), UAE, North Yemen (and occupied South Yemen which had a sort of democratic set up earlier), Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria (Military rule of secularized military), Malaysia (civilian dictatorship of Mahathir Mohammed), Indonesia (fledgling democracy), Pakistan, Bangladesh (spells of democratic rule and military dictatorships), Central African Republic (kingdom of former "Emperor"; Bokassa), Uganda (a Christian majority country that had a taste of Islamic dictatorship under Idi Amin), Afghanistan (theocratic dictatorship of the Taliban), etc.
3) There would be ill-treatment of women, Women would not be allowed to have an education, pursue any career. Men would be forced to wear turbans and grow beards.
This possibility is based on the observation today that a majority of the Muslim countries do not give equal rights to women like education, free-movement, driving, apparel, and even participation in mass-prayers in the mosques alongside their menfolk, (no doubt the scripture will be quoted to explain this, but this is the reality). The hijab, Chador or burqua (veil and full length gown) for women is still a common feature in Islamic societies.
In the ideal Islamic society of Talibanized Afghnaistan adult men are forced to grow a beard and wear the prescribed Islamic dress, they cannot sport normal (Western) hairstyles and even students above the age of three are forced to wear turbans.
The problem remains that the jihadic Islamists have the upper hand with weapons, state power,
Do they? Or (as I suspect) They've had there moment in the sun, and are going down.
Sure they are! The islamocfascists love democracy too, but only if they can use it as a tool to undermine the very democratic process to get them into power and bring in Islamic gender and political apartheid (aka Islamic law, sharia).
Here's some "democracy in action," Islamic style, over in Egypt where they have banners claiming "Reform is a religious necessity, reform is Prophet's way." One of the banners read, "Freedom is a religious duty."
Oh but wait.. they mean Sharia. The "freedom" to enslave fellow Muslims and non-Muslims alike...
Well Fred, that is instructive for those of us who understand the amazing 'tolerance' of Islam....but what about the secular humanist perspective of Islam?
Not much wiggle-room there.
We must have missed something in the professors' dialog, ya think?
Certainly they're compatible...Look at the Palestinians...They just had democratic elections...And in the islamic countries you get to vote for the candidate that's still alive...
There's no reason to vote on laws since all the laws are already covered by your religion...
Saddam Hussein had a democracy...People got to vote for him...
To me, it's a little peculiar that George Bush is pushing for Iraq to be a democracy and not a Republic...A nation of laws...But then again, they aleady have the laws, in their religious book...
AMIR TAHERI'S REMARKS AT DEBATE "ISLAM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH DEMOCRACY"
by Amir Taheri
Benador Online
May 19, 2004
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am glad that this debate takes place in English.
Because, were it to be conducted in any of the languages of our part of the world, we would not have possessed the vocabulary needed.
To understand a civilisation it is important to understand its vocabulary.
If it was not on their tongues it is likely that it was not on their minds either.
There was no word in any of the Muslim languages for democracy until the 1890s. Even then the Greek word democracy entered Muslim languages with little change: democrasi in Persian, dimokraytiyah in Arabic, demokratio in Turkish.
Democracy as the proverbial schoolboy would know is based on one fundamental principle: equality.
The Greek word for equal isos is used in more than 200 compound nouns; including isoteos (equality) and Isologia (equal or free speech) and isonomia (equal treatment).
But again we find no equivalent in any of the Muslim languages. The words we have such as barabari in Persian and sawiyah in Arabic mean juxtaposition or levelling.
Nor do we have a word for politics.
The word siassah, now used as a synonym for politics, initially meant whipping stray camels into line.( Sa'es al-kheil is a person who brings back lost camels to the caravan. )The closest translation may be: regimentation.
Nor is there mention of such words as government and the state in the Koran.
It is no accident that early Muslims translated numerous ancient Greek texts but never those related to political matters. The great Avicenna himself translated Aristotle's Poetics. But there was no translation of Aristotle's Politics in Persian until 1963.
Lest us return to the issue of equality.
The idea is unacceptable to Islam.
For the non-believer cannot be the equal of the believer.
Even among the believers only those who subscribe to the three so-called Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam ( Ahl el-Kitab) are regarded as fully human.
Here is the hierarchy of human worth in Islam:
At the summit are free male Muslims
Next come Muslim male slaves
Then come free Muslim women
Next come Muslim slave women.
Then come free Jewish and /or Christian men
Then come slave Jewish and/or Christian men
Then come slave Jewish and/or Christian women.
Each category has rights that must be respected.
The People of the Book have always been protected and relatively well-treated by Muslim rulers, but often in the context of a form of apartheid known as dhimmitude.
The status of the rest of humanity, those whose faiths are not recognised by Islam or who have no faith at all, has never been spelled out although wherever Muslim rulers faced such communities they often treated them with a certain measure of tolerance and respect ( As in the case of Hindus under the Muslim dynasties of India.)
Non-Muslims can, and have often been, treated with decency, but never as equals.
(There is a hierarchy even for animals and plants. Seven animals and seven plants will assuredly go to heaven while seven others of each will end up in Hell.)
Democracy means the rule of the demos, the common people, or what is now known as popular or national sovereignty.
In Islam, however, power belongs only to God: al-hukm l'illah. The man who exercises that power on earth is known as Khalifat al-Allah, the regent of God.
But even then the Khalifah or Caliph cannot act as legislator. The law has already been spelled out and fixed for ever by God.
The only task that remains is its discovery, interpretation and application.
That, of course, allows for a substantial space in which different styles of rule could develop.
But the bottom line is that no Islamic government can be democratic in the sense of allowing the common people equal shares in legislation.
Islam divides human activities into five categories from the permitted to the sinful, leaving little room for human interpretation, let alone ethical innovations.
What we must understand is that Islam has its own vision of the world and man's place in it.
To say that Islam is incompatible with democracy should not be seen as a disparagement of Islam.
On the contrary, many Muslims would see it as a compliment because they sincerely believe that their idea of rule by God is superior to that of rule by men which is democracy...." read more
http://www.benadorassociates.com/pf.php?
"But the bottom line is that no Islamic government can be democratic in the sense of allowing the common people equal shares in legislation."
I compare your link with the link of this thread and I hear nothing but noise, buzzing noise, bzzzz, numbing noise a hive.
This is the essence of Islam.
As another posted above....the Borg.
Bump
El Fadl prefers Sharia:
In common with other Islamists, Abou El Fadl wants Muslims to live by Islamic law (the Shari‘a), the law that among other things endorses slavery, execution for apostasy, and the repression of women, and treats non-Muslims as second-class citizens. "Shariah and Islam are inseparable," he has written, "and one cannot be without the other." In a revealing passage, he confesses that his "primary loyalty, after God, is to the Shariah."[21] Given that Islamic law is Abou El Fadl's academic specialty, this profound allegiance to its goals has great significance and provides a key to his outlook.
Daniel Pipes debunks El Fadl:
To judge from Abou El Fadl's press, he is a path-breaking and fearless antidote to extremism. But there is a body of other evidence suggesting that he is something other than the "moderate voice" his admirers believe or hope him to be.Wahhabi Menace
Abou El Fadl's signature issue, the one that has most established his reputation as a moderate, involves his outspoken opposition to the Saudi regime. But one can be an Islamist, and even a radical one, and also take a stand against Wahhabism. Ayatollah Khomeini, and indeed the entire school of Shi‘ite radicalism, provides a dramatic example of this pattern. After a confrontation with Saudi security forces during the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1987, which left hundreds of Iranians dead, Khomeini raged against "these vile and ungodly Wahhabis, [who] are like daggers which have always pierced the heart of the Muslims from the back."[12]
Abou El Fadl, another such anti-Wahhabi Islamist, fits into an Egyptian tradition, currently called the "New Islamists," that is outspokenly critical of Wahhabism. Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917-96)), a leading New Islamist, remains one of Abou El Fadl's chief intellectual influences. Although Ghazali had earlier taken refuge in Saudi Arabia, he felt free to criticize the dominant interpretation of Islam there, especially as concerns women. He also wrote a book in 1989 that accused the Wahhabis of a fanaticism that harms the reputation of Islam. Raymond William Baker recounts how Ghazali "directly attacked Saudi religious scholars, whom he charged with mistaking the backward, inherited customs of the Arabian Peninsula for Islam and its revelation and then arrogantly seeking to impose their limited understanding on others."[13] The Muslim Public Affairs Council of Los Angeles, with which Abou El Fadl was once closely affiliated, has a generally New Islamist outlook; it explicitly "rejects many of the ideas espoused by the doctrine of Wahhabism."[14]
Despite Abou El Fadl's general antipathy toward Wahhabi and Saudis, he nevertheless has offered excuses for them. The Wahhabis, he says, "do not seek to dominate—to attain supremacy in the world … They are more than happy living within the boundaries of Saudi Arabia."[15] This statement ignores the Saudi regime's policy since the 1960s of spending billions of dollars to spread the Wahhabi ideology abroad, precisely in an effort to dominate.[16] Abou El Fadl declares there has been "no examination" of the extent to which objectionable materials are found in Saudi-funded religious schools and mosques outside the kingdom, calling for congressional hearings to learn more about this.[17] But the U.S. government has already closed down several Saudi-funded institutions in the United States, such as the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America.[18] As Stephen Schwartz, author of The Two Faces of Islam, notes, "There is no doubt about official Saudi funding of Wahhabism, and there is little or no need for further expenditure of federal funds holding hearings on it."[19]
Finally, Abou El Fadl has been known to place his talents at the service of Saudi-funded terrorists. In November 1995, for example, he provided sworn testimony in an "Affidavit in Support of Application for Bail" for Mousa Muhammed Abu Marzook, a top Hamas official, assuring the court that, "pursuant to Islamic law," Abu Marzook was obligated to abide by any bail agreement he would reach with the U.S. government.[20]
"This is the essence of islam..."
http://www.faithfreedom.org/
If Your Wife Leaves Islam She Must be Executed
Says Shaykh ‘Abd-Allaah ibn Jibreen
The following is a question answered in islam-qa.com
7328
His wife has left Islam
"giving each person his due?" This statement implies that any and all Muslims can judge me, find me to be an infidel and dole out whatever punishment they think is appropriate. This statement also tells us that Islam IS NOT compatible with democracy.
However, there is some similarity between Islam and The National Inquirer.
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