BARF ALERT: 'Islam and Muslims not accountable for terrorism'

Sydney, April 9: The West must end "Islamophobia" and Muslim nations must tackle the causes of religious extremism, such as poverty, to win the fight against terrorism, the head of the world's largest body of Islamic nations said on Friday.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, chairman of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said the war on terrorism could not be won by military might alone.

Abdullah said in a speech in Sydney that the West and the Muslim world must unite to tackle the "root causes of terrorism", such as poverty.

"The increasing gulf and misunderstanding between the West and the Muslim world must be bridged. But it requires both sides to work in tandem to close the chasm," said Abdullah. The IOC groups 57 Islamic nations.

"The non-Muslim world, especially the West, must be prepared to discard their prejudices against Islam. Muslims too must be prepared to begin a process of reform and renewal in their respective Muslim countries," he said.

Abdullah is in Australia in part to begin negotiations on a free trade agreement but the relationship between Australia and Malaysia remains uneasy.

The two have often differed, including on how to prosecute the war on terrorism. US ally Australia was quick to join Washington's attack on Iraq while Malaysia opposed the invasion.

Abdullah said Malaysia's moderate form of Islam and its peaceful multi-faith society was an example of how to defeat religious extremism and terrorism.

"We have demonstrated that we can roll back the Islamists, not by engaging in a holier-than-thou contest, but by addressing the root causes of anger and frustration," said Abdullah, who defeated a rising Islamic opposition in 2004 elections.

Abdullah said the Muslim world abhorred terrorism in the name of Islam and should not be blamed for such atrocities.

"It is not justifiable to associate terrorism with any particular race or religion," he said. "Islam and Muslim countries should not be made accountable for them."

Abdullah said for the world to defeat extremism and terrorism it must first understand the causes of terrorism, singling out poverty as a major threat to global security.

"Today poverty is so serious a global problem that it is in fact a grave threat to global stability. Poverty could be the 'Trojan horse' for people who exploit the issue of poverty to camouflage their own secret agendas," he said.

Abdullah said Malaysia's moderate form of Islam, which he called "hadhari", made education a key policy aimed at elevating people from poverty and sharing in the nation's prosperity.

He said Malaysia was not seeking approval from the West, but wanted to send a message to other Muslim nations that Islam can embrace Western prosperity.

"It is not an approach to pacify the West. It is neither an approach to apologise for the perceived Islamic threat, nor an approach to seek approval from the non-Muslims for a more friendly and gentle image of Islam," he said.

"Malaysia offers a modest working model of renewal, reform and perhaps, renaissance in the Muslim world."

What would your reply be to this sweet example of 'taqiyya*' from our 'beloved' Muslimes?

*HINT: Definitions of taqiyya on the Web:

Precautionary dissimulation of one’s religious beliefs, especially in time of persecution or danger, a practice especially adopted by the Shi‘i Muslims. www.iis.ac.uk/glossary/glossary_rz.htm

(Arabic): Dissimulation; lying for the sake of ones religion; concealing ones true religious beliefs for strategic reasons. The concept of al-taqiyya is one historically associated with Shi'a* Islam. This is because Sunni* Muslims, who believe that the Shi'a are heretics, would impel them to denounce their faith, thinking this would expose them as mushriqeen* when they refused to. In response, the Shi'a would do so, but hold true to their faith in their hearts, thus preserving their faith and their lives. Taqiyya is now used by all Muslims as a means of obscuring Islam's aims, practices clarityandresolve.com/archives/2004/09/a_clear_and_res.html

In Shi'a Islamic tradition, Taqiyya (ÇáÊÞíÉ) is the dissimulation of one s religious beliefs when one fears for one's life, the lives of one's family members, or for the preservation of the faith. It is most often used in times of persecution or danger. Some Sunnis assert that Taqiyya is an act of hypocrisy that serves to conceal the truth. According to them, Taqiyya constitutes a lack of faith and trust in God because the person who conceals his beliefs to sp en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya

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"Innocent Religion Is Now a Message of Hate"
By Abdel Rahman al-Rashed
Telegraph.co.uk | September 13, 2004

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is general manager of Al- Arabiya news channel. Yesterday, his article appeared in the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement." Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

These images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.

For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realise the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.

Let us listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Sheikh - the Qatar-based radical Egyptian cleric - and hear him recite his "fatwa" about the religious permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq. Let us contemplate the incident of this religious Sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians.

This ailing Sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying in "infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill innocent civilians.

How could this Sheikh face the mother of the youthful Nick Berg, who was slaughtered in Iraq because he wanted to build communication towers in that ravished country? How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?

In a different era, we used to consider the extremists, with nationalist or Leftist leanings, a menace and a source of corruption because of their adoption of violence as a means of discourse and their involvement in murder as an easy shortcut to their objectives.

At that time, the mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life.

Then came the Neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry.

We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.

We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is general manager of Al- Arabiya news channel.

From my file "fire & blood & iron:"

The entire West ( dare I say "the civilized World?" ) is locked in a fight to the death with militant Islam.

There will be no second-place winner, no "third way" solution-- it is March or Die time, folks.

It is Us versus an eighth-century "culture" of plunder & pillage, forced religious "conversions," and the mistreatment of women.

The sooner we face up to this fact realistically and quit dancing around PC talking-point nonsense about diversity and tolerance, the better off we'll all be.

We did not pick this fight- which really has roots in Jimmy Carter's appeasement in 1979 of militants- but we had damned well better see it for what it is, and be prepared to face it and finish it.

I'll put it in raw, personal terms-- I don't want Sharia law visited upon my women, and I don't want a goat-roper "culture" infesting my land.

I don't want their vile, nasty, loathsome weapons of mass destruction loosed upon my fair country, either.

They picked the fight, and now it is up to us to finish it- balls to the wall, hammer and anvil, fire and blood and iron... freedom is never, ever free, and the coin you pay it in is men's lives and tears and blood.

What we saw during Gulf War I was our military doctrine ( high tech ) versus Soviet doctrine ( throw a lot of low tech iron at the problem )-- and we all know how that turned out.

What we saw in the 3-Week War is Information-Tech,
( What some are calling it Hyperwarfare... )
or 21st Century warfare versus 20th Century...

What I would suggest, and call your attention to, is the fact that we, and Israel, are capable of waging 21st Century warfare, and the entire Arab world is not.

Proven fact, by recent events.

One more thing- this will be a war where we are all called to be warriors- so I suggest to you that the time has come to get hard, and stay hard... it really is the time for Fire and Blood and Iron...

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