Posted on 12/12/2005 7:50:37 PM PST by nickcarraway
Volunteers from Indonesia's largest Islamic organisation will guard churches across the world's most populous Muslim nation on Christmas amid fears of terrorist attacks on those places, the group said on Friday.
Jakarta police have said they would boost security in the capital ahead of Christmas to avoid a repeat of 2000 Christmas Eve bombings on churches in several Indonesian cities, including in the country's capital.
A youth wing affiliated with Indonesia's largest Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama, some 40 million strong, said that members would guard churches for the coming Christmas festivities and it had persuaded youths from other religions to join the project.
"We have an annual programme to set up posts to secure Christmas. For this year, I have contacted groups from other religions like the Hindus and Buddhists and they have responded positively," said Tatang Hidayat, National Coordinator of NU's Banser group, known for its military-like uniform.
Hidayat said the volunteers would closely collaborate with existing police operations and the churches' own security.
Around 17,000 policemen are expected to safeguard Christmas celebrations in Jakarta alone.
The spate of bombings in 2000 killed at least 19 people, including a Banser member guarding a church in East Java.
The attacks along with other blasts in recent years -- most recently on the tourist island of Bali in October when suicide bombers killed 20 people -- have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a militant network intelligence experts call a Southeast Asian wing of al-Qaeda.
Around 85 per cent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim. Christians form the second largest religious group in the country as a whole, as well as in Jakarta.
Although Indonesia has been relatively calm in recent weeks, many security analysts say threats of militant attacks still run high because police have yet to catch one of the alleged masterminds of previous bombings, Malaysian-born Noordin M. Top.
Police last month killed Azahari Husin, another alleged Jemaah Islamiah leader, in a shootout in East Java province.
Why is the heading using the term 'XMas' while the body of the article continuosly mentions 'Christmas'. The word christmas is 9 letters....its not that long. About the same amount of letters as hannukah or ramadan and 2 consonants. No need to X christ out of christmas.
Repeat after me: "all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists.all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists.all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists.all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists.all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists.all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists.all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists. all muslims are terrorists and support terrorists." It's not brainwashing when it's the truth!
Yes, this is a good thing. Shame on those who will slam anyone who tries to do something good due to their pessimism. I say, bless those who are willing to put their lives on the line to protect innocent lives.
EXACTLY. That's JUST what I thought. LOL. They have them all inside and... I just pray this is a sincere effort on their parts. God IS moving and this could be the start of something good.
You took the words right out of my mouth, Torie.
Actually XMAS is Christmas, from ancient times. CHI means Christ, I believe. It's okay.
Sounds like sane humanistic gesture to me. Not unlike groups of people here in the U.S helping keep eye on Muslim Mosques during short period post 911 when Muslims who did nothing wrong feared for their safety.
This is the question serious WESTERN-type thinkers grapple with: there are many good people who are Muslims. Yet, when they attend their local mosque or give to Muslim 'Charities', they directly support those on violent jihad.
The general consensus of Islam is clear: that one Muslim must support the jihad of another, even if differing in vision from his own. Witness the aid given the 9/11 highjackers as they moved about the country. They received money, shelter, transportation, and just plain cover from their co-religionists.
Ominously, many of the suras in Q'uran encourage Muslims by instructing them that there is no need to tell an infidel the truth, there is no reason to keep one's word with an infidel, there is no need to keep a treaty with an infidel nation, and that if dissimulation is necessary to gain advantage over the infidels while Muslims are temporarily in a weaker position, that is a valid course of action.
Q'uran is available in English, and other Western languages. Read it. Also read of the world-wide epidemic of gang-rape by young Muslim men in countries and regions as far apart as Norway, Kosovo, and Australia. Have you heard of any Muslim cleric issuing a fatwah against this heinous practice?
(a)all muslims are terrorists
(b)and all muslims support terrorists.
Not many on this site believe (a).
There's damn good evidence for (b). A rational man need only ask, "How much?" We are at war with militant Islam. Many Muslims, just as sensible as the next guy, are not actively in it. Since they have been of scant help to us in reforming their terrorist bretheren, it is reasonable to say they are not in it just yet. If they follow Q'uran, they will be, and cannot be on our side.
Yeah, the Fox is going to guard the henhouse.
Right...
well, your reply is at least more reasoned than some of the other replies on this thread, but I still must strongly disagree with you.
In Iraq the vast majority of folks abhor the terrorists. Their attitude towards so called insurgents, is a different matter, but the killing of innocent men, women, and children is opposed there just as strongly as here.
Of course, the line between 'terrorist' and 'insurgent' is sometimes grey.
Also, keep in mind that we have Muslims serving in the US armed forces, fighting for our freedom against the terrorists.
Relgion and relious texts are what you make of them and interpretations vary. Yes, I've read the Koran as well as an autobiography of Mohammad. Yes, he committed acts of violence and, opposite to the United States, founded a country where religion and the state was one and the same, a terrible decision which has haunted the Muslim world ever since as Tyrannical governments use religion for their advantage.
So, one can rationally argue that Islam has injected a culture of violence and intolerance into some aspects of Muslim society, but this is not universally true and most of the problems in the Muslim world are not caused by their religion, but by their governments.
For more on this:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/terrorism.htm
Well, there have been some efforts to separate religion and government in the Muslim world. The first example that springs to mind is the Turks, who took draconian measures to limit the influence of the mullahs. But even they are faced with the rise of the fundamentalists, who are fueled by a birthrate that staggers the western mind. Then of course, there are the varous Baathist regimes, originally inpired by the NAZIs and then the Communists. Contemptuous of Islam at one time, they now make common anti-western cause with the terrorists.
In Europe there are the Bosnians, who despite their westward-looking mindset, have no qualms about making their nation an al-qaida rest camp and supply depot. This despite the fact that they probably would not have a primitive Muslim home to dinner (and definitely not meet him for a drink in a Sarajevo bar!) So they support violent jihad and (hopefully) do not indulge.
Your personal commitment to religious tolerance certainly appears commendable. However, I believe it safe to say that we will not be discussing our divergent points of view from the dais at the First Congregationalist Church of Riyadh Interfaith Breakfast, at any time soon. Because Muslims, by and large do not tolerate Christians (or any one else) in their midst. In those Muslim countries where there is a Christian Population (after all, they were once Christian lands)they remain at sufferance, they are persecuted, are not allowed to practice their religion publicly, nor build new churches. .
In regard to westernized, university-bred Muslims who live amongst us, I do suppose that some of them are actually tolerant of other religions. Unfortunately, numbering in the thousands, they have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the billions of their coreligionists around the globe. Muslims do have numbers. If for example, only 5% of them were active or active supporters of terrorism, Western Civilization would face more enemies at one time than ever before in its history.
Although 'Moderate Muslims' protest that theirs is a 'high-jacked religion of Peace,' there is excellent historical evidence to point out that Islam has actually been 'The Religion of Highjackers," since its introduction on the planet. Their protestations of tolerance and peace are also alarmingly congruent with Q'uran's encouragement of deception to calm the fears of the infidels.
Islam has been with us for 14 centuries. It has had no Renaissance (although after sacking the libraries of Byzantium, it was an unwitting transmitter of classical knowledge of Greece and Rome back to Europe), it has had no Enlightenment, no Reformation, no Counter-Reformation, no Scientific Revolution, no Industrial Revolution, not even a Humperdinck, never mind a Mozart to delight us. Argentina alone publishes more books, magazines, and learned articles than the entire Islamic world combined.
The western mental infrastructure allows us to accept the gifts of all cultures and to make ours available to anyone who wants them. All of this has little or nothing to do with oil. Oil has merely given Islam the wherewithal to ratchet jihad up a murderous notch or two.
It would be irrational to tolerate Islam, when many millions of Muslims demonstrate on a daily basis in every corner of the globe that they want me dead, enslaved, or converted to their creed, even at the cost of their own lives. It is even harder when hundreds of millions of Muslims who obviously agree with them, support their jihad.
It is not for me to purge Islam of the pernicious elements that make it such a scourge to those who practice it and those they want to convert. No. That's a job for these so-called 'Moderate Muslims.' In the meantime, I urge the authorities to be very mindful of how many, and precisely which Muslims they allow to come and live with us.
I agree with some of what you've said. But, there was a lot more in that previously posted link than just about oil. Articles at the end further reinforce the theories therein.
I don't think your characterization of the 'pillaging and unwitting transfer' of knowledge is historically accurate. Indeed, evidence suggests that at the time that at least some Muslim controlled areas were more tolerant of other religions than Christians were - I'm thinking of Spain in particularly and Israel.
In fact, this lack of separaton between church and state in Europe resulted in the same stagnation and Tyranny that exists today in Muslim countries. Hence why protestantism broke away from the Catholic Church (among other reasons) and why this country was founded.
I also don't think your characterization of Turkey is accurate. There is no separation of religion and state as you cannot freely worship as you wish:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/19/wturk19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/19/ixworld.html
In an effort to keep a lid on fundamentalism, all mosques are government-owned and imams are civil servants. Religious symbols are banned from other state property, girls are not allowed to wear headscarves in schools and court officials may not grow beards. One effect of this is that the prime minister's wife is not invited to official receptions at the presidential palace because she insists on wearing a scarf.
Mullahs have no chance to write and deliver impassioned speeches to the faithful at Friday prayers because the Chief Mufti of Istanbul faxes out the sermon, which must be delivered in identical form across the country.
Yet this tight grip on religion jars with Western, and EU, concepts of religious freedom. As a result, Turkey's Islamists believe that membership will allow them greater freedom to worship as they like.
The Turks are doing their best, and are at least a semi- functional society. But, they are sacrificing their Christians' freedom to pacify the ever growing hordes of fundamentalists, whom they can neither employ nor feed, and whom they will eventually be unable to control.
In regard to the Muslims' former tolerance of other sects in conquered lands: you have to re-consult Q'uran, which advises that when outnumbered, Muslims should practice deception and guile, until they outnumber the infidel.
In every Muslim country, even then, such as Andalucia and The Holy Land, infidels were required to wear distinctive clothing, pay the dhimmi tax, could not bring suits at law, etc. etc. Yes, yes, the Muslims had a completely marvelous couple of centuries reveling in what was left of Byzantine Christendom, after they thoroughly disemboweled it.
Now look at them. The only hope of Islam is to make the West their new Byzantium. That would be us. Their collective jealousy and rage is incomprehensible to the Western mind. For example, we pay them outrageous sums for their oil,and it makes us richer, and them poorer. They cannot figure it out, or accept it.
What I fear, my saintly friend, is that while you struggle to accomodate, to understand, to empathize, to build bridges; Muslims will kill us all, including that infintesimal minority of Muslims who agree with you.
Let's keep Western Civilization alive a while longer, if we can and you don't mind. Let's deliver the smackdown Islam seems to need every few centuries. Think Charlemagne at Tours, Think Sobieski at Vienna, Doria at Lepanto. Do not think Kerry in Paris.
Eurabia is a lost cause. Demography is destiny. Project the numbers of muslims vs euros ahead 10-20-30 years. Elderly pensioners are not going to win the future streetfights at the barricades.
I can't see elderly frogs fighting 25 year old Algerians.
But you are right there are just to many
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