The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades) (Paperback)
Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries (Hardcover)
by Paul Fregosi
Posted on 02/25/2006 9:09:38 PM PST by LouAvul
Margaret Lawston was reluctant to tell her friends what she was doing on Thursday nights. When she finally told them she was spending her evenings at a mosque learning about Islam, most of them had the same reaction: Why?
One friend told her it was spiritually wrong. Lawston, a retired schoolteacher and a Catholic, assured her friend that she wasn't going to convert. Lawston just wanted to know more about the faith.
"I decided I didn't want to hear any more propaganda from either side. I wanted to learn about Islam for myself," says Lawston, who is taking a free 10-week course called "Discover Islam" at the SALAM center in Sacramento. "I wanted to get my questions answered and learn about their beliefs from someone who can explain them."
Violent protests over the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad have sparked renewed questions about and criticism of Islam. Not since the early days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, say some Muslim leaders, have so many people questioned them about their religion. "A lot of people don't know what to think because there is a lot of misinformation out there," says Imam Mohammed Abdul Azeez of the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims mosque.
Mosque officials expected only about a dozen people to sign up for the course. Instead, 40 showed up.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
What fools.
They should realize that the word for "slave" in Arabic, abed, is the same as the word for "black".
Arabs are generally very racist towards blacks.
More fiber, or chili, and it won't last too long.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades) (Paperback)
Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries (Hardcover)
by Paul Fregosi
As a Christian, I am not hell bent on converting or killing all those of other religions. We along with Hindus and Buddists etc. are taught to respect others beliefs.
Just look at how muslims treat other religions when they come to power in any place.
Try to open a church in the f-ing "kingdom of saudi arabia".
Interesting post. A good recounting, I could see it in my mind quite clearly. I suppose the Muslims are just waiting on the gays to prevail and will join with the extremist Mormons to push for polygamy later. I'm not being sarcastic. I think what your post shows most clearly is how the Christian churches have really fallen down on the job.
What's wrong with the USA.
Terrorists take advantage of our open society, lax borders, lack of national identity card, useless airport security,
and lack of racial profiling to take over planes and kill innocent people.
Suddenly the religion practiced by the terrorists becomes a favored religion, acquiring all the privileges of a minority group. Liberals rush headlong to grant practicioners of that religion the much coveted victim status.
That was very disturbing.
bttt
http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/inshallah.asp
Inshallah: My journey into the world of Islam, and my escape
Laura's newest book - JUST RELEASED
The Beginning
A cacophony of sounds wrenched me from a sound sleep into that semi coherent state between sleep and wakefulness. The disorientation was brief. It was my first morning in Cairo, Egypt, and although I knew I was embarking on an adventure, I had no clue of the dark twists that my trek would take me on, deep into the bowels of Islamic fundamentalism. I didn’t realize that I had fallen into a rabbit hole reminiscent of that which Alice found herself in. That realization would come about an hour later.
For the moment, I only knew that I was halfway around the world, in an apartment on the 13th floor of a building at the beginning of the long wide thoroughfare that led from downtown Giza to the Pyramids. For a girl raised in the deep south, it was quite a contrast.
I grew up in a town of 8,000 people. From the sounds of things outside my window, it seemed that at least that many cars were on the street below my bedroom, all honking their horns in a discordant melody.
My husband was still sleeping peacefully. How in the heck could he sleep with all this noise? There was no chance of going back to sleep, so I decided to go take a shower.
That was my first adventure of the day! I’ll be gracious when speaking of the bathroom – if I had walked into a bathroom like this in any restroom anywhere in the United States I would have walked out and decided to just “hold it”. Clearly that wasn’t an option here. If my single experience with a bathroom at the Cairo Airport was any indication, this might be the Hilton of Egyptian bathrooms.
I decided to go ahead and jump through the shower, something that would happen several times a day in Egypt with all the dust. I turned on the hot water and there was a poof and a flash of light from some sort of device hanging on the wall. I turned off the water immediately. What the heck had I broken? That thing on the wall was shooting flames at me! I called my sister-in-law, since it was her apartment, and between her very limited English and my very animated hand signals, I managed to communicate to her that the monster on the wall was scaring me. She found it intensely amusing and told me “water hot”.
Well, it may have been the hot water heater, but it was certainly no hot water heater like any I had ever seen before! It was clearly not a beast I was equipped to do battle with. So cold water it would be! (That’s an easy decision to make when it is 90 degrees and there is no air conditioning!)
So after a quick shower, I put on a pair of jeans and a long sleeve shirt as I had been instructed, and pulled my hair up, still wet. After the battle with the water heater dragon, there was no way that I was ready to launch an offensive against the power converters I needed to use my American hair dryer (made in Taiwan, of course!).
A quick check revealed that my husband was still sleeping and had no intention of waking up any time soon, so I took a deep breath and ventured into the living room.
“Good morning Laura” said my sister in law, Siham, coming over and giving me a big hug and a knowing look. “You had nice night I see.”
I was puzzled but had no clue. I would find out later what she meant.
Siham handed me a cup of hot tea in a clear glass. One look at the cup showed that I was going to have to make some adjustments here. The tea was loose in the glass and I could see no way to drink it without getting a mouthful of tea bags. I looked up and said the words that are understood around the world “Coca Cola?”
Siham said “No Coca Cola.”
Oh no. No one told me there was no Coca Cola in Egypt. I thought Cokes were available anywhere in the world. This was going to be a problem.
My brother-in-law wandered into the living room during this exchange. He was in high school and spoke a fairly decent amount of English. Ahmed would prove to be a big help during those early days in Cairo. He thought it was cool to have an American sister-in-law, and really wanted the opportunity to hone his English skills.
He saved my life that morning. He told me they didn’t have Coca Colas at any of the stores nearby but that the little kiosk downstairs had Pepsi. He said he’d go get one for me.
Good enough.
Within 10 minutes, I was drinking an ice cold Pepsi in an old fashioned 10-ounce glass bottle, the kind we had when I was a child.
Somehow I knew instinctively that as long as I could get my Coca Cola’s, or a reasonable facsimile, everything was going to be just fine.
So I thought.
One thing that I quickly learned was that Egyptian hospitality was the rule, not the exception. Everyone in the country that I met went out of their way to treat me like royalty. As far as my in-laws were concerned, I was the ultimate trophy wife – blonde and American.
That first night of my first full day in Cairo, all of the extended family came over to meet me. It was quite surreal; these wonderful, warm people were all here to hug me and welcome me to the family. They greeted me with sincere and warm “welcomes” and then switched into Arabic, speaking in front of me as if I weren’t there. I didn’t understand a word! I assumed from their smiles that I met their approval, and was passing whatever tests that were required.
Then in the middle of the party, a new guest arrived who was different. Haj Mustafa looked like he was in his fifties but was dramatically different from the other people at the party. The other men at the party were dressed in western, American style attire; Haj Mustafa was dressed in a long gray galabaya – a traditional Egyptian peasant robe – and had a long beard. He didn’t mingle with the guests, but stayed off to the side of the room with another man I presumed to be his son.
Up until that moment, the standard protocol for the party had been pretty easy to follow. The women would rush up to me, hug me, kiss me on both cheeks, and touch my hair, since straight blonde hair was a rare commodity in Egypt; the men would shake my hand. But Haj Mustafa didn’t come over to meet me. Instead he stood over at the wall and glared at me.
Hassan noticed the arrival of the new guest, and rushed me off into the kitchen. He handed me a veil and said, “Put this on so you don’t offend Haj Mustafa”.
Huh? No one told me I had to wear a veil. I had asked and been told explicitly that I would NOT have to wear a veil!
“Put it on now or he’ll think you’re a prostitute because your hair is blonde.”
Fortunately my jaw was firmly attached to my head; otherwise I would have had to pick it up off the floor. I’d been called a lot of names in my life, but never a prostitute and certainly not because of my hair color. In the US, I would simply have refused. After all, the worst thing that could happen would be that we’d have a fight and break up. In Cairo that possibility was considerably more daunting. I didn’t know anyone here, I couldn’t speak the language, and he had all the money. I reached a quick decision.
Clearly it was not in my best interests to argue right then and there; I decided that we would settle this later. I let Hassan call Siham into the kitchen to arrange the veil, and once my hair was covered I went back and joined the party.
Once again I was the center of attention. Cries of “Habibti” and “Gamila” rang out – clearly my donning the veil was seen as a sign of extreme respect both to the culture and to Haj Mustafa, and I was the hit of the party.
Little did I know the symbolism that simple act conveyed.
I would soon learn.
That simple gesture marked the turning point in what had until then been a whirlwind of excitement and promise. It had all started less than six months before, and at the time my life was in a period of flux. All of the constants that had marked my 24 years had all of a sudden been thrown into motion.
My father’s small community newspaper finally succumbed after 2 years in that stage of terminal illness than only a struggling family owned business could endure. When the business died, my job died too. I was trying to decide whether to rekindle my dreams of medical school, which I had put on hold to work with Dad and in effect, administer CPR to the dying newspaper.
With the burial of Dad’s entrepreneurial dreams, my family had moved across the state, to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The family home was gone, taken back by the bank that had bankrolled Dad’s dreams.
My three-year relationship with the guy who was news director of the local radio station had gone kaput too.
So to say I was drifting would be an understatement. I was selling scientific laboratory equipment to hospital, research, and industrial labs while I decided what I wanted to do when I “grew up”. The pay was good, I was using what I learned in college, and the job came with a company car, so it was about the only stable influence I had going on in my life at the time.
During the week, I was on the road, traveling through Georgia, and northern Florida, visiting the different labs. On the weekends, I was at my parents’ new home. But it wasn’t home; it was the place where my folks lived. So I used every excuse I could find to get out on the weekend. As luck would have it, one Sunday night in the middle of January we had one heck of a snowstorm. A snowstorm isn’t terribly unusual our winters; we usually get one good snowfall every year or two. It usually makes a mess of the roads, gives everyone a day or two off from school, and then melts away like it was never there. This snowstorm was different – it didn’t melt! By Wednesday, we were all praying for the temperature to go up. By Friday night the cabin fever was so bad that nothing could have kept me in the house.
I did what any red blooded American twenty four year old would do after being snowed in with the parents for a week: I went out! I headed for downtown; I hoped I’d run into some friends of mine who were graduate students at the local university, and I knew even if they weren’t there, it would be more fun that sitting around the house watching Starsky and Hutch reruns again.
My favorite haunt was a restaurant called Lamar’s. They had the best sandwiches in town, and the bartender was always coming up with new concoctions for the regulars to try. The people who hung out at Lamar’s were an older crowd, if you call early to mid-twenties older - mostly grad students and recent graduates who were working nearby while they cut the collegiate umbilical cord.
I got a drink, put in my dinner order, and decided to go see if I had improved at what was fast becoming my new vice – Galaga! I was seriously hooked on that video game, and after a week of being cooped up with family, I was really looking forward to it. Luck was with me – the machine was unoccupied – and I fed it a couple of quarters, and started shooting at the invading forces from whatever unnamed galaxy was attacking my ship.
It wasn’t long before I noticed I had company. That wasn’t terribly unusual; girls didn’t usually play the video games, and certainly didn’t win. But heck, I expected to win – I had just invested a roll of quarters the previous weekend, and I was on a roll. I didn’t expect to get distracted by the man standing quietly next to me.
For some reason, he caught my eye. It may have been the way he was looking at me: with interest, but not in a way that was annoying it. I was intrigued – so intrigued that I didn’t see that little blue ship dart out and shoot my last fighter ship.
He asked if I minded if he played too, and when I nodded, he dropped two quarters in the machine. I won the first game; he won the second. Then the bartender signaled that my dinner was ready. My new friend asked if he could join me. His name was Hassan, and he was a graduate student in Management Information Systems from Cairo, working on his Ph.D.
By the end of the evening I had a date for the next night and two very ticked off parents who could not understand why a 24 year old did not feel compelled to be home by midnight. By the end of the next evening, he suggested that he meet my parents for Sunday dinner.
Six weeks later we got married. Secretly. We were married in front of the probate judge, with no one we knew present; the only witnesses were the clerks from the office.
Looking back now, there were many warning signs. But his demand that the marriage be kept secret should have been a big flashing neon sign complete with sound and motion!
I didn’t know then, nor did I know that first day in Cairo, but his life was filled with lies and secrets; lies and secrets that would rock the foundations of my world.
Little did I know that I had entered the world of jihad – a world which had already declared war on my homeland. But over the next decade, before I made my escape, I would learn quite a bit about jihad, and the Muslims who had embarked on the path.
Our freeper, StillProud2befree, has a story about escaping from Egypt. While she was married and living in Egypt, she adopted two girls. I'm literally reading the story about this now. She is still, to this day, battling the Egyptian authorities to keep her youngest daughter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1585707/posts?page=70#70
Interesting! I didn't think of it that way.
The area where I live, Islamic recruiting is so blatant, icnanj.org literally advertises on billboard signs. They sponsor events that make national news and have outreaches that I know who the Islamic Circle and how to contact them without looking it up.
Yet, I'm unable to find my children's Catholic School website in a google search which is part of Diocese that only makes the news for scandals.
>>>>I think what your post shows most clearly is how the Christian churches have really fallen down on the job.<<<<
Our churches should be at the forefront of protecting the citizens from this Islamic recruiting. There is no reason in the world the Islamic Circle should have been able to infiltrate with the branding affect that they have. Our churches need to learn marketing.
"We have NOTHING to fear."
Neither did the Jews who were being led to take a wonderfully refreshing "shower" in Auschwitz.
Our biggest fear should be the epidemic of anocephalic inclusion afflicting nonmuslims.
Sickening and scary.
"The only thing funnier would be a black muslim woman driving a BMW."
Got one that lives down the road. Husband is an Arab. She dresses like a street hooker and she works as a real estate agent. And I might add, she is very dishonest in her dealings. She sold the property adjacent to my farm to a black Army Reservist who was leaving to go to Iraq within 48 hours. She told him that 1/3 of my farm and 1/2 of the farm on the other side were included in what he was buying. She had even listed the false information in MLS. He paid cash and he was in a hurry to close the deal so that his fiance would have a nice place to live while he was gone. So he did not even have the property surveyed and apparently did not have a thorough title search done. When he came home for leave, he told me that I was planting fruit trees on his property. That's when he found out he had been scammed...forcing him to have the added worry of handling a lawsuit while deployed in Iraq.
In my experience, such business practice is considered normal among Arabs. They actually consider it a business skill to deceive others to your advantage. God forbid you should call them on it.
Muslims throughout the world are in full propaganda spewing mode, telling a story of islam being a peaceful religion, while behind their back they are planning for sharia law worldwide.
Goes a little further than what Dr. Ahmad Sakr actually said, but your assessment certainly captures the extended implication of what he did say. I'm purposely taking a conservative approach to studying the history of Islam, but thus far, I've not come across anything which contradicts or refutes what you wrote above.
Thanks for the links with accompanying quotations from the Quran.
My approach is actually a lay study of the history of both Islam and Christianity. For a foundation, I'm simultaneously (or rather alternately) reading Esposito's The Oxford History of Islam and both Latourette's A History of Christianity and Bainton's Christendom: A Short History of Christianity and its impact on western civilization.
If you stumble upon my past and future comments concerning Islam, they will most assuredly include excerpts from moderate to liberal Muslims. Your links and comments would not be unwelcome. :-) Thanks.
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