Posted on 07/10/2006 12:40:15 PM PDT by Wicket
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is a Muslim. He has a doctorate in Islamic studies from Harvard University and teaches at Reed College. He has one book to his credit and is halfway through writing his second, a history of Islam in the United States since Colonial times. . .
He is smart, articulate, thoughtful and innovative. His dark hair and goatee are perfectly trimmed. He seems born to button-down shirts and khaki slacks. . .
Americans often don't realize that Islam, like Christianity, is incredibly diverse in its expressions, he says. Christians across the world don't agree on every social issue, and neither do Muslims. . .
It is wrong, he says, to draw conclusions about Islam based only on one reading of the Quran, on the statements of a few Muslim leaders or on the culture of one group of believers. It is inaccurate to isolate an issue -- such as Western culture, democracy or the role of women -- and suggest that Muslims have one response to it. . .
"I don't like talking about Islam in political terms," he says. For that reason, he declines to comment on Osama bin Laden and Zacarias Moussaoui. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
Well, duh.
Aaaaaw, SO smart. SO thoughtful.
Was he SO thoughful as to condem the attacks on 9/11?
Some how, I doubt it.
by chopping it off at the neck...
If his target audience is the madrassas, and children under 14, I predict huge success for his writings.
Otherwise, he is wasting his time.
The Muslim Mass Murderers have no religious peers in the last 800 years. Certainly not in the last 20 years anywhere. No other religion can make that claim.
You can't sugar coat islam effectively when dealing with informed adults.
I'd be interested to hear what he has to say about this. I noticed that the group from FL who wished to blow up the Sears bldg was a Moorish National Group which believes that Moroccans were in the US before Europeans. You can't just dismiss this stuff. I do genealogy in Virginia and I had been reading some of this on the internet well before 9/11. Little did I realize then that the foundation was being laid for US/World domination. Muslims who write about Islam from that period should be carefully evaluated.
Portland:
How many "American" muslims are islamist?
"It is wrong, he says, to draw conclusions about Islam based only on one reading of the Quran, on the statements of a few Muslim leaders or on the culture of one group of believers."
Likewise, it is wrong to draw conclusions about Islam from a mere several scores of televised beheadings, thousands of terror incidents with tens of thousands of civilian casualties, hundreds of stonings, the chopping off by axe of hundreds of hands, hundreds of honor killings, parades of people whipping themselves bloody with chains, the glorification of suicide to the point where it's the national pastime of an entire quasi-country, and a culture which has given the world utterly nothing since its inception but suffering, war, torture and death.
Hey, OK, I like to keep an open mind.
"a Moorish National Group which believes that Moroccans were in the US before Europeans"
There's some islamic BS about the Algonquin Indians as well, very serious stuff, since that gives them the right to destroy and take over America according to their rock god and pedophile prophet.
Reed College was founded in 1908, and its first classes were held in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon and Amanda Reed. Simeon Reed had been an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River; in his will he suggested that his wife could "devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose, which shall be of permanent value and contribute to the beauty of the city and to the intelligence, prosperity, and happiness of the inhabitants." Amanda Reed followed that suggestion in her will by setting up a board of trustees to found an institution of learning in Portland, with no limits other than an insistence on equality and secularism.
But I say this as a Reed dropout - the place is just as loony as you say. Maybe more so.
Perhaps he was talking about the "shores of Tripoli" business.
"Moorish National Group which believes that Moroccans were in the US before Europeans"
I guess the thinking is, they touched it first, so they have first dibs. Worked in Kindergarten; why not give it a shot?
If there is a more Leftwing college than Reed I'm not aware of it.
One of their reasons, IIRC, is that there are drawings of some Indians wearing hats that look like the fez from Morocco. It is possible that Muslims did visit here before the Europeans came to stay--but then, probably so did most peoples. There is an interesting description in one of Morison's books about a rotted hull Columbus found on one of the Caribbean islands that could fit the description of a dhow. Not sure I spelled that right. But it certainly doesn't mean that they discovered America. Archeology in the Middle East has become a muddle because of these types of claims. I suspect that they want the same thing to happen here. Ugh. That's the reason I'm interested in what this man has to say.
I hope this putz goes to Somalia, the new islamic ruling class said if you have a goatee to shave it off or they'll kill you.
Or at least have a claim to it.
Which is entirely possible, just as it is for the Welsh, Bretons, Galicians, Irish and others who have been proposed as crossing the Atlantic before Columbus.
They just didn't affect much of anything by their presence.
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