Posted on 10/13/2007 8:52:29 AM PDT by fweingart
One of America's foremost experts on Islam says New York's decision to honor a Muslim holiday this weekend shows the city has not learned an important lesson from the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
New York's famous Empire State Building is lit up green today in honor of the Muslim holiday of Eid, the biggest festival in the Muslim calendar marking the end of Ramadan. City officials say the lighting, which will continue through Sunday, "will become an annual event in the same tradition of the yearly lightings for Christmas and Hanukah."
Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, says city leaders do not recognize the observance is "an insult to the memory" of the people who were killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"That's because they don't think that it has anything to do with Islam in general," says Spencer, "even though the people who did kill 3,000 on 9/11 in New York City were motivated by Islamic teachings -- teachings that have still, six years later, not been repudiated, not been even examined in depth or with any serious attempt at reform by American-Muslim advocacy groups."
According to Spencer, those groups need to be called to account to "act much more energetically against jihadism and Islamic supremacism." He says until those groups speak out against jihadism, those who call on them to do so will continue to be vilified.
The Jihad Watch director says the city has not learned an important lesson from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"This is just part of an ongoing problem really that we assume -- without evidence -- that the teachings that motivated 9/11 are repudiated by Muslims and are not deeply rooted within Islam," he asserts. "And as long as we continue to assume this without evidence, there are still going to be Muslims who act on these teachings in order to recruit terrorists and to justify violence in the name of Islam."
Spencer says he expects most people who might be tempted to speak out against New York City honoring Eid "will be cowed from doing so by the prospect of being labeled bigots or racists."
How very constitutionalist of you.
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