Posted on 04/22/2008 8:41:50 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
They once plotted insurrection in Britain. Young, middle-class, and angry, they were the vanguard of a generation of disaffected Muslims that, at its most extreme, gave rise to the July 7, 2005, transportation bombers.
But now, in one of the most visible assaults on political Islam from within the British Muslim community, a network of ex-radicals launched on Tuesday a movement to fight the same ideology that they once worked to spread.
The Quilliam Foundation named for a 19th-century British convert to Islam aims to propagate a tolerant and pluralistic view of Islam among young Muslims who are the most vulnerable to radicalism.
"We are trying to rescue our faith from those who have sadly hijacked it," says Ed Husain, author of "The Islamist," a book about his own radical years, and deputy director of the foundation. "There is a Western Islam in the making and it is not arrogant or extreme."
Mr. Husain has said that as long as Islamist militants provide "social honor" for suicide bombers and spuriously use doctrine to justify violence and political aims, "then we will continue to see mass murderers being respected as martyrs."
Guided by mainstream Muslim scholars and supported by prominent politicians and academics, the group of around a dozen ex-radicals plans to expose what it calls the weaknesses of Islamist rhetoric and actions in short, to recapture Islam from the ideologues and terrorists.
"We are trying to fill a vacuum. The ideology of Islamism has sadly become the default for political discourse among young British Muslims," says the foundation's director, Maajid Nawaz, a former radical who until last year was a leader of the Hizb ut-Tahrir (Liberation Party) group, which wants to revive an international caliphate across the Muslim world, although it advocates doing so through nonviolent means.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
“We will not tolerate your intolerance of us!”
Hey, that’s great news — if it’s for real.
Chances are it is for real since they probably realize IslamoFascism cannot by definition coexist with western civilization. IslamoFascism’s actions will require it be rubbed out.
Let’s hope it takes root.
I’m more and more of the belief that this clash of civilization will eventually be resolved with us shining so much light on their most despicable beliefs that even they will be shamed into changing.
Yeah, and let’s hope these guys don’t get whacked by the wackos.
Hard to say if it is real, Anwar al Aulaqi/Awlaki was a “voice for tolerance” after 9/11 too but it was all for show.
And “The Project” for muslim takeover was akin to the socialist Fabian society or Gramsciians
takeover by slowly and steadily marching through the institutions rather than by the gun.
Seems to be connected to George Soros. Which means it is socialists trying to s
tone down the rhetoric to make it PC enough for Westerners to accept it as authentic and stupidly incubate it until it is ready to hatch in a warbler’s nest like a brown headed cowbird that will eventually push its innocent siblings out of the nest to their deaths.
The socialists aren’t trying to defeat radical Islam they are just trying to hijack Islam for their own ends. By hiding their shock troops in the Trojan Horse of diversity and fake smiles, they hope to harness the aggressiveness for their own purposes by teaching the aggressors that it is easier in the first stages of the conquest to cut their mutual enemies’ throats with politics than with swords of steel.
Same crap that was done to Iran, where the socialists , blessed by Carter and western libs, joined hands with the Islamists to overthrow the Shah. The Western socialist left had intended to snatch the revolution out of the mouth of the Islamists once the Shah was ouusted by the more violent Islamists, but theMullahs were too smart for them and struck first.
The world has been paying dearly for that mistake ever since.
The Mullahs and the Soviets pulled off quite a coup there at the expense of the people who thought the revolutionaries were going to be an improvement over that Shah.
Instead of trying to do to Islam what the leftists did to Christianity, the people in the West should drop the politics and focus on helping Muslim citizens leave the bondage of Islam. The path to true freedom and love is Christ.
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