Posted on 10/07/2001 5:15:59 AM PDT by sarcasm
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 Andrea Mohin/The New York Times From left, Fariah Amin, Salam Said and Andira Abudayeh, are juniors at Al Noor School, a private Islamic academy in Brooklyn. |
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 Andrea Mohin/The New York Times Fami Fozi, 17, left, would not fight against a Muslim country. Mazen Kased, also 17, is not convinced that Muslims attacked the trade center. |
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hey are Americans who feel duty- bound by Islam to obey American laws. But some of them say that if their country called them to war against a Muslim army, they might refuse to fight. They cannot be shaken from the conviction that America is intrinsically anti-Muslim. Yet they see it as the one place where Muslims are free to be themselves.
To be young and Muslim in the United States today, to hear students at Al Noor School in Brooklyn tell it, is to be both outsider and insider, to revel in both roles but see neither as the ideal. It is to be consumed by causes abroad and removed from politics at home, to feel righteous and also confused, to alternate between gratitude and resentment toward the world outside their classrooms.
As any parent knows, this is the paradoxical planet inhabited by many teenagers, whether they are Muslim or not. But in a country wounded by terrorists and preparing for war, young Muslim Americans are finding that real life has raised especially acute questions for them about competing values of allegiance and faith.
"We have a burden on us," said Andira Abudayeh, who is 16 and attends Al Noor. "We're Muslims, and we feel like other Muslims around the world do. And we're Americans."
In extended conversations last week, high school students at Al Noor spoke of their empathy for the young Muslims around the world who profess hatred for America and Americans, saying the hostility is an outgrowth of American support for Israel.
They said they did not believe that the hatred extended to them. "Muslims are all one," said Fariah Amin, who is also 16. "They kind of think of us as just living in America."
The students complained that the United States threw its weight around too much in the world, but that it also was not active enough in support of what they called freedom-seeking Muslims in Chechnya and the "true" Muslims who oppose the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"Isn't it ironic that the interests of America are always against what Muslims want?" said Fami Fozi, a 17-year-old student who said he would rather go to jail than fight in the United States Army against Muslims.
The students also said the Koran, which Muslims consider the literal word of God, provides a perfect blueprint for their lives. Their ideal society would follow Islamic law and make no separation between religion and state.
In the meantime, they said, they want to become doctors and lawyers and teachers in the United States. Even though the American government uses taxes to finance things that are un-Islamic — licensing the sale of alcoholic beverages, for example — they said Muslims here should pay taxes and accept the judgments of secular American courts.
"If you want to survive in freedom, I guess you just have to pay taxes to get the benefits from America," said Ahmad Odetalla, 14. "You know you're not going to be the one who buys alcohol. So as long as you stay away from what is forbidden in religion, I guess we have to pay taxes."
The students at Al Noor may not be a scientific sampling of Muslim American youth. But their comments are similar to those posted by Muslim Americans on the numerous Internet chat rooms and message boards about Islam, and their outlook is similar in some ways to that of other newcomers.
Immigrants and their children often feel the strain between the adopted and the native culture. Their political interests may focus on the topics and debates in their homeland. In the case of these Al Noor students, they are children of immigrants from places like Pakistan, Egypt, the occupied Palestinian territories and Yemen, which have been preoccupied for years by the efforts of Islamic fundamentalist movements to gain power through violence or the ballot box.
Still, some of their comments reflect what they have been reading and exposed to in the United States, where some Muslim clerics say openly what is said underground in Muslim countries: that the United States is to blame for the ills of the Muslim world through its support of more secular Muslim rulers.
Some of the students, for example, said they would support any leader who they decided was fighting for Islam. Among those who do not fit that definition, they said, are the rulers of just about every Arab and Muslim country.
Mr. Fozi, for instance, said that he would support any leader he determined to be an observant Muslim who is fighting for an Islamic cause, and that he would do so even if it meant abandoning the United States. "I would support him with my life," he said. How would he know who is a true Muslim? "I use my understanding of Islam and see what the person is doing," Mr. Fozi said.
Several of the young men said they could fight against a Muslim if they were convinced that the Muslim had committed a crime. They all said they were not convinced that Osama bin Laden — or any Muslim, for that matter — was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacks that they condemned as violating all precepts of Islam.
"It comes down to the proof," said Mazen Kased, 17. "If you prove a Muslim did it, that's a different story."
Another 17-year-old student, Ammar Arif, agreed. "If you prove it's Osama bin Laden and I was in the Army, I would go to fight," he said. "That's my duty to my country and my religion as well."
The students at Al Noor are reluctant to accept that the terror attacks were carried out by anyone of their religion. They draw on their deeply felt belief that Americans are biased against Islam and Muslims and that Muslims are victims of a prejudiced news media. Like many Muslim Americans, they said they believed that non-Muslims did not understand them and their choices.
These are also children whose parents made a conscious decision by sending them to a private Islamic school to shield them, at least during the school day, from the secularism of their adopted American culture. Girls at Al Noor must wear a loose- fitting robe and a tight-fitting scarf to cover their hair and necks. Except for the youngest children, boys and girls are separated during the school day.
They feel their separateness keenly. Since Sept. 11, rumors have raced through the school that Muslims have been shot and beaten in Brooklyn, and that it is not safe to walk the streets because of revenge attacks by Americans against Muslims.
They believe the rumors — which have not proven true — because they said it fits with their experience of seeing negative images of Islam in films and articles that they find disrespectful of Islam.
"A lot of newspapers write negative things, and we get so upset," said Mona Widdi, 16.
But few students said they thought that newspapers should be forbidden to write things about Islam, the prophet Muhammad or the Koran, topics that writers in most of the Muslim world stay away from out of fear of offending Muslim clerics.
"America does have freedom of speech, and it's one of the basic things," Miss Amin said. "I was taught about it since kindergarten. You can't tell someone that they can't write that. But if they can't prove it, they shouldn't put it in the paper as some kind of hatred against us."
None of the students said they had experienced any harassment since Sept. 11. Their school has received offers of guidance counselors from local hospitals, visits of support from state education officials, offers of interfaith exchanges from nearby Catholic schools and a constant stream of calls offering assistance from political figures in Brooklyn.
The principal, Nidal Abuasi, acknowledged that the students' assumption of a backlash might be misplaced.
"Maybe," he said, after recounting the number of calls from the neighborhood expressing good will, "we are too paranoid."
Christianity sees non-believers as lost sheep subject to redemption through repentance and a simple profession of faith in Christ as savior. ISLAM (which is Arabic for submission) teaches that non-Muslims must be converted to Islam and, if they refuse to submit, they have no redeemable value - they are infadels. Islam teaches that it is permissible to shed the blood of infadels.
Dr. M. Khan the translator of Sahih al-Bukhari into English, had this to say in the introduction to his translation:
"Allah revealed in Sura Bara'at (Repentance, IX) the order to discard (all) obligations (covenants, etc), and commanded the Muslims to fight against all the Pagans as well as against the people of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) if they do not embrace Islam, till they pay the Jizia (a tax levied on the Jews and Christians) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued (as it is revealed in 9:29).
Al-Ghazali (died AH 505, that is AD 1127) who earned the title "hoggat al-Islam, meaning rock of Islam", some five centuries after the time of Mohammad, is not apologetic in stressing the use of force in the preservation and progress of Islam:
"After the death of Mohammad, the man of the miracle [the Qur'an] and the apostle of truth and the companions, fearing the weakening of Islam, the decrease of the number of its followers, and the return of masses to their previous infidelity, saw that holy war and invading other countries for the sake of Allah, smashing the faces of the infidels with the sword and making people enter the religion of Allah as the most worthy of all tasks and better than all sciences."
This has become a major problem -- so-called American citizens swearing allegiance to the country of their origin INSTEAD of the United States of America in case of war. The entire Mideast seems to be particularly afflicted with this "America Second" syndrome.
We owe these people NOTHING. It's gift to live in the USA, they treat it as a right. Now they give a collective middle-finger to those ancestors of ours who died in wars so that these bastards can live here?
As far as I'm concerned, the enemy has infiltrated.
Then, too, this is not what they thought about it 1,000 years ago. In fact, they could make a good case for their having "saved" Western Civilization at that time.
It's at this point I'd like to get into a discussion of how you can take the First, Second and Third Amendments to the US Constitution and derive the intention of the Founding Fathers to establish an aggressively armed Protestant State in America.
Which, of course, they did. So, there's no need for that discussion in this thread. Similarly, Mo's pique as indicated in the various of his sermons which were not "revealed" to him by the Angel, don't always have anything to do with religion or morality. Many Moslems are unaware of the differences in the two kinds of texts. The Wahabis know the differences but chose to ignore them. A good many folks knowledgeable in Islam who post in FreeRepublic also know the differences, but they likewise chose to ignore them.
We probably ought to have a standard that requires anyone citing the Koran to tell us whether the text referenced is from God or from Mo.
And what do Muslims want?
Total destruction of Israel and the rest of the world to convert to Muslisms
Scary in those so young
He certainly is a man of courage, under the circumstances. Yes, I've wondered the same - especially in light of Salmon(sp) Rusdie's circumstances.
With this evidence of direct involvement of these groups with the terrorist attacks, I hope a US Army recruitment team is asked in to these Islamic schools to aide these youths in the assimilation to army life. After all, they have the evidence now, lets see em carry out their promises.
Roles of Religion
To the Editor:
Re "The 2 Worlds of Muslim American Teenagers" (news article, Oct. 7): Your article about the views of Muslim students at Al Noor School in Brooklyn is one of the more frightening you have published in memory.
Though raised in our free society, some might not fight for America against fellow Muslims. Imagine what we would think of Christian students who refused to fight Germany in World War II because Germans were Christians.
America does not help Muslims? Obviously, these students were never taught about American aid to Afghan Muslims or of our fighting against Christians in Serbia to help Muslims.
Muslims are all victims? These students are oblivious to the human suffering caused by Muslim governments in Sudan and throughout the Middle East.
They deny that Muslims attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11? Is truth a value in their school?
If the views of these young Muslim Americans are at all typical, we are in trouble.
DENNIS PRAGER
Glendale, Calif., Oct. 7, 2001
Seems to me that western nations by accepting 'refugees' are importing trouble. Big trouble.
Out of the mouth of babes God has, once again, perfected praise of the truth.
"Isn't it ironic that the interests of America are always against what Muslims want?
Now, haven't there been people like me who for the last month been telling people that this is EXACTLY what this is all about? Islamic Anti-Israeli atitudes?"
When you consider someone a prophet, the distinction is meaningless. For the Christian and Jew, if it is in the Bible, it is God's word, period. We may know when God is speaking directly, but we also believe it is ALL God's word.
Therefore, it is no small step to see how many Muslims believe it is ALL Allah's word, and is to be obeyed.
btw, this hold true more many recent immigrants in this country due to the killing of socialization programs to give basic "American" teachings,,,,,,,,nonetheless OUT !!
The sciences have concluded that E=MC-squared. Sword or nuke. Choose your weapon.
The portions that were not "revealed" are well known and understood for what they are. On the other hand, there is this Sharia business - that's Islamic law. It was developed based on the supposition that learned men, properly counseled in the revealed Word of God, could sit around asking "What would Mo or his disciples decide", and come up with a good answer.
The Sharia grew out of the same sort of thought that undergirds the "What Would Jesus Do" business. The inherent danger in this, as we were warned from the most ancient times by all the prophets and by Jesus in his day, is that it sits up men to be "like God", and presumes they may make "God-like" judgments. The correct approach is to look at what Jesus did and said, and what his disciples did and said, and what the prophets did and said - not would they "WOULD DO" or "WOULD SAY".
I hope you can understand this.
About 1000 AD the Moslem world got caught up in the development of Sharia and froze itself. They haven't made a serious change in the law for a millenium. About all you get are a bunch of bearded old men sitting around reviewing the Sharia to see what has already been decided and then issuing fatwa after fatwa. It's all akin to sorcery and necromancy. It's about as useful, too!
The most extreme Fundos in the Moslem world hold the Sharia and it's derivative fatwas to be supreme guides to living. They hold that the Koran has been interpreted in its totality in the Sharia. Where Sharia and Koran appear to conflict, they adhere to the Sharia.
They are, in short, "Hypocrites", as described by Mo, and must be dealt with in the same manner. BTW, it's the "Hypocrites" that Mo is directing his followers to kill. Quite possibly it would be only Protestants who would argue that the Koran be placed ahead of the Sharia as a guide to life. Catholics would do something similar to what Moslem Fundos do and is turn to canon law, or Church tradition (and various rulings on faith or morals issued by various patriarchs or the Pope.)
We have our own home-grown "100% American" freaks, too.
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