Posted on 10/12/2001 11:59:31 AM PDT by jalisco555
In the name of Allah, the most Benevolent and the Most Merciful. May this memo find you in the shade of Islam enjoying the mercy, the protection and the grace of Allah.
I am writing this memo to you all with the explicit purpose of inviting you to lead the American Muslim community in soul searching, reflection and reassessment.
What happened on September 11th in New York and Washington DC will forever remain a horrible scar on the history of Islam and humanity. No matter how much we condemn it, and point to the Quran and the Sunnah to argue that Islam forbids the killing of innocent people, the fact remains that the perpetrators of this crime against humanity have indicated that their actions are sanctioned by Islamic values.
The fact that even now several Muslim scholars and thousands of Muslims defend the accused is indicative that not all Muslims believe that the attacks are unIslamic. This is truly sad.
Even if it were true that Israel and the US are enemies of the Muslim World, wonder what is preventing them from unleashing their nuclear arsenal against Muslims, a response that mercilessly murders thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of Muslims is absolutely indefensible. If anywhere in your hearts there is any sympathy or understanding with those who committed this act, I invite you to ask yourself this question, would Muhammad (pbuh) sanction such an act?
While encouraging Muslims to struggle against injustice (Al Quran 4:135), Allah also imposes strict rules of engagement. He says in unequivocal terms that to kill an innocent being is like killing entire humanity (Al Quran 5:32). He also encourages Muslims to forgive Jews and Christians if they have committed injustices against us (Al Quran 2:109, 3:159, 5:85).
Muslims, including American Muslims have been practicing hypocrisy on a grand scale. They protest against the discriminatory practices of Israel but are silent against the discriminatory practices in Muslim states. In the Gulf one can see how laws and even salaries are based on ethnic origin. This is racism, but we never hear of Muslims protesting against them at International fora.
The Israeli occupation of Palestine is perhaps central to Muslim grievance against the West. While acknowledging that, I must remind you that Israel treats its one million Arab citizens with greater respect and dignity than most Arab nations treat their citizens. Today Palestinian refugees can settle and become citizens of the United States but in spite of all the tall rhetoric of the Arab world and Quranic injunctions (24:22) no Muslim country except Jordan extends this support to them.
While we loudly and consistently condemn Israel for its ill treatment of Palestinians we are silent when Muslim regimes abuse the rights of Muslims and slaughter thousands of them. Remember Saddam and his use of chemical weapons against Muslims (Kurds)?. Remember Pakistani army’s excesses against Muslims (Bengalis)?. Remember the Mujahideen of Afghanistan and their mutual slaughter? Have we ever condemned them for their excesses? Have we demanded international intervention or retribution against them? Do you know how the Saudis treat their minority Shiis? Have we protested the violation of their rights? But we all are eager to condemn Israel; not because we care for rights and lives of the Palestinians, we don’t. We condemn Israel because we hate “them".
Muslims love to live in the US but also love to hate it. Many openly claim that the US is a terrorist state but they continue to live in it. Their decision to live here is testimony that they would rather live here than anywhere else. As an Indian Muslim, I know for sure that nowhere on earth, including India, will I get the same sense of dignity and respect that I have received in the US. No Muslim country will treat me as well as the US has. If what happened on september 11th had happened in India, the biggest democracy, thousands of Muslims would have been slaughterred in riots on mere suspicion and there would be another slaughter after confirmation. But in the US, bigotry and xenophobia has been kept in check by media and leaders. In many places hundreds of Americans have gathered around Islamic centers in symbolic gestures of protection and embrace of American Muslims. In many cities Christian congregations have started wearing hijab to identify with fellow Muslim women. In patience and in tolerance ordinary Americans have demonstrated their extraordinary virtues.
It is time that we acknowledge that the freedoms we enjoy in the US are more desirable to us than superficial solidarity with the Muslim World. If you disagree than prove it by packing your bags and going to whichever Muslim country you identify with. If you do not leave and do not acknowledge that you would rather live here than anywhere else, know that you are being hypocritical.
It is time that we faced these hypocritical practices and struggled to transcend them. It is time that American Muslim leaders fought to purify their own lot.
For over a decade we have watched as Muslims in the name of Islam have committed violence against other Muslims and other peoples. We have always found a way to reconcile the vast distance between Islamic values and Muslim practices by pointing out to the injustices committed upon Muslims by others. The point however is this – our belief in Islam and commitment to Islamic values is not contingent on the moral conduct of the US or Israel. And as Muslims can we condone such inhuman and senseless waste of life in the name of Islam?
The biggest victims of hate filled politics as embodied in the actions of several Muslim militias all over the world are Muslims themselves. Hate is the extreme form of intolerance and when individuals and groups succumb to it they can do nothing constructive. Militias like the Taliban have allowed their hate for the West to override their obligation to pursue the welfare of their people and as a result of their actions not only have thousands of innocent people died in America, but thousands of people will die in the Muslim World.
Already, half a million Afghans have had to leave their homes and their country. The war has not yet begun. It will only get worst. Hamas and Islamic Jihad may kill a few Jews, women and children included, with their suicide bombs and temporarily satisfy their lust for Jewish blood, but thousands of Palestinians then pay the price for their actions.
The culture of hate and killing is tearing away at the moral fabric of the Muslim society. We are more focused on “the other” and have completely forgotten our duty to Allah. In pursuit of the inferior jihad we have sacrificed the superior jihad.
Islamic resurgence, the cherished ideals of which pursued the ultimate goal of a universally just and moral society has been hijacked by hate and call for murder and mayhem. If Binladen were an individual then we would have no problem. But unfortunately Binladen has become a phenomenon -- a cancer eating away at the morality of our youth, and undermining the spiritual health of our future.
Today the century old Islamic revival is in jeopardy because we have allowed insanity to prevail over our better judgment. Yes, the US has played a hand in the creation of Binladen and the Taliban, but it is we who have allowed them to grow and gain such a foothold. It is our duty to police our world. It is our responsibility to prevent people from abusing Islam. It is our job to ensure that Islam is not misrepresented. We should have made sure that what happened on Sept. 11th should never have happened.
It is time the leaders of the American Muslim community woke up and realized that there is more to life than competing with the American Jewish lobby for power over US foreign policy. Islam is not about defeating Jews or conquering Jerusalem. It is about mercy, about virtue, about sacrifice and about duty. Above all it is the pursuit of moral perfection. Nothing can be further away from moral perfection than the wanton slaughter of thousands of unsuspecting innocent people.
I hope that we will now rededicate our lives and our institutions to the search for harmony, peace and tolerance. Let us be prepared to suffer injustice rather than commit injustices. After all it is we who carry the divine burden of Islam and not others. We have to be morally better, more forgiving, more sacrificing than others, if we wish to convince the world about the truth of our message. We cannot even be equal to others in virtue, we must excel.
It is time for soul searching. How can the message of Muhammad (pbuh) who was sent as mercy to mankind become a source of horror and fear? How can Islam inspire thousands of youth to dedicate their lives to killing others? We are supposed to invite people to Islam not murder them.
The worst exhibition of Islam happened on our turf. We must take first responsibility to undo the evil it has manifest. This is our mandate, our burden and also our opportunity.
Muqtedar Khan, Ph.D. Director of International Studies, Adrian College, MI Association of Muslim Social Scientists Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy
Radical Islam's phony patriotism
While President Bush – and now, Oprah – continue to paint a rosy picture of the American-Arab Islamic community, this picture is not entirely accurate. Certainly many American Muslims are loyal and peaceful, but these moderates are not represented in the Islamic leadership that President Bush and the media have recently courted and presented to America. Moderate American Muslims, like Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani and Khalid Duran – who are to be commended for their courage and patriotism for opposing terrorism – are frozen out by the American Muslim mainstream (and by President Bush and Oprah).
Instead, Bush and media icons embrace radical Islamic leaders in America and abroad as symbols of peace and tolerance.
Take Imam Hassan Qazwini, cleric of the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in America, based in Detroit. Like many U.S. Islamic leaders, he openly promoted terrorism and hatred, but now preaches a saccharine love of America.
Saturday, Qazwini held an open house for non-Muslims at his mosque, at which he professed love for America. He recently told the Detroit Free Press that he and his congregants are "praying for the victims ... for unity and solidarity. ... [F]ellow Americans ... we are not the enemies; we are peaceful citizens." He also appeared at a unity prayer session in Detroit.
But, on Nov. 15, 1998, I attended a religious service at Qazwini's mosque that was anything but pro-American and peaceful. Dressed undercover as a Muslim woman, I watched invited speaker Louis Farrakhan preach hate and violence to a very receptive audience of over 1,000 primarily Arab Muslim-Americans.
It was chilling to watch their and Qazwini's frenzied applause and wild cheering as Farrakhan preached about how our government was occupied by "forces of evil" and "people in positions of power with a Satanic mentality" and urged, "We should perform a jihad (holy war). [They are] frightened, and we must frighten them even more." Qazwini and a man whom I believe to be Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab-American News, called Farrakhan "our dear brother," "a freedom fighter" and "a man of courage and sacrifice." (Siblani denies this and claims it was Nouhad El-Hajj, publisher of the Arab American Journal, but Siblani's publication openly praises Farrakhan and his sentiments.)
Ironically, the week before, Qazwini and Arab-American leaders protested the movie, "The Siege," in which Arab terrorists blow-up hijacked buses and buildings in New York. Imagine that.
When campaigning in Michigan, Bush met repeatedly with Qazwini, and when he held his January press conference announcing his "faith-based" initiative, Qazwini was front and center among the religious leaders on stage at the White House. Bush introduced him as "my friend from Michigan," and according to the Detroit Free Press, Qazwini met with Bush at his Texas ranch in December "to advise him on formulating the pair of executive orders issued" for the program. Qazwini's mosque, which cheered for Farrakhan's jihad against America, will certainly be a major recipient of our "faith-based" tax-money.
In 1998, Mothers Against Teaching Children to Kill and Hate, was founded to combat Palestinian Authority official textbooks' "portrayal of Western society as the enemy of Islam and the Arab World." According to a 1999 Detroit News article, "In one translation, a lesson on verbs uses the sentence, 'The soldier sacrificed himself as a martyr for his homeland.'" Arab-American leaders Jim Zogby, who heads the Arab American Institute, and Imad Hamad, Detroit leader of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee – the primary Arab American civil rights organizations in America – justified this to the News, with Hamad saying that Arabic language is "vague," with "different meanings." No, the Arabic I studied is very clear and so is its meaning in the Palestinian textbooks. Why have these Arab American leaders who now claim to be against terrorism, defended schoolbooks that educate their Middle Eastern relatives in the currency of hate against the West?
Then there is Muqtedar Khan. A political science professor at Michigan's Adrian College, he is supposed to be a moderate Muslim American. A frequent op-ed writer in the Detroit News and several other publications, he is on the board of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and the executive committee of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. But Khan's Feb. 8 Detroit News opinion column attacking one of the world's most peaceful, humane religious leaders – the Dalai Lama – belies the moderate tone Khan tries to present. Khan is upset that the Dalai Lama is respected and "legitimized ... by bestowing upon him a Nobel Peace Prize." The Dalai Lama's crime (according to Khan)? He actually opposes forcible conversions to Islam. What nerve.
Khan has written for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which is linked to the extremist Liberty Lobby, runs ads for Holocaust deniers and links to Arafat terrorist organization Fateh.org (which features a picture of a dead baby killed by Fateh snipers and a chat-webmaster with the name of "Abu Jihad" – "Father of the Holy War").
In another recent Khan gem, he attacks President Bush and urges Arab-Americans to support Democratic Congressman David Bonior for governor of Michigan, due to Bonior's opposition to the use of secret evidence and profiling against terrorists-measures that could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.
Spencer Abraham, now Bush's Energy Secretary, was Michigan's U.S. senator and Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chairman through the end of 2000. As the only Arab-American U.S. senator and representing a state with the heaviest concentration of Arab-Americans, Abraham unfortunately caved to the pressure of Arab-American Muslim leaders, such as the Arab-American Institute's Zogby, on national security and funding matters. According to the Detroit News, Abraham is to blame for delaying systems that would improve tracking of foreign visitors, something that Arab American groups actively opposed. These systems also might have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.
Abraham, in the middle of a tight re-election bid and enlisting Michigan Congressman Joe Knollenberg, sought over $268 million in tax-funded USAID grants for Hezbollah terrorist-controlled Southern Lebanon, also at Zogby's request. Hezbollah, which means "Party of Allah" in Arabic, has targeted and murdered many Americans. Reports show that millions in USAID grants to Afghanistan were misspent on terrorist activities of the Taliban.
Oprah, in her Friday show – "Islam 101" – presented viewers with Jordanian Queen Rania Al-Abdullah, as an example of a moderate, modern Islamic woman. But Queen Rania's husband, King Abdullah, rules precariously over a country where Osama bin Laden is the most popular figure, where radical Islamic fundamentalism rules, and where most women do not live the liberal, modern life of the queen. In another example of the "moderation" of her religion and her country, Rania is a very lucky woman. While the majority of her country is made up of Palestinians, they are subjugated by the rule of the Hashemite minority – her husband and before him, his father, King Hussein. In September of 1970, her "moderate" country killed over 10,000 of her fellow Palestinian Jordanians.
It's time for President Bush and the media to stop promoting in phony liberalism of radical Islamists. Giving voice to truly moderate, patriotic Islamic leaders in America is vital to a successful war against terrorism.
The culture of hate and killing is.....the moral fabric of the Muslim society.
It really wasn't the attacks of 9/11 that caused my eye to jaundice against Isalm. And that's true even though I immediately knew in my gut that rabid Islamic extremists were responsible when I saw the second plane hit the WTC.
No, what has convinced me that Islam is not a "religion of peace," this article notwithstanding, is the tepid, whiney, "blame Israel" response from the overwhelming majority of Moslems who've cared to speak on the record about the Attacks of 9/11.
If there were "peaceful" Moslems out there in any great number, the press would be parading them around on every nightly newscast. Instead, there were news blackouts of the gleeful Moslems in this country and around the world who cheered the evil actions of the terrorists.
Ostensibly, this was to protect the so-called "peaceful" Moslems from an angry backlash.
I'm certainly open to my mind being changed on this, but I'll bet that the writer of this article finds himself hiding from a fatwa long before either bin Laden or Sadaam Hussein does.
****I invite you to ask yourself this question, would Muhammad sanction such an act?***
In a new yourk minute!
I SALUTE the author of this article and for his sake I pray that salvation after death is somehow possible. His heart is surely open to the Truth he just could not accept 'in this life.'
DEPORT NOW!!!
IT IS LIFE OR DEATH
Someone twisted his arm, I'd bet.
3 posted on 10/12/01 12:05 PM Pacific by Straight Vermonter "
I can't put it any better, but I'd like to emphasize it one more time.
I wonder how many of these hypocrites he is speaking of will follow his advice? I also wonder who will be the first so-called cleric to issue a fatwah against him...I pray for this man...I think he just put his life on the line.
I don't dislike Islam because 19 crazies were suicide bombers. But I have real reservations when it appears as if these guys weren't so far out of the mainstream thought of this religion.
For example, the Mafia flourished behind omerta, the unfamiliar Italian culture, a foreign language and other insulating factors for years, until Italian Americans in law enforcement had the courage to fight their "own people", often at the expense of being welcomed in their communities.
Some of the pioneering investigators like Frank Salerno and later Joe Pistone (Donnie Brasco), just a couple examples, made progress that an Anglo never could, because they shared a culture. Giuliani was a mob-busting prosecuter, knowing he would achieve fame and headlines for busting his "own kind". Even if it was politically motivated, it was effective.
Until American Muslim agents are infiltrating terrorist cells for the CIA and FBI (and maybe they are, but I doubt it), and other American Muslims are taking action in fighting the bad among their own, Muslims in this country will rightly or wrongly be feared by Americans.
There have been a few other essays like this (One was from a Muslim in the US Armed Forces) from Muslims, and they are very much welcomed. It doesn't change my opinion on the majority of muslims, but it is a start, and a shining beacon for Muslims who wish to leave the 16th century behind and enter the 21st century.
Dittos.
Look for Dr. Khan to get the "Salmon Rushdie treatment", price on his head and all.
Palistinians are victims of Israeli terror, GWB is dangerous and not as "concerned" about the Palistinians as Clinton was, UN should send in Peace keepers.
Though he does tend to place blame on Muslims on occasion, he still toes the party line.
Regards
Problem with that statement is, Muslims are no more a "people" than Catholics are a "people". Catholic France regularly battles with Catholic Italy. Muslim Iraq battles with Muslim Iran. Can anyone show me the difference?
American Muslims are just that, Americans. My family originated in Germany and the family fractured over support of Hitler even after World War II started (my side of the family was on the right side even though their most brilliant member (me) wasn't born until three years after the war ended). Our fight shouldn't be with these people. After all, they left that mess to come here. Those who don't support the US will spawn those who do and then die off.
The fight must be with the facist states of the Middle East. They're the ones who sponsor, fund, and hide the terrorists who do their dirty work. We have to destroy these governments and keep coming back until they can separate the religious fanatics in their midst from the seats of power. We've shoved the worst of our bigots into the corner and they must do the same.
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