Posted on 06/19/2002 1:56:45 PM PDT by ZULU
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Islamic Scholar Warns U.S. of 'Two-Faced' Muslims
NewsMax.com Wires
Thursday, June 20, 2002
WASHINGTON – A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement is warning the West against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes an intensive dialogue with Islam.
"The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other," Bassam Tibi said Tuesday in an interview with United Press International.
Syrian-born Tibi, who claims to be a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed and teaches political science at Goettingen University in Germany, appealed for intellectual honesty in these exchanges.
This Is 'Peace'?
"First, both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them. The word 'peace,' for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam – or 'House of Islam' – to the entire world," explained Tibi, who is also a research scholar at Harvard University.
"This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought, a concept developed by Immanuel Kant," an 18th-century philosopher.
This Is 'Tolerance'?
"Similarly, when Muslims and the Western heirs of the Enlightenment speak of tolerance they have different things in mind. In Islamic terminology, this term implies abiding non-Islamic monotheists, such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, as second-class believers. They are 'dhimmi,' a protected but politically immature minority."
According to Tibi, the quest of converting the entire world to Islam is an immutable fixture of the Muslim worldview. Only if this task is accomplished, if the world has become a "Dar al-Islam," will it also be a "Dar a-Salam," or a house of peace.
Tibi appealed to his co-religionists to "revise their understanding of peace and tolerance by accepting pluralism." Furthermore, he said, Muslim leaders should give up the notion of Jihad in the sense of conquest, as opposed to Jihad as an internal struggle of the individual.
Liberal Mush
Tibi's advice comes at a time when the U.S. government is urging American Muslim leaders to promote understanding for the United States in Islamic regions. To Tibi, this is more of a diplomatic endeavor than the promotion of a more profound theological understanding between Islam and the Judeo-Christian worldview prevalent in the West.
But Muzammil Siddiqi, one senior Islamic scholar the State Department consults with, told UPI he found that his efforts in furthering contacts between Muslim, Christian and Jewish theologians were having some success.
Indian-born Siddiqi is the director of the large Islamic Center of Orange County in California. In consultation with the State Department and in cooperation with the University of Kentucky, he traveled back and forth between the United States and the Middle East trying to convince Muslim theologians and jurists to meet with American church leaders.
"I have found that many, though not all, were ready to welcome visitors from America and also to come here to explore with Christians and Jews what we have in common," Siddiqi said.
Though Siddiqi's center is heavily engaged in interfaith activities, he made it clear that to him, as indeed for conservative Christians, syncretism – the mixing of religions – was anathema.
Common values should be sought out, he explained, and the equality of all believers respected, be they Muslims, Christians, Hindus or Buddhists. But the purity of the faith must not be compromised.
In an article in the prestigious Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, Tibi gave anecdotal evidence of how daunting a task this dialogue with Islam can be.
Staring in Horror at the Bible
The bishop of Hildesheim in Germany paid an imam a courtesy visit in his mosque. The imam handed the Catholic prelate a Koran, which he joyfully accepted. But when the bishop tried to present the imam with a Bible, the Muslim cleric just stared at him in horror and refused to even touch Christianity's holy book.
"The bishop was irritated because he perceived this behavior as a gross discourtesy," wrote Tibi, "but the imam had only acted according to his faith. For if an imam gives a bishop a Koran, he considers this a Da'Wa, or call to Islam."
This, explained Tibi, must be borne in mind when one engages in a dialogue with Muslim "scholars," for it corresponds to a verse in the Koran: "And say ... to those who are unlearned: 'Do ye submit yourselves?'" (Surah 3:20).
Copyright 2002 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
This is why at some point the West will realize the first step in really fixing this problem will require making Mecca a place that used to be on the map.
Finally, an acknowledgement that it's more of a political system than a religion.
Important info bump.
Otherwise known as "Homo sapiens var. profilacticus loco-equinea"
For example, suppose in 1939 the Nazi party established a headquarters in every city and large american town in the USA. Suppose they funded these headquarters directly from Berlin and recruited members from among society's dregs in prisons and gangs. Suppose Nazis immigrated to the USA by the shipload and took up residences across the nation.
Who would stand for that?
Suppose they spread propaganda and told everybody "we are peaceful people from the land of chocolate".
Who would believe this?
But today Islam is invading the USA, recruiting in prisons, putting their Saudi funded mosques everywhere, lying to us that "Islam is Peace" etc etc, and the USA largely just accepts it.
Islam has no place in the west.
Furthermore, they do not share a cultural context from which to establish an understanding. Concepts such as the separation of church and state, the existence of objective truth and the desirability of speaking it, which are a given in the West, are utterly alien to Islam.
Even those sheeple who only casually follow this culture war can at a glance comprehend the meaning of Trojan Horse Muslims, and they won't forget it.
A muslim is "humiliated" when a Westerner has a better car then he.
Muslims are "humiliated" when they stand next to a taller or stronger non-muslim.
A muslims were "humiliated" when the Wright Brothers invented airplanes. And so on.
IOW, muslims have the mentality of an angry bitter 10 year old.
You are right.
Years of politically correct thinking, exposure of weak and undisciplined young minds to Hollyweird, leftist newspaper propaganda, education by liberal freaks masquerading as teachers, actions by jellyfish calling themselves Politicians, wacko left-wing Clergymen, conscienceless attorneys, etc, has destroyed our ability to defend ourselves, our beliefs, and our society.
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