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The primary incidents that seem to have convinced much of FR post-9/11 that Islam is evil (as opposed to simply being wrong in terms of its theology, the position that I myself hold) are, as I understand it, as follows:

1. The anti-US demonstrations staged by supporters of Osama bin Laden following the terrorist leader's rather gloating October 7 videotape.

2. The sudden recognition that the regional conflicts in the Balkans, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Kashmir, Indonesia, the southern Philippines, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, ect. are being either instigated or escalated by the presence of Islamic militants.

3. The situation in Pakistan where a woman was sentenced to death for being raped.

4. The frequent Islamic communiques praising the actions of organizations like Hamas in Israel.

5. The Miss World snarfu in Nigeria, where a single remark by a newspaper writer got a fatwa leveled against her and the ensuing sectarian violence resulted in deaths of 200 mostly Christian Nigerians.

6. The fact that the two Muslim organizations that are so often called upon to condemn terrorism (CAIR and AMC) are themselves tacit and in some cases active sympathizers of such terrorism.

Let me take these one by one:

1. I don't dispute that bin Laden commands a great deal of support amongst the Islamic world. In Saudi Arabia, roughly 95% of the population regards him as a hero. Worldwide, however, the number that Daniel Pipes has come up with (and I concur with his assessment here) is anywhere between 15-30% of Muslims. Now that's a lot, over 100,000,000 people, but lest we forget, Hitler had similar worldwide followings, as did Stalin, Mao, and any number of despots during the course of the last century. Bin Laden is simply a chip off the old block in this regard.

However, back in the 1960s, protests were held across the Western world in support of every communist despot in the books. Even today, there is still a sizeable chunk of the left in America that holds sympathy for Fidel Castro regardless of the man's barbarity. But to mistake the protests in support of al-Qaeda as being indicative of Muslim opinion would be as much of mistake to judge all of the anti-war protests worldwide as being indicative of Western opinion. This simply is not the case and the ISCA had been trying to warn the US about militant Islam on our shores years before 9/11.

2. Here again, see how many of these conflicts have been started by or are linked to both al-Qaeda and Saudi cash. If you can name for me one Sunni Islamic terrorist group that isn't Wahhabi, is linked to al-Qaeda, or receives Saudi funding (in all likelihood, most are all three), I'll concede the point that other sects of non-Wahhabi Sunni Islam has a indicative trend towards political violence. At present, I don't see it as such.

Wahhabism, since its inception, has been linked with violence. For a long time (mid-1600s to the 1920s), we here in the West had little problem with Islamic radicalism (which shouldn't be confused with the policies of the Ottoman Empire, which are a different thing altogether). Once Wahhabism became widespread in the 1960s and 70s, this changed, thus putting us in the current situation we are in today.

And before anyone describes how Islam has been irrevocably opposed to Christianity, I would point out that there are still Orthodox and Catholic Christians living in many Muslim countries. Only recently (historically speaking) have there been systematic efforts to eradicate them. The same goes for the large Jewish populations that used to exist in North Africa and other countries in the Middle East.

Islam, like other religions, has both a nasty and a nice side to it. Currently, the nasty one is in ascendance, just as the nasty side of Shintoism was in ascendance during World War 2. Does anybody see the Japanese launching a worldwide campaign of conquest today? No, because the violent side of Shintoism died with World War 2. The violent side of Islam is likely to suffer a similar fate once the ayatollahs are overthrown in Iran, al-Qaeda is annihilated, and the House of Saud is cast back into the sandbox from whence it came. In order to do so, it is generally a good idea to have allies on the other side, just and the US had German and Japanese allies during World War 2. Sheikh Kabbani is one of those individuals and should be recognized as such.

3. I don't dispute that this is barbaric. So was the incident in rural India earlier this year where several men were burnt alive for killing a cow. However, if somebody wants to post the sura that justifies this activity, please do so. It strikes me as being a combination of Wahhabism, Deobandism (a political philosophy that inspired the Taliban), and Pashtunwali, the tribal code of the Pashtuns than by Islam.

4. Here again, this is the result of Saudi influence over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and Saudi financial control over tons of mosques in the Arab world as well as the immigrant communities here in the US. But this opinion is hardly a unanimous one.

For example, Sheikh Palazzi, a non-Wahhabi cleric, has argued that Israel has a right to Jerusalem, citing the Qur'an as proof. Which is strange, seeing as how so many Freepers seem convinced that the Qur'an explicitly blesses the actions of Hamas.

5. A lot of the Freepers have a skewed picture of what took place in Nigeria due to the fact that while they followed the violence that took place in Kaduna, a general apathy towards Africa prevented them from appreciating the political ramifications of what occurred there.

The fatwa in question was issued by the Nigerian governor of Zamfara, who can no more issue a fatwa within Islam than I as a Catholic can absolve myself of sins. The Jama'at ul-Nasril Islam and the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Nigeria's two largest Muslim bodies, both dismissed the fatwa.

6. The ISCA has been trying to warn the US about the dangers of militant Islam in America for years. Sheikh Kabbani is given high praise from Emerson and Pipes (neither of whom have any qualms about naming names when it comes to terrorist supporters) alike for both this brave man and his organization.

So if you want to call in tonight, here's just some things you might want to be aware of. At any rate, the man is taking some time out of his day to discuss Islam and probably a number of other topics with Luis. If Freepers call up all but insisting that the man is the base pawn of Satan, a terrorist, ect, I doubt he'll be inclined to come back.

Also, when did asking callers to remain civil when speaking with guests become "whitewashing?"