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Muslim council takes complaints to Bush (Grover Norquist Alert)
Washington Times ^ | February 21, 2003 | Ralph Z. Hallow

Posted on 02/21/2003 8:47:13 AM PST by Sabertooth

Edited on 07/12/2004 3:39:58 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

The Muslim council posted this call for action on its Internet site, together with praise for Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who has worked with Islamic groups in behalf of the Republican Party (see below - ST).


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: enemywithin; grovernorquist; jihadinamerica; khaledsaffuri; norquist; norquistmole; salamalmarayati
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To: sf4dubya; Mad_Tom_Rackham; Texas_Jarhead; Lijahsbubbe; sheik yerbouty; SJackson; Capt. Tom; ...
An historical comparison that comes to mind when one thinks of iSLAM is the Thugee cult of India. The typical Thug was, apart from from the murders he committed, a good citizen and model husband devoted to his family. Yet they made travel in India difficult for over three hundred years.

If the Thugee's somehow made a resurgence here, would the Islamodefenders want them banned, or at least watched? Probably not. I think hypertolerance can get us killed. Now, I don't believe there is an exact corollary between iSLAM and Thugeeism, but there is a similarity, at least in their propensity to lie and murder other religious people when they can get away with it:

Kali is a grisly creature with a skeletal body which is strewn with serpents and skulls. She wears corpses as earrings and a girdle of severed hands.

THE INDIAN GODDESS KALI.
She once fought a demon named Raktavija but, every time he was wounded, a drop of his blood would fall to the ground and a thousand giants would spring from the drop. The only way Kali could prevent this was to drink each drop before it landed until she had drained the demon's veins.

Despite her appearance, many men who claimed to have seen her in visions describe her as being placid and delightful, motherly and fine. (A religion of peace?)

Kali inspired the cult of Thagna (or Thugee). The Cultists (Thugs) made it their sacred duty to waylay innocent travelers and strangle them to death with knotted cloths.

The word 'thagna' means to deceive and the Thugs lived in the community as respected and orderly citizens. They were well liked, prominent men who led double lives. (The Koran gives Muslims the right to lie if it is to deceive infidels.)

What started as a serious religious attitude later became a method of personal gain for the unscrupulous. The cult was especially active during early Victorian days in India although the British tried their best to suppress the murderous side of it.

Kali stands for energy, both creative and destructive. Her cult is linked to Tantric practices (which aim to enable men to rise above their sexual nature by gaining full control over themselves). In her positive aspect Kali is named Durga, Kumari or Parvati. The city of Calcutta was named after her.

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm..."
81 posted on 03/04/2003 11:29:32 PM PST by Thorondir
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To: Thorondir
Thanks for the ping.

Time to hit the sack here.
82 posted on 03/05/2003 12:00:52 AM PST by RecentConvert
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To: independentmind
"Follow the money."

I have long suspected some people on FR are paid to say what they do. Do you have any information to this effect?
83 posted on 03/05/2003 3:32:21 AM PST by aristeides
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To: aristeides
No, I don't. It's just a guess on my part. Following the money in this particular case would be almost impossible for the average FReeper.
84 posted on 03/06/2003 4:00:52 PM PST by independentmind
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  • On September 20, 2001 -- just nine days after the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- Shaykh Hamza Yusuf was the Muslim representative in a small ecumenical gathering held in the Oval Office. At the same time, FBI agents were trying to interview him at his house in California since he had declared two days before the attack: "This country is facing a terrible fate....This country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did -- and lest people forget that Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands." His wife told the incredulous agents Yusuf wasn't home, he was with the President.

Bay area suburbanite helps meld Muslim faith, modern culture

HAYWARD, Calif. — When Mark Hanson was a 1970s teenager growing up in Marin County as the privileged son of a college professor and a liberal activist mother, he barely escaped serious injury in an auto accident. Baptized Greek Orthodox and attending Catholic high school, he began to explore Buddhism, metaphysics and other philosophies. He read excerpts from the Quran, and he decided at 18 to become a Muslim, taking the name Hamza Yusuf.

"A lot of people get into something at that stage of life, and it's a phase," he says.

It wasn't a phase. Twenty-five years later, the 43-year-old Mr. Yusuf — as he is now known, though his legal name remains Mark Hanson — is one of the most popular and influential leaders of American Muslims, helping a younger generation of followers bridge the gap between traditional Islam and American culture.

His speech at a Muslim conference in Chicago last fall attracted more than 10,000 people. Similar crowds have flocked to hear him at New York's Madison Square Garden in the past decade. Videotapes of his talks sell briskly over the Internet. Nine days after Sept. 11, he was invited to meet with President Bush. Standing outside the White House, Mr. Yusuf declared, "Islam was hijacked on that ... plane as an innocent victim" — a statement that President Bush used in his speech to Congress that evening but that also prompted death threats from radical Muslims.

"He's kind of like a rock star for the religious set," says Syed Ali, who teaches sociology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.

In the wake of Sept. 11, many of America's three million Muslims are struggling with what it means to be both Muslim and American. It's a dilemma Mr. Yusuf embodies: a white man in a religion still dominated by nonwhite immigrants; an American in a religion often deemed anti-American; a self-described moderate in a religion often seen as extremist.

The same day he visited the White House, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents knocked on the door of his home in California to quiz him about a speech he made Sept. 9 in which he said: "This country is facing a very terrible fate. ... This country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did — and lest people forget that Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands."

Mr. Yusuf says he regrets those remarks and some other strident speeches he made over the years. "Anger is a dangerous emotion and not a part of the Islamic tradition," he says. "There are Muslims in the community whose anger has led them to do some pretty horrendous things. That's a problem, a horrendous problem. I don't want to contribute to that."

Like Catholic and Jewish immigrants before them, America's Muslims are confronting the challenge of assimilation versus tradition. Muslims are one of the country's most successful ethnic or religious groups. Nearly three-fifths are college graduates. Half make more than $50,000 a year and are in managerial, medical, professional, technical or teaching jobs. And as they have become successful, American Muslims have drifted away from the faith. Just 20 percent of American Muslims attend mosque regularly, according to Hamid Dabashi, chairman of the department of Middle Eastern languages and culture at Columbia University in New York.

Recently, however, many American children of these immigrants are returning to the fold, enrolling in classes that teach classical Islamic law and traditions and, in the case of some women, choosing to wear a head scarf and robe even though they grew up in assimilated homes. At a convention of the Islamic Society of North America recently, one of the best-selling T-shirts among young Muslims featured a woman in a head scarf with the phrase, "It's good in the hood."

These second-generation Muslims often shun their parents' immigrant mosques, perceived as too rigid and out of touch with American values. They are turning instead to leaders like Mr. Yusuf, who calls for renewed Islamic learning and understanding of Muslim history, but understands the challenges of child rearing, spirituality and marriage in modern society. Fluent in Arabic, Mr. Yusuf is comfortable peppering his sermons with quotes from the Quran and references to Oprah Winfrey, talking about the history of Islam and describing his struggle to keep his children from spending too much time on the Internet.

"He's not living in the past, he's living in the present," says Altaf Husain, president of the Muslim Student Association, which has sponsored talks by Mr. Yusuf at scores of college campuses. "He speaks our language. He is able to articulate in an American accent what Islam is like for young people."

With his slim build, neatly trimmed mustache and soft-spoken manner, Mr. Yusuf looks like a professor at a liberal-arts college. His father, who for a while taught college English, named his son after Columbia University English professor Mark van Doren. Today, Mr. Yusuf lives in an upper-middle-class home at the end of a suburban San Francisco cul-de-sac with a minivan in the driveway. His Mexican-American wife converted to Islam two years after marrying Mr. Yusuf and wears a head scarf and robe. On a recent Friday night, their four young boys clamored for Mr. Yusuf to read to them and settle sibling squabbles. Mr. Yusuf's wife cooked enchiladas in the kitchen.

In some ways, Mr. Yusuf's background echoes that of another Marin County seeker drawn to Islam — John Walker Lindh, currently awaiting trial in the United States for fighting on behalf of the Taliban. But whereas Mr. Lindh embraced the radical Islam of al Qaeda, Mr. Yusuf became a Sufi, a member of a mystical, intellectual branch of Islam that attracts many white American converts.

When he was a child, Mr. Yusuf recalls, his mother kept a poem by a famous Sufi poet on the wall, right next to a saying by a famous Jewish sage. Eventually, his parents enrolled him in a Catholic high school. "My mother is a seeker," says Mr. Yusuf. One of his sisters converted to Orthodox Judaism when she married a Jewish husband. Another became Muslim after Mr. Yusuf converted. "My family has a pretty deep interest in the deep questions," he says.

Islam, with its vivid descriptions of a single God passing judgment on people in the afterlife, appealed to Mr. Yusuf. So did the discipline of praying five times a day. Meeting other American converts to Islam in California and elsewhere gave Mr. Yusuf a sense of belonging, he says.

After converting, Mr. Yusuf dropped out of college and spent the next decade traveling to the United Arab Emirates and Mauritania, learning Arabic and studying with Muslim scholars. During a visit to Algeria, he was arrested as a spy. "They didn't know what to make of this American who wanted to learn Arabic and study Islam," he says

Mr. Yusuf returned to California to complete his college degree and went on to get a nursing degree, planning to return to West Africa. Soon, he began teaching at local mosques, and his sermons struck a chord with young people, many of whom had drifted away from Islam. Many Muslim immigrants, says Mr. Yusuf, "were too complacent, too caught up in the American dream, the pursuit of material goals. They lost sight of the higher goals." But he adds: "That's easy for someone who grew up in Marin County to say. I didn't grow up in Madras, India, in poverty."

On a recent Saturday, Mr. Yusuf sat before a crowd of 200 people in a former church assembly hall, dressed in a white robe. A cameraman videotaped his sermon, to be copied and sold over the Internet. The crowd was racially and ethnically mixed. About 32 percent of America's Muslims are from South Asia or of South Asian descent; 26 percent are Arab-American. African-Americans make up about 20 percent of the country's Muslim population.

The topic this day was male-female relations. Traditional Islamic law, Mr. Yusuf told the crowd, treated women fairly, giving them the right to divorce and also a share of communal property. Though a screen divided the women in the hall from the men, they participated actively in the discussion. One asked whether it is proper under Islamic law to seek a divorce from her husband after they had been separated for two years. Mr. Yusuf said it is. Another woman asked for the titles of good books on raising children. Mr. Yusuf recommended one by a Muslim scholar and several by British and American authors.

While Mr. Yusuf peppers his talks with modern allusions, he also embraces tradition. He encourages followers to pray five times a day and to study Islamic texts. He believes women should dress modestly, with their heads covered. Though he lives in a suburb with a first-rate school system, he home-schools his children and doesn't own a television. "Islam means submissions," he says. "It is hard. It is supposed to be hard. If it weren't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing."

It's a message many young Muslims find appealing. Hosai Nisari was born in Afghanistan but didn't go to mosque or wear a veil when she was growing up in California. In college, she became more interested in Islam and decided to start wearing a head scarf and robe. She has been coming to Mr. Yusuf's talks since 1997 and now teaches at an elementary school run by a local mosque. "If you go to an immigrant mosque, you get ideas that are foreign," she says as she leaves the two-hour session. "He speaks to us from an American Muslim perspective."

Most controversially within the Muslim community, Mr. Yusuf is sharply critical of what he calls "political Islam" — the focus of many Muslim leaders on political issues, which he believes has turned many Muslims away from mosques.

"Middle East politics have become so central," he says. "It's definitely important, but it's one component in a very large tradition. The concern of the Muslim community has to be centered here. There needs to be a lot more outreach to people alienated from mosques, people alienated from the anger-based approach."

Mr. Yusuf has expressed his own anger about Israel in the past. In 1995 he said, "The Jews would have us believe that God has this bias to this little small tribe in the middle of the desert and all the rest of humanity is just rubbish. I mean that is the basic doctrine of the Jewish religion, and that's why it is a most racist religion."

Mr. Yusuf says he regrets those remarks, saying they were "inappropriate, non-Islamic and out of character." He says he and many other Muslims have allowed "political animosity" over issues like the Middle East to become "racial and ethnic animosity."

"We have to change that," he says. "I am groping with that myself." Even before Sept. 11, Mr. Yusuf was delivering sermons urging Muslims to show respect for Jews and meeting with rabbis.

Upon hearing of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Yusuf says, his first response was to pray that Muslims weren't involved. When it became clear that they were, Mr. Yusuf says he became aware of the "deep rage in parts of the Muslim community." Suhail Khan, a Muslim aide in the Bush administration who had heard Mr. Yusuf speak over the years, invited him to the White House to meet with Mr. Bush the day of the president's Sept. 20 address to Congress. Mr. Yusuf was one of six religious leaders, and the only Muslim, to meet the president privately, presenting him with a copy of the Quran. Mr. Yusuf attended the speech that evening, sitting near first lady Laura Bush.

Lately, Mr. Yusuf has become increasingly critical of Muslim countries, even as he says he is troubled by the United States invasion of Afghanistan. Unchecked power in the hands of any government can lead to repression and unilateral military action, Mr. Yusuf says. "The only reason that Muslim countries are not doing it is because they do not have the power," he said in a sermon delivered after Sept. 11. "That is why they can only do it to their own population."

Such views, and Mr. Yusuf's critique of mosques that focus on Middle East politics, are prompting criticism from other Muslim leaders.

"Mr. Yusuf is a popular speaker, but I don't think he is a relevant figure in Muslim politics," says Agha Saeed, national chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, which encourages Muslim involvement in politics. "His political views don't reflect the feelings of the community. The Palestinian issue remains central to American Muslims."

After Sept. 11, says Mr. Saeed, Mr. Yusuf responded "more as a person born in this country. The different parts of his biography came into conflict."

It's a conflict Mr. Yusuf says he shares with growing numbers of American Muslims. "We're struggling to find not only our identity in this country, but our voice," he says.

Following the recently concluded World Economic Forum, Mr. Yusuf sat in a New York hotel lobby, dressed in a conservative dark suit, sipping tea, reflecting on meetings with American business and political leaders, as well as influential Arabs, some of whom were consumed with talk of American conspiracies against their interests.

It pains him, he says, to hear the "us versus them" approach that Muslims and Americans often take with each other.

"I'm one of us, and I'm one of them at the same time," he says.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jonathan Kaufman | Feb. 15, 2002





85 posted on 03/11/2003 7:24:58 AM PST by Sabertooth
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Oops, I botched the link at #85...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jonathan Kaufman | Feb. 15, 2002




86 posted on 03/11/2003 7:29:10 AM PST by Sabertooth
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To: Sabertooth
bump
87 posted on 03/11/2003 7:34:13 AM PST by TLBSHOW (The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate......)
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To: Sabertooth
Interesting "tactics" you employ, ST. Very interesting.

Regards,

JS


88 posted on 03/11/2003 7:54:10 AM PST by justshe (FREE MIGUEL !)
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To: Sabertooth

Khan Says He Didn't Open Door to Al-Arian


Posted March 3, 2003


Al-Arian (right): conflicting information regarding his invitation to the White House.
Media Credit: Ken Helle Reuters
Al-Arian (right): conflicting information regarding his invitation to the White House.
Former White House aide Suhail Khan tells Insight Online he was not involved in organizing a Muslim outreach event at the White House in June 2001 that was attended by Sami Al-Arian, the former University of South Florida professor arrested Feb. 20, 2003, by the FBI on terrorism charges. Khan was working in the White House Office of Public Liaison, but was not involved at the time in organizing events geared toward the Muslim community, he said.

"I only learned that the professor had come to the White House when I saw CNN," he said. Khan's comments followed an initial Insight Online article [see "Controversial Professor Arrested in Florida Was White House Guest"] that reported via sources that he had invited Al-Arian to the White House.

Less than an hour after the story was posted at Insight Online, references to Khan were removed by editors because of conflicting information about the former White House aide's involvement with the Al-Arian invite, one of at least two White House visits by Al-Arian the magazine now has confirmed.

Continuing questions about how Al-Arian gained access to the White House, despite reported warnings from the U.S. Secret Service that the professor was a suspected terrorist, and Khan's alleged involvement prompted the former aide's comments.

White House sources tell Insight Online that the meeting Al-Arian attended had been solicited by the American Muslim Council (AMC), which provided the list of attendees.

"We did not solicit this meeting or chose who would attend," the White House sources said, speaking on background. "The AMC has had other briefings at the White House under other administrations, and their people were cleared by the Secret Service."

The decision to bring the radical Muslim group into the Bush White House, as part of an effort to "reach out" to the Muslim community, "spans a number of offices at the White House," the officials said. Al-Arian and the AMC delegation met with Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and with John Dilulio, who then headed the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The White House officials could not confirm that the Secret Service raised any objections to the presence of Al-Arian or any other members of the AMC delegation. However, published reports quoting unidentified sources said that the Secret Service had in fact raised security flags about Al-Arian and others.

No matter how Al-Arian gained access to the White House complex, the sources said, the ultimate decision to override Secret Service or other national security "flags" rests with a handful of senior aides to President Bush whom the sources said need to do a better job of vetting guests. "We were fairly new to the White House when this happened," one of two White House sources said.

Insight Online reported in its initial version of its online story (to which Khan later responded) that on Sept. 24, 1999, Al-Arian and his Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace held a rally in front of the White House at Lafayette Park to protest the use of secret evidence in deportation proceedings of non-U.S. nationals suspected of terrorism. A variety of Muslim groups and civil-liberty organizations have questioned the use of secret evidence -- then and now.

Insight Online also reported, based on an e-mail message obtained by the magazine, that rally organizers advertised Khan as one of their featured speakers. However, Khan says he was in California at the time, working on the ultimately unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Rep. Tom Campbell to unseat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

"I don't know how my name appeared on the list of speakers," Khan said in reference to the e-mail that listed him. "I didn't even get invited to it or receive a phone call from the organizers." Beyond that, he said, "I've never spoken at a rally in my life."

Khan didn't know why the organizers had used his name, but pointed out that Campbell was cosponsoring legislation with Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) to repealon constitutional grounds the use of secret evidence. Additionally, Khan said, as a board member of the Islamic Institute, he was friendly with Institute founder Grover Norquist, who was working with Barr and Al-Arian on the issue at the time.

Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and the founding chairman of the Islamic Institute, has been a strong promoter of the White House outreach effort to American Muslims, and hired two top aides to former AMC Chairman Abdurahman Alamoudi to run his Islamic Institute.

Alamoudi was video-taped at a rally in front of the White House on Oct. 28, 2000 telling the crowd that he supported Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups on the United States' international terrorist list.

In an angry email critique of the first online story about Al-Arian's visit to the White House and to Norquist's offices, he said that "nobody who knows me thinks I have a close relationship with Sami Al-Arian."

Norquist continued to deny that Al-Arian visted his office for more than a few minutes despite numerous witnesses who confirmed this to the magazine, including one of Norquist's close associates. He also insisted that he "was proud to stand with President Bush and Bob Barr in opposing the misuse of secret evidence." In fact, Norquist has advocated the repeal of secret evidence, while the president has instructed Attorney General John Ashcroft to expand its use in terrorist-related cases.

The Al-Arian arrest in late February has raised considerable concerns about security at the White House and further fueled Muslim uneasiness about the use of expanded federal powers to crack down on suspected terrorists and their support networks.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight.

LINK



89 posted on 03/11/2003 8:50:01 AM PST by Sabertooth
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To: justshe
Interesting "tactics" you employ, ST. Very interesting.

Hi JS. Care to elaborate?




90 posted on 03/11/2003 8:58:05 AM PST by Sabertooth
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To: Sabertooth
Nope. Nothing to elaborate. You know exactly to what I refer. It was an eyeopener. Let's leave it at that.
91 posted on 03/11/2003 9:01:43 AM PST by justshe (FREE MIGUEL !)
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To: justshe
You know exactly to what I refer. It was an eyeopener. Let's leave it at that.

My apologies, I actually don't know, but we can drop it since that is your preference.

I haven't really understood the objections of some to the pursuit of this story. My best guess is that, for the most part, they believe that they are doing what is in the best interests of the country, President Bush, and the war effort. While I've disagreed with that assessment, most have abided by FR's posting guidelnes and I haven't doubted their sincerity.

In any event, I view healthy debate and spirited, good faith disagreement as an important function of Free Republic. It's usually much easier for others to spot flaws in our reasoning or errors in our facts, than it is for us to do it ourselves. It's happened to me on not a few occasions, and I'm better informed as a result.

Have a nice day, and I'll continue to look forward to your posts in the future.




92 posted on 03/11/2003 9:28:55 AM PST by Sabertooth
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To: justshe
BUMP!

Regards;

LG


93 posted on 03/11/2003 2:09:20 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez (Darkdrake Lives!)
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To: Luis Gonzalez
Glad to see YOU understand the message.

DarkDrake will be missed. Stealth attacks are underhanded and despicable, no?

Regards;

JS


94 posted on 03/11/2003 2:31:26 PM PST by justshe (FREE MIGUEL !)
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To: Sabertooth
bump
95 posted on 03/18/2003 9:07:18 PM PST by TLBSHOW (The gift is to see the truth......)
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To: TLBSHOW
bump for later read
96 posted on 03/18/2003 10:14:19 PM PST by Captain Beyond (The Hammer of the gods! (Just a cool line from a Led Zep song))
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