Muslim Heretics Conference

Posted by: Tom Heneghan

Tags: FaithWorld, al qaeda, apostasy, christian, egypt, election, islam, islamist, law, muslim, muslim world, religion, sharia, united states

Two recent op-ed articles in the United States presented Barack Obama as a “Muslim apostate” according to “Muslim law as it is universally understood.” Since Muslims were bound to see him as an apostate, they argued, the potential next president could be seen as “al Qaeda’s candidate” because Islamists could whip up popular anger in the Muslim world by portraying him as a turncoat heading a Western war against Islam. He also risked assassination, one suggested, because Muslim law considers apostasy a crime worthy of the death sentence and bars punishment for any Muslim who kills an apostate.

There were many generalisations about Islam in these two articles, one by Edward Luttwak in the New York Times and the other by Shireen K. Burki in the Christian Science Monitor. There is no one code of Muslim law, as Luttwak (who is a strategic analyst not previously known for his mastery of Islamic jurisprudence) or Burki (who we’re told “studied Islam at school” in Pakistan) want unsuspecting readers to believe. Few Muslim countries have death for apostates on their books, and even fewer actually carry it out. This is not meant to defend any law about apostasy, which is an individual right, but just to state a few facts.

Most important of all, Obama never tires of saying that he is a committed Christian and has never practiced the religion that his father (who left his son when he was 2 years old) no longer practiced either. The fact these articles appeared amid an “Obama-is-a-Muslim” whispering campaign in an election year makes a good case for suspecting they may have been motivated more by political strategy than legal scholarship. A lot of the 368 comments on Luttwak’s article assume that’s the case. Call it the “Sharia smear.”

We considered asking around in the Muslim world for reactions to Luttwak’s article (the first to appear), but it was so unfounded that it did not seem worthwhile. There wasn’t much echo there, anyway.

A respected Islamic scholar, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, has now given a Muslim response to the supposed Islamic legal arguments the two articles are based on. “A strange paradox has emerged whereby Sharia (the religious law of Islam) has paradoxically become mythical in its alleged power to determine the behavior of Muslims everywhere, yet defenseless against the most fanciful, even outrageous claims and charges,” he remarks on the Religion Dispatches blog at Emory University, where he teaches law. An-Na’im has just published a well-reviewed book on Sharia, Islam and The Secular State .

The argument by Luttwak “is wrong from a Sharia point of view, and false in terms of the present political and legal realities of Muslim-majority countries,” An-Na’im writes. “Those who think Muslims will respond negatively to Sen. Obama based on his presumed religion have an overly simplistic view of what it means to be Muslim today.“

As for impunity for apostate killers, he asks, “how is it that the killers of the Egyptian intellectual Dr. Farag Foda were prosecuted and executed for murder by the Egyptian state in 1994?”

For all the details, the full text is here (”Swiftboating Obama/Misrepresenting Islam”) and cross-posted at The Immanent Frame (hat tip).

UPDATE: After posting this, I saw I’d missed that Ali Eteraz had already dissected Luttwak’s op-ed. Chalk it up to me being on the road…

FaithWorld » Blog Archive » Muslim scholar responds to “Sharia smear” against Obama | Blogs | Reuters.com

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A former Dutch lawmaker and outspoken critic of Islam published a children’s book on Thursday, about a friendship between a Muslim boy and a Jewish girl, that seeks to fight prejudice in both communities.

Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been living under heavy guard since the murder in 2004 of fellow Islam critic Theo van Gogh, who directed a film she wrote which accused Islam of condoning violence against women.

Her new book — “Adan and Eva” — tells the story of a Moroccan boy and a rich Jewish girl living in Amsterdam. Adan takes Eva to Koran school, while Adan gets drunk on wine served at a Jewish meal.

Their families eventually decide to break up the friendship and Eva is sent to boarding school in Switzerland, while Adan is banished to Morocco.

“Everything starts at school. That is where children learn about each other and learn to respect each other. We live in a world of adult prejudice,” Hirsi Ali told De Telegraaf daily. “Reconciliation starts with children.”

Hirsi Ali’s spokeswoman said she hoped the book would also be published in English and said the Spanish, Italian and Danish rights had already been sold. Hirsi Ali’s autobiography “Infidel” is one of the New York Times top 20 bestsellers.

She moved to the United States in 2006 after leaving the Dutch parliament following a row about her citizenship was triggered when she admitted she had lied to win asylum.

Hirsi Ali said she was still spent a lot of time trying to raise funds to pay for her security after the Dutch government decided to stop paying for protection abroad.

She accused the government of stifling debate about Islam and leading a “systematic campaign against free speech” after a cartoonist was detained earlier this month on suspicion of offending Muslims due to his provocative drawings.

In March, Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders stoked Muslim anger around the world with a film accusing the Koran of inciting violence and saying the 1 million Muslims living in the Netherlands posed a security threat.

Children’s book by Islam critic to fight prejudice | U.S. | Reuters

Radical Islam taking advantage of Christianity’s decline, says bishop

Hollye Blades

Radical Islam is threatening to fill a “moral vacuum” in Britain as a result of a decline of Christian values, a senior Church of England bishop has said.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, claims that the Church dissolved its influence over the country’s morals during the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s. He said that the waning influence of Christianity had created a lack of principles that was allowing radical Islam to push its “comprehensive” claims.

Mohammed Shafiq, of the Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, criticised the Bishop, saying that there was no evidence that the vacuum left by Christianity was being filled by extremists; it was being filled by secularists and an obsession with celebrity, fame and money, he said.

Dr Nazir-Ali said in his article for the political magazine Standpoint that Christianity had brought together a “rabble of mutually hostile tribes, fiefdoms and kingdoms” into a nation conscious of its identity and able to make an impact on the world.

He quoted an academic who blamed the 1960s cultural revolution for bringing Christianity’s role in society to an abrupt end. It was said that, instead of resisting the social and sexual revolution, church leaders had capitulated. The Bishop said: “It is a situation which has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we find ourselves. Whilst the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place.”

Marxism had been shown to be a “nonsense”, he added. “We are now, however, confronted by another equally serious ideology, that of radical Islamism, which also claims to be comprehensive in scope. It remains the case, however, that many of the beliefs and values which we need to deal with the present situation are rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.”

Earlier this year the Bishop argued in a Sunday newspaper that Islamic extremists were creating “no-go areas” for non-Muslims in Britain, over which he received death threats. Last weekend he was quoted as claiming that the Church was not doing enough to convert Muslims to Christianity.

In his Standpoint article he said: “The question is not ‘should faith have a role in public life?’ — but what kind of role? Every temptation to theocracy, on every side, must be renounced. There is no place for coercion where the relationship of religion to the State is concerned.”Government would have to be more open to religious concerns and to make room for religious conscience, the Bishop said.

“The integrity and autonomy of public authority and of the law will also have to be recognised and it would be best if religious law in its application was left to the communities. Public law should, however, continue to provide overarching protection for all.”

Mr Shafiq countered the Bishop’s argument on extremism, saying: “Another day and another attack on Islam and Muslims by Mr Nazir-Ali.

“Everything this man says is based on fiction and promoting intolerance and fear among communities.

“Islam is on the rise because people recognise and are inspired by the trueness of our faith, whilst recognising that we live in a majority Christian country. We all have a duty to work together to build cohesive communities and not establish division,” Mr Shafiq added.

Radical Islam taking advantage of Christianity’s decline, says bishop -Times Online

Speaker says goal of Islam is freedom
BECCA BONTHIUS
Special to The Messenger

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Messenger photo | John Halley
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na?im, a progressive muslim, argued against the Islamic state at a public lecture in Ohio University?s Bentley Hall Tuesday night

Progressive Muslim thinker Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im argued against the notion of the Islamic state during his lecture “Imagining and Realizing Progressive Islam: A Framework and Call to Action,” Tuesday night in Bentley Hall.
“If you leave the possibility of an Islamic state alive, then someone is always going to try to make it happen. And when they do, you’ve got disasters, like what happened to Sudan,” An-Na’im, who is from Sudan, said.
An-Na’im is a Professor of Law at Emory University and is the author of “Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari’a.” His lecture was the first of the Mohmoud Mohamed Taha Progressive Islam Lecture Series, put on by the Centers for African Studies and Southeast Asian Studies and supported by a two-year Social Science Research Council grant.
The public lecture series honors Taha, a Sudanese Islamic social reformer “who sacrificed his life in the name of tolerance, women’s rights in Islam and a universal message of peace,” Steve Howard, Ohio University Director of African Studies, said. Taha was executed in 1985, and next year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Taha, as An-Na’im explained, said the goal of being a Muslim is absolute individual freedom, which is “to think as we choose, and to speak as we think, and to act as we speak.” An-Na’im, who was a student of Taha, used that concept of consistency of thought, speech and action as the basis of his lecture.
“I am trying to evoke a vision of Islam…that will inspire Muslims out of their current state of…regression,” An-Na’im said. He defined “progressive Islam” as “improving the quality of our lives…provided it is we who decide that it improves our lives and how it improves our lives.” The way to honor Taha, who serves as a model for “living the values of transformative Islam,” is to “facilitate that ability to live, to think freely, to speak as we think and to act accordingly,” he said.
States must be secular, or neutral to religious doctrine, An-Na’im said, and must allow Muslims the options of belief and disbelief. He said that framework for individual freedom can only be achieved when people accept responsibilities and negative consequences and work collectively to make transformations based on their convictions.
“We can start making things go right immediately here and now. Wherever we are. Whoever we are. It is not a matter of waiting for regime change, for perfect conditions, in order to achieve transformation,” he said.
Howard said the way Islam is described in the West leads to “misunderstanding, perpetuation of stereotypes and ignorance of many possibilities for East-West dialogue and mutual communication.” The lecture series aims to dispel some of these misconceptions by increasing people’s exposure to the subtleties of Islam, and will address the possibilities for progressive change and reform.
“This is the first time that I have clearly heard a Muslim talking about - I’ll use the Christian language - separation of church and state,” Art Gish of Athens said of An-Na’im’s lecture. Gish has worked for 12 years with Christian peacemaking teams in Iraq and Palestine. “I so deeply appreciate a progressive Muslim voice. So often religious people are reactionary, and I’m a religious person myself,” he said.
Sri Murniati, a political science graduate student from Indonesia, has followed An-Na’im’s work for several years, and took his Human Rights and Islam class when she studied in Jakarta. “To listen to it in person, it’s much more compelling, and I had an opportunity to ask my own questions,” she said, adding she thought he addressed the audience’s questions very carefully.
Howard said he considers An-Na’im a mentor. They met 30 years ago when Howard was working on his dissertation in Sudan. “He’s saying things that take a lot of courage to say and, in a lot of these contexts, they’re very dangerous things to say,” Howard said.
An-Na’im’s lecture was the first and last of this academic year. The rest of the Progressive Islam Lecture Series will start in the fall.

Speaker says goal of Islam is freedom

Islam’s growth result of western relativism, warns Muslim convert

Magdi Christian Allam

Rome, May 28, 2008 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- Italian journalist and Muslim convert to Catholicism, Magdi Allam, warned this week that Islam is growing as a result of the ideology of relativism that pervades the West and claims that there are many truths instead of one unique Truth.

In an article published by the magazine Mundo Cristiano and quoted by Analisis Digital, Allam explained that relativism, which attributes “equal dignity to everything regardless of the content” has made it possible for extremism and Islamic terrorism “to be introduced and to take root” in Europe, to the point that there are Islamic extremists with European citizenship who “act upon and spread an ideology of hatred and violence.”

Likewise, Allam, who was recently baptized by Benedict XVI, said it was impossible to be a moderate Muslim, because the religion of Islam is “physiologically violent, as confirmed by certain verses from the Koran that defend an ideology of hatred, violence, death and condemnation of those who are not Muslims.  This way of thinking comes from Mohammed,” Allam said, adding that Islam is an “intrinsically violent” religion.

Asked about his conversion to the faith, Allam said he was convinced by the preaching and testimony of Benedict XVI, whose “strong affirmation of the relationship between faith and reason as a foundation for understanding the authenticity of true religion” fascinated him.

Islam’s growth result of western relativism, warns Muslim convert

MARRAKECH: You will not see g-strings, revealing leotards, or nudity at Claude Thomas’ newly created cabaret revue in Marrakech. Instead, dancers’

bodies are demurely hidden and kisses are only allowed on the cheek. “Les Folies de Marrakech.” launched earlier this month, is an unusual blend of Western decadence and Islam.

“This is the first time I have so many beautiful bodies to show and I have to hide them,” said Thomas. “Here I am doing a cabaret in the Muslim style because the goal is to have an end result that is 100 percent Moroccan, but also 100 percent Folies.”

For the producer, the change was a radical one. Throughout the past 15 years, he put on music-hall performances - first in the northern French city of Lille, then in Japan, Canada, Reno and Las Vegas. Now it is time to create a new category of such shows for Muslim audiences, he said.

“This is not Moulin Rouge because we are not in Paris,” said the 49-year old Thomas. “This is not the Cirque de Soleil because we are not in Las Vegas. Here I’m offering a dream while still respecting the country’s culture.”

After facing tough French social laws and unforeseen challenges, he sold his cabaret in France in May 2006, and came to spend a few days in Marrakech where he found a “new Las Vegas.”

Advised by the Moroccan consul in Lille to call the event a “music hall” instead of a “cabaret,” Thomas’ production lasts an hour and a half and takes the audience on a world tour with magicians, acrobats, pirates, a falconer, magic fountains, dance, music and comedy.

While Thomas may be the creative force behind the show, it seems it’s Islam that lays down the law here. As such, his performers also serve as in-house consultants who let him know during rehearsals what will fly with local mores and what will not.

“When she tells me the costume could shock,” said Thomas, “I modify it while still keeping its magic.”

Along with his cousin, he bought five hectares of land and constructed a 2,000-square-meter hall to host an audience of 1,100 for a dinner show costing 550 dirhams [$78].

Thomas auditioned 300 acrobats, flame-throwers and break-dancers from across the country - finally selecting 47 from among them, of which 12 are girls aged 17 to 32.

“They come from all walks of life,” he said, “from the Casablanca bourgeoisie to street kids from Sale.”

Thomas also recruited five choreographers to train the troupe for 14 hours a day for nine months. While the grueling physical training was a challenge, perhaps harder still was overcoming mental obstacles.

“The most difficult thing is that Moroccans do not think they are capable of feats and so are astonished when they succeed,” said Canadian choreographer Santiago Martinez.

He says he also had to adapt his choreography to the rules of Islam. “One day, I had asked them to hold their arms in second position [resembling a curved cross], but they refused because they said it was too much like the Christ. So I told them to lift their arms higher,” said Martinez cheerfully.

However, on issues of gender equality, Thomas won’t budge and refuses to have only women clear the tables. “I respect your religion and I’ve even created a prayer room,” he said, “but here everyone is an artist regardless of their gender.”

Nineteen-year-old Imad al-Machriki was a tightrope walker at a circus school in Sale before joining Thomas’ troupe. Now, while training, he is also taking up school work again, after having dropped out at 13.

“It was very hard to become a professional,” said Machriki, “but today I think we are about to succeed.”

The Daily Star - Arts & Culture - French cabaret king modifies show to suit Islam

Muslim leaders must be more outspoken about violence in the name of religion, a senior Vatican official urged yesterday.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Pope’s principal adviser on Islam, said that while the majority of Muslim clerics condemned acts of terrorism, they needed to be more vocal about jihad, especially because of its frequent appearances in the Qur’an.

The cardinal made the remarks after a lecture, given in London to an audience of students, Catholic clerics and figures from other religions. It was one of several public appearances during a rare visit to the UK.

He said: “In the Qur’an you have several interpretations of jihad - violent and holy. Most Muslims are condemning war made in the name of religion. The problem is that in the Qur’an you have good and bad jihad, so you choose.

“There is no worldwide authority who can interpret the Qur’an, so it depends on the person you have in front of you. Sometimes you should like religious authorities to be more outspoken about violence in the name of religion. But Muslims believe the Qur’an is the divine word of God, so it is a problem.”

He said it would be “easier” if there were a single Islamic authority to negotiate with. “It’s a great difficulty there are many voices of living Islam.”

The cardinal is president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and has been tasked with improving relations between the Vatican and Islam.

Tauran, the former Vatican foreign minister, has not shied away from difficult issues since his 2007 appointment. He has criticised countries, notably Saudi Arabia, which do not allow freedom of religion.

He expressed hope, however, that a summit of Islamic scholars and Catholic officials, to be held in November, would yield positive results.

The meeting, organised following an appeal from hundreds of Muslim scholars for closer ties with Christianity, will not be attended by representatives from Saudi Arabia or Iran, two regimes that place severe restrictions on religious freedom. “Of course we would like to see someone from Saudi Arabia. But we will meet them in another context. We talk to the interlocutors who come, we do not choose them.”

His remarks came as the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said that radical Islam threatened to fill a “moral vacuum” in Britain arisen as a result of a decline of Christian values. Writing in the newly launched political and cultural magazine Standpoint, the bishop claims that the church dissolved its influence over the country’s morals during the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Cardinal urges Muslim leaders to oppose violent jihad | World news | The Guardian

First Published 2008-05-21, Last Updated 2008-05-21 11:27:29


Table exhibiting funding concentration (IRS and IRMEP 2003)

The Neo-Conservatives & ‘Islamofascism’

The threat of Islam has been driven home to the American people by the neoconservatives and the controlled media so that nations in the Middle East can be annihilated – wiped out. The leaders no longer serve the American people but the interest of Israel, says Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich.

John F. Kennedy warned: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic”. After the attacks of 9/11, refusing to present the truth as authority, we have been led to believe that the greatest threat to civilization is Islam. Dominance and ownership of language enabled the neoconservatives to coin the term ‘Islamofascism’ in order to wage war against Iraq. Iran is their next target, while shamelessly and brutally the people of Palestine and Lebanon are being eradicated in the name of ‘democracy’.

Describing Neo-conservatism as “a Jewish phenomenon” Jacob Heilbrunn, a professed former neoconservative says: “Neoconservatives are bound by a “shared commitment to the largest, most important Jewish cause: the survival of Israel”. Many of the founders of neo-conservatism, including the Public Interest founder Irving Kristol and coeditor Nathan Glazer, Sidney Hook, and Albert Wohlstetter, were either members of, or close to the Trotskyist left in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In 1960, Norman Podhoretz, became editor of Commentary and it focused on foreign policy, Israel in particular, and the threat of the Soviet Union.

The end of the Cold War had left Israel in an awkward place. According to The Jerusalem Report, in 1991, the idea that radical Islam would replace communism had taken seed among the Israeli right. The basis of the idea was founded on the neoconservatives fear that with the demise of the Soviet Union, and the splintering of the America’s right wing faction, there would no longer be an unconditional support for a US-Israel alliance. Kristol and Podhoretz did not see the attraction to Islam as an ideology, but there was a decade of peace and prosperity to implement the seeds of hostility in the American psyche; As Podhoretz had stated: “But the real world and the world of ideas aren’t always in the direct communication they should be. In the world of ideas the major media, the universities, the artistic community all of these are still on the left.” (Jerusalem Report). These would have to be mastered.

In 1993, Samuel Huntington offered the solution, The Clash of Civilizations based on an earlier piece by Bernard Lewis. In an effort to Scapegoat Islam, he underscores that “Muslim societies and states located at the cultural fault lines of the world have shown to be excessively violent. He argues that Muslim enthusiasm for war and readiness to use violence cannot now be denied either by Muslims or non-Muslims. Although his theory was challenged by numerous reputable scholars, the neoconservatives continued to establish themselves in positions of power and influence.

Washington think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) became home to many influential neoconservatives such as Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and Richard Perle who came to join the AEI from the Jerusalem-based think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). A 2003 study by the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy (IRMEP) indicates a correlation between the Bush war policy and the funding of these think tanks.

In addition to think tanks, much of the media was given over to the neoconservative ideology. This was made easy by the regulations in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the 1980s allowing mergers and acquisitions. It was natural for Rupert Murdoch and the neoconservatives to come together in the 1990s who had continued to make his media empire grow, especially in the 90s. Murdoch was recognized by the US for his support of Israel, and the Jewish Congress of New York had voted him “Communication Man of the Year” in 1982.

In line with the neoconservative’s agenda, the mainstream media in the US framed September 11 within the context of Islam and Islamic terrorists. Refusing to acknowledge the identity of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, fifteen of whom were Saudi nationals, the threat of Islam as designed by Huntington was trumpeted by the media. As religious extremism was emphasized as the motive for the terrorist plot, all other inquiries were terminated. America’s response to 9/11 was not an accident. Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ was to provide new bearings for US foreign policy.

There seemed to be a deliberate attempt to portray the motivation of the hijackers as Islamic extremism, thus replacing the threat of Soviet Union with Islam. But who were the real hijackers? In that a new UN Human Rights Council assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is indicative that this group’s role is believed to be influencing US policies, if not determining it (New York Sun). What is irrefutable is that on September 20, 2001, a large group of neoconservatives outside the government sent an open letter to the White House outlining how the war on terror should be conducted. The target was to be Iraq even if evidence did not link Iraq directly to September 11. Among them were Norman Podhoretz, Defense and Policy Board members Eliot Cohen and Richard Perle, William Kristol, and Charles Krauthammer.

Two short months after the invasion of Iraq, William Kristol, Editor of Murdoch’s Weekly Standard and recently appointed New York Times columnist opined: “[T]he war in which we are presently engaged is a fundamental challenge for the United States and the civilized world ….The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East. The creation of a free Iraq is now of fundamental importance…But the next battle….will be for Iran.” (Weekly Standard). The threat of Islam has been driven home to the American people by the neoconservatives and the controlled media so that nations in the Middle East can be annihilated – wiped out. The leaders no longer serve the American people but the interest of Israel. The 2008 presidential campaign was a clear indication of the influence of the neoconservatives, the mass media, and the priorities in this country.

Former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, made the threat of Islamic terrorism the centerpiece of his campaign. He brought two neoconservatives on board with him as advisors; Daniel Pipes, the man who headed ‘Campus Watch’ to ensure that all education in this country is pro-Zionist, and Peter King, senior Republican Congressman on the House Homeland Security Committee who is of the opinion that there are “too many mosques in this country”. Podhoretz also joined Giuliani (now with McCain), as did John Deady who resigned after it came out that he said the following of Giuliani: “He’s got, I believe, the knowledge and the judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history and that is the rise of the Muslims. Make no mistake about it, this hasn’t happened for a thousand years, these people are very dedicated and they’re also very, very smart in their own way. We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or, in other words, get rid of them.”[i] Renowned Evangelical Pat Robertson gave Giuliani his endorsement.

Mitt Romney raised eyebrows when he suggested that mosques be wire-tapped. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, allegedly dissuaded Mike Huckabee from “reaching out” to the Muslim world. Jim Backlin, a blogger for the Christian Coalition of America wrote: “Comments like ‘America was founded on Christian principles’ by Senator John McCain just might make him President” who sings ‘bomb Iran’. Mrs. Clinton has pledged to “obliterate Iran” should Iran attack nuclear-armed Israel with nuclear weapons [it does not have].

Where does America go from here? Wave our flags and destroy another country because we allow our congress and officials, including the president to be influenced by neoconservatives and in so doing tell us that they are saving our civilization?

“An army is a strange composite masterpiece, which strength results from an enormous sum total of utter weaknesses. Thus only can we explain a war waged by humanity against humanity in spite of humanity” – Victor Hugo.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an Iranian-American studying at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is a member of World Association of International Studies society, Stanford. Her research focus is US. foreign policy towards Iran, Iran’s nuclear program, and the influence of lobby groups.

Note:

[i] “The Religion Card; GOP Candidates Play on anti-Muslim Sentiments” The Progressive, Biography Resource Center, USC Feb 2008.

Sources:

- JJ Goldberg, “The Rest is Commentary”. The Jerusalem Report. Jerusalem:Sep 26, 1991.

- Eli Lake, The New York Sun, 10 April 2008.

- William Kristol, Weekly Standard, May 12, 2003.

- Tony Smith, “A Pact with the Devil”.

- Halper and Clarke, “America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order”. Cambridge University Press: 2004

Middle East Online

JERUSALEM: Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.

Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.

The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.

The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said.

He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a “commandment” to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.

“I certainly don’t denounce the burning of the booklets,” he said. “I denounce those who distributed the booklets.”

Jews worship from the Old Testament, including the Five Books of Moses and the writings of the ancient prophets. Christians revere the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, which contains the ministry of Jesus.

Calev Myers, an attorney who represents Messianic Jews, or Jews who accept Jesus as their savior, demanded in an interview with Army Radio that all those involved be put on trial. He estimated there were 10,000 Messianic Jews, who are also known as Jews for Jesus, in Israel.

Police had no immediate comment.

Israeli authorities and Orthodox Jews frown on missionary activity aimed at Jews, though in most cases it is not illegal. Still, the concept of a Jew burning books is abhorrent to many in Israel because of the association with Nazis torching piles of Jewish books during the Holocaust of World War II.

Earlier this year, the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family’s West Bank home went off in his hands.

Last year, arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church used by Messianic Jews and set the building on fire, raising suspicions that Jewish extremists were behind the attack. No one claimed responsibility, but the same church was burned down 25 years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Israel - International Herald Tribune

Ahmad Junaidi, Jakarta

Jews are apparently one of — if not the — the most-hated people among Indonesian Muslims, because Israel as a state has committed gross human rights abuses against Palestinians for 60 years since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

In a meeting on media and diversity recently, chairman of the Indonesian Survey Institute Syaiful Mujani revealed a finding of his latest research that more than 30 percent of Muslims here did not want Jewish people as their neighbors.

Violence by the Jewish state, which celebrated its 60th anniversary May 14, has made headlines in newspapers for decades here while rocket attacks and suicide bombings on Israel’s discos and nightclubs by Hamas get little attention in the media.

Although Palestine is geographically far away, it’s emotionally close to many Muslims here, even though not all Palestinians are Muslims.

The Palestinian miseries have also been a favorite talking point for some Islamist parties here which regularly deploy thousands of supporters in demonstrations condemning the only democratic country in the Middle East.

A recent seminar in Depok, West Java, which featured Muslim pundits and Jewish rabbis, aimed to convince the public that the conflict was not based on the religions of Judaism and Islam.

But the conclusion of the seminar should not be just lip service. It needs to be followed up with real actions, such as eliminating teachings that discriminate against the Jews, an almost impossible mission.

Since kids, ulemas in pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) have told us “to hate Jews — and Christians would never be sincere to you (Muslims) until you follow them”.

Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji in her recently-translated book, Beriman Tanpa Rasa Takut: Tantangan Umat Islam Saat Ini (Faith Without Fear: The Challenge for Muslim Today), revealed how Muslims have discriminated against the Jews since the beginning of Islam.

Despite praising the same monotheistic roots inherited from Prophet Ibrahim, Manji, who recently visited Jakarta and Yogyakarta, questioned among other things the concept of dzimmi which gives protection to Jews but at the same time discriminates against them by urging different clothes and walking in separate streets in Medina, a place idolized by Islamists here.

Manji, who was expelled from a madrasa (Islamic school) in Canada when she was 14 years old, currently campaigns for ijtihad (critical thinking) among Muslims.

Many scholars believed anti-Semitism started here in the 1960s. Actually, many Jewish communities lived here peacefully, especially in Jakarta and Surabaya, during the Dutch colonial era.

With the current increasing trend of fundamentalism — particularly the influence of Wahabism — slogans such as “Go to hell, Israel” or “Jihad against Jews” can be easily found in the streets.

The puritans would easily label other people with different opinions as Jewish cronies and American collaborators as perhaps they did with the followers of Ahmadiyah.

The efforts by moderate Muslims to convince the world that God assigned Prophet Muhammad as a blessing for universe (rahmatan lil alamin) seem to go unheard among noisy rallies using symbols of violence, such as fake weapons and time bombs with Pakistani attire.

Some may think anti-Semitism is to a lesser degree similar to anti-Chinese sentiment here. The Holocaust could be considered a large-scale version of the May 1998 tragedy in which hundreds of Chinese-Indonesians were killed and their properties destroyed.

Dozens of Chinese-Indonesian women were allegedly raped or sexually harassed during the riots which then pushed the downfall of authoritarian president Soeharto.

Some viewed all of the “anti spirits” — anti-Semitism, anti-Chinese, anti-America, anti-foreign capital– were just a manifestation of our failure to solve our own social, political and cultural problems.

But the “anti-spirit” is not seen in the soccer game. We still love Chelsea although it’s favorite manager Portuguese Jose Maurinho was replaced with Avram Grant, the former Israel coach.

Blaming the others — with all those ridiculous conspiracy theories — is the easiest way and often conducted by losers, instead of finding the roots of the problems in our culture, including religious teachings.

Ijtihad, instead of jihad (holy war), is one of the ways to reconcile Muslims with those who are considered by some puritans as “the others”: the West, Jews, Indonesian-Chinese and Christians.

Forget the Indonesian Muslim Council’s fatwa (edict) banning pluralism, secularism and liberalism, all of which are actually the pillars of critical thinking.

Ijtihad should move forward, instead of backward into puritanism and searching and applying values of a medieval desert age. It should be wide open for all Muslims, instead of just conducted by narrow-minded goateed ulemas.

Thanks to the late Muslim scholars such as Nurcholish Madjid, Ahmad Wahib, Mukti Ali, Munawir Sadzali and Mansour Faqih for opening youths’ horizons in various studies from religious teachings to gender studies.

Amid the increasing fundamentalism with its stalemated thought, Muslims here have developed enlightened ideas that could make them live together with global citizens in peace.

The writer is a journalist at The Jakarta Post. He can be reached at junaidi@thejakartapost.com

The Jakarta Post - Questioning religions without fear