Muslim Heretics Conference

There’s a disturbing trend in this 2008 election. We are witnessing the manipulation and exploitation of Muslim-Jewish differences by political candidates in pursuit of votes. As advocates for our respective communities, we believe it’s in America’s interest that it stop.
It appears that the political logic of the candidates and their handlers calls for winning Jewish American support at the expense of Muslim American voters. This takes the shape of aggressive outreach to the Jewish community while Muslims go ignored. That strategy may be politically expedient, but it is inherently flawed. Muslims see their exclusion as a betrayal of American values, and many Jews are alarmed by the parallels to their own historical political exclusion.
American Jews are all too familiar with institutionalized bigotry. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Rep. John Rankin opposed the immigration of Holocaust survivors, and he opposed integration. In that McCarthyite, anti-Communist era, politicians clamped down against those who they thought threatened the changing fabric of America — namely, Jews. Now, Muslims are on the receiving end of similar suspicions, this time in the name of fighting terrorism.
Muslims today are political scapegoats associated with global tragedies including terrorism and war. Against this dismal backdrop, politicians are apparently deeming Muslim voters political pariahs; any endorsement from national Muslim groups is tantamount to a kiss of death.
Just one day after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton dropped out of the Democratic race, Sen. Barack Obama rushed to receive the blessing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Last week, his campaign volunteers rushed to remove Muslim women wearing head scarves from a Detroit rally. Though Obama apologized, Muslims felt stung by a candidate supposedly running on a platform of inclusion and change.
But the snubs aren’t limited to Obama. Sen. John McCain recently dismissed a Muslim American businessman from an important campaign committee. In March, McCain visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem but made no similar visit to the adjacent Muslim holy site, the Dome of the Rock. And although both candidates have made frequent stops at churches and synagogues, neither has made a campaign stop at a mosque.
Put on the spot about turning their backs on Muslim voters, politicians may argue that they can’t afford to lose Jewish support, implying that the Jewish community would oppose any politician who associates with Muslims.
To be sure, the politicians aren’t inventing a division between Muslims and Jews. We acknowledge the tension between our communities created by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And yet it is also clear that Jews and Muslims should be natural allies in countering xenophobia and hysteria. We both suffer from scapegoating as fear works against common sense in our political culture. Whether it is anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, we both know the face of bigotry.
The issue of excluding Muslims to get Jewish votes is not about ensuring domestic security, it is about cowardly politics. It is about playing to fears, not processing facts. It is about the canard that Muslims and Jews have been fighting since ancient times and nothing will change. It is about blaming both for America’s problems. We Muslims and Jews, along with all people of faith, represent the spirit of God. There is much that binds us together. It is in the spirit of this shared history, and our common interests, that we must stand against these divisions being created by the candidates.
Abraham Lincoln argued against the politics of fear, holding out hope for the “better angels of our nature.” Our presidential candidates must display such higher thinking in the coming months. Likewise, we — American Jews and Muslims — must do the same.
Salam Al-Marayati is the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Steven B. Jacobs, a rabbi, is the founder of the Progressive Faith Foundation. Both are members of the Abrahamic Faiths Peacemaking Initiative.

Another wedge issue - Los Angeles Times

Written by Zahir Ebrahim

Thursday, 05 June 2008

by Zahir Ebrahim
Why this fanatical preference for waging the ‘war on terror’ against only ‘Islamofascism’ today? [An earlier version of this essay appeared here.]
Personally, I think that the fanatics of all ‘religions’ can be equally fascists.
It would not bother me so much if all such ‘fundamentalist’ fascist fanatics would be thusly labeled using the English language’s choicest words, and equitably hung and then burnt at stake as monumental criminals after a stint in Guantanamo Bay with vicious dogs grabbing at their genitals and entirely reenacting for them the barbarisms that transpired in Abu Garib prison for good measure!
However, as a rather straightforward and ordinary Muslim, I do find it deeply offensive that:

a) only uniquely label our ‘pirates’ thusly disparaging only Islam unjustly after these ‘pirates’ have been deftly created/nurtured by the ‘emperor’ and now have germinated,
b) use them as a convenient excuse for “imperial mobilization” in the pretext of fighting an endless “War on Terror” as otherwise, “democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization”, and “that exercise requires a high degree of doctrinal motivation, intellectual commitment”, including a “sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being” and “truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat” such as a “new pearl harbor”,
c) profound morons on the planet, mostly the educated ones, and almost all of them living in the West - the supposed ‘enlightened civilization’ - and including some indigenously well placed ‘Native Informants’, continue echoing ‘a‘, and conveniently ignore ‘b‘ as the proverbial dancing/trumpeting/shitting monstrous elephant right in the nuptial bed that needs ‘a‘ as much as fish need water!

So to equalize the ‘American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives” on ‘the Grand Chessboard’, and as a plebeian computer scientist but well versed in identifying the ‘most significant bits’ of complex issues - just as the old wise man of antiquity, St. Augustine - let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?
Fight Zionofascism (fascism of the Zionists – too well known to need an explanation), and Christofascism (fascism of the Evangelical Christians hell bent on bringing on ‘Armageddon’), and Judeofascism (fascism of the Jews hell bent on asserting their ‘god’s chosen peoples’ mantra that puts them beyond the pale of ordinary people’s morality), and Neofascism (fascism of the neo-cons to conquer the world regardless of the cost to anyone else), and Atheofascism (fascism of godless atheists who seem to be in the majority among the imperialists du jour who play realpolitik with other peoples’ blood), and last but not least, Uberfascism (fascism of all the Nietzscheian supermen in all cultures who think they are better than human beings and can run rough-shod upon ordinary mortals as their ‘god-given’ primacy imperative), in your own backyards in this holy “War on terror” - the ‘highest order bits’ upon which the real ‘page faults’ (in computer science geek-speak) - and the threat of ‘Islamofascism’ 20,000 miles away will automatically melt away without spending an additional dime as the insignificant and dependent ‘lower order bit’.
Indeed, ‘Islamofascism’ will magically disappear from the international scene just as it was deliberately brought into existence by “God on your side” with people in foreign ’suits and ties’ as noted in this open letter to the veritable ‘ubermensch’ Middle East Scholar Daniel Pipes.
Then we shall be left with the more harmless and normative struggle for Renaissance within cultures and societies - a social struggle normal for every generation in every epoch as human beings attempt to keep up with the ‘modernity’ of their times and continually attempt to overcome their demons of history and its concomitant cultural baggage - as opposed to the fabricated ’synthetic terror’ that is criminally and most audaciously being cultivated for “imperial mobilization” today!
To rationally and efficaciously eradicate the synthetic curse of the ‘islamofascists’ and the attendant suicide bombers, requires first and foremost, to nullify with extreme and ruthless prejudice, its highest level gardeners, and their deliberate aiders and abettors and exponents in all guises. The weeds, without its deft cultivation and nurturing, will die out in due course. It is a monumental crime against humanity to kill the weed with the most inhuman ’shock and awe’ and blithely call the shattering of the tabula rasa of innocent civilians surrounding them ‘collateral damage’, while leaving not only their mastermind covert-patrons to cultivate more, but the very act of ’shock and awe’ in itself being its rather obvious deft cultivator. If someone ever kills my loved ones in a ’shock and awe’ as ‘collateral damage’, they better kill me too, or in my abject insanity, I will surely loose my gift of being a human being first and become the worst criminal – an easy recruit for a gardener! Let me know if there is another human being on this planet who would remain immune from such insanity. In the statistical law of large numbers, one can harvest a thousand a day!
And what of the so called ‘misanthropic’ statements or doctrines in the Islamic scriptures? Well, let’s begin with the far more blatantly misanthropic and tortuous content in the Rabbinical Talmudic literature first as noted by the Jewish ‘native informants’ themselves, shall we? Followed surely by the Zionist and Christian Zionist doctrinal literature of hate and ‘Armageddon’, and then of course the neo-cons’ blatantly chauvinistic ‘American Mein-Kampfs’ in duplicate and triplicate editions. Surely the Islamic literature must also not escape full-spectrum scrutiny-in-context either. If there are doctrines in ‘Islamic’ literature which are misanthropic, as in any influential doctrinal system, let’s expunge them, for any god that is selective, racist, particularistic, misanthropic, iniquitous, and preaches hateful doctrines of ‘primacy’ and ‘might makes right’, can only be man-made and therefore, can easily be eradicated in the ‘civilized’ modernity du jour!
Thus we should be able to not only equitably excise all such misanthropic garbage in all fascist doctrines - be they emanating from the minds of White House National Security Council, or from the penmanship of imperial thinkers, or the crooked fingers of mullahs, priests, and rabbis and the assorted self-righteous ‘ubermensch’ deviants of all stripes - but also charge their authors and exponents, whether alive or dead, and whether self-proclaimed prophets, presidents, emperors, professors, editors, think tankers, journalists, or national security advisers, as the worst monumental criminals to ever poison mankind’s thoughts and acts and thus accordingly deposit the living among them into Guantanamo Bay with full military ‘enemy-combatant’ protocol.
For good measure, we can pass equitable global laws outlawing all misanthropic doctrines, be they practiced by the Jews, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Neo-cons, Hindus, Europeans, Americans, Free Masons, et. al.
Indeed, to equitably identify, adjudicate, and suitably consign all such forms of hateful doctrinal fascism and their fascist exponents who continually hide behind ‘legal cover’ of powerful nations, a radical free-thinking dialog algorithm is proposed in “Dialog Among Civilizations: Whytalksfail?“.
I suspect most everyone with an ounce of moral imagination would subscribe to such equitable distribution of collateral language and agree for a perpetual ‘holy jihad’ against all fascism. Even the erstwhile ZioNeoConoFascist literati cabal who possess imagination by the bucketful - moral or not - and love ‘perpetual war’, will surely join in. Nothing inspiringly new or terribly profound here beyond simple self-evident moral truths and obvious empiricism!
And the only point of rehearsing this ad nauseam by the non-fascists is because the manifest Machiavellian deceit is also rehearsed ad nauseam by the ‘ubermensch’ fascists and their academic exponents who are almost always beyond the pale of any ‘earthly’ justice system. To take down and refute one sentence of their lie almost takes 10 paragraphs. And they blithely go on synthesizing new ones - as an infinite number of lies are possible on any topic - all it takes is some Straussian imagination. And to bring to book even a single one of these monumental criminals seems to require the ‘victors’ justice’ and an unconditional surrender in an Apocalyptic World War!
Okay, so having done all that hard intellectual work, i.e., dispelled the myths, unraveled the deceptions, and identified all the terror philosophies in ancient texts and their modern exponents, then what? Who will equitably implement the actual excising of these doctrines from among mankind?
We are merely defenseless civilians, we don’t possess vast armies of conquest, or even for our self-defense against the fascists, nor ‘WMDs’, nor other means of initiating détente through any ‘MAD’ checks! And nor do we have any resources to reach the mainstream audience in the world’s most powerful ‘populist democracy’ who are indeed the accomplice prime-movers of this ‘imperial mobilization’ by virtue of their zombie-like ‘United We Stand’ as ‘Good Germans’ behavior of continually ‘looking from the side’, as atrocities upon atrocities upon the ordinary ‘lesser’ human beings continue to mount while the ‘populist democracy’ stays veritably busy pursuing its “American Dreams”!
So one mostly ends up preaching to the equally impotent choir - with some cheerleading here and there - and then all of us go home after a day’s worth of hard loquacious workout on the treadmill of in-efficacious protests as noted in “History is great fun to rehearse - what does it do for us today?” and in this open challenge of courage thrown to Amnesty International, USA.
What has changed since October 7, 2001 when Afghanistan was bombed into pre-history and today 6 years later? Iraq was still bombed in the interim! And this time around, Iran may be bombed with Nuclear Weapons! And us, the so called ‘voice of conscience’, are still occupied dispelling and unraveling the lies ad infinitum - while Muslims across the world continue to die in large numbers from ZioCon inspired American and British peoples’ own horrendous weapons of mass destruction bought and paid for by the American and British tax payers! It’s better to not mention the soldiers of economic conscription also needlessly dying at the behest of their masters wrapped in the false flag of patriotism, for they are, after all, bombing and killing another peoples on their own indigenous land and are thus the aggressors. They do have the choice to say no! I’ll be content mentioning only their victims, for those are my peoples as human beings first - regardless of their race and religion and nationality.
As per the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, all blame for aggression, and for “all the evil that follows”, is laid upon those who initiate the first aggression. Yes even under the euphemistic but well worn mantra of “preemptive self-defense” - an idea deftly exploited by Hitler as he went in search and annexation mission for his ‘Lebensraum’ that caused the destruction of much of Europe, most of it due to Allied bombing of civilian centers to free the European cities from the clutches of the occupiers! Before you send your precious sons and daughters off to fight the fictional “War on Terror” - do remember these veritable lessons of ‘victor’s justice’ subsequently enshrined into International Law not too long ago!

Atlantic Free Press - Hard Truths for Hard Times - Islamofascism - Zionofascism - Judeofascism - Christofascism - Neofascism etc.

JAKARTA, June 25 (Reuters) - Indonesia’s former President Abdurrahman Wahid on Wednesday slammed government restrictions on a controversial Islamic sect and urged the “silent majority” of moderate Muslims to speak out in defence of religious tolerance.
Under pressure from hardline groups, the government issued a ministerial decree this month that stopped short of banning the Ahmadiyya, while warning that followers could face five years in jail for tarnishing religion.
“Now the fundmantalists demand that the Ahmadiyya movement, one sect of Islam, must be disbanded. But I think it’s only the first step. After that, they will make further demands,” Wahid told Reuters in an interview in his office in the country’s largest Muslim organisation.
“You ban Ahmadiyya, then you ban the Shi’ites, Christians, Buddhists,” said Wahid, who is still a key figure in the Nahdlatul Ulama, a Muslim group with some 40 million members.
Indonesia’s commitment to freedom of belief has been put to the test in recent weeks with the government’s handling of the Ahmadiyya sect.
Indonesia is the world’s most-populous Muslim country but its constitution protects freedom of religion, and it has sizeable Christian, Hindu and Buddhist communities.
The government has come under increasing pressure from hardline and some mainstream Muslim groups to outlaw Ahmadiyya, whose followers do not accept the Prophet Mohammad as Islam’s final prophet and who say their founder is a prophet and messiah.
Members of Indonesia’s main Muslim groups “are too passive in my view,” Wahid said, adding “the silent majority, that’s us.”
Wahid, who was Indonesia’s president from 1999 to 2001, said that hardline groups were not representative of the country’s largely moderate population and that the government was wrong to cave in to their demands over Ahmadiyya and other issues.
“These fundamentalists number only a little, but they are well organised, disciplined. It’s important to realise that the fundamentalists are on their last breath of life.”
Mosques and buildings belonging to Ahmadiyya, which is estimated to have anywhere from 200,000 to two million followers in Indonesia, have been attacked in recent months.
On June 1, the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), a militant group, also provoked a public outcry when it beat up women and elderly people at a peaceful rally held to celebrate freedom of religion and tolerance for Ahmadiyya.
“The government should be strong, it should ban FPI,” said Wahid, who promotes moderate Islamic thought, democratic reform, and religious pluralism through the Wahid Institute, a Jakarta-based nonprofit organisation led by his daughter Yenni Wahid.

INTERVIEW-Former Indonesian president urges religious tolerance | Reuters

The Barack Obama campaign rejected help from Muslim congressman Keith Ellison during the Democratic primary, the New York Times reported this week. Ellison, an African-American who was raised as a Catholic, converted to Islam in college. What’s the deal with black Muslims—are they Sunnis or Shiites or something else?

Most are Sunnis, if they care to make the distinction. A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center found that among the several million Muslims in America, 20 percent are native-born African-Americans. Among those black Muslims, half identified themselves as Sunni—as Ellison does—and another third said they had no affiliation. There are a handful of predominantly black Shiite mosques in the United States, though they represent a small minority of all black Muslims. Another small percentage belongs to the Nation of Islam, an independent Muslim movement that has had strained relations with the mainstream Islamic community. Estimates of the Nation of Islam’s membership vary from 10,000 to 200,000 with most guesses falling near the low end.

Decisions to identify as “Sunni” may reflect the desire of some black Muslims to differentiate themselves from the Nation of Islam rather than from Shiites or other Muslim sects. Muslims born in the United States are less likely than those from other parts of the world to identify with the Sunni-Shiite divide. And “Sunni” may be a default choice for some people, since it describes 85 percent of all Muslims in the world. Many of those black Muslims who do happen to identify themselves as Shiite were inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution; younger American Shiites might have been exposed to the sect of Islam during study-abroad programs.

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There are some cultural differences between African-American Muslims and other Islamic groups in the United States. While nearly all self-identified Muslims in America adhere to the five pillars of Islam, imams at predominantly black mosques tend to deliver longer sermons and are more likely to have other employment, experts say. Imams who preach to immigrant communities are more likely to be supported wholly by the mosque and are often brought in from abroad.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer .

Explainer thanks Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Jamillah Karim of Spelman College, Lawrence H. Mamiya of Vassar College, and Anthony B. Pinn of Rice University.

Do black Muslims in America identify as Sunni or Shiite? - By Chris Wilson - Slate Magazine

Fight Taliban, But Not With Weapons

How do you negotiate a truce with scattered bands of thuggish bandits fighting not for secular objectives but for religious fundamentalism? Let Afghanistan’s elected government fight them. Negotiating a truce with a diverse groups of guerrillas will only undermine the Karzai government’s authority and leave people increasingly skeptical of the power of the central government. With the U.S. preoccupied with the war in Iraq in this election year, and EU countries worried about Iran’s nuclear program, this is the worst time to consider beefing up troop reinforcements in Afghanistan. Besides, the problem is complicated by Pakistan’s ambiguous attitude toward the Taliban; Islamabad has skillfully used them to bargain more military aid from the US and to keep the warring tribes (including rival Taliban factions) quarreling with each other so that it can influence Afghanistan’s strategic future.

Let’s now turn the tables on Pakistan and ask it to send troops to fight in the Afghan war if it wants military and economic aid from the US to continue: after all, Pakistani ISI military intelligence played a big role during the Cold War in arming the mujahedeen that today constitute the Taliban leadership. The Karzai government will strongly resist Pakistan’s involvement, of course, but then it will give it an additional motivation to shape up and clean up its own house without depending on outside forces.

The Taliban thrives on ignorance and indigence of local populace. In order to win the war against the Taliban, the Karzai government should open up more roads, build more schools and housings, start more television stations, supply more electricity, and create more urban centers — i.e., focus more on economic projects to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan interior. The answer is not to bring in more foreign troops.

In today’s war against Islamofascism, there’s no stronger weapon than the free flow of information from the outside world. Show pictures of how a fellow Muslim country like Turkey or Malaysia is doing, or of how the once impoverished countries like India and China are advancing. It will be a much more potent weapon than the barrel of a gun.

Please e-mail PostGlobal if you’d like to receive an email notification when PostGlobal sends out a new question.

Shim Jae Hoon at PostGlobal: Fight Taliban, But Not With Weapons - PostGlobal at washingtonpost.com

Facing the most challenging and dangerous time in our history, American voters in this year’s presidential election can ill afford to put in office a leader lacking foreign policy experience.  Our next president must understand at the outset much of the world’s turmoil today, whether it is Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, etc., originates in Iran — either directly or through proxies.

Presumed Democratic Party presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made clear, when a questioner proposed meetings with leaders such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions, his ignorance of these nations and their leaders.   He reasoned, “that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding principle of this administration — is ridiculous.” Even fellow Democrat Senator Joe Biden found fault with this approach, stating Obama gave the wrong answer.  Since then the Illinois senator has fuzzed up his previously, unambiguous declaration, saying some low-level preparation would first have to be done.  Obama also suggests even President John F. Kennedy was willing to talk to the Soviets without preconditions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, avoiding war by doing so.
Obama’s JFK analogy conveniently omits two important points:  it was Kennedy’s perceived weakness that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis; it was not his negotiation talents that extracted him from it.
When Kennedy took office in January 1961, the Kremlin was unsure of the metal of the Free World’s new leader.  They did not have to wait long to find out.  Less than three months into his term, Kennedy made a tremendous foreign policy blunder.  Having approved a CIA plan to invade Cuba and topple Fidel Castro, having promised US air support to the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion force critical to its success, the young and inexperienced US president panicked at the last moment.  As more than a thousand anti-Castro fighters stormed Cuban beaches, Kennedy withdrew the promised air support.  Almost the entire force was killed or captured. 
It was the absence of Kennedy’s backbone in the Bay of Pigs invasion that then led to the Cuban Missiles Crisis the following year.  Emboldened by Kennedy’s earlier misadventure, the Soviets secretly positioned missiles in Cuba — drastically reducing US response time in the event of a missile launch by Moscow.  This led to a test of wills between Moscow and Washington that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war. 

It was high-stakes poker. The Soviets were ultimately forced to back down, but not because of Kennedy’s courage.  Unsure whether Moscow was willing to go to war, Kennedy was able to see what cards the Soviets held.  A courageous Russian spy working for Washington in Moscow by the name of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky provided Kennedy with his answer.  Kennedy bluffed his way through the crisis.  The information later cost Penkovsky his life. 

Inexperience and naivete in the White House would come back to haunt the US again seventeen years after the Bay of Pigs disaster.  An American public anxious for change voted into office a US president whose later actions paved the way for Iran’s Ahmadinejad. 
As civil unrest hit Iran in 1979, Jimmy Carter pressured Tehran’s pro-US Shah to abandon his country to a man Carter believed to be Islam’s Mahatma Gandhi — the Ayotollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  This “Gandhi” turned out to be more like Attila the Hun. Khomeini embarked upon a purge grander than the reign of terror introduced by the French Revolution’s Robespierre almost two centuries earlier.  Carter’s naivete provided Islamic extremism with a national flag and a breeding ground for exporting Islamofascism abroad and into the 21st century.  America’s reward for Carter’s assistance was the seizure of the US embassy and hostages there, followed by Tehran’s designation of the US as the “Great Satan.”
We have been in a perpetual and undeclared war with Iran ever since.
It is interesting to note Iran has behaved only when it perceived a forceful American president occupied the office.  Within hours after Ronald Reagan took the oath, our hostages in Iran were released.  Similarly, as the US prepared to invade Iraq in 2003, the Iranians toed the line out of fear the invasion may not stop there.  It is doubtful the Iranians will perceive as “forceful” a US president who is on record as saying he will meet them sans any preconditions.
Of course, the Iranians already knew, from Obama’s earlier actions, he would be a weak-kneed leader.  They gained this insight last year when Obama refused to vote for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which sought to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — the organization of holy Islamic warriors that has left its violent footprint throughout the region — on the grounds it constituted “saber-rattling.”  Color as “weak” — from Iran’s viewpoint, and ours — any US leader who refuses to officially label a terrorist group as “terrorists.”
Even our European allies are concerned about Obama’s stance towards Iran. While it has been difficult to present a unified front, on one point all agree — no direct talks with Tehran unless it first suspends its nuclear enrichment program.  This demand has been enshrined in every UN resolution passed on the issue.  If anything, European leaders are even more hard-lined on this precondition due to all the lies and delays by Iran over the years.  Meanwhile, Obama disparages the multilateral process in approaching Iran and the European contribution.  His position will not endear him to our European allies.
Ignoring the fact the only times Iranian extremists reigned in their adventurism was in the face of US resolve, Obama believes he, as president, is capable of talking rationally with an Iranian leadership incapable of doing so.  It is inexperience that causes one to boast he can do what three-decades of domination by theocratic extremism in Iran’s leadership and the failure of the international community in

Islamic Extremism for Dummies - HUMAN EVENTS

Women in a northern Malaysian city ruled by conservative Islamists are being urged by the city’s authorities to forsake bright lipstick and noisy high-heels “to preserve their dignity and avoid rape”.

Pamphlets have been distributed recommending that Muslim women shun heavy makeup and loud shoes. The municipal officials in Kota Bharu, capital of Kelantan state, which is run by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party, stressed that the code was merely advice for women who wish to follow the “Islamic way”.

The party’s brand of Islam - mocked by Malaysian liberals as “Taliban lite” - has already decreed that supermarkets must have separate checkout lines for men and women. Couples caught sitting too close together on park benches are hunted down by the city’s moral enforcers and fined up to £285 in the city’s sharia courts.

A directive on dress a decade ago decreed that Muslim women must wear non-transparent headscarves that cover the chest, along with loose-fitting, long-sleeved blouses. There are fines of up to £75 and as many as 20 women are punished for breaking the rule every month.

Azman Mohamad Daham, a spokesman for the municipality, said: “Our minimum guideline is they must wear headscarves.” The goal of the modesty drive was to prevent rape and safeguard the women’s dignity, he said.

Forsake lipstick ‘to avoid rape’ | World news | The Guardian

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Abul Kasem, an ex-Muslim who is the author of hundreds of articles and several books on Islam including, Women in Islam. He was a contributor to the book Leaving Islam – Apostates Speak Out as well as to Beyond Jihad: Critical Views From Inside Islam. He writes from Sydney, Australia and can be reached at nirribilli@gmail.com.

FP: Abul Kasem, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Kasem: Thank you Jamie.

FP: We’re here today to discuss how many Muslims consider themselves to be victims of oppression vis-à-vis the West. Let’s begin our conversation with this question: What is the Islamic definition of oppression?

FP: Ask any Islamist this question and he will certainly provide answers such as: Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia….and so on. Think carefully, how true these statements are. In fact, if one takes the trouble to read the blood-soaked history of Islam, one could not help wondering why this label of oppression not be imposed on Islam itself? The unprovoked, savage invasions by the Bedouin Arabs, to subjugate, at the point of swords, the people of Iraq, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Armenia, Cyprus, Sicily, Crete, Spain, Afriqiya (north Tunisia), India to their fascistic/Arab imperialism (peddled as Islam) demonstrate a naked truth—that it was Islam that started this oppression.

Therefore, the charge that the Islamic mayhem in the current world is due to what is happening (read oppression) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chechnya are just sham pretensions by the Islamists, the ideological gurus of the Islamist terrorists and the suicide bombers. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey and France have none of their soldiers fighting in Iraq, yet these countries are not immune from the Islamist terrorists’ attack. Did you ever wonder why? Not being satisfied with the campaign of unremitting terror in the infidel territories, the Islamist terrorists even have to terrorize the innocent people of Islamic Paradises.

FP: So what is the psychology behind the Muslim belief that Islam is being oppressed?

Kasem: This fact is: Islam is grossly offended/oppressed by any un-Islamic moves of the infidels/not-so-good Muslims (like the Islamic Paradises I just listed). This is simply because these Islamists audaciously believe that Islam is the only religion into which each and every person on this planet must be subjected to by hook or by crook—using terror, force and slaughter, if need be. They have the Qur’an solidly backing them up. This is the major theme of the Qur’an. This belief, for instance, was eloquently supported by the cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika in an interview with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in November 2005. The spiritual leader of the Victorian terror cell, Benbrika made the following statement: “I am telling you that my religion doesn’t tolerate other religion. It doesn’t tolerate. The only one law which needs to be spread, it can be here or anywhere else has to be Islam.”

FP: Provide us some verses from the Qur’an that support what this imam said.

Kasem: Sure, and feel free to click here to verify the documentation for these verses.

The only religion is the religion of Allah, Islam…16:52

Muslims (Islam) are the best of righteous people…3:110

Allah has perfected Islam and it is the only religion for mankind (last verse revealed, and so, the final word of Allah disclosed to Muhammad)…5:3

Islam is the perfect religion; it will dominate all other religions…9:33

Can’t worship anything other than Allah; Islam is the only right religion (the purpose of an Islamic state)…12:40

There is only one God (Allah) and all should bow to Islam…21:108

Allah proclaims Islam (the religion of truth) over all other religions…48:28

Allah has sent Muhammad to proclaim the ‘Religion of Truth’ (Islam) over all religions…61:9

FP: So tell us what happens to those people who, despite the call to convert to Islam, do not follow suit?

Kasem: In the language of the Qur’an, they are worse than animals, believe it or not. Here is how the Holy Qur’an grades the Kafirs (infidels).

The worst of beasts in the sight of Allah are the deaf and dumb (unbelievers) who do not understand Islam…8:22

FP: And what must be done to the worst of beasts?

Kasem: The sword must be used on those who refuse to convert to Islam or deviate from Islam. The Islamists, of course, emphasize that: ‘Islam means peace’, ‘there is no compulsion in religion’, ‘killing one person is killing the entire mankind’, and so on. Because of such deliberate misleading propaganda by the cunning, crafty and sly Islamists and their bogies of western apologists of Islam, one might find it hard to believe easily that there could be anything in the Qur’an but unbound ‘peace’, incessant ‘love’ and boundless ‘mercy’ for the infidels. Sadly, to the disappointment of these gullible unbelievers, the Qur’an, in many verses, categorically exhorts the true believers to use force preemptively to convert the unbelievers to Islam. Here is a sample verse:

Allah sent down iron as a material for war and for other benefits; whoever deviates from Islam is to be brought back with iron (i.e. with force, meaning use iron (sword) to force people to Allah’s religion)…57:25

And when all efforts to persuade the Kafirs to convert to Islam have failed, or when the unbelievers resort to rejecting Islam openly, Islam stipulates that they be crucified or maimed. Read this verse from Allah:

Punishment for waging war against Allah (i.e. the unbelievers who reject Islam) and His messenger is execution (beheading) or crucifixion or cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides or exile from the land…5:33

FP: What do you say to those who argue that these verses are applicable only in war situations, when Islam and its founder, Muhammad (or Muslims) are/were attacked in a physical fight?

Kasem: Perish this thought, if you want to learn about ‘real Islam’. The words, ‘waging war’, in the above verse has very little to do with real combat (like Iraq, Afghanistan). Any action, activity, remark, gesture, words, sound, utterance, look, manner, habit, conduct, style and so on, which are not in conformity with pure Islamic percepts are considered as blasphemous or ‘waging war’.

Thus, even the slightest criticism of Islam, Muhammad, Qur’an or Sharia, verbally or in writing, might be treated as gross violations of Islamic tenets. These acts are absolutely blasphemous, and are punishable by death (by beheading, the Islamic method of slaughter).

The conclusive proof of this dreadful provision is the appalling blasphemy laws enacted by most of the Islamic Paradises. This is the meaning of freedom of thought in Islam—the freedom to mete out capital punishment to those who dare to mildly criticize Islam, in any manner whatsoever. If anyone still has any suspicion about this, let them consult the blasphemy law of any Islamic states, which complies one-hundred-percent with the Qur’anic verse I quoted.

FP: Share with us some activities, manners, social customs, traditions and the daily way of life, which non-Muslims take for granted, but which are extremely un-Islamic

and that according to Islamic morals, customs and laws are offensive activities/practices that can be construed as oppressive to Islam. They therefore become legitimate targets for eradication — or they must be swiftly replaced by Islamic practices or Islamic purification.

Kasem: Sure, I can give you many examples. And before I do, it is important to stress the following: the very small number of Islamists currently occupying (the Islamists think that Allah has sent them to infidel lands to conquer it) the infidel lands (camouflaged as economic migrants or political asylum seekers or refugees) will fight tooth-and-nail, legally or politically, covertly or overtly to remove such un-Islamic practices from the infidel lands which they have occupied (migrated for Islamic occupation). They would, whenever possible, incessantly lobby the simple and fair-minded Kafir politicians to enact Islamic laws as a replacement for those infidel customs, traditions and values. In their language, this process of Islamisation by stealth is called ‘elimination of vices and promotion of virtues’—a secret method of inuring the infidels into Islamic imperialism.

So here is how Islam is oppressed by the unbelievers:

* The infidels do not submit to Allah despite repeated warnings to them. This is the highest form rebellion by the Kafirs and undoubtedly, is an extreme form of oppression to Islam.

* The infidel women go to swim in the beaches wearing bikini. Allah is greatly offended by such outrageous conduct of Islamically impure infidel women.

* The Kafir nations vehemently condemn Islamic stoning in Islamic Paradises. Islamic penal code is written by Allah, how could the infidels condemn such a divine, merciful penal system? Allah is surely angry with the infidels.

* The Kafirs’ law court incarcerates Islamic rapists, but, who, according to Islam, has the inalienable right to have unlimited sex with infidel women, no question asked. As per Islam, these infidel women (Islamically, all western women, who do not dress/conduct themselves as per Islamic/Bedouin custom are harlots, sluts and prostitutes and all infidels are incestuous, believe it or not) are Islamic captives.

* To protect its innocent citizens from the genocide of the Islamist terrorists, the Kafirs pass anti-terror laws, but the Islamists believe it is their basic Islamic right to terrorize the infidels. The anti-terror law is oppression to Islam, as this law violates the Qur’anic injunction of casting terror in the hearts of the unbelievers.

* An infidel woman gives birth out-of-wedlock and she is treated fairly by the social security system of the harami (repugnant) Kafir. This oppresses Islam, as this woman must be stoned to death, as per pure, unadulterated Islam. The infidels are not respecting the sanctity of Islam.

* An infidel woman goes out of her house without hijab. This is oppression to Islam, as this violates the Qur’nic injunction that women must stay at home at all time and serve their husbands. In case she has to be out, she must seek her husband’s permission and must be ‘covered’, from head to toe.’

* Violating the Qur’an and Hadis, Kafir men and women patronize pubs and drink wine and liqueur. Islamic punishment of forty lashes is not meted out for such naked un-Islamic indulgence. To further anger the Muslims, during Ramadan, the Kafirs heartily eat and jubilantly drink publicly, in open view of the Muslims. This, of course is an unpardonable Islamic offence, as the infidels show no sensitivity/respect for the best religion on earth.

* An unmarried Kafir woman engages in de-facto relationship with a man. This offends the migrant Muslims, but despite much harangue from the Islamist moralists, the Kafirs refuse to change their law of personal freedom. This (the unbridled mixing of opposite sexes), is certainly a gross oppression to Islamic faith.

* The infidel’s local council prohibits the use of loud speakers to broadcast the melodious tune of Azan (the Islamic prayer call). This is the violation of Islamic right of noise pollution, and, therefore is a gross tyranny upon Islam.

* Harami Kafirs enact law banning hijab in public schools. This angers the Islamists, as it amounts to flagrantly violating the Qur’an, and hence is oppressive to Islam.

* The Kafirs refuse to pay jizyah (special privileges to the Arab Bedouins/Muslims). In modern times, this jizya is in the form of special privileges to the Muslims (for example, Bumiputra/Malay/Muslim policy in Malaysia, reservation of places for the Muslims in Kafirs’ Universities, special concession on employment policies, affirmative policies exclusively designed for the incompetent Muslims…and so on). Non-payment of jizya tax is a gross violation of the holy Qur’an and is oppression to Islam.

* When, for security reasons and to apprehend the suspected terrorists of peaceful Islam, America, the Great Satan, requires all visitors to the United States to be photographed, fingerprinted and biometrically registered, it offends real Islam.

* When the infidels and in-name-only Muslims patronize a theatre to enjoy a stage drama, Islam is gravely hurt, as this vilely violates the basic tenets of the Qur’an—no idol worshipping. Ditto for patronizing cinema houses. Acting in a drama/and or watching this performance is abhorrently un-Islamic. In Bangladesh, bombs are thrown in such premises, as visiting stage drama and enjoying a movie is oppressive to Islam.

* When you quote those murderous verses from the Holy Qur’an it oppresses Islam. Embarrassing Allah /Islamists is a great offence.

* When you quote those anti-feminist and misogynist hadis from Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim and Sunaan Abu Dawud, Allah gets slighted.

* When you expose that Islam allows unlimited sex with maid-servants (sex-slaves) and infidel women. These provisions are Qur’anic, so they are above any discussion.

* When the police embarks on a clean-up operation in an Islamic enclave in a Kafirland. This action violates the incontrovertible rights of the Islamist terrorists to frighten the infidels—an absolute Islamic right enshrined by Allah in the Qur’an.

* When the Kafir government disallows Sharia law to be enforced for the Muslims living in a Kafirland. Allah’s law supercedes all man-made laws, how could the abhorrent infidels annoy Allah?

·* When, through earthquake and Tsunami, Allah tests His believers in Islamic Paradises and the Kafir’s aid is delayed due to the poor/non-existence of logistical supports in those Islamic Paradises. Infidels must attend immediately to the Muslims’ plight—this is also a form of jizya on the unbelievers.

* When you disclose that the prophet of Islam, Muhammad (pbuh), had between nine to twenty official wives and at least one sex-slave. Allah is angry when you discuss Muhammad’s intimate private life—a violation of Islamic privacy.

* When the harami freethinkers disclose that the 52-year-old Prophet (pbuh) of mercy married a six-year-old girl and had sex with her when she turned nine. See above for the reason.

* When the ‘Islam bashers’ reveal that Hazrat Omar (Allah’s mercy be upon him) married a four-year-old baby-girl when he was around 54-55 years old. See above for reason.

* When the devilish Islamphobes divulge that Hazrat Ali (Allah’s mercy be upon him) used to have sex with captive women, routinely, even when he was married to Fatima, Muhammad’s dearest daughter. Those who embarrass the Khulafa Rashedin (the rightly guided caliphs) embarrass Allah. Allah will not forgive them

* When the infidels learn from the writing of the Muslim apostates that Muslims must not be friendly with the Jews and the Christians and the unbelievers. When the Qur’an has decreed certain matters, it is a great offence to discuss about them.

* The Kafirs in Kafirland, instead of adopting the Islamic values of the myopic Muslim community in their midst, urge the Islamists to respect multiculturalism. This is an affront to Islam. According to Islam, these Kafirs (read animals) must adopt pristine Islamic values, and not the other way round.

* The Kafirs do not learn Arabic, the language of Allah/Islam, but instead, urge the Islamist immigrants to learn the language of their adopted country and try to integrate. Allah is offended when the Kafirs do not learn the language (Arabic) of His Scripture.

* The western/infidel civilization refuses to adopt Bedouin/Arab culture. Instead, sticks to their own decadent, petrified, immoral, corrupt, lascivious way of life. Islam is oppressed when the Muslims, the best creation of Allah have to witness, with their open eyes, such blatant depravity and transgression. After all, Islam came to purify the world, but the infidels steadfastly refuse to comply. This is oppression to Islam

* Peaceful Islam is not allowed to preach hateful sermons by the clerics living in infidel territories. This is a gross of violation Islamic human rights, of freedom to preach hatred for the infidels, since this right has been fully enshrined in the Qur’an, the constitution of Allah.

* Kafirs deport/cancel visa of firebrand clerics who exhort, in Friday congregations, jihad and murder of the infidels. Read above why Islam is oppressed for such an action of the Kafir.

* Billboards near Allah’s house (mosques) in Kafirlands brazenly display women’s underwear, bras and lingerie in provocative manner, arousing the sexual passion in the devotees of Allah. This is oppressive to Islam, as Allah does not like to have a look at women’s undergarments and their half-clad body. Allah only looks at hijabi/Burka-clad Muslimahs.

* Islamists living in Haram land pass by a fitness centre and observe infidel women (and men) performing physical exercise wearing sportswear. Offended, the Islamists complain to the local council and advise the authority that during physical fitness chore the women must wear Burka and jilbab, their shiny and sexy thighs and polished legs must be covered inside baggy Islamic trousers, otherwise, the doors and windows of the gym must be covered with black ‘hijab.’ The local council turns down the Muslim request. This is oppressive to Islam.

* The Islamists in Kfirlands go to the local swimming pool and observe men and women practicing swimming together. This is grossly un-Islamic and is oppressive to the Muslims. They ask the local council to open separate swimming pools exclusively for Muslim women and having no access to male visitors. The council turns down their request, which offends the Islamists.

* In Olympic events, women are allowed to compete, in the presence of mixed spectators, in gymnastics, track and field, swimming, beach volleyball, high jump (despicable, because of the possibility of viewing the women’s pudenda), long jump, pole vault…etc., Allah is offended with such display of female flesh in such provocative/erotic manner. The Islamists write lengthy articles and lobby their politicians to ban women from participating in such events. In Islamic Paradises they successfully force the government to ban the telecasting of such ‘pornographic’ events of the International Olympic.

* The infidels enact laws to prevent polygamy; Muslims could no longer acquire four wives at any time. This surely is a gross violation of Islamic rights of Muslim men to acquire four wives at any time, guaranteed by the Qur’an.

* Imams extolling the goodness in beating wives to discipline them are deported from infidel lands. This is a great torment to Islam, as it openly violates the Qur’anic verse which calls to beat women to control them,

* During Christmas gala, party, the Kafir invites his Muslim neighbor and unwittingly serves haram food and wine. The display of haram food and alcoholic drinks to the Muslims is, of course, very offensive. The infidels must not eat and drink haram stuff in the presence of Muslims—it is very odious, Allah becomes angry.

If you have time to spend, I am certain you could find many other actions and traditions of the infidels which are revoltingly offensive to the Muslims, and, therefore, oppressive to Islam. Many of these examples I cite were from my own experience—from the real world. So be prepared to witness many such examples in your land as well.

Keep in mind: the Islamists are prepared to go to any extent to launch their agenda of globalization of Islamic imperialism, which is basically Arab/Bedouin imperialism.

FP: Explain why we should consider Islam as Arab/Bedouin imperialism.

Kasem: The ultimate goal of the Islamists is the creation of a Pan Islamic world, which must be ruled by a caliph (the Islamists call it the Khilafat movement) who will be responsible to enforce Islamic laws (Sharia) globally. So, what are the requirements to be a caliph?—you might ask. According to Islamic law, (ref: Reliance of the Traveler, published by Amana Publications, Bettsville, Maryland, 1999, pp.640-642, law number o25.3) the mandatory qualifications of an Islamic caliph are:

1. must be a Muslim

2. must be a male

3. must be from the Quraysh tribe of the Arabs

4. must be a freeman (i.e., not a slave)

5. must be of sound mind.

This provision of Islamic law means that the world—the Pan Islamic world must be ruled by an Arab (from the Quraysh stock, probably from Saudi Arabia or Jordan) and no one else.

This also means that George Bush, Tony Blair, Jacque Chirac, Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Prime Minister, the Japanese Prime Minister….the most powerful infidel leaders in the world and the no-so-powerful infidel leaders must convert to Islam, declare complete allegiance to the new Arab/Quraysh caliph and become this Arab caliph’s governors. If they do not comply with such Islamic demand then they must be removed by terror, intimidation and force.

I hope by this time you clearly comprehend why the Islamist terrorists do what they do around the globe. The Islamists are absolutely serious in their goal—the Islamic caliphate, and to assist them there is no shortage of Arab charity money to finance their strategy and operations. This is the reason why the Islamists, the Islamist terrorists, the Jihadists and the Islamist apologists have no shortage of funds—the Arab/oil money is aplenty to finance the establishment of a super Arab (Islamic) kingdom. This is what I mean by Arab Imperialism when I say that “Islam is Arab/Bedouin imperialism.”

FP: And so the conflict will not just go away?

Kasem: Terrified, threatened and in panic, the unbelievers might want to know when this Islamic madness might end. I am afraid there is bad news for them. The war against the infidel world is a perpetual war. Islam divides the entire world/humanity into two—the world of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the world of warfare (Dar al-Harb). These two worlds are in permanent confrontation, until Islam replaces the current civilization with its own version, the Islamic Caliphate. This is what Samuel Huntington had ominously postulated in his classic work, The Clash of Civilizations. This inevitable clash is now on us, make no mistake on this.

FP: Can you provide some Qur’anic verses that clearly divide the civilization into two categories: Islamic and un-Islamic, and declare perpetual war against the infidels?

Kasem: Sure. Here are two:

Believers fight for Allah, unbelievers fight for evil, so fight against the friends of Satan (this verse literally divides the into two camps—the world of Islam and the world of unbelief or Kufr; i.e., Dar-al-Islam and Dar-al-Harb) …4:76

Those who resist Allah and Muhammad will be humiliated (i.e. Islam, for ever, is at war with the infidels)…58:20

FP: So what are our conclusions?

Kasem: As exemplified from the most authentic source of Islam (Qur’an), Islam truly is intolerant to any idea/faith which does not endorse it as the only religion for mankind. Any action/deed which is against the Qur’an is certainly oppressive to Islam. Once we understand this fascistic and imperialistic nature of Islam, the fight against the Islamist terrorism becomes quite simple and straightforward. It (the Islamic terrorism) is not at all a political war—it is an ideological war, truly, the collision of culture and civilization. But, in contrast to the battle among various civilizations, as hypothesized by Samuel Huntington, this clash is between two worlds—the word of Islam and the world of Kufr or unbelief. Let the PC politicians pay heed to what the cleric I cited earlier said. He is 100% Muslim and 0% politician/hypocrite.

The current world is about to be divided into two camps—the camp of Islam and the camp of infidels, without any third-world between them. Thus, having almost been polarized, a final showdown is gradually shaping up between these two camps. It is just a matter of time when this showdown will result in a massive loss of human lives—both Muslims and non-Muslims, unless correct steps are taken to diffuse this cataclysmic time-bomb.

FP: Abul Kasem, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Kasem: Thank you.

FrontPage Magazine

Why are Muslim countries backward?

Unfortunately, Muslims have not produced their own innovative alternatives, but they have always blamed the Western world or America for their failure
Ali GÜNE?

  A few weeks ago I went to the Hollywood Hotel in the Illidza district of Sarajevo to see my friends who were on a visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina. While our conversation was in progress, an old lady called upon me. Turning back, I saw that three ladies were sitting at a nearby table and speaking Turkish. First, I welcomed them to Sarajevo and then offered them tea and Bosnian coffee to form a better and friendly ground for our further conversation. I asked them why they were in Sarajevo, and they told me that they were on a tour of the Balkans. Later they asked me the same question, and I told them that I was teaching at the International University of Sarajevo.

Turkey on the brink?:

  One of the ladies, with a furious, angry and perturbed face, said to: “Look, my son. Do not go back to Turkey. You are safe and free here. Turkey is moving to an unknown future. The minds of people are confused.” Upon my short question of why, she continued to state: “Economy is going bad. The rate of unemployment is on the rise. What is the worst is that Turkey is becoming like an Arab country, since the headscarf is permitted in Turkish universities; some secondary and high schools allow students to enter school with the headscarf, yet the Ministry of Education does not do anything. Moreover, the government is putting its own people into key posts to transform Turkey gradually into the form of an Arab country or into a Shariah country. I do not feel happy, but worried, in my country.” Then I asked her if there was any pressure upon her way of life, and she answered: “there is nothing at the moment, yet the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is doing it gradually and clandestinely.

  Once the convenient time comes, it will do it.” Finally, she told me that if the AKP’s perception of life or its going back to Islamic roots or tradition is viewed as a true solution, could I tell her “why Muslim or Arab countries are backward and undeveloped?” Like many other radical secularists in Turkey, this lady was not only unhappy with Islam, but also blamed Islam as the sole reason behind backwardness, lack of development and improvement, lack of democracy and freedom. But it is not Islam as a religion which keeps Muslim countries backward and undeveloped. The Islam I know and the Holy Koran I read severely disparages laziness, sluggishness, disorder, muddiness, indifference to and alienation from social life but all the time encourages people to read, learn and think critically. Moreover, there are many hadiths - sayings and teachings of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) - in which the Prophet Mohammed (PBUP) strongly heartens Muslims to seek knowledge wherever it is, emphasizes at all times the superiority of knowledge and scholars and tells that “knowledge or wisdom is the lost property of Muslims, and they can get it wherever they find it” and that “the death of a true scholar is the death of the university”. One can find many other hadiths related to the encouragement and pursuit of science, knowledge, teaching and wisdom in unanimously accepted hadith books, and one of them is Riyazu’s – Salihin. Thus, the Islam I believe in is not the Islam the old lady talked about. 

Islamization or liberalization?:

  As for the Islamization of life in Turkey, moreover, the lady above, like many others in Turkey, is unaware of the reality of Islam in Anatolia when she thinks that Turkey is moving towards a kind of Islamization under the AKP’s rule. The overwhelming majority of the people in Turkey have been already practicing for centuries an Islamic life one way or another which she is now afraid of. Islam has divinely, sociologically and culturally become a reality and entered every strata of Turkish society; it has constructed the whole way of life – it has shaped the way they eat, the way they greet each other, the way they marry, the way they welcome and host their guests, the way they send their sons to the army, the way they wish each other good luck and success, the way they bury their dead and so on. Even when we listen to an atheist in Turkey for a while, we can easily witness her/his uses of many religious words such in?allah (God willing), ma?allah (may God preserve her/him from evil), elhamdulillah (thank God) and so on. Within centuries, this Islamic way of life as well as its discourse has become reality and part of life whether we accept it or not, as in Christianity and Judaism. I think what secularists miss in Turkey is that when the scope of freedom expands under the AKP rule, the people in Turkey – Muslims, non-Muslims and others – have found the chance to express themselves, express their views and display their identities in the way they wish. What has happened so far is that a certain view of identity has been imposed upon the masses by the state ideology, and those who have attempted to act in a different way have been intimidated, frightened, regarded as marginal or fundamentalists on the right and left and eventually accommodated to the official state ideology. It should not be the duty of the state to assign a view of identity to its citizens but help them develop and express their diverse identities by respecting each other.However, when the lady said that Muslim countries are backward and undeveloped, she was also right, and thus Muslim people should make self-criticism about the backwardness of their own countries and analyze carefully the reasons behind it. Those people who regularly listen to news and read newspapers can easily notice that many of Muslim countries, except Turkey, are ruled by authoritarian rulers, monarchies and tribal leaders, who keep their countries under control to sustain their own authority intact. Backwardness, ignorance, tribal conflicts, the imbalance of power and wealth between the ruling elite and the rest of the people, lack of education, corrupt tyrannies and indoctrinations are visibly widespread in Muslim countries.

What goes wrong?:

  Backwardness in a sense becomes a strong means for Muslim leaders not only to keep their extensive authoritarian power as absolute but also to silence the people in a desperate way. As the experts of international relations and historians will tell much in detail, Muslims, from the 19th century to the present time, have been unable to accommodate themselves to new perspectives, conditions and developments, which have enabled particularly Western countries to improve profoundly in science, economy, and technology and so on; they have refused to accept these new perspectives and developments because of their western origins, rather than taking what is useful for them to advance their countries as well as the life-standard of their people. Unfortunately, Muslims have not produced their own innovative alternatives, either, but they have always blamed the Western world or America for their failure. In a sense, it has worked out well so far for some tyrannical Muslim rulers to suppress their people; As a result of backwardness, failure and accusation, therefore, there has been constructed among Muslims a sense of inferiority or a psychological complex of incapability of achieving success in their countries.How can Muslim countries do away with backwardness? First, Muslim countries should get rid of certain cultural dogmas, monarchic, oligarchic, tyrannical and tribal rules, which obviously prevent Muslim countries not only from developing economy and science but also from creating an intellectual atmosphere and culture, in which Muslims become able to discuss, analyze certain issues, produce new perspectives and innovations and accomplish mental broadness in accord with the realities of the contemporary world.

Modernization is key:

  Secondly, Muslim intellectuals and scholars are not free, self-confident and peaceful in their views, but are afraid of writing against what is going wrong in their countries; they are also afraid of suggesting ground-breaking views for the improvement of their countries. Thirdly, Muslim countries should allow modernization to go ahead and create a peaceful free environment for life. In addition, a highly qualified education system, equipped with high technology, should be implemented in Muslim countries in a way that it should compete with the rest of world in its quality in terms of scientific research, critical and analytical thinking. In parallel to this, some research centers should be established not only to increase research activities but also to produce science and technology. Finally, the wealth should not be accumulated in the hands of small number of people, but the rest of society should make use of it as much as possible.

   ………

  Dr. Ali Güne? teaches English literature at the International University of Sarajevo.

Why are Muslim countries backward? - Turkish Daily News Jun 25, 2008

In Germany, Islam is often equated with fundamentalism and fanaticism, a perception that imposes a heavy burden on the country’s 3 million Muslims. Their relationship to Western society is divided between integration and sometimes self-imposed exclusion.

The name of the salon is German — Goldene Finger (Golden Fingers) — but the services it offers are listed in the window in Arabic and Turkish. In the front of the shop, 40-year-old Palestinian Toufic al-Rifae gives men haircuts and trims their beards. Veiled women disappear into a back section behind a curtain, where female hairdressers do their hair and, using thick lines of the traditional Middle Eastern cosmetic preparation known as kohl, apply their makeup in the Arab style.

Diagonally across the street, Ris A, a restaurant specializing in grilled meats, advertises its poultry as “halal,” or slaughtered according to Islamic religious rules. The place is reminiscent of a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant, with its colorful plastic tables and chairs and tiled floor. In an open kitchen in the corner, 72 chickens are being roasted over coals on a large rotating grate. The name of the restaurant, explains the owner, a 35-year-old Lebanese man, “means in Islam: ‘What Allah has bestowed upon me’.”

Al Sundus is a shop specializing in “Arab lingerie,” Arab water pipes, known as shishas, are bubbling away in the El Salam café and neighborhood bakeries sell rectangular cakes coated in white cream or decorated with bright green pistachios. One Middle Eastern business after another lines the northern end of Sonnenallee, a prominent street in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood.

For some, Sonnenallee is a colorful, quirky shopping street. Others refer to it derisively as the Gaza Strip.

Most businesses that are not in the hands of Arabs are Turkish-owned: Mehmet Özçelik’s bakery, which sells sweet baklava; a Turkish Airlines travel agency; the supermarket run by Nazik Balabanoglu and her husband Ergin; the funeral home owned by Mustafa Mutlu, whose employee Islam Cenaze Servisi makes arrangements to send the bodies of deceased Muslims to their native countries or organizes their funerals in an Islamic cemetery (more…) next to the grand Sehitlik Mosque on Berlin’s Columbiadamm Street. The unemployed Turks killing time at the Taxi Café call the neighborhood “Little Istanbul.”

Being able to speak German is not a requirement for daily life in this immigrant neighborhood, where the street scene is one of bearded men wearing knit caps and women in headscarves. Not all businesses are Turkish or Arabic, however. German senior citizens congregate on Tuesdays for dance evenings at Zum Ambrosius, one of Berlin’s traditional corner pubs, which seems exotic in this environment. But even this traditional German establishment was recently purchased by a man of Lebanese descent.

Some would call the souk in downtown Berlin picturesque. The Neukölln Museum, an institution run by the district administration, now offers guided tours through the Muslim “kiez” or “hood.” Abeer Arif, an Iraqi-born German citizen, is in charge of the “Oriental Tour of Discovery.”

But there is also something oppressive and ghetto-like about this Middle Eastern business district in the middle of Germany’s most densely populated Muslim neighborhood.

The Neukölln district is home to 300,000 people, and half of them live in the northern part that Sonnenallee runs through. One-third of Neukölln’s population are immigrants — including about 60,000 Muslims, who are concentrated almost exclusively in the northern section.

There are 20 mosques in Neukölln alone, out of about 80 in all of Berlin. Few of these houses of worship are recognizable as such from the outside. Most are reached through gates or rear courtyards, where former workshops and factory buildings have been converted to prayer rooms with colorful patterned carpets laid out on the floor. Sweets, tea and soft drinks are sold in adjacent shops.

GRAPHICS GALLERY: GERMANY’S MUSLIMS BY THE NUMBERS

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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (12 Photos)

Neukölln, like a specimen under a microscope, is proof positive of something that is slowly dawning on the rest of the country: Islam, this mysterious religion, both fascinating and alarming, has gained a foothold in Germany, which is now home to more than 3 million Muslims. But the close proximity between long-established Germans and outlandish Muslims is also a potential source of conflict, triggering resentment and fear on both sides.

Since the religiously motivated terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, many Germans perceive the faith in Allah principally as a threat. There are growing fears that jihadists will begin launching attacks and suicide bombings in Germany, fears fueled in part by repeated warnings coming from German security agencies (more…). Amid such fears, suspicion is easily extended to include the entirety of the Muslim faithful, despite the fact that there are likely no more than a few hundred Muslims promoting terror in Germany.

These suspicions, in turn, prompt many Muslims to feel excluded and rejected by the German majority. Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble sees this as one of the central challenges of integration policy. “Muslims are part of society and our common future,” Schäuble, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), stressed at a February conference on the image of Islam in Germany. The difficulty, Schäuble pointed out, lies in the public’s growing tendency to equate Islam with fundamentalism and fanaticism.

Muslims in Germany: Life in a Parallel Society - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News