Muslim Heretics Conference

There is a little known article on the web that can be accessed by typing the words “confessions of a british spy” into a search engine.

It concerns a british spy plot to destabilize the Ottoman Empire in the early 1700’s. The article, if genuine (and it appears to be) was translated into english from a Turkish document.

It relates the story of how a young Muslim, Wahhabi, by name was “recruited” by a British spy (Hempher). The purpose of the plot was to cause Muslims to begin fighting amongst themselves and therebye distract the Ottoman authorities from what was really going on. This was to be achieved by corrupting the mainstream Muslim religions.

This man went on to begin the Wahhabi movement in what is now Saudi Arabia. As we all know, that is where the “big bucks” are coming from that support the Muslim extremists that continue to howl for the blood of those who don’t think as they do.

As indicated in that document the relationship between Wahhabi and the tribal chief that protected him during the startup period continues to this day in the modern rulers of that country and the Wahhabi religion..

It is a fascinating “read” in light of what is now happening in the world and if you follow the thought and begin to research other articles on the net, many placed there by Muslims fighting back, you are going to be appalled.

There is a great deal of information available to read and it is well worth the time spent digging for it.

I recommend “confessions of a british spy” to everyone as a great place to start on the path to “enlightenment” regarding peaceful Muslims today and the problems that they face.

As a person who knew absolutely nothing about Muslims before I read this article, it heightened my interest as I began to explore the web. That effort has created an entirely different picture of the current unrest and the reasons for it in my mind.

It may do the same for you.

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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited, before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the Guidelines for Comments.

Daniel Pipes replies:

I devote much attention to this fascinating document in my book, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 211-12. See http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1648. You can see an extract at “The Saga of Hempher, Purported British Spy: an extract from The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy.”

Wahhabism and “Confessions of a British spy” - Reader comments at DanielPipes.org

Quran underscores complete equality

Saturday, September 27, 2008

By Mohammed Elfiki

This article is in response to a column entitled “Sharia law spreads influence,” by Cal Thomas, which you published in July.

Once again, Mr. Thomas is spreading misunderstanding about Islam. He has written a piece that takes a naive view about Sharia law. He has made Islam look like a religion that is against women’s rights. In fact, Islamic law protects women more than any other laws.

The Quran provides clear evidence that woman is completely equated with man in the sight of God in terms of her rights and responsibilities. (”Whoever does good, whether male or female, and he is a believer, we will most certainly make him live a happy life, and we will most certainly give them their reward for the best of what they did.”)

Woman, according to the Quran, is not blamed for Adam’s first mistake. Both were wrong, both repented, and both were forgiven. In one verse, Adam was specifically blamed. (”Then they both ate of it, so their evil inclinations became manifest to them, and they both began to cover themselves with leaves of the garden, and Adam disobeyed his Lord, so his life became evil (to him).”)

Islam gave women a variety of rights 1,400 years ago. In Islamic law, women have an unqualified right to own property, a right that does not change in marriage. She is also free to dispose of her property in any way she likes, without consulting anyone. A Muslim woman is not required to change her maiden name in marriage, a symbolic demonstration that even in marriage, Islam recognizes her independence. It was not until the late 1870s in England (and later elsewhere in Europe) that married women achieved the right to enter contracts and own property.

In most cases in Islamic law, the female’s share of inheritance is half that of the male’s share. However, women are less burdened financially. Men are financially responsible for all the female dependents in the family. Women do not have any financial obligations. Even if the wife is rich, she is not required to spend a penny on the household. The full responsibility for her food, clothing, housing, medication, recreation, etc., is her husband’s.

Domestic violence is rare in a typical Muslim family. Every husband knows that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, never hit a woman in his life. He actually said, “The most perfect believers are the best in conduct, and the best of you are those who are best to their wives.”

In Islam, a woman cannot be forced to marry anyone without her consent. A woman can also marry without parental approval according to the Hanafi school, which is taking place in Muslim countries such as Egypt. When the continuation of marriage relationship is impossible for any reason, men are still taught to seek a gracious end for it.

A divorced woman has the right to custody of the children. If she gets remarried, custody goes to her mother, if she is alive. If not, then custody goes to the mother of the father, then to the adult sisters of the children, then to the aunts.

No wonder three-quarters of those who revert to Islam in a country like Britain are women. No wonder, also, why the most senior judge in England, Lord Phillips, declared Islamic legal principles in Sharia law may be used within Muslim communities in Britain to settle marital arguments and regulate finance.

Mohammed Elfiki, of Syracuse, is a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, and an Islamic studies scholar.

Women and Islam- Syracuse.com

Europe’s Sharia question

A poster in Whitechapel reads: “Shariah the only option for the UK”

In recent weeks, the European Commission and the UK have made apparent concessions to Islamic law, and with confrontations in Cologne over a proposed mosque, the role of Muslims in a future Europe is again in the spotlight, writes Simon Roughneen for ISN Security Watch.

By Simon Roughneen for ISN Security Watch

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Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis made his famous prediction in 2004: “Current trends show that Europe will have a Muslim majority by the end of the 21st century at the latest […]. Europe will be part of the Arab West-the Maghreb.”
Similar claims have been made by other authors, with European countries featuring below-replacement birth rates, while Muslim immigrants and their descendants predicted, in some quarters, to reach over 20 percent of the population of Europe by 2020.
A low fertility rate of 1.47 babies per woman, according to the 2005 estimates for the EU as a whole, is far below the 2.1 needed to keep a population constant, and with newspapers reporting “Muhammed” as the most popular baby’s name in London, the swing toward Mecca has some popular culture branding to match the statistics.  Europe’s Muslim population has tripled in the past 30 years, fuelled by immigration from North Africa, Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
No one knows whether or not he reads Lewis, but not to be outdone, Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gadhaffi speculated in February 2006 that “we have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are other signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe, without swords, without guns, without military conquests. The 50 million Muslims in Europe, will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”
Thus an apparently ineluctable demography suggests that Europe, if it does not automatically become Islamic, will have to reframe its political and social norms to address growing and increasingly assertive Muslim community, which is making its presence felt in Europe’s three largest and most powerful states - Germany, the UK and France, as well as in Belgium, The Netherlands and elsewhere, including Russia, which on current trends will be majority Muslim by 2050.
Multiculturalists believe that Muslims can integrate into Western European culture: As they become wealthier and more assimilated, Muslims will shed vestiges of their imported identity and adopt the ways of their hosts, and a “European Islam” will form. However, with newspaper reports in the UK suggesting that Islamic law, or “Sharia,” was being implemented selectively in various parts of the country, and a dispute over the construction of a mosque in Cologne leaving the city divided after a weekend of riots, the debate around Sharia in Europe, as well as the broader issues of Muslim-Christian relations in Europe, is once more headline news with the prospect of continued division looming.
In many ways, “Muslim-Christian” might be a misnomer. With most Europeans now graphed somewhere along the atheist-secularist-agnostic-lapsed axis, “Muslim-Euroskeptic” might be a better phrase, if the latter epithet had not already been applied to political views critical of the EU. Either way, Islam’s potential in Europe, present and future, might be drawing strength from Western cultural trends, as noted by Muslims elsewhere. The Srinigar-based Greater Kashmir  newspaper published a report summing-up various views on “how Islamic” Europe could possibly become, noting, with reference to the atrophying of Europe’s Christian culture:
“Most observers believe that the fast erosion of the religious and cultural values in the [W]estern societies is pushing its people toward Islam, [which] offers a more comprehensive, well-knit and value-oriented cultural, social and family structure.”
Law of the land vs ‘man-made’
Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani - perhaps the world’s pre-eminent Shi’ite cleric - recently called for Muslims “to respect the laws of the countries in which they live,” echoed by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, Executive Director of the Centre of Islamic Pluralism, and conductor of a recent survey of British Muslim’s views on Islamic law, which outlined that 65 percent of them “brusquely repudiated the imposition of Sharia.”
However, that is not to say that pro-Sharia activism does not exist. In 2001, German-based Turkish organization Mili Gorus, which has over 200,000 members, said in its August 2001 Gazete
“a religious Muslim is also at the same time an advocate for Sharia. The state, the media, the courts have no right to intervene. The allegiance of a Muslim to Sharia cannot be questioned.”
Meanwhile the allegedly disbanded London-based Al-Muhajiroun, banned under UK law for terrorist links, has made the case against “man-made law,” at different times declaring that its members did not recognize British law, which prompted some to point out that this snub did not extend to returning welfare benefits claimed under the same system.
Shifting toward Sharia?
Danish Radio reported on 17 September that Muslims living in EU countries will in the future be able to divorce according to Sharia, according to an online translation of the report:
“This is the belief of the EU Commission, which recommends that a couple be able to choose which country’s law they will follow if they divorce - as long as they have some kind of connection to the country they choose.”
While senior officials and politicians in the UK have asserted that no parallel legal system, Islamic or otherwise, will be implemented in the UK, claims to the contrary are being made by Islamic jurists, not least that the British government has elevated five Sharia courts to the level of tribunal hearings.
Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, barrister and head of the Muslim Action Committee, told the London Times newspaper that the Arbitration Act 1996 allows rulings by his Muslim Arbitration Tribunal to be enforced by country and high courts.
Among four other locations, Islamic tribunals have been set up in the UK West Midlands to resolve disputes among the Muslim community. Special panels, comprising an Islamic scholar and a lawyer, are hearing arguments before making legally binding rulings, and a judge has been appointed to advise the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) on how to make these rulings fit with English law.
According to Shamim Qureshi, a district judge who works closely with the tribunals, “MAT is arbitration and that exists in this country. Any two people can agree to it, just like a contract with an insurance company for home insurance,” British newspapers reported.
The UK Conservative Party’s legal spokesman, Dominic Grieve, begged to differ, saying in a statement that “arbitration tribunals can settle some disputes and have their judgments enforced. But they must act within the principles of English law.
“They can’t forbid girls to attend mixed classes in school or award sons the bulk of inheritances merely because the parties agreed in advance to accept the verdict - any more than a regular court can enforce a voluntary contract of slavery or prostitution.”
Whatever the legal status of these tribunals, it is clear that Islamic norms are being moved closer to the mainstream of the British legal system.  A cynic might wonder if the secular UK had temporarily forgotten itself, given that this comes mere months after Church of England head Rowan Williams called for the implementation of Islamic law for Muslims in the UK.
“We believe that ‘politically-correct’ non-Muslims like Rowan Williams have formulated inept and patronizing suggestions for what they believe would benefit Muslims. Sharia is not a ’sound-bite’ issue and the discussion does not benefit from light-minded political comments,” Schwartz told ISN Security Watch.
Toward confrontation
Outside the law, no pun intended, are broader political and cultural issues surrounding the place of Muslims in Europe. One school of thought holds that many Muslims move to Europe to flee the oppressive dominant regimes which enforce Islamic law, or aspects of same, to varying degrees, and therefore do not want Islamic law. Beyond this, the conventional wisdom is that various grievances, such as the war on terror, papal discourse on religious relations, and the Danish cartoons controversy are the drivers of Muslim anger, abetted by what the head of France’s Great Mosque, Kamel Kabtane, described to the German magazine Der Spiegel as discrimination, high unemployment and social exclusion.
Schwartz sees these as “ephemeral to the real problem, radical Islamist ideology,” which is alive and well in Europe. The hatching of the 9-11 plot by a Hamburg-based al-Qaida cell is well-known, and despite the successful prevention of any major terror attack in Europe since July 2005, hardliners are often dominant in Muslim communities, even if often subterranean to public awareness.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Dr Barham Salih apparently claimed some mosques in Blackburn, England would be banned in Iraq for the extremist messages they preach, after visiting the town to campaign for long-time Labour cabinet member and former foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2005. According to Conservative Party culture spokesman Tobias Ellwood, Salih told him that: “I am not surprised that you British are facing so many problems with extremists after what I saw in those mosques in Blackburn.”
This all has prompted reaction from some European politicians. Usually derided as far-right, the Vlaams Belang Flemish separatists, the Lega Nord in Italy, the Danish People’s Party and Geert Wilders Dutch Party for Freedom have been focusing more and more on Islam’s role in Europe in recent years.
Some of these convened in Cologne 18-20 September to discuss the imminent construction of a mosque with a 55-meter high minaret in the city, whose population is now one-third Muslim. The “Pro-Cologne” gathering brought a storm of protest from some city officials and left-wing politicians, while Iran asked France, as president of the European Council, to block the conference, as it reflects “a growth of anti-Islamic sentiments in Europe.” The German Council of Muslims called it “an unparalleled abuse of the freedom of opinion.”
Media reportage on the events differed, and itself has already become a source of controversy. Some accounts describe thousands of people gathered in a counter-demonstration in front of the city’s world-famous gothic cathedral, while others state that no more than 1,000 gathered, and of these, many were left-wing activists, rather than ordinary Cologne citizens.
Converging opinions
The optimism peddled by multiculturalists - perhaps including some of those involved in the anti Pro-Cologne demonstration - whether well-intentioned or merely naive, does little to practically address the issue of Islam’s role in Europe, now or in the future, as the demographic balance between Muslims and Europeans changes.
Whether European Muslims and Europeans can be categorized separately however, remains a moot point. Integration proponents believe such demarcations to be irrelevant and/or discriminatory, though the boundaries are often self-evident, even if an often-silent cohort of Muslims do not adhere to hardline or extremist views.
However, a recent Pew Global Attitudes Survey alluded to some common threads between European and Muslim public opinion when the US is included as a factor.
A slight majority of British blame al-Qaida for 9-11 (57 percent), but another 26 percent say they don’t know who the perpetrators were. The numbers were roughly the same for French and the Italians, with 8 and 13 percent, respectively thinking the US authored the act. Among Germans, almost one-quarter - 23 percent - the US itself staged 9-11. In Turkey, 36 percent of respondents blame the US for the attacks, while in Indonesia, less than a fourth of all respondents 23 percent think al-Qaida orchestrated 9/11, while over half claims they have no idea.
With such a harmonizing of public opinion, Gadhaffi might be on the right track.

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Simon Roughneen is a senior correspondent, reporting from across Africa, southeast Asia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Northern Ireland since 2004.

Europe’s Sharia question / ISN

Caryle Murphy

Riyadh // When the head of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court recently declared that media officials responsible for airing immoral television programmes could be killed, his remarks provoked what has become a familiar response around the world.
Ridicule and scorn for Saudi Arabia, and more “proof” for Islamophobes of the “backwardness” of Islam.
Sheikh Lihedan’s remarks were not the only ones in recent months to trigger a spate of global eye-rolling.
In March, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Barrak declared that two Saudi writers, whom he accused of expressing heretical ideas, should be put to death unless they recanted.
Another elderly sheikh, Abdullah bin Jibreen, told an interviewer on Al Majd TV, a conservative Riyadh-based religious station, that journalists “who insult scholars to shame or discredit them or undermine their authority … should be punished”.
Sheikh Jibreen’s suggested chastisements included “imprisonment for a long time”, being “removed from the positions they hold, or … flogging”.
There were other less frightening, but sometimes silly, pronouncements that caused non-Muslims to wonder why representatives of such a profound and spiritual religious tradition as Islam concern themselves with trivialities.
The most famous was a declaration by a member of the Saudi religious police, officially known as the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, that dog-walking had become an unacceptable “phenomenon” in Riyadh. He demanded enforcement of 14-year-old ban on selling cats and dogs.
Then came a Saudi cleric bemoaning the fact that young children have become enamoured of such cartoon figures as Mickey Mouse even though Islamic law stipulates that mice should be killed.
Sheikh Mohammed al Munajid told Al Majd TV last month that sharia regards a mouse as “one of Satan’s soldiers”.
According to a translation of Sheikh Munajid’s statements by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the cleric then said: “How do you think children view mice today – after Tom and Jerry? Even creatures that are repulsive by nature, by logic, and according to Islamic law have become wonderful and are loved by children. Even mice. Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases.”
Saudis who do not follow the austere, narrow-minded version of Islam that prevails in their country’s religious establishment love to publicise comments such as these to embarrass the clerics.
But the press coverage, both in Saudi Arabia and abroad, often disregards some important aspects of religious discourse in the kingdom.
First of all, the press almost always refers to any comment from a religious figure as a fatwa. But in most cases, their comments do not rise to the level of a fatwa, and are therefore not worthy of the deference normally accorded such religious opinions.
One only has to look at the YouTube video of Sheikh Munajid’s Mickey Mouse comment (youtube.com/watch? v=bnhQjk7T478) to see that it was an offhand remark, perhaps an attempt to make a joke. It was not a researched, carefully worded fatwa.
Indeed, a more pertinent criticism of such comments is to ask why sheikhs do not spend their religious capital on more important moral concerns, such as demanding badly needed reforms to the Saudi court system, and urging kindness and justice for the poor, including the expatriate workers who do most of the manual labour in the kingdom.
Also, the press rarely notes if the sheikh making the controversial comments is associated with the government or not. Sheikhs Barrak, Jibreen and Munajid, for example, do not hold government jobs.
By contrast, Sheikh Lihedan does. And this was why his comments about television executives prompted a rapid government rebuttal.
Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al Obaikan, a moderate religious scholar who advises the justice ministry, denounced Sheikh Lihedan’s remarks, and said they would encourage terrorists by giving them “a reason” for “taking lives, attacking television stations and targeting the localities where TV owners may be”.
He made clear that Sheikh Lihedan’s statements should not “be considered as the opinion of the Saudi Muslim scholars or even of the state”.
Lastly, those who publicise controversial remarks by Muslim scholars rarely raise the bigger question prompted by such comments: Who speaks for Islam?
Actually, this is the burning ember stoking almost every controversy in Islam in these volatile times. What the ultra-conservative sheikhs – and often their critics too – fail to note is that the voices of authority in Islam have become far more numerous than at any previous time in modern history.
Rising education levels of all Muslims in the past 50 to 100 years means that today the realm of who is qualified to interpret Islam’s holy texts has expanded greatly. Religious scholars who spend their whole lives poring over ancient scriptural texts used to have unchallenged authority to interpret Islam. Not any more.
Today, those clerics are being asked to share that authority with other Muslims in a wide variety of occupations – professors, journalists, artists, film-makers – who have their own ideas about Islam’s role in intellectual pursuits, governmental affairs and even just plain everyday life.
Muslim clerics generally do not like and even feel insulted by this challenge to their monopoly on interpreting Islam. During the Al Majd TV interview, for example, Sheikh Jibreen said the punishments he recommended for his critics were “so that they can concede to the superiority of scholars and clergymen who are held in high regard in the state and otherwise”.
And Sheikh Munajid, in a television interview in March that was translated by MEMRI, addressed the question of clerical authority directly.
“Some of these heretics say, ‘Islam is not the private property of anyone.’ So what do they want? … They say, ‘We want to issue rulings.’ Someone who is ignorant, who does not know any Arabic, or who has no knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence wants to issue rulings?! They say, ‘We reinterpret the texts’,” Sheikh Munajid said.
“There is a very dangerous conspiracy against the religion of Islam in newspapers and in what these people say,” he continued. “A journalist, or one of those low lifes, wants to … These people are a mixture of western, local and imported ideologies, but they want to express their views with regard to religious rulings. This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people – the prerogative of knowledgeable people, not of fools or heretics.”
So what to do?
The Arab world needs more freedom of speech, not less. So as long as ultra-conservative clerics do not incite violence, they should be allowed to publicly say what they please.
Those who disagree with them ought to have the same right.
I asked one Saudi government employee recently what he thought King Abdullah felt about Sheikh Lihedan’s comments.
“Disappointment,” he replied. “The king just made a big effort and spent a lot of money to hold an interfaith conference in Madrid as a way to improve Saudi Arabia’s image,” he said. With one sentence, he added, Sheikh Lihedan destroyed the king’s efforts.
In a meeting with Islamic scholars in Mecca on Monday, King Abdullah spoke frankly about the challenges facing Islam, saying that “unfortunately, the image of Islam is being tarnished by none other than Muslims themselves”.
“If we want to be honest with ourselves,” he said, “we have to accept this reality that the sons of Islam are the ones desecrating this pure religion. Islam disowns them and disowns anyone who tries to give it a bad name.”
Of course, he was speaking about suicide bombers and their terrorist handlers.
But was he also thinking about others whose words harm Islam?
cmurphy@thenational.ae

Saudi clerics’ outbursts hurt image of Islam - The National Newspaper

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Two of the Arab world’s most prominent Muslim theologians have waded into a bitter exchange of barbs, engaging in a debate that is a small-scale rendition of the worsening animosity between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam.

The fight began early this month when Youssef al-Qaradawi, a Sunni who is one of the best known Islamic television clerics, called Shiites “heretics” and accused them of seeking to infiltrate Sunni societies.

Lebanon’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, shot back that Qaradawi was trying to incite “fitna” — the word for internal civil strife among Muslims that is anathema to followers of Islam.

Centuries-old tensions between Islam’s two main branches in the Middle East have flared into the open in recent years, following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the eruption of sectarian killings there.

Though sectarian violence has eased in Iraq this year, it has boiled over in other places, particularly Lebanon, which saw dozens killed in fighting in May between Sunni groups and the Shiite militants of Hezbollah.

Periodic reconciliation efforts, such as a Sunni-Shiite dialogue conference in June in the holy city of Mecca, have done little to ease the deep suspicions of the Mideast’s Sunni majority toward Shiites, seen by some Sunnis as a tool for spreading the influence of Persian Iran.

Although many Sunnis in the Arab world had shown admiration for Hezbollah’s confrontations with Israel, much of that good will evaporated after the Shiite group turned its guns on Lebanon’s Sunnis.

The verbal clash between the clerics started with a Sept. 9 interview that al-Qaradawi gave to Egypt’s independent newspaper Al-Masri Al-Youm.

“Shiites are Muslims but they are heretics and their danger comes from their attempt to invade the Sunni society,” said the Egyptian-born cleric, who lives in Qatar. “They are able to do that because of their billions (of dollars) and trained cadres of Shiites proselytizing in Sunni countries.”

“In this period, we should protect the Sunni society from the Shiite invasion,” added al-Qaradawi, who is widely respected throughout the Middle East and has a popular weekly TV show on Islamic law on the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

A few days later, Fadlallah responded in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai Al-Amm. “If what has been attributed to Sheik al-Qaradawi is true, then this amounts to fitna,” he said.

Al-Qaradawi replied with a statement saying: “We Sunnis know that we are the only group that will survive. All other (Muslim) groups have been involved in heresy.”

The eruption of the fight has puzzled some in the region, particularly since al-Qaradawi has participated in numerous Muslim and interfaith reconciliation dialogues.

Ibrahim Bayram, a political analyst at Lebanon’s leading newspaper, An-Nahar, said Wednesday that he found al-Qaradawi’s statements strange, “because he is considered a moderate cleric and he used to call for closer relations between Sunnis and Shiites.”

“The time when any cleric can decide who is a Muslim, and who is not, is gone,” Bayram said.

Mideast countries are overwhelmingly Sunni, except for Iraq, Iran and Bahrain, which have Shiite majorities. Shiites also are the largest single community in Lebanon, which has numerous ethnic and religious groups.

The 14-century-old bitterness grew out of the dispute over the succession of Prophet Muhammad, which split the Muslim world into Sunni and Shiite branches. Both follow the same basic tenets, but important differences include commemorations of rival historical figures.

The Associated Press: Clerics’ debate underlines Sunni-Shiite divide

During Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that started Sept. 1, believers are urged to control their tempers — a special challenge for Safiah Khan when she opened her newspaper last week.
Out popped a DVD titled Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, a controversial film about a small portion of radical Muslim terrorists.
“The timing is so bad. Ramadan is supposed to be a joyous time for us,” said Khan, of Fort Lauderdale, one of thousands of residents who got the video delivered along with their newspaper. All three South Florida major daily newspapers — the Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post — delivered the DVD.
The distribution of 28 million copies of the film has caused a stir among South Florida Muslims who are concerned it will spark another round of hate. Muslims in South Florida say they will try to counter the anti-Muslim sentiment sparked by the DVD.

The film, from a New York organization called The Clarion Fund, uses clips and interviews to say that leaders of “radical Islam” brainwash many Muslims to hate the West.
The distribution is part of a campaign called the Obsession Project, led by the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a pro-Israel think tank in Washington, D.C.
Khan, a member of the Masjid Al-Iman mosque in Fort Lauderdale, objects to the way Obsession singles out terrorist acts by Muslims.
“This just incites the fears of people who have doubts about Islam,” said Khan, a marketing manager for an insurance company.
She also wondered why the DVD was being mass distributed now, two years after it was produced.
“People are already talking about Barack Obama’s roots, thinking he must be a Muslim,” said Khan, who wondered if the distributors were attempting to taint Islam and Obama.
Ari Morgenstern, Endowment for Middle East Truth’s spokesman, said his group was not trying to influence the presidential election. Nor, he said, was the mass distribution timed for Ramadan.
“It was no one thing,” he said. “It’s just an important issue that Americans should be aware of, regardless of the season.”
As for singling out Muslims, Morgenstern said the film was about terrorism, not Islam in general. “It makes a very clear distinction between the majority of Muslims and a minority who subscribe to radical ideology. And I think Americans can make that distinction.”
Altaf Ali, executive director of the South Florida Council on American Islamic Relations, said his organization has received hate mail as a result of the film’s distribution.
“The film vilifies Islam,” he said. “It’s a propaganda tool used to influence and coerce people and appeal to their fears.”
He also said local Muslims would participate in forums to counter anti-Muslim sentiment.
Following the release of Obsession in 2006, the Muslim Public Affairs Council launched a campaign to counter the film. Since the campaign, dubbed “Truth Over Fear: Countering Islamophobia,” the Muslim Public Affairs Council has held more than 50 workshops across the country critiquing Obsession.
A Lake Worth coalition, the Florida Security Council also distributes Obsession. Tom Trento, the coalition’s founder, first saw it in 2006, then lined up a viewing for legislators and staff members in Tallahassee.
“It’s a good analysis that would take a lot of people a lifetime to get,” said Trento, a self-avowed evangelical Christian who said he has studied the matter for years. “I decided to show it to a lot of people.”
Trento said he and his volunteers passed out 10,000 copies at each presidential nominating convention this year. They plan to give out more at the vice presidential debate on Oct. 2 in St. Louis.
Gregory Lewis can be reached at glewis@SunSentinel.com or 954-356-4203.

Local Muslims fear controversial DVD could spark backlash against Islam — South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

As the daughter of firebrand cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, Yasmin Fostok might be expected to share his fanatical beliefs.

But the radical Muslim’s daughter has ditched his extreme interpretation of Islam  -  as well as most of her clothing.

The busty blonde has been revealed as a topless, tattooed pole dancer.

The 26-year-old single mother has been displaying her charms in London clubs and touring as a ‘podium’ dancer with a troupe called Ibiza Untouched.

Hundreds of youngsters go wild over the daughter of the preacher of hate who rants against Western ‘depravity’.

Yasmin shrugged off the secret life that her father would abhor. ‘I don’t agree with his views  -  I just get on with my life and that’s it,’ she said.

Parents: Radical Muslim Omar Bakri Mohammed and his wife Hanan Fostok

Perhaps predictably Bakri, now exiled to Lebanon, dismissed the news as a ‘ fabrication’ and described it as an attack on him and Islam.

‘The more you put pressure on me, the stronger I become. Islam will conquer Britain,’ he said.

Galmour girl: Yasmin Fostok in Catford yesterday; she grew up a devout Muslim and wore a veil in her teens

‘I have not seen my daughter for nine years, but because she is a member of my family people want to make things up about her.

‘You are going to pay a heavy price. You can read it any way you like. The time is now.’

Bakri, who said the British people brought the 7/7 outrages on themselves and praised the ‘ magnificent’ September 11 hijackers, raised his six children on benefits totalling £300,000, and his daughter is following suit.

She lives with her three-year-old son in a ground-floor flat in Catford, South East London. Her rent and council tax are paid by the state and she receives child benefit and income support.

She grew up a devout Muslim and in her teens wore a veil. She left school in Enfield at 16 after her parents arranged a marriage to a Turk but the couple separated.

She told The Sun: ‘I’ve done pole dancing, but I like to keep it quiet.

‘I don’t normally do topless work, but I’m willing to go topless if the venue is right.’

She said she did not get on with her father. ‘His views are nothing to do with me,’ she added. ‘I am an adult, my own person. I do my business and he does his.’

One friend told the newspaper: ‘Bakri would have a heart attack if he saw his daughter on stage.

‘She was brought up a strict Muslim and had all of his extreme teachings about morality drummed into her head.

‘But she has been leading a wild double life thrashing about on stage in pole dancing clubs and drinking and partying like there’s no tomorrow.’

Bakri initially reacted with horror when confronted with Yasmin’s lifestyle. ‘If this is true I am deeply shocked,’ he said. ‘She was brought up properly in the Muslim faith, but she is free to make her own choices in life.

‘I have no control over her because as far as I know she is still married. Her behaviour should be the responsibility of her husband.’

Syrian-born Bakri, whose leave to remain in Britain was revoked after the 7/7 London attacks, changed his tune and claimed: ‘I have no daughter doing anything like this  -  all my children are practising Muslims.

‘I spoke to my daughter. She told me it was all lies.’ The ‘Tottenham Ayatollah’ then claimed the story was part of a plot to get back at him after police were forced by a judge to hand back £14,000 in cash they confiscated from his son Abdul.

‘They are using members of my family to get back at me, because I have won. They are jealous because my son Abdul has got back the money that the police stole from him.

‘Islam has prevailed and you are defeated. The lowest people on earth are non-Muslims and that is why we have to put up with these fabrications and lies.’

Miss Fostok was keeping a low profile yesterday at her dingy flat on the busy South Circular Road.

Police spent half an hour there and later said they were advising her on security.

They would not comment on whether she had received threats from religious fundamentalists.

One neighbour said: ‘She’s a very quiet girl, a good girl. I see her most days with her little boy and she seems like a very good mum.

‘She doesn’t smoke or drink so I’m surprised to learn that she has been pole dancing in clubs.’

Early years: Yasmin, pictured far right with father Omar Bakri, and brothers Mohammed and Abdul, admits to working as a pole-dancer

Yasmin told The Sun: ‘I’ve done pole dancing, but I like to keep it quiet.

‘I don’t normally do topless work, but I’m willing to go topless if the venue is right.’

One friend told the newspaper: ‘Bakri would have a heart attack if he saw his daughter on stage. She was brought up a strict Muslim and had all of his extreme teachings about morality drummed into her head.

‘But she has been leading a wild double life thrashing about on stage in pole dancing clubs and drinking and partying like there’s no tomorrow.

‘Yasmin has no time for Bakri’s evil views.’

One of a string of boyfriends Yasmin has apparently been with since her marriage break up told the paper: ‘She’s a million miles away from the daughter her daddy would have wanted and is very adventurous in bed.

‘She likes to dress up in kinky gear and has worn a police uniform, a French maid’s outfit and various office clothes.’

Bakri initially reacted with horror when confronted with Yasmin’s lifestyle.

‘If this is true I am deeply shocked. She was brought up properly in the Muslim faith, but she is free to make her own choices in life,’ he said.

‘She should not seek forgiveness from me, she should seek forgiveness from God.

‘It is his forgiveness which is important. If she has done these  things she will be judged on Judgment Day.

‘But God will forgive her anything except becoming a non-Muslim. I have no control over her because as far as I know she is still married. Her behaviour should be the responsibility of her husband.’

Yesterday Syrian-born Bakri, whose leave to remain in Britain was revoked after the 7/7 London attacks, changed his tune and claimed: ‘I have no daughter doing anything like this - all my children are practicising Muslims.

‘I spoke to my daughter. At first I told her I was shocked at the stuff I was hearing. But then she told me it was all lies.’

The ‘Tottenham Ayatollah’ then claimed the story was part of a plot to get back at him after police were forced to hand back £14,000 in cash they confiscated from Bakri’s son Abdul after a judge ruled the cash was not intended for ‘terrorist purposes’.

‘They are using members of my family to get back at me, because I have won. They are jealous because my son Abdul has got back the money that the police stole from him.

‘Islam has prevailed and you are defeated. The lowest people on earth are non-Muslims and that is why we have to put up with these fabrications and lies.’

Yasmin was keeping a low profile yesterday at her dingy flat on the busy South Circular Road in London.

The flat is in a row of Victorian terraces currently covered with scaffolding. Satellite dishes adorn the walls, the paint is peeling and the windows are dirty.

One neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘She’s a very quiet girl, a good girl. I was very surprised to learn of what she’s been up to. I see her most days with her little boy and she seems like a very good mum.

‘I had no idea that she was Omar Bakri’s daughter - all I knew was that she had returned to the UK from living in Turkey. She doesn’t smoke or drink so I’m even more surprised to learn that she has been pole dancing in those clubs.’

When first confronted by The Sun, Yasmin said she didn’t get on with her father.

‘He is not around here at the moment, is he?’ she asked. ‘His views are nothing to do with me. I am an adult, my own person. I am an individual. I do my business and he does his.’

But last night Bakri’s protests he know nothing about his daughter’s new lifestyle were undermined by claims he personally paid for her to have a breast enlargement operation.

According to The Sun, he paid £4,000 in cash to a clinic in London for the operation that launched her career as a pole dancer.

A friend told the newspaper: ‘Her dad’s ashamed of her behaviour but she’d never have become a pole dancer if he hadn’t paid for her bigger boobs.

‘She was always self-conscious about her size and managed to convince him she should have it done.

‘She played the daddy’s girl and said it would make her feel more of a mother when she was breast feeding her children.

‘He went along with it and even went to the top London clinic with her where he paid for the surgery in cash. The rest of the family were set against it but he insisted she should have her way if it would make her a better mother.’

The friend said it backfired when she developed the courage to flaunt her body and become a lapdancer.

The friend said: ‘She’d never have done it if it wasn’t for those boobs - which were paid for by her father. It’s all his fault.’

Revealed: Radical cleric Bakri’s pole-dancer daughter | Mail Online