"Jesus is Muslim!!!"
This was the title of the lecture at the community college at Dupage County in Illinois, College of Dupage (COD), organized by the Muslim Student Association (MSA) on April 30.
More than 100 people were there, including professors, but mostly Muslims, and some converts to Islam, with a self-imposed segregation between males and females in seating arrangements. In addition, two tables, one for boys, and one for girls, each on a different side of the room, were set for refreshments. They wanted to make sure that boy and girls would not mix.
A disciple of the late famous South African Muslim apologist Ahmed Deedat, Isra, a veiled woman in her late thirties who hails from New York, gave the presentation. She tried to prove from the Bible that Jesus practiced the religion of Muhammad, who preached Islam around 600 years after Christ walked the earth.
As usual with minorities in the US, the lecturer was handled with kid gloves by Christians in the audience. No body dared ask the question whether the lady lecturer was being anachronistic or not, especially at the start.
The lecturer asked who understood the title of the lecture ("Jesus is Muslim"). I had to throw something at her. So, I said: "First, I am glad that you used the present tense of the verb to be (is) in the title of the lecture, which means that you believe that Jesus is alive. Secondly, if Islam is submission to the will of God, and you say that Jesus submitted to the will of his Father and went to the cross, then, in this sense you may say he is Muslim."
She ignored the issue of the crucifixion and reiterated that since Jesus submitted to the will of God in many ways, then "Jesus is a Muslim."
The atmosphere was so tense, and the moderator started to look at me with great animosity, avoiding my raised hand all the time.
Then, the lecturer asked the question: "What was Jesus' first miracle?"
A Christian in the audience said that it was changing water to wine. She commented: "No. According to the Quran, Jesus' spoke in the cradle in order to defend his mother against the accusation of adultery."
The lecturer quoted the chapter entitled Mary in the Quran:
[19.27] And she came to her people with him, carrying him [baby Jesus] (with her). They said: O Marium! surely you have done a strange thing.
[19.28 ] O sister of Haroun! Your father was not a bad man, nor, was your mother an unchaste woman.
[19.29] But she pointed to him. They said: How should we speak to one who was a child in the cradle?
[19.30 ] He said: Surely I am a servant of Allah; He has given me the Book and made me a prophet;
[19.31] And He has made me blessed wherever I may be, and He has enjoined on me prayer and poor-rate so long as I live;
[19.32] And dutiful to my mother, and He has not made me insolent, unblessed;
[19.33] And peace on me on the day I was born, and on the day I die, and on the day I am raised to life.
[19.34] Such is Isa, son of Marium; (this is) the saying of truth about which they dispute.
In order to draw the attention of female students, she commented: "Note how Jesus defends his mother in the Quran, while in the New Testament he calls her 'woman' rudely."
Second Premise: Jesus called God his father and the father of his followers, and never claimed that he is God.
She quoted John 20: 17, when Mary Magdalene saw the resurrected Jesus at the tomb:
Jesus said to her, "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"
Third Premise: Jesus fasted like Muslims. She quoted Matthew 6: 16- 18
16 "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
The lecturer commented that Muhammad gave his followers the same commandments whenever they fast.
Fourth Premise: Jesus prayed like Muslims pray. She quoted Matthew 26: 39
" And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed (…)"
"Have you seen how Muslims pray? They prostrate themselves like Jesus did."
Fifth Premise: "Jesus greeted his disciple like Muslims do: Peace be with you, which is in Arabic Assalamu Alaykum."
The lecturer quoted John 20: 19:
Jesus came and stood among them and said, " Peace be with you!"
After the lecturer finished her presentation, she took questions and avoided my raised hand again and again, until the audience commented saying, "This guy has been waiting for ever."
After waiting "forever," I thought that there was no point in arguing with her as long as she picked and chose from the Bible. So, I decided to ask the question which was like the elephant in the room:
"The title of your lecture and your premises makes me put the thesis of your presentation in a different way: Instead of saying that Jesus is Muslim, why don't you ask the question: 'Was Muhammad Jewish?'"
Then I added quickly before she had the chance to answer my question:
"Muhammad prayed towards Jerusalem, before his emigration to Medina. He prayed twice a day, like Jews, before his emigration too. In addition, Muhammad fasted Yum Kippur, and fasted twice a week like Pharisees."
Then a Christian sitting next to me mentioned that the Quran abounds with biblical stories and narratives from the apocrypha.
She was fit to be tied, and glared at me saying: "Mister, why don't you gather some people, set some platform, and give a lecture?"
Well…as if she truly foretold my plans: Starting the first student club of its kind, "Muslims for the Messiah," I will certainly do that.
By Hicham Chehab
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Rome Calls for Positive Secularism
29 Oct 2010
Middle East Christians are told to embrace secularist drive | Austen Ivereigh
Austen Ivereigh
guardian.co.uk Comment Thu 28 Oct 2010 13:00 BST
Catholic bishops in the Middle East have called for Christians in the region to be advocates of separating faith and politics
Seldom has such dazzling headgear gathered in one place. A meeting of Catholic bishops from the Middle East has just ended in Rome. For two weeks, some 180 patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops and bishops of six different churches – Chaldean, Coptic, Syrian, Greek-Melkite, Maronite and Armenian – discussed the challenges facing Christianity with their Latin-rite brothers, with Pope Benedict listening in.
An expanding Israel and the rise of political Islam figured heavily. So too did the emigration of Christians in the region, which has accelerated in the last 15 years to the point where there is a real prospect of Christians disappearing from some parts of the cradle of Christianity. The area known as Dora in Baghdad used to be nicknamed "the Vatican of Iraq". But the seven churches, seminary and bible college have all closed since 2003. In Iraq, almost every Catholic family knows someone who has been kidnapped or killed. Churches have been car-bombed. No wonder close to half of the 800,000 Iraqi Christians before the US occupation have fled abroad.
But Iraq is exceptional. So, too, is the West Bank, where land belonging to Christian Arabs – like other Palestinians – is seized by Israel in the name of security, then handed over to settlers; or Jerusalem, where Palestinians are being forced from their homes. Mostly, in places such as Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, or Jordan, Christians live peacefully with Muslims. Yet they keep their heads down, aware that, even though their forebears were citizens of the region long before the Muslims, the latter increasingly – at least in some parts – equate rights with religious allegiance.
That's why the Synod's call for Catholics and other Christians to be advocates in the region of a "positive secularism" – the term the bishops used was "positive laïcité", after a 2007 speech by Nicholas Sarkozy – is, at least, bold. It may also surprise Catholics in Europe and the US who criticise the secularist drive to separate faith and politics to find the church in the Middle East at the forefront of arguing that faith and politics should be, ahem, separate.
Sceptics will be quick to point out one of the basic rules of religious co-existence throughout history: secularism always looks better to religious minorities who have the most to lose from theocracies. And there's truth in that in the Middle East. Caught between Israeli expansionism and Islamic radicalism, the future of the tiny Christian minority depends, in large part, on basic rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience – on building, as the Synod put it, "an all-inclusive, shared civic order", in the words of its working document, that protects "human rights, human dignity and religious freedom".
But this isn't only about survival. Christianity is the religion that gave rise to secularism. Laïcité is a Christian by-product; secularism a Christian heresy. The church has always promoted a distinction between the two spheres – temporal and spiritual, civic and religious – without ever, of course, agreeing where the border between them lies. When Pope Benedict bowed to his audience of politicians at the conclusion of his Westminster Hall speech, he was deferring to the legitimate sovereignty and proper autonomy of the political sphere – while at the same time asserting the church's right to hold that sphere to a transcendent ethical horizon.
Separation, in other words, but not divorce. The principle has been clear ever since St Thomas Aquinas said that sins and crimes are different things; and at least since the second Vatican council, the Catholic church has argued that religions should not be privileged by the state, that the state cannot coerce in matters of faith, and that citizenship is not contingent on beliefs or membership of institutions. All residents of a country, whatever their faith or lack of it, are social actors with a stake in society and the legitimate right to seek to shape it.
Yet separation does not imply exclusion; it does not mean making of the state and the public square a faith-free zone, as secularists and humanists seek to. The so-called "neutral" state is, in reality, the attempt to impose an ideology – an individualist, humanist form of thinking. A secular theocracy is just as much a theocracy as an Islamic one. "Positive" secularism – as opposed to the "aggressive secularism" deplored by Pope Benedict in the UK in September – means a separation of religion from the state, but at the same time allowing faith the freedom to run schools, offer services, and build the common good, according to the principles and values that nourish it. Such a "positive secularity" allows for faiths (alongside non-religious beliefs) to seek to shape society on equal terms, benefitting from the freedom accorded to them by the state, but not depending on state sponsorship or legal privilege.
Arguing for a "positive secularity" is not easy in the Middle East, where regimes are pressurised by millenarian and fundamentalist movements – whether Zionism or radical Islam – which seek to link rights to religious allegiance. Yet the three religions of the Middle East have a long history of peaceful, respectful coexistence – the many exceptions to this story do not negate the truth of it – and a theology to underpin it. Universal human rights are not concessions of the state but intrinsic to every human being, whose dignity lies in his creation by God. That is the root of our citizenship – not our nation, tribe or religion.
They be few – and shrinking. But Christians in the Middle East, the region's "indigenous citizens", are well-placed to invite Judaism and Islam to embrace a healthy secularism.
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Middle East Christians are told to embrace secularist drive | Austen Ivereigh
Austen Ivereigh
guardian.co.uk Comment Thu 28 Oct 2010 13:00 BST
Catholic bishops in the Middle East have called for Christians in the region to be advocates of separating faith and politics
Seldom has such dazzling headgear gathered in one place. A meeting of Catholic bishops from the Middle East has just ended in Rome. For two weeks, some 180 patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops and bishops of six different churches – Chaldean, Coptic, Syrian, Greek-Melkite, Maronite and Armenian – discussed the challenges facing Christianity with their Latin-rite brothers, with Pope Benedict listening in.
An expanding Israel and the rise of political Islam figured heavily. So too did the emigration of Christians in the region, which has accelerated in the last 15 years to the point where there is a real prospect of Christians disappearing from some parts of the cradle of Christianity. The area known as Dora in Baghdad used to be nicknamed "the Vatican of Iraq". But the seven churches, seminary and bible college have all closed since 2003. In Iraq, almost every Catholic family knows someone who has been kidnapped or killed. Churches have been car-bombed. No wonder close to half of the 800,000 Iraqi Christians before the US occupation have fled abroad.
But Iraq is exceptional. So, too, is the West Bank, where land belonging to Christian Arabs – like other Palestinians – is seized by Israel in the name of security, then handed over to settlers; or Jerusalem, where Palestinians are being forced from their homes. Mostly, in places such as Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, or Jordan, Christians live peacefully with Muslims. Yet they keep their heads down, aware that, even though their forebears were citizens of the region long before the Muslims, the latter increasingly – at least in some parts – equate rights with religious allegiance.
That's why the Synod's call for Catholics and other Christians to be advocates in the region of a "positive secularism" – the term the bishops used was "positive laïcité", after a 2007 speech by Nicholas Sarkozy – is, at least, bold. It may also surprise Catholics in Europe and the US who criticise the secularist drive to separate faith and politics to find the church in the Middle East at the forefront of arguing that faith and politics should be, ahem, separate.
Sceptics will be quick to point out one of the basic rules of religious co-existence throughout history: secularism always looks better to religious minorities who have the most to lose from theocracies. And there's truth in that in the Middle East. Caught between Israeli expansionism and Islamic radicalism, the future of the tiny Christian minority depends, in large part, on basic rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience – on building, as the Synod put it, "an all-inclusive, shared civic order", in the words of its working document, that protects "human rights, human dignity and religious freedom".
But this isn't only about survival. Christianity is the religion that gave rise to secularism. Laïcité is a Christian by-product; secularism a Christian heresy. The church has always promoted a distinction between the two spheres – temporal and spiritual, civic and religious – without ever, of course, agreeing where the border between them lies. When Pope Benedict bowed to his audience of politicians at the conclusion of his Westminster Hall speech, he was deferring to the legitimate sovereignty and proper autonomy of the political sphere – while at the same time asserting the church's right to hold that sphere to a transcendent ethical horizon.
Separation, in other words, but not divorce. The principle has been clear ever since St Thomas Aquinas said that sins and crimes are different things; and at least since the second Vatican council, the Catholic church has argued that religions should not be privileged by the state, that the state cannot coerce in matters of faith, and that citizenship is not contingent on beliefs or membership of institutions. All residents of a country, whatever their faith or lack of it, are social actors with a stake in society and the legitimate right to seek to shape it.
Yet separation does not imply exclusion; it does not mean making of the state and the public square a faith-free zone, as secularists and humanists seek to. The so-called "neutral" state is, in reality, the attempt to impose an ideology – an individualist, humanist form of thinking. A secular theocracy is just as much a theocracy as an Islamic one. "Positive" secularism – as opposed to the "aggressive secularism" deplored by Pope Benedict in the UK in September – means a separation of religion from the state, but at the same time allowing faith the freedom to run schools, offer services, and build the common good, according to the principles and values that nourish it. Such a "positive secularity" allows for faiths (alongside non-religious beliefs) to seek to shape society on equal terms, benefitting from the freedom accorded to them by the state, but not depending on state sponsorship or legal privilege.
Arguing for a "positive secularity" is not easy in the Middle East, where regimes are pressurised by millenarian and fundamentalist movements – whether Zionism or radical Islam – which seek to link rights to religious allegiance. Yet the three religions of the Middle East have a long history of peaceful, respectful coexistence – the many exceptions to this story do not negate the truth of it – and a theology to underpin it. Universal human rights are not concessions of the state but intrinsic to every human being, whose dignity lies in his creation by God. That is the root of our citizenship – not our nation, tribe or religion.
They be few – and shrinking. But Christians in the Middle East, the region's "indigenous citizens", are well-placed to invite Judaism and Islam to embrace a healthy secularism.
Send to a friend
Contact us
Go back to the web story
Browse guardian jobs
Soulmates dating
Search for a date now
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Win Tickets to the Friends Provident t20 final
Enjoy England- take part and win
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Monday, October 4, 2010
My Ordination Story at NID
http://www.peopleablaze.org/Index.asp?PageID=13127
Leader of Arabic Outreach Now Ordained, Installed
September 2010
Above: District President Rev. Dan Gilbert, right, bestows the blessing on Hicham Chehab during his ordination at Peace, Lombard. Below: Other scenes from the ordination.
Pastor Hicham Chehab grew up in a world of bitter animosity between Muslims and Christians, which he experienced personally in a physical attack when only about 7. By age 13 he was recruited by an extremist Muslim group, but a study of the Sermon on the Mount, during college, brought him to faith. Pastor Chehab later earned an M.A. in the history of the Arabs and did Ph.D. studies in the history of Islam. He emigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon and completed his pastoral education at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
While enrolled in the seminary, Chehab came to Northern Illinois to work in Arabic outreach through a partnership that included the Northern Illinois District LCMS, Trinity Lutheran Church in Roselle, and a board representing POBLO (People of the Book Lutheran Outreach mission society out of Detroit) and other area congregations.
This summer, a new local mission society was formed to work with this ministry. Chicagoland Lutheran Muslim Mission Association includes sustaining congregations:
Peace Lutheran Church, Lombard
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Brookfield
St. John Lutheran Church, LaGrange
Trinity Lutheran Church, Roselle
Trinity Lutheran Church, Lisle
And supporting congregations:
St. John Lutheran Church, Lombard
St. Mark Lutheran Church, St. Charles
Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Alsip
Tabor Lutheran Church, Chicago
Hicham Chehab was ordained as a pastor in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and installed as associate pastor at Peace Lutheran Church in Lombard, Illinois, on August 15, 2010. He will continue to serve as missionary of the Chicagoland Lutheran Muslim Mission Association, which planted Salam Arabic Church, conducts campus ministry and provides assistance to new immigrants and refugees.
Leader of Arabic Outreach Now Ordained, Installed
September 2010
Above: District President Rev. Dan Gilbert, right, bestows the blessing on Hicham Chehab during his ordination at Peace, Lombard. Below: Other scenes from the ordination.
Pastor Hicham Chehab grew up in a world of bitter animosity between Muslims and Christians, which he experienced personally in a physical attack when only about 7. By age 13 he was recruited by an extremist Muslim group, but a study of the Sermon on the Mount, during college, brought him to faith. Pastor Chehab later earned an M.A. in the history of the Arabs and did Ph.D. studies in the history of Islam. He emigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon and completed his pastoral education at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
While enrolled in the seminary, Chehab came to Northern Illinois to work in Arabic outreach through a partnership that included the Northern Illinois District LCMS, Trinity Lutheran Church in Roselle, and a board representing POBLO (People of the Book Lutheran Outreach mission society out of Detroit) and other area congregations.
This summer, a new local mission society was formed to work with this ministry. Chicagoland Lutheran Muslim Mission Association includes sustaining congregations:
Peace Lutheran Church, Lombard
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Brookfield
St. John Lutheran Church, LaGrange
Trinity Lutheran Church, Roselle
Trinity Lutheran Church, Lisle
And supporting congregations:
St. John Lutheran Church, Lombard
St. Mark Lutheran Church, St. Charles
Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Alsip
Tabor Lutheran Church, Chicago
Hicham Chehab was ordained as a pastor in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and installed as associate pastor at Peace Lutheran Church in Lombard, Illinois, on August 15, 2010. He will continue to serve as missionary of the Chicagoland Lutheran Muslim Mission Association, which planted Salam Arabic Church, conducts campus ministry and provides assistance to new immigrants and refugees.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Could Religion Play a Positive Role in ME Peace?
http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/09/can_religion_solve_conflicts_in_the_middle_east.html
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Crescent Symbol and Islam!
http://islam.about.com/od/history/a/crescent_moon.htm
The crescent moon and star is an internationally-recognized symbol of the faith of Islam. The symbol is featured on the flags of several Muslim countries, and is even part of the official emblem for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Christians have the cross, the Jews have the star of David, and the Muslims have the crescent moon, right?
What is the history behind the crescent moon symbol? What does it symbolize or mean? How and when did it become associated with the faith of Islam? Is it a valid symbol for the faith?
The crescent moon and star symbol actually pre-dates Islam by several thousand years. Information on the origins of the symbol are difficult to ascertain, but most sources agree that these ancient celestial symbols were in use by the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia in their worship of sun, moon, and sky gods. There are also reports that the crescent moon and star were used to represent the Carthaginian goddess Tanit or the Greek goddess Diana.
The city of Byzantium (later known as Constantinople and Istanbul) adopted the crescent moon as its symbol. According to some reports, they chose it in honor of the goddess Diana. Others indicate that it dates back to a battle in which the Romans defeated the Goths on the first day of a lunar month. In any event, the crescent moon was featured on the city's flag even before the birth of Christ.
The early Muslim community did not really have a symbol. During the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islamic armies and caravans flew simple solid-colored flags (generally black, green, or white) for identification purposes. In later generations, the Muslim leaders continued to use a simple black, white, or green flag with no markings, writing, or symbolism on it.
It wasn't until the Ottoman Empire that the crescent moon and star became affiliated with the Muslim world. When the Turks conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, they adopted the city's existing flag and symbol. Legend holds that the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, had a dream in which the crescent moon stretched from one end of the earth to the other. Taking this as a good omen, he chose to keep the crescent and make it the symbol of his dynasty. There is speculation that the five points on the star represent the five pillars of Islam, but this is pure conjecture. The five points were not standard on the Ottoman flags, and as you will see on the following page, it is still not standard on flags used in the Muslim world today.
For hundreds of years, the Ottoman Empire ruled over the Muslim world. After centuries of battle with Christian Europe, it is understandable how the symbols of this empire became linked in people's minds with the faith of Islam as a whole.
Based on this history, many Muslims reject using the crescent moon as a symbol of Islam. The faith of Islam has historically had no symbol, and many refuse to accept what is essentially an ancient pagan icon. It is certainly not in uniform use among Muslims.
This leads to the question of alternatives. What other "symbol" represents the faith? Is it necessary to even have a symbol? Take our poll, then come join us for a discussion in the Forum.
The crescent moon and star is an internationally-recognized symbol of the faith of Islam. The symbol is featured on the flags of several Muslim countries, and is even part of the official emblem for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Christians have the cross, the Jews have the star of David, and the Muslims have the crescent moon, right?
What is the history behind the crescent moon symbol? What does it symbolize or mean? How and when did it become associated with the faith of Islam? Is it a valid symbol for the faith?
The crescent moon and star symbol actually pre-dates Islam by several thousand years. Information on the origins of the symbol are difficult to ascertain, but most sources agree that these ancient celestial symbols were in use by the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia in their worship of sun, moon, and sky gods. There are also reports that the crescent moon and star were used to represent the Carthaginian goddess Tanit or the Greek goddess Diana.
The city of Byzantium (later known as Constantinople and Istanbul) adopted the crescent moon as its symbol. According to some reports, they chose it in honor of the goddess Diana. Others indicate that it dates back to a battle in which the Romans defeated the Goths on the first day of a lunar month. In any event, the crescent moon was featured on the city's flag even before the birth of Christ.
The early Muslim community did not really have a symbol. During the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islamic armies and caravans flew simple solid-colored flags (generally black, green, or white) for identification purposes. In later generations, the Muslim leaders continued to use a simple black, white, or green flag with no markings, writing, or symbolism on it.
It wasn't until the Ottoman Empire that the crescent moon and star became affiliated with the Muslim world. When the Turks conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, they adopted the city's existing flag and symbol. Legend holds that the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, had a dream in which the crescent moon stretched from one end of the earth to the other. Taking this as a good omen, he chose to keep the crescent and make it the symbol of his dynasty. There is speculation that the five points on the star represent the five pillars of Islam, but this is pure conjecture. The five points were not standard on the Ottoman flags, and as you will see on the following page, it is still not standard on flags used in the Muslim world today.
For hundreds of years, the Ottoman Empire ruled over the Muslim world. After centuries of battle with Christian Europe, it is understandable how the symbols of this empire became linked in people's minds with the faith of Islam as a whole.
Based on this history, many Muslims reject using the crescent moon as a symbol of Islam. The faith of Islam has historically had no symbol, and many refuse to accept what is essentially an ancient pagan icon. It is certainly not in uniform use among Muslims.
This leads to the question of alternatives. What other "symbol" represents the faith? Is it necessary to even have a symbol? Take our poll, then come join us for a discussion in the Forum.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Nasa and Islam
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1080246
Muslim pandering 'not good for the country'
Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 7/8/2010 5:00:00 AM
A conservative media watchdog thinks the mainstream media has virtually ignored the NASA administrator's recent outlandish statement that the "foremost" mission of the space agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made that announcement on the English language version of Al Jazeera, which Jeff Poor of the Media Research Center's Business and Media Institute believes was a questionable move in and of itself.
He questions how Bolden described space travel as an international collaboration in which Muslim nations must be a part.
"My suspicion is it's just one of those PC things that he was directed...from the Obama administration to do, trying to send a new message," Poor presumes. "I just don't think that's good for the country."
He feels that the strongest condemnation of Bolden's comments perhaps came from syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on the Fox News Channel's Special Report with Bret Baier.
"This is a new height in fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep us there," Krauthammer argued. "This idea to feel good about their past [and] trying to make achievements is the worst combination of group therapy, psychobabble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy."
He further suggested that the NASA administrator should have been fired for deviating from the intended purpose of NASA.
Muslim pandering 'not good for the country'
Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 7/8/2010 5:00:00 AM
A conservative media watchdog thinks the mainstream media has virtually ignored the NASA administrator's recent outlandish statement that the "foremost" mission of the space agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made that announcement on the English language version of Al Jazeera, which Jeff Poor of the Media Research Center's Business and Media Institute believes was a questionable move in and of itself.
He questions how Bolden described space travel as an international collaboration in which Muslim nations must be a part.
"My suspicion is it's just one of those PC things that he was directed...from the Obama administration to do, trying to send a new message," Poor presumes. "I just don't think that's good for the country."
He feels that the strongest condemnation of Bolden's comments perhaps came from syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on the Fox News Channel's Special Report with Bret Baier.
"This is a new height in fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep us there," Krauthammer argued. "This idea to feel good about their past [and] trying to make achievements is the worst combination of group therapy, psychobabble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy."
He further suggested that the NASA administrator should have been fired for deviating from the intended purpose of NASA.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Good Devotion
Hidden Hands of God
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”.
Proverbs 3:5
We all have times when our plans don't work out the way we want or our plans are gone to no return. We get delayed, interrupted, and inconvenienced. It's easy to get frustrated and fight against everything that doesn't go our way. But I am learning and I pray that we all as body of Christ would trust the Lord in a way that would bring us to the assurance that not every interruption is bad. Not every closed door means we're doing something wrong. Not every delay means we're not where we're supposed to be. There is something I call divine interruption or the hidden hands of God where God, on purpose, will delay us to protect us from an accident. On purpose, He will close a door because it's not His best. Sometimes, God will allow us to be inconvenienced so we can help someone else in need. We have to be willing to press through difficulty so we can be at the right place at the right time.
His word says in Romans 8:28 “ and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him”.
This verse is not only about God working things for your good but it’s also about giving you the privilege to partnership with Him ministering to others.
The next time you're interrupted, delayed, or inconvenienced, don't start thinking, "This is a pain. This is getting me off schedule." No, get a new perspective. Look for what God wants to do because it could be divine interruption or divine protection. Trust Him today because He is directing your steps.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”.
Proverbs 3:5
We all have times when our plans don't work out the way we want or our plans are gone to no return. We get delayed, interrupted, and inconvenienced. It's easy to get frustrated and fight against everything that doesn't go our way. But I am learning and I pray that we all as body of Christ would trust the Lord in a way that would bring us to the assurance that not every interruption is bad. Not every closed door means we're doing something wrong. Not every delay means we're not where we're supposed to be. There is something I call divine interruption or the hidden hands of God where God, on purpose, will delay us to protect us from an accident. On purpose, He will close a door because it's not His best. Sometimes, God will allow us to be inconvenienced so we can help someone else in need. We have to be willing to press through difficulty so we can be at the right place at the right time.
His word says in Romans 8:28 “ and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him”.
This verse is not only about God working things for your good but it’s also about giving you the privilege to partnership with Him ministering to others.
The next time you're interrupted, delayed, or inconvenienced, don't start thinking, "This is a pain. This is getting me off schedule." No, get a new perspective. Look for what God wants to do because it could be divine interruption or divine protection. Trust Him today because He is directing your steps.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Good Prison Programs May Fight Radical Islam
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West's prisons can keep militant Islam out: study
7:02am EDT
By William Maclean, Security Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Western prisons could root out militant Islamism among inmates by adopting the more imaginative approaches to prisoners used in parts of the Middle East and Asia, a British study suggests.
The provision of religious advice and helping prisoners cultivate non-extremist social networks are among measures proposed in the study of prisons in 15 countries.
Britain's chief prison inspector said last month the treatment of Muslim inmates by prison staff as potentially dangerous militants risked driving them into the hands of radical groups.
Prisons occupy a central place in the history of militant Islamist groups such as al Qaeda which see them as valued centers of learning, recruitment and indoctrination.
Creative programs can turn the tide, argues the study of prison militants in Afghanistan, Algeria, Britain, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Israel, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the United States and Yemen.
For example in Singapore, alleged terrorists are systematically re-educated in prison, said the report by London's International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR).
A team of trained religious advisers helps them go through the Koran, showing how critical passages need to be read in context, and how extremist notions about violence are often based on misreadings and misinterpretations, the report says.
Prisons can be "a place for reform as well as radicalization," Peter Neumann, study author and director of ICSR based at London University's King's College, told Reuters.
"Prisons can play a positive role in tackling problems of radicalization and terrorism in society as a whole."
"SECURITY FIRST" APPROACH
Most Western prison systems practiced a "security first" approach with radicalized inmates, Neumann said, arguing this amounted to "locking people away and making sure they don't cause any trouble." Opportunities for reform were missed.
In Saudi Arabia, officials spend heavily to reform and re-integrate former militants to try to ensure they can look forward to a meaningful and productive life after leaving prison, the report says. In some cases, this process has included buying them houses and cars, and even finding them wives.
"None of the de-radicalization programs in the Middle East and Southeast Asia is perfect," said Neumann.
"But they should serve as an inspiration for people in the West to think more creatively about what positive things could be done with radicals and terrorists in the state's custody."
Neumann said this approach would not work everywhere, because de-radicalization depended on a conducive environment.
Releasing people into hostile communities with no further supervision would not work because all good de-radicalization programs were based on follow-up and after-care, which in case of Afghanistan for example was difficult, he said.
The study's proposed measures include:
-- A mix of education, typically combining ideological and/or religious re-education with vocational training.
-- Appointing credible interlocutors, who can relate to prisoners' personal and psychological needs.
-- Sophisticated methods for locking prisoners into multiple commitments and obligations toward family and community.
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
© Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.
Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, use the Reprints tool at the top of any article or visit: www.reutersreprints.com.
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, use the Reprints tool at the top of any article or visit: www.reutersreprints.com.
West's prisons can keep militant Islam out: study
7:02am EDT
By William Maclean, Security Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Western prisons could root out militant Islamism among inmates by adopting the more imaginative approaches to prisoners used in parts of the Middle East and Asia, a British study suggests.
The provision of religious advice and helping prisoners cultivate non-extremist social networks are among measures proposed in the study of prisons in 15 countries.
Britain's chief prison inspector said last month the treatment of Muslim inmates by prison staff as potentially dangerous militants risked driving them into the hands of radical groups.
Prisons occupy a central place in the history of militant Islamist groups such as al Qaeda which see them as valued centers of learning, recruitment and indoctrination.
Creative programs can turn the tide, argues the study of prison militants in Afghanistan, Algeria, Britain, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Israel, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the United States and Yemen.
For example in Singapore, alleged terrorists are systematically re-educated in prison, said the report by London's International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR).
A team of trained religious advisers helps them go through the Koran, showing how critical passages need to be read in context, and how extremist notions about violence are often based on misreadings and misinterpretations, the report says.
Prisons can be "a place for reform as well as radicalization," Peter Neumann, study author and director of ICSR based at London University's King's College, told Reuters.
"Prisons can play a positive role in tackling problems of radicalization and terrorism in society as a whole."
"SECURITY FIRST" APPROACH
Most Western prison systems practiced a "security first" approach with radicalized inmates, Neumann said, arguing this amounted to "locking people away and making sure they don't cause any trouble." Opportunities for reform were missed.
In Saudi Arabia, officials spend heavily to reform and re-integrate former militants to try to ensure they can look forward to a meaningful and productive life after leaving prison, the report says. In some cases, this process has included buying them houses and cars, and even finding them wives.
"None of the de-radicalization programs in the Middle East and Southeast Asia is perfect," said Neumann.
"But they should serve as an inspiration for people in the West to think more creatively about what positive things could be done with radicals and terrorists in the state's custody."
Neumann said this approach would not work everywhere, because de-radicalization depended on a conducive environment.
Releasing people into hostile communities with no further supervision would not work because all good de-radicalization programs were based on follow-up and after-care, which in case of Afghanistan for example was difficult, he said.
The study's proposed measures include:
-- A mix of education, typically combining ideological and/or religious re-education with vocational training.
-- Appointing credible interlocutors, who can relate to prisoners' personal and psychological needs.
-- Sophisticated methods for locking prisoners into multiple commitments and obligations toward family and community.
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
© Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.
Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, use the Reprints tool at the top of any article or visit: www.reutersreprints.com.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Al Qaeda First Lady!
Saudi Arabian mother becomes the First Lady of al-Qaeda
Saudi Arabia is reviewing its terrorism strategy after the detection of a female run network that was fund raising for al-Qaeda.
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
Published: 5:48PM BST 25 Jun 2010
Heila al-Qusayyer, the middle class mother now described as al-Qaeda's 'First Lady' was running a cell of 60 alleged militants. She is believed to have been the Arabian peninsula's principal fund-raiser for al-Qaeda.
Qusayyer holds a degree in geography and was married to a former executive from Aramco, the all-powerful state oil company, who gave up all his worldly possessions to become a radical preacher.
Related Articles
Amnesty criticises Saudi Arabia's 'shocking' human rights violations
Government warns of nuclear terror threat
Britain and US back 'Marshall Plan' for Pakistan
Terrorist Isa Ibrahim was a 'lone wolf' who radicalised himself
Afghanistan offensive 'shows signs of success' says Gordon Brown
Afghanistan: a war we cannot winCounter-terror officials have previously assumed that young men and boys are the principal agents of radical Islam.
Saudi security chiefs have since set up a specialist all-female unit at King Saud University, the country's oldest, to study the appeal of Islamist militancy to women and how best to tackle it.
"The story of this woman, who was involved in collecting money, with that money finding its way to al-Qaeda, has been like an alarm call to us," General Mansur al-Turki of the Saudi interior ministry told The Daily Telegraph.
There had been previous arrests of women terrorists, including some involved in bomb preparatio but such is the sensitivity towards the role of women, they were returned home.
The country's approach to suspects has become tougher across the board after Saeed al-Shehri, the deputy leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Until then alleged terrorist were mainly put through a controversial rehabilitation programme with an emphasis on education and psychology.
Shehri, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who returned to Saudi Arabia and then fled to Yemen, specifically demanded the release of Heila al-Qusayyer, who had been arrested in February.
Based on confessions she is said to have made in custody, the authorities say she used the cover of Islamic charities to obtain donations of cash and jewellery that she passed on to al-Qaeda.
One payment was of 650,000 Saudi riyals (GBP120,000).
Saudi newspapers have picked over leaked details of her arrest, such as that when discovered she was alone with a male suspect - a violation of strict sharia laws banning the mixing of sexes.
Wafa al-Shehri, Shehri's wife, was a key intermediary, returning to Saudi Arabia to recruit women and girls. But Qusayyer is also said to have been intending to join Saeed al-Shehri and become his second wife.
Even so, consideration is paid to her right to privacy as a woman. There is no known photograph of her, even wearing the niqab or face-veil that is used by all conservative women in the kingdom.
She was divorced by her first husband, Abdulkareem al-Humaid, the former oil executive, after he was jailed, so that she could continue her mission by marrying again.
Gen Turki said that women were possibly easier prey than men, because they were more affected by issues such as poverty and unemployment known to be a breeding ground for militancy.
He said it was also clear that women's restricted lives under local customs and laws did not mean they were unable to mix with male militants.
"We must reassure the community about the issue of al-Qaeda approaching women," he said.
Saudi Arabia is reviewing its terrorism strategy after the detection of a female run network that was fund raising for al-Qaeda.
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
Published: 5:48PM BST 25 Jun 2010
Heila al-Qusayyer, the middle class mother now described as al-Qaeda's 'First Lady' was running a cell of 60 alleged militants. She is believed to have been the Arabian peninsula's principal fund-raiser for al-Qaeda.
Qusayyer holds a degree in geography and was married to a former executive from Aramco, the all-powerful state oil company, who gave up all his worldly possessions to become a radical preacher.
Related Articles
Amnesty criticises Saudi Arabia's 'shocking' human rights violations
Government warns of nuclear terror threat
Britain and US back 'Marshall Plan' for Pakistan
Terrorist Isa Ibrahim was a 'lone wolf' who radicalised himself
Afghanistan offensive 'shows signs of success' says Gordon Brown
Afghanistan: a war we cannot winCounter-terror officials have previously assumed that young men and boys are the principal agents of radical Islam.
Saudi security chiefs have since set up a specialist all-female unit at King Saud University, the country's oldest, to study the appeal of Islamist militancy to women and how best to tackle it.
"The story of this woman, who was involved in collecting money, with that money finding its way to al-Qaeda, has been like an alarm call to us," General Mansur al-Turki of the Saudi interior ministry told The Daily Telegraph.
There had been previous arrests of women terrorists, including some involved in bomb preparatio but such is the sensitivity towards the role of women, they were returned home.
The country's approach to suspects has become tougher across the board after Saeed al-Shehri, the deputy leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Until then alleged terrorist were mainly put through a controversial rehabilitation programme with an emphasis on education and psychology.
Shehri, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who returned to Saudi Arabia and then fled to Yemen, specifically demanded the release of Heila al-Qusayyer, who had been arrested in February.
Based on confessions she is said to have made in custody, the authorities say she used the cover of Islamic charities to obtain donations of cash and jewellery that she passed on to al-Qaeda.
One payment was of 650,000 Saudi riyals (GBP120,000).
Saudi newspapers have picked over leaked details of her arrest, such as that when discovered she was alone with a male suspect - a violation of strict sharia laws banning the mixing of sexes.
Wafa al-Shehri, Shehri's wife, was a key intermediary, returning to Saudi Arabia to recruit women and girls. But Qusayyer is also said to have been intending to join Saeed al-Shehri and become his second wife.
Even so, consideration is paid to her right to privacy as a woman. There is no known photograph of her, even wearing the niqab or face-veil that is used by all conservative women in the kingdom.
She was divorced by her first husband, Abdulkareem al-Humaid, the former oil executive, after he was jailed, so that she could continue her mission by marrying again.
Gen Turki said that women were possibly easier prey than men, because they were more affected by issues such as poverty and unemployment known to be a breeding ground for militancy.
He said it was also clear that women's restricted lives under local customs and laws did not mean they were unable to mix with male militants.
"We must reassure the community about the issue of al-Qaeda approaching women," he said.
Pakistan Monitors Websites for Blasphemy
Pakistan scans Google, other sites for blasphemy
By ASIF SHAHZAD (AP) – 47 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan will monitor seven major websites, including Google and Yahoo, to block anti-Islamic links and content, an official said Friday. Seventeen lesser-known sites are being blocked outright for alleged blasphemous material.
The moves follow Pakistan's temporary ban imposed on Facebook in May that drew both praise and condemnation in a country that has long struggled to figure out how strict a version of Islam it should follow.
Both the Facebook ban and the move announced Friday were in response to court orders. The sites to be monitored include Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and its YouTube service, Amazon.com Inc. and MSN, Hotmail and Bing from Microsoft Corp., said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority spokesman Khurram Mehran.
"If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website," Mehran said.
Google spokesman Scott Rubin said the company intends to monitor how Pakistan's new policies affect access to its services, which include the world's most popular search engine and the most widely watched video site, YouTube.
"Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much ... content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our policies," Rubin said.
Yahoo called Pakistan's actions disappointing. The company is "founded on the principle that access to information can improve people's lives," Yahoo spokeswoman Amber Allman said.
Microsoft and Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mehran said an example of one of the 17 sites being blocked include islamexposed.blogspot.com, which is a blog created through Google's Blogger service. That site features postings with headlines such as "Islam: The Ultimate Hypocrisy" and links to anti-Islam online petitions.
Mehran said that, under instructions from the Ministry of Information Technology, the authority had begun the process of barring and monitoring the various sites.
Facebook was not part of the latest petition ruled upon by the judge in the city of Bahawalpur, Mehran said.
It was not possible late Friday to obtain a copy of the judge's order. Attempts to get comments from the affected companies also were not immediately successful.
A top court ordered the ban on Facebook for about two weeks in May amid anger over a page that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous. YouTube also was briefly blocked at the time.
The Facebook ban was lifted after the social-networking company blocked that particular page in Pakistan, but officials said at the time that the government would keep blocking some other, unspecified sites that contain "sacrilegious material."
The Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the page.
It also sparked a good deal of soul-searching, especially among commentators, who questioned why Pakistanis could not be entrusted to decide for themselves whether or not to look at a website.
Some observers noted that Pakistan had gone further than several other Muslim countries by banning Facebook, and said it showed the rise of conservative Islam in the country. Created in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims, Pakistan has swung away from moderate Sufi Islamic influences common to South Asia toward the more rigid version of the faith found in the Arab world.
It was not the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger.
Pakistan and other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad, and again in 2008 when they were reprinted. Later the same year, a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six people.
Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi in Islamabad and AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By ASIF SHAHZAD (AP) – 47 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan will monitor seven major websites, including Google and Yahoo, to block anti-Islamic links and content, an official said Friday. Seventeen lesser-known sites are being blocked outright for alleged blasphemous material.
The moves follow Pakistan's temporary ban imposed on Facebook in May that drew both praise and condemnation in a country that has long struggled to figure out how strict a version of Islam it should follow.
Both the Facebook ban and the move announced Friday were in response to court orders. The sites to be monitored include Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and its YouTube service, Amazon.com Inc. and MSN, Hotmail and Bing from Microsoft Corp., said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority spokesman Khurram Mehran.
"If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website," Mehran said.
Google spokesman Scott Rubin said the company intends to monitor how Pakistan's new policies affect access to its services, which include the world's most popular search engine and the most widely watched video site, YouTube.
"Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much ... content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our policies," Rubin said.
Yahoo called Pakistan's actions disappointing. The company is "founded on the principle that access to information can improve people's lives," Yahoo spokeswoman Amber Allman said.
Microsoft and Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mehran said an example of one of the 17 sites being blocked include islamexposed.blogspot.com, which is a blog created through Google's Blogger service. That site features postings with headlines such as "Islam: The Ultimate Hypocrisy" and links to anti-Islam online petitions.
Mehran said that, under instructions from the Ministry of Information Technology, the authority had begun the process of barring and monitoring the various sites.
Facebook was not part of the latest petition ruled upon by the judge in the city of Bahawalpur, Mehran said.
It was not possible late Friday to obtain a copy of the judge's order. Attempts to get comments from the affected companies also were not immediately successful.
A top court ordered the ban on Facebook for about two weeks in May amid anger over a page that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous. YouTube also was briefly blocked at the time.
The Facebook ban was lifted after the social-networking company blocked that particular page in Pakistan, but officials said at the time that the government would keep blocking some other, unspecified sites that contain "sacrilegious material."
The Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the page.
It also sparked a good deal of soul-searching, especially among commentators, who questioned why Pakistanis could not be entrusted to decide for themselves whether or not to look at a website.
Some observers noted that Pakistan had gone further than several other Muslim countries by banning Facebook, and said it showed the rise of conservative Islam in the country. Created in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims, Pakistan has swung away from moderate Sufi Islamic influences common to South Asia toward the more rigid version of the faith found in the Arab world.
It was not the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger.
Pakistan and other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad, and again in 2008 when they were reprinted. Later the same year, a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six people.
Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi in Islamabad and AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Pakistan Monitors Websites for Blasphemy
Pakistan scans Google, other sites for blasphemy
By ASIF SHAHZAD (AP) – 47 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan will monitor seven major websites, including Google and Yahoo, to block anti-Islamic links and content, an official said Friday. Seventeen lesser-known sites are being blocked outright for alleged blasphemous material.
The moves follow Pakistan's temporary ban imposed on Facebook in May that drew both praise and condemnation in a country that has long struggled to figure out how strict a version of Islam it should follow.
Both the Facebook ban and the move announced Friday were in response to court orders. The sites to be monitored include Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and its YouTube service, Amazon.com Inc. and MSN, Hotmail and Bing from Microsoft Corp., said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority spokesman Khurram Mehran.
"If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website," Mehran said.
Google spokesman Scott Rubin said the company intends to monitor how Pakistan's new policies affect access to its services, which include the world's most popular search engine and the most widely watched video site, YouTube.
"Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much ... content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our policies," Rubin said.
Yahoo called Pakistan's actions disappointing. The company is "founded on the principle that access to information can improve people's lives," Yahoo spokeswoman Amber Allman said.
Microsoft and Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mehran said an example of one of the 17 sites being blocked include islamexposed.blogspot.com, which is a blog created through Google's Blogger service. That site features postings with headlines such as "Islam: The Ultimate Hypocrisy" and links to anti-Islam online petitions.
Mehran said that, under instructions from the Ministry of Information Technology, the authority had begun the process of barring and monitoring the various sites.
Facebook was not part of the latest petition ruled upon by the judge in the city of Bahawalpur, Mehran said.
It was not possible late Friday to obtain a copy of the judge's order. Attempts to get comments from the affected companies also were not immediately successful.
A top court ordered the ban on Facebook for about two weeks in May amid anger over a page that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous. YouTube also was briefly blocked at the time.
The Facebook ban was lifted after the social-networking company blocked that particular page in Pakistan, but officials said at the time that the government would keep blocking some other, unspecified sites that contain "sacrilegious material."
The Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the page.
It also sparked a good deal of soul-searching, especially among commentators, who questioned why Pakistanis could not be entrusted to decide for themselves whether or not to look at a website.
Some observers noted that Pakistan had gone further than several other Muslim countries by banning Facebook, and said it showed the rise of conservative Islam in the country. Created in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims, Pakistan has swung away from moderate Sufi Islamic influences common to South Asia toward the more rigid version of the faith found in the Arab world.
It was not the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger.
Pakistan and other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad, and again in 2008 when they were reprinted. Later the same year, a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six people.
Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi in Islamabad and AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By ASIF SHAHZAD (AP) – 47 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan will monitor seven major websites, including Google and Yahoo, to block anti-Islamic links and content, an official said Friday. Seventeen lesser-known sites are being blocked outright for alleged blasphemous material.
The moves follow Pakistan's temporary ban imposed on Facebook in May that drew both praise and condemnation in a country that has long struggled to figure out how strict a version of Islam it should follow.
Both the Facebook ban and the move announced Friday were in response to court orders. The sites to be monitored include Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and its YouTube service, Amazon.com Inc. and MSN, Hotmail and Bing from Microsoft Corp., said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority spokesman Khurram Mehran.
"If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website," Mehran said.
Google spokesman Scott Rubin said the company intends to monitor how Pakistan's new policies affect access to its services, which include the world's most popular search engine and the most widely watched video site, YouTube.
"Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much ... content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our policies," Rubin said.
Yahoo called Pakistan's actions disappointing. The company is "founded on the principle that access to information can improve people's lives," Yahoo spokeswoman Amber Allman said.
Microsoft and Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mehran said an example of one of the 17 sites being blocked include islamexposed.blogspot.com, which is a blog created through Google's Blogger service. That site features postings with headlines such as "Islam: The Ultimate Hypocrisy" and links to anti-Islam online petitions.
Mehran said that, under instructions from the Ministry of Information Technology, the authority had begun the process of barring and monitoring the various sites.
Facebook was not part of the latest petition ruled upon by the judge in the city of Bahawalpur, Mehran said.
It was not possible late Friday to obtain a copy of the judge's order. Attempts to get comments from the affected companies also were not immediately successful.
A top court ordered the ban on Facebook for about two weeks in May amid anger over a page that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous. YouTube also was briefly blocked at the time.
The Facebook ban was lifted after the social-networking company blocked that particular page in Pakistan, but officials said at the time that the government would keep blocking some other, unspecified sites that contain "sacrilegious material."
The Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the page.
It also sparked a good deal of soul-searching, especially among commentators, who questioned why Pakistanis could not be entrusted to decide for themselves whether or not to look at a website.
Some observers noted that Pakistan had gone further than several other Muslim countries by banning Facebook, and said it showed the rise of conservative Islam in the country. Created in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims, Pakistan has swung away from moderate Sufi Islamic influences common to South Asia toward the more rigid version of the faith found in the Arab world.
It was not the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger.
Pakistan and other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad, and again in 2008 when they were reprinted. Later the same year, a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six people.
Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi in Islamabad and AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
American Terrorists
Jihad Watch
US Misunderstanders of Islam get 10 years in Pakistani prison for jihad seeking
Pakistani authorities and experienced players of the double game keep up appearances for the gullible West. "US 'jihad seekers' awarded 10 years imprisonment by Pak court," from ANI, June 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Islamabad, June 24 (ANI): A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Thursday awarded 10 years imprisonment to each of the five US terror suspects who were arrested from Punjab province's Sargodha District in December 2009.
Waqar Husain Khan, 22 (Virginia), Ahmed Abdullah Mani, 20 (Virginia), Ramay S Zamzam, 22 (Egypt), Iman Hasan Yamar, 17 (California), and Omar Farouk, 24 (Virginia) were arrested on charges of plotting terror attacks across Pakistan, The News reports.
The five 'jihad seekers' had visited a religious seminary linked to the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in Hyderabad and were on their way to terror camps based in the volatile Waziristan region....
A religious seminary? Full of Misunderstanders of Islam? Why, it's...inexplicable, if you buy into the mainstream view of Islamic terrorism's relationship to Islam.
The jihad seekers had pleaded innocence, saying they were being 'set up' and tortured by the FBI and the Pakistani police in custody. (ANI)
Al-Qaeda advises its operatives always to claim torture when in non-Muslim custody.
Posted by Robert on June 24, 2010 8:24 AM | 6 Comments
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Categories: American jihadis, Pakistan, Pakistan's double game
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6 Comments
Hugh | June 24, 2010 8:36 AM | Reply
These people were, however, identified, in a story in The New York Times, as "Muslim-Americans." It was understood, then, by the writers of the story, that the important thing in their identity was not that two were from Pakistan, and one from Yemen, and two from Ethiopia, but that they were all Muslims, that Islam was their identity, Islam was what explained their behavior.
And if the government of Pakistan prosecuted them, it did so both because it knew the Americans were looking, and because those who run Pakistan -- the generals and zamindars -- don't like the threat by the Taliban and others like-minded of undoing the social and, above all, economic order in Pakistan, which threatens the ruling class.
Had these five "Muslim-Americans" (better: Muslims, for they had no American loyalty or identity worth speaking of) not threatened the interests of the Pakistani ruling class, but only constituted a threat to American soldiers or other Infidels, then they would probably never have been caught, charged, tried, sentenced.
ebonystone | June 24, 2010 9:00 AM | Reply
If they were "set up", it was by Islam, not the FBI. And if they were tortured, it was by the will of Allah -- oh most merciful. They don't even understand their own religion.
Alarmed Pig Farmer | June 24, 2010 9:25 AM | Reply
And if the government of Pakistan prosecuted them, it did so both because it knew the Americans were looking...
But let's be clear that our gubmint will silently look the other way when these Jihad war terrorists "escape" from whatever prison to which they're consigned.
*** 33:11 ***
Allah and His Messenger promised us nothing but delusion; they have promised only to deceive us.
Btw, ain't been watching the news much lately. Has Moammar found out where that TWA mass murderer bomber dude Gordo Brown turned loose is living?
winoceros replied to comment from Alarmed Pig Farmer | June 24, 2010 10:24 AM | Reply
He's living with Nicole and Ron's real killer, and Natalie's real killer. They took a house by the sea together.
duh_swami | June 24, 2010 12:42 PM | Reply
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Thursday awarded 10 years imprisonment to each of the five US terror suspects who...
'Awarded'?
PMK | June 24, 2010 5:29 PM | Reply
Is it asking too much for our government to deny them reentry? Are we supposed to believe they were there to attack Pakistan and weren't there for training to carry out attacks at home?
If we didn't let them come here we wouldn't have to fight them here and we wouldn't have to fight them over there either.
"Awarded"? It might sound ludicrous to us but we don't willingly strap on suicide vests, either. "Awarded" actually sounds right for them.
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US Misunderstanders of Islam get 10 years in Pakistani prison for jihad seeking
Pakistani authorities and experienced players of the double game keep up appearances for the gullible West. "US 'jihad seekers' awarded 10 years imprisonment by Pak court," from ANI, June 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Islamabad, June 24 (ANI): A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Thursday awarded 10 years imprisonment to each of the five US terror suspects who were arrested from Punjab province's Sargodha District in December 2009.
Waqar Husain Khan, 22 (Virginia), Ahmed Abdullah Mani, 20 (Virginia), Ramay S Zamzam, 22 (Egypt), Iman Hasan Yamar, 17 (California), and Omar Farouk, 24 (Virginia) were arrested on charges of plotting terror attacks across Pakistan, The News reports.
The five 'jihad seekers' had visited a religious seminary linked to the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in Hyderabad and were on their way to terror camps based in the volatile Waziristan region....
A religious seminary? Full of Misunderstanders of Islam? Why, it's...inexplicable, if you buy into the mainstream view of Islamic terrorism's relationship to Islam.
The jihad seekers had pleaded innocence, saying they were being 'set up' and tortured by the FBI and the Pakistani police in custody. (ANI)
Al-Qaeda advises its operatives always to claim torture when in non-Muslim custody.
Posted by Robert on June 24, 2010 8:24 AM | 6 Comments
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6 Comments
Hugh | June 24, 2010 8:36 AM | Reply
These people were, however, identified, in a story in The New York Times, as "Muslim-Americans." It was understood, then, by the writers of the story, that the important thing in their identity was not that two were from Pakistan, and one from Yemen, and two from Ethiopia, but that they were all Muslims, that Islam was their identity, Islam was what explained their behavior.
And if the government of Pakistan prosecuted them, it did so both because it knew the Americans were looking, and because those who run Pakistan -- the generals and zamindars -- don't like the threat by the Taliban and others like-minded of undoing the social and, above all, economic order in Pakistan, which threatens the ruling class.
Had these five "Muslim-Americans" (better: Muslims, for they had no American loyalty or identity worth speaking of) not threatened the interests of the Pakistani ruling class, but only constituted a threat to American soldiers or other Infidels, then they would probably never have been caught, charged, tried, sentenced.
ebonystone | June 24, 2010 9:00 AM | Reply
If they were "set up", it was by Islam, not the FBI. And if they were tortured, it was by the will of Allah -- oh most merciful. They don't even understand their own religion.
Alarmed Pig Farmer | June 24, 2010 9:25 AM | Reply
And if the government of Pakistan prosecuted them, it did so both because it knew the Americans were looking...
But let's be clear that our gubmint will silently look the other way when these Jihad war terrorists "escape" from whatever prison to which they're consigned.
*** 33:11 ***
Allah and His Messenger promised us nothing but delusion; they have promised only to deceive us.
Btw, ain't been watching the news much lately. Has Moammar found out where that TWA mass murderer bomber dude Gordo Brown turned loose is living?
winoceros replied to comment from Alarmed Pig Farmer | June 24, 2010 10:24 AM | Reply
He's living with Nicole and Ron's real killer, and Natalie's real killer. They took a house by the sea together.
duh_swami | June 24, 2010 12:42 PM | Reply
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Thursday awarded 10 years imprisonment to each of the five US terror suspects who...
'Awarded'?
PMK | June 24, 2010 5:29 PM | Reply
Is it asking too much for our government to deny them reentry? Are we supposed to believe they were there to attack Pakistan and weren't there for training to carry out attacks at home?
If we didn't let them come here we wouldn't have to fight them here and we wouldn't have to fight them over there either.
"Awarded"? It might sound ludicrous to us but we don't willingly strap on suicide vests, either. "Awarded" actually sounds right for them.
Leave a Comment
NOTE: The Comments section is provided in the interests of free speech only. It is mostly unmoderated, but comments that are off topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying stand a chance of being deleted. The fact that any comment remains on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Jihad Watch, or by Robert Spencer or any other Jihad Watch writer, of any view expressed, fact alleged, or link provided in that comment.
Sign in to comment.
My Testimony- Audio
Download the MP3 audio:http://www.morainevalley.edu/library/eventpodcasts/3-30_2010_libraryevents.mp3
Obama Loses Popularity in Muslim World
latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-obama-global-20100618,0,6949141.story
latimes.com
Obama's ratings ebb in Muslim world
Pew poll of global attitudes finds support strong in most nations, but slipping in Muslim countries, due in part to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
5:39 PM PDT, June 17, 2010
Reporting from Washington
advertisement
Confidence in President Obama among the world's Muslims is slipping, according to a poll of global attitudes that also found widespread concern that the United States remains a go-it-alone nation even under the new administration.
The survey, by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, found support for Obama strong in most nations, even as his rating at home has slipped. But in five of seven Muslim-majority nations that were polled, his popularity slid over the last year, winning approval ratings from about one-third or less of respondents.
The finding will probably be of concern to the White House, which has worked to improve the United States' image abroad, particularly in the Muslim world.
Obama's worst grades were for his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of 22 nations polled, in only three, France, Nigeria and Kenya, did the majority of respondents support his approach.
Obama administration officials have been concerned about damage to the White House's image in the Muslim world stemming from developments in the Gaza Strip, where Israel, a staunch U.S. ally, has imposed a blockade, citing the need to prevent Hamas militants from obtaining arms.
In Pakistan, the number of Muslims who approve of Obama fell from 13% to 8% over the last year. Among Muslims in Egypt, which receives billions in U.S. aid, support for Obama fell from 41% to 31%, and in Turkey, from 33% to 23%.
Many of those polled said the United States didn't give enough consideration to the views of other countries when making decisions on international issues. The median number who said the United States acts unilaterally was 63%, down slightly from the 67% who used the same description in 2007, when George W. Bush was president.
In most countries, especially wealthier ones, Obama won strong support for the way he has handled the international economic crisis. The exception was the United States, where respondents were almost evenly split.
In Western Europe, support for Obama remains strong. In Germany, 90% believe Obama will do the right thing in foreign affairs, compared to 65% of Americans.
Approval of the United States among Mexicans tumbled after Arizona enacted a law giving police increased powers to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally. Forty-four percent said after the bill's signing that they approved of the United States, compared with 62% before the signing.
The last year saw a slight increase in the number of Muslims who said that suicide bombing and other forms of violent extremism are justified to protect Islam from its enemies. In Egypt the figure rose to 20% from 15%, and in Jordan it was also 20%, up from 12%.
Still, these levels were below those at mid-decade, after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pew poll touches a sensitive issue for the Obama administration, which has attached great importance to opinion in the Muslim world, as the president demonstrated in his Cairo speech in the fifth month of his presidency.
But the high hopes sparked a year ago in the Arab and Muslim worlds have been replaced in many cases with growing disillusionment and anger toward Washington. A recent editorial in Cairo's Al Ahram Weekly said the Obama administration had sorely let down the region.
"Where are the promises that Obama made in Cairo last year? Is he really this powerless or is he duplicitous?" the editorial says. "Whatever the answer, the Arab and Muslims worlds need to acknowledge that we are ultimately responsible for finding answers to the crises that are piling up around us."
Obama and his top commander for the Middle East, Army Gen. David Petraeus, have suggested that Muslim unhappiness with the failure of Mideast peace efforts have compounded security concerns for U.S. forces in the region.
Philip J. Crowley, the chief State Department spokesman, said the second year dip in support might be similar to the traditional dip in midterm election results.
He said Obama's decision to add troops in Afghanistan was "difficult," and acknowledged that Muslims "have concerns about Gaza, a concern we share."
The administration should be getting a boost from its coming withdrawal from Iraq, though signs of that have not shown up yet, Crowley said. He noted that support from Muslims was still up from the Bush administration's departing numbers.
Shibley Telhami, a specialist on Arab opinion at the University of Maryland, said "it boils down to one issue — the Arab-Israeli conflict."
paul.richter@latimes.com
Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
Obama's ratings ebb in Muslim world
Pew poll of global attitudes finds support strong in most nations, but slipping in Muslim countries, due in part to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
5:39 PM PDT, June 17, 2010
Reporting from Washington
advertisement
Confidence in President Obama among the world's Muslims is slipping, according to a poll of global attitudes that also found widespread concern that the United States remains a go-it-alone nation even under the new administration.
The survey, by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, found support for Obama strong in most nations, even as his rating at home has slipped. But in five of seven Muslim-majority nations that were polled, his popularity slid over the last year, winning approval ratings from about one-third or less of respondents.
The finding will probably be of concern to the White House, which has worked to improve the United States' image abroad, particularly in the Muslim world.
Obama's worst grades were for his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of 22 nations polled, in only three, France, Nigeria and Kenya, did the majority of respondents support his approach.
Obama administration officials have been concerned about damage to the White House's image in the Muslim world stemming from developments in the Gaza Strip, where Israel, a staunch U.S. ally, has imposed a blockade, citing the need to prevent Hamas militants from obtaining arms.
In Pakistan, the number of Muslims who approve of Obama fell from 13% to 8% over the last year. Among Muslims in Egypt, which receives billions in U.S. aid, support for Obama fell from 41% to 31%, and in Turkey, from 33% to 23%.
Many of those polled said the United States didn't give enough consideration to the views of other countries when making decisions on international issues. The median number who said the United States acts unilaterally was 63%, down slightly from the 67% who used the same description in 2007, when George W. Bush was president.
In most countries, especially wealthier ones, Obama won strong support for the way he has handled the international economic crisis. The exception was the United States, where respondents were almost evenly split.
In Western Europe, support for Obama remains strong. In Germany, 90% believe Obama will do the right thing in foreign affairs, compared to 65% of Americans.
Approval of the United States among Mexicans tumbled after Arizona enacted a law giving police increased powers to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally. Forty-four percent said after the bill's signing that they approved of the United States, compared with 62% before the signing.
The last year saw a slight increase in the number of Muslims who said that suicide bombing and other forms of violent extremism are justified to protect Islam from its enemies. In Egypt the figure rose to 20% from 15%, and in Jordan it was also 20%, up from 12%.
Still, these levels were below those at mid-decade, after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pew poll touches a sensitive issue for the Obama administration, which has attached great importance to opinion in the Muslim world, as the president demonstrated in his Cairo speech in the fifth month of his presidency.
But the high hopes sparked a year ago in the Arab and Muslim worlds have been replaced in many cases with growing disillusionment and anger toward Washington. A recent editorial in Cairo's Al Ahram Weekly said the Obama administration had sorely let down the region.
"Where are the promises that Obama made in Cairo last year? Is he really this powerless or is he duplicitous?" the editorial says. "Whatever the answer, the Arab and Muslims worlds need to acknowledge that we are ultimately responsible for finding answers to the crises that are piling up around us."
Obama and his top commander for the Middle East, Army Gen. David Petraeus, have suggested that Muslim unhappiness with the failure of Mideast peace efforts have compounded security concerns for U.S. forces in the region.
Philip J. Crowley, the chief State Department spokesman, said the second year dip in support might be similar to the traditional dip in midterm election results.
He said Obama's decision to add troops in Afghanistan was "difficult," and acknowledged that Muslims "have concerns about Gaza, a concern we share."
The administration should be getting a boost from its coming withdrawal from Iraq, though signs of that have not shown up yet, Crowley said. He noted that support from Muslims was still up from the Bush administration's departing numbers.
Shibley Telhami, a specialist on Arab opinion at the University of Maryland, said "it boils down to one issue — the Arab-Israeli conflict."
paul.richter@latimes.com
Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
Iran Hangs Sunni Insurgent
latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-rigi-20100621,0,2936466.story
latimes.com
Iran hangs leader of outlawed Sunni militant group
Abdulmalak Rigi, head of the Jundallah militant group comprising minority ethnic Baluchis, was convicted in a number of bombings and attacks and found guilty of heresy and corruption on Earth.
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
4:29 PM PDT, June 20, 2010
Reporting from Berlin
advertisement
Iran hanged the leader of an outlawed Islamic militant group Sunday after convicting him on charges of terrorism, murder and collaborating with Western intelligence services, including the CIA, state television reported.
Abdol-Majid Rigi, also known as Abdulmalak Rigi, was executed in Tehran's Evin Prison in the presence of the families of the victims of his alleged crimes, state television said. Among other charges, he was found guilty of heresy and corruption on Earth, capital offenses under Iran's Islamic law.
State television claimed the rebel leader acknowledged in court that his crimes contravened Islam and humanity and asked his collaborators not to repeat his mistakes. An official based in eastern Iran said he hoped security in the region would improve with Rigi's demise.
"The terrorist measures of Malak Rigi and his group had taken away the sense of security from people," Ali-Reza Azimi-Jahed, commander of the Revolutionary Guard in Sistan-Baluchistan province, told state television. "Now we witness an increase in the sense of security among people."
The execution marks a milestone in Iran's war against ethnic and religious militant groups on its eastern and western borders. For years, Rigi led a group called Jundallah, a militant Sunni Muslim group that drew support from Iran's struggling ethnic Baluchi minority, a community that straddles part of eastern Iran, western Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Baluchis are Sunni Muslim; Iran is 90% Shiite. Iran's Sunnis, which include Kurds and Arabs as well as Baluchis, say they are treated as second-class citizens, especially under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom many view as a sectarian chauvinist.
Since 2002 or 2003, Jundallah has waged a guerrilla war against Iranian authorities along the untamed eastern frontier, slipping in and out of Afghanistan and Pakistan as it launched attacks against Iranian officials and government targets.
In October, an alleged Jundallah bomber killed 31 people, including several higher-ups in the Revolutionary Guard, in an operation some analysts say scuttled a potential breakthrough between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
Rigi was captured in February during a still murky operation. The commercial plane he was aboard, bound from the United Arab Emirates for Kyrgyzstan, was grounded by Iranian fighter jets in southern Iran.
Tehran authorities had said Rigi, who was 25 or 26, was on his way to a meeting with U.S. or Western officials who they alleged were giving him funding and weapons.
U.S. and other Western officials have strenuously denied supporting Rigi, whose group borrows religious and ideological traits from Al Qaeda.
daragahi@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
Iran hangs leader of outlawed Sunni militant group
Abdulmalak Rigi, head of the Jundallah militant group comprising minority ethnic Baluchis, was convicted in a number of bombings and attacks and found guilty of heresy and corruption on Earth.
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
4:29 PM PDT, June 20, 2010
Reporting from Berlin
advertisement
Iran hanged the leader of an outlawed Islamic militant group Sunday after convicting him on charges of terrorism, murder and collaborating with Western intelligence services, including the CIA, state television reported.
Abdol-Majid Rigi, also known as Abdulmalak Rigi, was executed in Tehran's Evin Prison in the presence of the families of the victims of his alleged crimes, state television said. Among other charges, he was found guilty of heresy and corruption on Earth, capital offenses under Iran's Islamic law.
State television claimed the rebel leader acknowledged in court that his crimes contravened Islam and humanity and asked his collaborators not to repeat his mistakes. An official based in eastern Iran said he hoped security in the region would improve with Rigi's demise.
"The terrorist measures of Malak Rigi and his group had taken away the sense of security from people," Ali-Reza Azimi-Jahed, commander of the Revolutionary Guard in Sistan-Baluchistan province, told state television. "Now we witness an increase in the sense of security among people."
The execution marks a milestone in Iran's war against ethnic and religious militant groups on its eastern and western borders. For years, Rigi led a group called Jundallah, a militant Sunni Muslim group that drew support from Iran's struggling ethnic Baluchi minority, a community that straddles part of eastern Iran, western Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Baluchis are Sunni Muslim; Iran is 90% Shiite. Iran's Sunnis, which include Kurds and Arabs as well as Baluchis, say they are treated as second-class citizens, especially under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom many view as a sectarian chauvinist.
Since 2002 or 2003, Jundallah has waged a guerrilla war against Iranian authorities along the untamed eastern frontier, slipping in and out of Afghanistan and Pakistan as it launched attacks against Iranian officials and government targets.
In October, an alleged Jundallah bomber killed 31 people, including several higher-ups in the Revolutionary Guard, in an operation some analysts say scuttled a potential breakthrough between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
Rigi was captured in February during a still murky operation. The commercial plane he was aboard, bound from the United Arab Emirates for Kyrgyzstan, was grounded by Iranian fighter jets in southern Iran.
Tehran authorities had said Rigi, who was 25 or 26, was on his way to a meeting with U.S. or Western officials who they alleged were giving him funding and weapons.
U.S. and other Western officials have strenuously denied supporting Rigi, whose group borrows religious and ideological traits from Al Qaeda.
daragahi@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
White House welcomes Shariah finance specialist
White House welcomes Shariah finance specialist
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=170617
Thursday, June 24, 2010
HOMELAND INSECURITY
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
White House welcomes
Shariah finance specialist
Obama selects Muslim expert
in Islamic transactions as fellow
Posted: June 25, 2010
12:00 am Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
WorldNetDaily
Samar Ali (Photo: Vanderbilt Register)
The Obama administration has announced its appointment of 13 White House fellows – and the first person featured on its short list is a Muslim attorney who specializes in Shariah-compliant transactions.
"This year's White House fellows are comprised of some of the best and brightest leaders in our country," Michelle Obama said in the June 22 announcement. "I applaud their unyielding commitment to public service and dedication to serving their community."
White House fellows spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House staff, the vice president, Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials.
Samar Ali of Waverly, Tenn., is the first name appearing on the White House list. She is an associate with the law firm Hogan Lovells – a firm that claims to have advised on more than 200 Islamic finance transactions with an aggregate deal value in excess of $40 billion.
What does Islam plan for America? Read "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America" and find out!
According to Ali's biography posted on the White House website, "She is responsible for counseling clients on mergers & acquisitions, cross-border transactions, Shari'a compliant transactions, project finance, and international business matters. During her time with Hogan Lovells, she has been a founding member of the firm's Abu Dhabi office."
Hogan Lovells lists Ali's experience "advising a Middle Eastern university in the potential establishment of a Foreign Aid Conventional and Shari'ah Compliant Student Loan Program and advising a Middle Eastern client in relation to a U.S. government subcontract matter."
"Our team members are at the forefront of developments in the Islamic finance industry," Hogan Lovells boasts. "We help set standards for the sector. We have also advised on numerous first-of-their-kind transactions, such as the first convertible Sukuk, the first equity-linked Sukuk, the first Sharia-compliant securitization, the first international Sukuk al-mudaraba and Sukuk al-musharaka, the first Sukuk buy-back, and the first Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) guaranteed Islamic project financing."
Ali also clerked for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Edwin Cameron, now of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Promoting Islam and Shariah
The White House notes that Ali also led the YMCA Israeli-Palestinian Modern Voices for Progress Program and is a founding member of the first U.S. Delegation to the World Islamic Economic Forum. Ali was listed as a member of the British delegation to the World Islamic Economic Forum in 2009 and as a U.S. delegate in 2010.
Shariah Finance Watch blog noted, "[I]t was at the World Islamic Economic Forum where key leaders declared Shariah finance to be "dawa" (missionary) activity to promote Islam and Shariah."
In fact, the president of Indonesia, H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, delivered a March 2, 2009, keynote address to Islamic leaders at the World Islamic Economic Forum in Jakarta during which he called for Islamic banks to do "missionary work in the Western world."
"Islamic banking should now be able to take a leadership position in the banking world," he said. "Islamic banks have been much less affected by the financial meltdown than the conventional banks – for the obvious reason that Shariah banks do not indulge in investing in toxic assets and in leveraged funds. They are geared to supporting the real economy."
He added, "Islamic bankers should therefore do some missionary work in the Western world to promote the concept of Shariah banking, for which many in the West are more than ready now."
'We didn't consider terrorists to be Muslims'
Ali received her law degree from Vanderbilt Law School and served as the first Arab-Muslim student body president at Vanderbilt. She has interned for the Islamic International Arab Bank in Amman, Jordan.
According to Vanderbilt Law School, Ali's mother immigrated to the U.S. from Syria, and her father is Palestinian. He left the West Bank town of Ramallah at age 17.
America.gov reported that Ali said her parents taught her to "never forget where we came from and to never forget where we are now."
"I will always be Arab and I will always be American and I will always be Muslim," she said.
Ali spoke out at a campus memorial service days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"In my opinion," she told the Washington File, "Al-Qaida is trying to ruin Islam's reputation and we are simply not going to let them win this fight. If someone has a political agenda, they need to call it what it is, and not disguise it in the name of a religion or use the religion to achieve their political goals. This is simply unacceptable."
While she said she grieved the loss of thousands of American lives, Ali told the File she grew concerned about whether Americans would assume that she, as a Muslim and Arab-American, approved of those attacks.
"Thus, I was worried that many of my fellow citizens, would not realize that just because my friends and I are Muslims and Arabs, did not mean that we were part of or even agreed with the terrorists who caused September 11," she said. "We didn't even consider the terrorists to be Muslims. I was worried that people would confuse Islam with Osama Bin Ladin and his agenda, that they would confuse his agenda as the agenda of all believers in Islam."
(Story continues below)
Creeping Shariah
Shariah already is moving into some elements of American society, with a lawsuit pending over U.S. government involvement in a financial institution that accommodates Shariah requirements in its business operations.
WND also reported in November 2008 that the Treasury Department sponsored and promoted a conference titled "Islamic Finance 101."
Islamic finance is a system of banking consistent with the principles of Shariah, or Islamic law. It is becoming increasingly popular, having reached $800 billion by mid-2007 and growing at more than 15 percent each year. Wall Street now features an Islamic mutual fund and an Islamic index. However, critics claim anti-American terrorists are often financially supported through U.S. investments – creating a system by which the nation funds its own enemy.
In his July 2008 essay, "Financial Jihad: What Americans Need to Know," Vice President Christopher Holton of the Center for Security Policy wrote, "America is losing the financial war on terror because Wall Street is embracing a subversive enemy ideology on one hand and providing corporate life support to state sponsors of terrorism on the other hand."
Holton referred to Islamic finance, or "Shariah-Compliant Finance" as a "modern-day Trojan horse" infiltrating the U.S. He said it poses a threat to the U.S. because it seeks to legitimize Shariah – a man-made medieval doctrine that regulates every aspect of life for Muslims – and could ultimately change American life and laws.
Some advocates claim Islamic finance is socially responsible because it bans investors from funding companies that sell or promote products such as alcohol, tobacco, pornography, gambling and even pork.
However, many Islamic financial institutions also require industry participants to adhere to tenets of Shariah law. According to Nasser Suleiman's "Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking, "First and foremost, an Islamic organization must serve God. It must develop a distinctive corporate culture, the main purpose of which is to create a collective morality and spirituality which, when combined with the production of goods and services, sustains growth and the advancement of the Islamic way of life."
Three nations that rule 100 percent by Shariah law – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan – hold some of the most horrific human rights records in the world, Holton said.
"This strongly suggests that Americans should strenuously resist anything associated with Shariah."
Tenets of Shariah
In his essay, "Islamic Finance or Financing Islamism," Alex Alexiev outlined the following tenets of Shariah taken from "The Reliance of the Traveler: The Classic Manual of Sacred Law":
A woman is eligible for only half of the inheritance of a man
A virgin may be married against her will by her father or grandfather
A woman may not leave the house without her husband's permission
A Muslim man may marry four women, including Christians and Jews; a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim
Beating an insubordinate wife is permissible
Female sexual mutilation is obligatory
Adultery [or the perception of adultery] is punished by death by stoning
Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a religious obligation
Apostasy from Islam is punishable by death without trial
Lying to infidels in time of jihad is permissible
'Useful idiots'
Alexiev wrote that many Islamic financial institutions claim Shariah-Compliant Finance "derives its Islamic character from the strict observance of the ostensible Quranic prohibition of lending at interest, the imperative of almsgiving (zakat), avoidance of excessive uncertainty (gharar) and certain practices and products considered unlawful (haram) to Muslims …" However, he said, "[E]ven a casual examination of the reality of Islamic finance today reveals it to be a bogus concept practiced by deceptive ploys and disingenuous means by practitioners that are or should be aware of that, but remain predictably silent."
Shariah finance institutions have funded militant Islamism for more than 30 years. Alexiev cited Islamic Development Bank's hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Hamas in support of suicide bombing. Bank Al-Taqwa and other banks and charities run by Saudi billionaires that have funded al-Qaida activities.
Additionally, Shariah law mandates that Muslims donate 2.5 percent of their annual incomes to charities – including jihadists. When 400 banks regularly contribute to such charities, potential financial sums can be virtually limitless.
If Western banks endorse Shariah, they will "end up becoming what Lenin called useful idiots or worse to the Islamists," Alexiev wrote. "And it is a very thin line between that and outright complicity in the Islamist agenda."
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This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=170617
Thursday, June 24, 2010
HOMELAND INSECURITY
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
White House welcomes
Shariah finance specialist
Obama selects Muslim expert
in Islamic transactions as fellow
Posted: June 25, 2010
12:00 am Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
WorldNetDaily
Samar Ali (Photo: Vanderbilt Register)
The Obama administration has announced its appointment of 13 White House fellows – and the first person featured on its short list is a Muslim attorney who specializes in Shariah-compliant transactions.
"This year's White House fellows are comprised of some of the best and brightest leaders in our country," Michelle Obama said in the June 22 announcement. "I applaud their unyielding commitment to public service and dedication to serving their community."
White House fellows spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House staff, the vice president, Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials.
Samar Ali of Waverly, Tenn., is the first name appearing on the White House list. She is an associate with the law firm Hogan Lovells – a firm that claims to have advised on more than 200 Islamic finance transactions with an aggregate deal value in excess of $40 billion.
What does Islam plan for America? Read "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America" and find out!
According to Ali's biography posted on the White House website, "She is responsible for counseling clients on mergers & acquisitions, cross-border transactions, Shari'a compliant transactions, project finance, and international business matters. During her time with Hogan Lovells, she has been a founding member of the firm's Abu Dhabi office."
Hogan Lovells lists Ali's experience "advising a Middle Eastern university in the potential establishment of a Foreign Aid Conventional and Shari'ah Compliant Student Loan Program and advising a Middle Eastern client in relation to a U.S. government subcontract matter."
"Our team members are at the forefront of developments in the Islamic finance industry," Hogan Lovells boasts. "We help set standards for the sector. We have also advised on numerous first-of-their-kind transactions, such as the first convertible Sukuk, the first equity-linked Sukuk, the first Sharia-compliant securitization, the first international Sukuk al-mudaraba and Sukuk al-musharaka, the first Sukuk buy-back, and the first Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) guaranteed Islamic project financing."
Ali also clerked for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Edwin Cameron, now of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Promoting Islam and Shariah
The White House notes that Ali also led the YMCA Israeli-Palestinian Modern Voices for Progress Program and is a founding member of the first U.S. Delegation to the World Islamic Economic Forum. Ali was listed as a member of the British delegation to the World Islamic Economic Forum in 2009 and as a U.S. delegate in 2010.
Shariah Finance Watch blog noted, "[I]t was at the World Islamic Economic Forum where key leaders declared Shariah finance to be "dawa" (missionary) activity to promote Islam and Shariah."
In fact, the president of Indonesia, H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, delivered a March 2, 2009, keynote address to Islamic leaders at the World Islamic Economic Forum in Jakarta during which he called for Islamic banks to do "missionary work in the Western world."
"Islamic banking should now be able to take a leadership position in the banking world," he said. "Islamic banks have been much less affected by the financial meltdown than the conventional banks – for the obvious reason that Shariah banks do not indulge in investing in toxic assets and in leveraged funds. They are geared to supporting the real economy."
He added, "Islamic bankers should therefore do some missionary work in the Western world to promote the concept of Shariah banking, for which many in the West are more than ready now."
'We didn't consider terrorists to be Muslims'
Ali received her law degree from Vanderbilt Law School and served as the first Arab-Muslim student body president at Vanderbilt. She has interned for the Islamic International Arab Bank in Amman, Jordan.
According to Vanderbilt Law School, Ali's mother immigrated to the U.S. from Syria, and her father is Palestinian. He left the West Bank town of Ramallah at age 17.
America.gov reported that Ali said her parents taught her to "never forget where we came from and to never forget where we are now."
"I will always be Arab and I will always be American and I will always be Muslim," she said.
Ali spoke out at a campus memorial service days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"In my opinion," she told the Washington File, "Al-Qaida is trying to ruin Islam's reputation and we are simply not going to let them win this fight. If someone has a political agenda, they need to call it what it is, and not disguise it in the name of a religion or use the religion to achieve their political goals. This is simply unacceptable."
While she said she grieved the loss of thousands of American lives, Ali told the File she grew concerned about whether Americans would assume that she, as a Muslim and Arab-American, approved of those attacks.
"Thus, I was worried that many of my fellow citizens, would not realize that just because my friends and I are Muslims and Arabs, did not mean that we were part of or even agreed with the terrorists who caused September 11," she said. "We didn't even consider the terrorists to be Muslims. I was worried that people would confuse Islam with Osama Bin Ladin and his agenda, that they would confuse his agenda as the agenda of all believers in Islam."
(Story continues below)
Creeping Shariah
Shariah already is moving into some elements of American society, with a lawsuit pending over U.S. government involvement in a financial institution that accommodates Shariah requirements in its business operations.
WND also reported in November 2008 that the Treasury Department sponsored and promoted a conference titled "Islamic Finance 101."
Islamic finance is a system of banking consistent with the principles of Shariah, or Islamic law. It is becoming increasingly popular, having reached $800 billion by mid-2007 and growing at more than 15 percent each year. Wall Street now features an Islamic mutual fund and an Islamic index. However, critics claim anti-American terrorists are often financially supported through U.S. investments – creating a system by which the nation funds its own enemy.
In his July 2008 essay, "Financial Jihad: What Americans Need to Know," Vice President Christopher Holton of the Center for Security Policy wrote, "America is losing the financial war on terror because Wall Street is embracing a subversive enemy ideology on one hand and providing corporate life support to state sponsors of terrorism on the other hand."
Holton referred to Islamic finance, or "Shariah-Compliant Finance" as a "modern-day Trojan horse" infiltrating the U.S. He said it poses a threat to the U.S. because it seeks to legitimize Shariah – a man-made medieval doctrine that regulates every aspect of life for Muslims – and could ultimately change American life and laws.
Some advocates claim Islamic finance is socially responsible because it bans investors from funding companies that sell or promote products such as alcohol, tobacco, pornography, gambling and even pork.
However, many Islamic financial institutions also require industry participants to adhere to tenets of Shariah law. According to Nasser Suleiman's "Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking, "First and foremost, an Islamic organization must serve God. It must develop a distinctive corporate culture, the main purpose of which is to create a collective morality and spirituality which, when combined with the production of goods and services, sustains growth and the advancement of the Islamic way of life."
Three nations that rule 100 percent by Shariah law – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan – hold some of the most horrific human rights records in the world, Holton said.
"This strongly suggests that Americans should strenuously resist anything associated with Shariah."
Tenets of Shariah
In his essay, "Islamic Finance or Financing Islamism," Alex Alexiev outlined the following tenets of Shariah taken from "The Reliance of the Traveler: The Classic Manual of Sacred Law":
A woman is eligible for only half of the inheritance of a man
A virgin may be married against her will by her father or grandfather
A woman may not leave the house without her husband's permission
A Muslim man may marry four women, including Christians and Jews; a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim
Beating an insubordinate wife is permissible
Female sexual mutilation is obligatory
Adultery [or the perception of adultery] is punished by death by stoning
Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a religious obligation
Apostasy from Islam is punishable by death without trial
Lying to infidels in time of jihad is permissible
'Useful idiots'
Alexiev wrote that many Islamic financial institutions claim Shariah-Compliant Finance "derives its Islamic character from the strict observance of the ostensible Quranic prohibition of lending at interest, the imperative of almsgiving (zakat), avoidance of excessive uncertainty (gharar) and certain practices and products considered unlawful (haram) to Muslims …" However, he said, "[E]ven a casual examination of the reality of Islamic finance today reveals it to be a bogus concept practiced by deceptive ploys and disingenuous means by practitioners that are or should be aware of that, but remain predictably silent."
Shariah finance institutions have funded militant Islamism for more than 30 years. Alexiev cited Islamic Development Bank's hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Hamas in support of suicide bombing. Bank Al-Taqwa and other banks and charities run by Saudi billionaires that have funded al-Qaida activities.
Additionally, Shariah law mandates that Muslims donate 2.5 percent of their annual incomes to charities – including jihadists. When 400 banks regularly contribute to such charities, potential financial sums can be virtually limitless.
If Western banks endorse Shariah, they will "end up becoming what Lenin called useful idiots or worse to the Islamists," Alexiev wrote. "And it is a very thin line between that and outright complicity in the Islamist agenda."
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Obama's Islamic Envoy: Obama Is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islamâ€
Obama's Islamic Envoy: Obama Is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islamâ€
Obama’s Islamic Envoy: Obama Dropping References to Islamic Terrorism, Jihadism has Made Him America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam”…
More like “Panderer-in-Chief”…
(Weekly Standard)-Rashad Hussain, America’s special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Saudi-based body formed in 1969 to “protect” Jerusalem from the Israelis, announced a new title this week for President Barack Obama. According to Hussain, Obama is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam.”
Hussain so designated Obama in a keynote speech Wednesday, June 23, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The occasion was another “post-Cairo” conference, following on the event that welcomed Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan to Washington in April. Hussain also declared that Obama is “Educator-in-Chief” on the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which has produced diplomatic and political events around the capital for some years. Hussain affirmed with satisfaction that presidential iftar dinners, where the fast is broken after sundown, and which had formerly been limited to diplomats from Muslim countries, now welcomed American Muslims from throughout society.
In his remarks, Hussain also congratulated Obama for sending Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, to last year’s annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a notorious front for Saudi-financed Muslim radicalism. Worse, Hussain has now divulged that the U.S. will support the OIC in the latter’s United Nations effort to criminalize “defamation of religion” – widely perceived as a measure to suppress criticism of Muslim practices that violate human rights. “The OIC and the Obama administration will work together in the UN on the issue of defamation of religion, especially in Europe,” said Hussain.
…As noted by Hussain, Obama has called for references to “Islamic terrorism” and “jihadism” to be expunged from the official vocabulary employed by his administration, and has pronounced last year’s Fort Hood massacre to be unrelated to Islam. As the president has assured the world, terrorism is anti-Islamic and the term “jihad” has been misused. Thus Obama presumes not only to act as “educator” on Islam to non-Muslim Americans, but to define the religion for its own adherents.
Rest here »
Obama’s Islamic Envoy: Obama Dropping References to Islamic Terrorism, Jihadism has Made Him America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam”…
More like “Panderer-in-Chief”…
(Weekly Standard)-Rashad Hussain, America’s special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Saudi-based body formed in 1969 to “protect” Jerusalem from the Israelis, announced a new title this week for President Barack Obama. According to Hussain, Obama is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam.”
Hussain so designated Obama in a keynote speech Wednesday, June 23, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The occasion was another “post-Cairo” conference, following on the event that welcomed Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan to Washington in April. Hussain also declared that Obama is “Educator-in-Chief” on the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which has produced diplomatic and political events around the capital for some years. Hussain affirmed with satisfaction that presidential iftar dinners, where the fast is broken after sundown, and which had formerly been limited to diplomats from Muslim countries, now welcomed American Muslims from throughout society.
In his remarks, Hussain also congratulated Obama for sending Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, to last year’s annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a notorious front for Saudi-financed Muslim radicalism. Worse, Hussain has now divulged that the U.S. will support the OIC in the latter’s United Nations effort to criminalize “defamation of religion” – widely perceived as a measure to suppress criticism of Muslim practices that violate human rights. “The OIC and the Obama administration will work together in the UN on the issue of defamation of religion, especially in Europe,” said Hussain.
…As noted by Hussain, Obama has called for references to “Islamic terrorism” and “jihadism” to be expunged from the official vocabulary employed by his administration, and has pronounced last year’s Fort Hood massacre to be unrelated to Islam. As the president has assured the world, terrorism is anti-Islamic and the term “jihad” has been misused. Thus Obama presumes not only to act as “educator” on Islam to non-Muslim Americans, but to define the religion for its own adherents.
Rest here »
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Dearborn's Ban on Evangelism
The Arab American News
Evangelists challenge arrests at Arab festival, claim free speech rights
Friday, 06.25.2010, 12:40am
The group is alleging that their free speech rights were violated after their video cameras, which were used to record various conversations at the festival, were confiscated by police. They are requesting the return of their cameras and tapes.
DEARBORN — A total of four Christian evangelists who were reportedly attempting to convert patrons at Dearborn's Arab International Festival last week were arrested and jailed for disorderly conduct according to Dearborn Police.
Those arrested were Negeen Mayel of California, Nabeel Qureshi of Virginia, David Wood of New York, and Paul Rezkalla, a student at New York University.
The group is alleging that their free speech rights were violated after their video cameras, which were used to record various conversations at the festival, were confiscated by police. They are requesting the return of their cameras and tapes.
Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad told the Detroit Free Press that the missionaries were arrested in order to ensure security and to prevent festival patrons from being bothered.
Evangelists challenge arrests at Arab festival, claim free speech rights
Friday, 06.25.2010, 12:40am
The group is alleging that their free speech rights were violated after their video cameras, which were used to record various conversations at the festival, were confiscated by police. They are requesting the return of their cameras and tapes.
DEARBORN — A total of four Christian evangelists who were reportedly attempting to convert patrons at Dearborn's Arab International Festival last week were arrested and jailed for disorderly conduct according to Dearborn Police.
Those arrested were Negeen Mayel of California, Nabeel Qureshi of Virginia, David Wood of New York, and Paul Rezkalla, a student at New York University.
The group is alleging that their free speech rights were violated after their video cameras, which were used to record various conversations at the festival, were confiscated by police. They are requesting the return of their cameras and tapes.
Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad told the Detroit Free Press that the missionaries were arrested in order to ensure security and to prevent festival patrons from being bothered.
Christians in Palestine
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/briefing-papers/1208-christian-muslim-relations-in-palestine
hursday, 24 June 2010 17:50 Silvia Nicolaou-Garcia
Briefing Paper - June 2010
An overview of the Christian presence in Palestine
The estimated number of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem is 51,710, making the percentage of the Palestinian Christians in the Occupied Territories two percent of the Palestinian population.i There is, in contrast, a higher percentage of Christians in Israel. The percentage of the Arab Christians in Israel - including Israeli Occupied Jerusalem - is 1.66, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Bethlehem, which traces its roots to the very origin of the Christian faith, is the home to the highest percentage of Christians in Palestine (43.4%), followed by Ramallah (24.7%), then Jerusalem (17.9%).
Christianity has a long standing history in Palestine, and Palestinian Christians belong to several traditional communities of faith. The first are the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox churches, the second is made up of the Syrian, Coptic and Armenian Orthodox churches, and a third category consists of those churches belonging to the Catholic family of churches. There are also a small but increasing number of evangelical churches, including the Lutheran and Episcopal churches.
Over the past century, the percentage of Christian Palestinians has been in decline. The influx of Jewish immigrants since the late 1880s, the Nakba of 1948 and the expulsions of 1967 played a big role in diminishing the presence of Palestinian Christians. During the Deir Yassin Massacre of 1948, over a quarter of a million Palestinians, many of them Christian, were displaced or disappeared. Many of the 531 villages that were levelled in 1948 had a mix of Christian and Muslim inhabitants. To this day, millions of Palestinians have been expelled from their lands, and rendered homeless and as refugees. Of the remaining Palestinian Christians, most of them have emigrated at an increasing rate from 1990 onwards, because of lack of freedom and security and due to the deteriorating economic situation.
A relationship of trust in the face of Israeli adversity
Various Christian Zionist propaganda sources claim that the main problem for Palestinian Christians is their Muslim neighbours.ii The decline of Christian presence in Palestine is portrayed as the fault of Muslims and not of the illegal Israeli occupation.iii Christian Zionist tours to the Holy Land contribute towards the spread of this myth and frame the conflict in an anti-Muslim way in order to distract attention from Israel's continued violations of international law.
Even though the relationship between Palestinian Christians and Muslims is not always a rosy one, the above claims are far from true. Palestinian Christians are an indigenous, integral part of the Arab Palestinian culture and civilization in the political, historical and religious spheres. At the political level, Palestinian Christians have been fellow citizens in the common struggle against foreign or colonial invasion, regardless of its religious or ethnic identity. Many seats in the current Palestinian Legislative Council are held by Palestinian Christians. This amounts to more or less 8% of the seats, whereas Christians only make up 2% of the population of the West Bank and Gaza. Similarly, the Samaritans, who number three hundred and twenty persons, have one seat in the Council. Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter are observed, and Christians continue to be an integral part of the Arab Palestinian culture and civilization. A relationship of peaceful coexistance is also found on the personal level. People from both religions visit each other during religious festivals, and in Jerusalem schools run by Christian churches have a majority Muslim student population.
Palestinian Christians, like their Muslim counterparts, have experienced a long history of dispossession and have not been immune to Israeli policies of occupation and discrimination. Not only do they have to deal with the day to day hardships that come with occupation, but they are also dismayed by the fact that many of their fellow Christians in Europe and North America unquestionably support the Israeli regime. Western Christians (in particular American and Britain) have, for a variety of reasons, tended to show greater sympathy towards the state of Israel than towards the worsening condition of the Palestinian people. This alliance can be traced back as far as 1917, when the United Kingdom issued the Balfour Declaration and established Palestine as a "national home for the Jewish people". More recently the Nixon administration in 1973 provided Israel with a full replacement of all its tanks, planes and ammunition during the October War against Egypt and Syria.
However, Western Christian alliances with Israel go beyond a political alliance. Throughout the 20th Century there has been a significant influence of Christian theological attitudes toward Israel which has been devastating on the indigenous Palestinian Christian community. The rise of Evangelicalism and Christian fundamentalism has fermented the unquestionable support for the state of Israel. As was highlighted by the Pope earlier this month during his visit to Cyprus, "the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories is creating difficulties in everyday life….moreover; certain Christian fundamentalist theologies use Sacred Scripture to justify Israel's occupation of Palestine." A 46-page text published by the Vatican: The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness" stresses how this fundamentalist theology is making the situation for Christian Arabs even more sensitive.iv
Christian Zionist support for Israel is also manifested in the shape of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, encouraged particularly by the Israeli Government Tourist Office.v This support has an objectionable consequence on the indigenous Palestinian Christian communities. Many of the Western pilgrims appear not only ignorant of recent Middle Eastern history, but surprised to find an Arab Christian presence at all. Like their Muslim neighbours, they are subject to daily experiences of humiliation at checkpoints and roadblocks and prevented from making pilgrimage to their Holy places of worship. Palestinian Christians are routinely prohibited from travelling to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, where the church commemorates Jesus' crucifixion, burial, and resurrection from the dead, whilst Palestinian Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza strip are prevented from travelling to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
In December 2009, a group of Palestinian Christians, including Archbishop Michel Sabbah, the retired Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem published "A Moment of Truth" , a call for help to the international community on behalf of the Palestinian Christians. They severely criticised "theologians in the West who try to attach a biblical and theological legitimacy to the Israeli infringement of our rights, urge for non violent resistance tools such as boycott and divestments and call for a stop on Israeli 'racism and apartheid'." In an interview with Sabbah earlier this year, he clearly spoke on behalf of all the Christian Churches in Palestine when stating that "Israeli Occupation is the Main cause of Instability in the Middle East".vi
Palestinian Christians and the Islamic resistance
Contrary to what is propagated in the media, the relationship between Christians and the Islamic resistance in Palestine is one of respect. Although tensions arise between the Christian minority and the rest of the population, these are not the result of a systematic discrimination against them, but are more due to the everyday anguish of the siege and occupation.
With regard to the Islamic resistance Movement (Hamas), Article 31 of its Charter specifically says, "Hamas is a humane movement which cares for human rights and is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes towards other religions…under the shadow of Islam it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security".
An example of the coexistence is the situation of Palestinian Christians in Gaza, contrary to the Israeli propaganda (hasbara). School playgrounds are places where coexistence between Muslims and Christians takes place. The Holy Family School in Gaza City is part-funded by the Vatican. Father Emanuel Musallem explains how he is the priest of more than 4,000 Christians in Gaza. His school has more than 1,200 students, 1,000 of which are Muslim. Father Emanuel explains how many Hamas leaders are sending their children to this school, because he is not preaching "Christianity", he is rather "spreading the light of knowledge in his Palestinian nation". Father Emanuel declares himself first an Arab, then a Palestinian, and then a Christian.
On another level, Hamas has always demonstrated respect for Christmas religious festivities. In December 2003, they were the first to organize an assistance package and donations to families whose houses were damaged by the Israeli Defence Forces in Rafah. The movement went even further and on Christmas Eve 2003 when several officials dressed up as Santa Claus and distributed presents to Christian children in Bethlehem. Another example of the tolerance and respect between the two communities was when Declaration number 67 was issued by Hamas in 1990, cancelling a general strike which coincided with the religious Christmas holidays.
Another issue which is frequently discussed in the media is whether or not Hamas is encroaching upon women's rights in the Gaza strip. Calls to ban male hairdressers from cutting women's hair and a ruling stating that female lawyers had to cover their hair when acting in civil courts were denounced by many in the international community. However, even though, to some extent, the atmosphere in the region is more conservative, these measures were not approved of by the majority of the population and were therefore never implemented. Hana Afana, a 24 year old trainee maths teacher explains how Hamas is imposing a religious code, and how what is really worrying for the women in the region is the siege and the economic situation. Qualified professionals and graduates like her find themselves unable to find a job. According to Mona Ahmad al-Shawa, who runs the women's unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, basic human rights such as access to electricity, running water and medical treatment are what women want.
Muslims and Christians in Palestine are not just bonded at the playground or in the spiritual sphere. They share the sheer disappointment with the Oslo process and the rampant corruption of the Palestinian Authority, which has misappropriated billions of dollars worth of aid from the international community. Hamas winning the elections in the territories reflected the disillusionment of Palestinians, and was a natural reaction to their dissatisfaction. Often regarded as a military organization, the movement engages well beyond its military wing. It runs a network of social, educational, health and economic services, especially in Gaza. Christians in Bethlehem and Ramallah, tired of the PA's corruption and sex scandals, were not afraid to vote for Hamas.
Collaboration between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Israeli State - "The Holy Land is not for Sale or Lease"
The Palestinian Authority is, however, not the only one accused of corruption and scandalous transactions, and there seems to be internal strife between the different Palestinian Christian communities. The Greek Orthodox Church has been portrayed as collaborating with Israel since 1967, due to its involvement in land and political disputes. The Orthodox Church is the biggest private owner of land in Jerusalem and owns most of the land in the West Bank on which the Christian religious sites, including the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem where Christians believe Jesus was born, are built. Much of this land was donated to it by Orthodox Christian Palestinians in the late 1800s. Over the last few decades the church has increased land sales to the Israeli authorities or leased land to them for a period of 999 years. Examples of these transactions include the sale of St. John's property in the Christian quarter on 11th April 1990, the transfer of fifty dunams near Mar Elias monastery, and the sale of two hotels and twenty seven stores on Omar Bin Al-Khattab square near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The church's land sales have come against a background of corruption allegations. Nicholas Papadimas, a previous church treasurer in Jerusalem, was involved some of the sales before he fled the country and was charged in Greece with stealing church funds in a separate case. On being appointed as patriarch in 2005, Theophilos had promised to stop selling Palestinian land, but he was also involved in many shady undertakings with Israel. The current patriarch, Irineos, has also been accused of being behind secret land deals with two international Jewish investment groups.
Another source of tension comes from the fact that the Greek clergy do not allow Arab clergymen from rising in the church. This is the case of the prominent Palestinian Christian clergyman, Abdullah Hanaa. On the 13th of November 2009, Theofilos removed Abdullah from his position as the deputy head from the Orthodox Church. This resulted in widespread condemnation from the Palestinian Greek Orthodox Community, who demonstrated in their thousands in the streets of Ramallah.
The Israeli authorities have used the church's corruption and financial difficulties to their political advantage and applied additional political pressure to ensure that the choice of patriarchs is beneficial to Israel's land acquisition policies. One of the church's Jerusalem properties was purchased by Israel with the involvement of the Ateret Cohanim association which is dedicated to buying Arab property in Jerusalem and settling Jews there.
Both the Christian and Muslim Palestinian communities have suffered at the hands of the Occupation. Excavations near the gate of Maryam in the Western Wall of the Church of the Sepulchre in November 2009 are a recent example of this. Far from collaborating with the Israeli entity, the struggle against the occupation should unite not only the different Christian Churches, but also the Muslim community.
Conclusion
According to Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, "The last 5 years have been very difficult for all the Palestinians - Muslims and Christians". Gaza Baptist Church is one of only three churches serving the 4,000 Christians living among the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million inhabitants. Hanna explains how the siege united the community. Because of the lack of basic food, Christian charities have provided food for families, 99% of which are Muslim. During the 2009 bombings, "the church ceiling fell down up to 6 times".
The plight of the Palestinian Christian is very much connected to that of the Palestinian Muslim in that both, whether in the Occupied Territories or inside Israel itself, are experiencing daily injustices at the hands of oppressive and discriminatory policies imposed on them by the Israeli government. The conflict is therefore not between Muslims and Christians; nor between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Palestinian Christians; it is between Palestinians as a whole and Israel's occupation and apartheid establishment. It is indeed hard to be Palestinian Christian. But it is equally hard being a Palestinian Muslim.
It is hard simply being a Palestinian.
hursday, 24 June 2010 17:50 Silvia Nicolaou-Garcia
Briefing Paper - June 2010
An overview of the Christian presence in Palestine
The estimated number of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem is 51,710, making the percentage of the Palestinian Christians in the Occupied Territories two percent of the Palestinian population.i There is, in contrast, a higher percentage of Christians in Israel. The percentage of the Arab Christians in Israel - including Israeli Occupied Jerusalem - is 1.66, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Bethlehem, which traces its roots to the very origin of the Christian faith, is the home to the highest percentage of Christians in Palestine (43.4%), followed by Ramallah (24.7%), then Jerusalem (17.9%).
Christianity has a long standing history in Palestine, and Palestinian Christians belong to several traditional communities of faith. The first are the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox churches, the second is made up of the Syrian, Coptic and Armenian Orthodox churches, and a third category consists of those churches belonging to the Catholic family of churches. There are also a small but increasing number of evangelical churches, including the Lutheran and Episcopal churches.
Over the past century, the percentage of Christian Palestinians has been in decline. The influx of Jewish immigrants since the late 1880s, the Nakba of 1948 and the expulsions of 1967 played a big role in diminishing the presence of Palestinian Christians. During the Deir Yassin Massacre of 1948, over a quarter of a million Palestinians, many of them Christian, were displaced or disappeared. Many of the 531 villages that were levelled in 1948 had a mix of Christian and Muslim inhabitants. To this day, millions of Palestinians have been expelled from their lands, and rendered homeless and as refugees. Of the remaining Palestinian Christians, most of them have emigrated at an increasing rate from 1990 onwards, because of lack of freedom and security and due to the deteriorating economic situation.
A relationship of trust in the face of Israeli adversity
Various Christian Zionist propaganda sources claim that the main problem for Palestinian Christians is their Muslim neighbours.ii The decline of Christian presence in Palestine is portrayed as the fault of Muslims and not of the illegal Israeli occupation.iii Christian Zionist tours to the Holy Land contribute towards the spread of this myth and frame the conflict in an anti-Muslim way in order to distract attention from Israel's continued violations of international law.
Even though the relationship between Palestinian Christians and Muslims is not always a rosy one, the above claims are far from true. Palestinian Christians are an indigenous, integral part of the Arab Palestinian culture and civilization in the political, historical and religious spheres. At the political level, Palestinian Christians have been fellow citizens in the common struggle against foreign or colonial invasion, regardless of its religious or ethnic identity. Many seats in the current Palestinian Legislative Council are held by Palestinian Christians. This amounts to more or less 8% of the seats, whereas Christians only make up 2% of the population of the West Bank and Gaza. Similarly, the Samaritans, who number three hundred and twenty persons, have one seat in the Council. Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter are observed, and Christians continue to be an integral part of the Arab Palestinian culture and civilization. A relationship of peaceful coexistance is also found on the personal level. People from both religions visit each other during religious festivals, and in Jerusalem schools run by Christian churches have a majority Muslim student population.
Palestinian Christians, like their Muslim counterparts, have experienced a long history of dispossession and have not been immune to Israeli policies of occupation and discrimination. Not only do they have to deal with the day to day hardships that come with occupation, but they are also dismayed by the fact that many of their fellow Christians in Europe and North America unquestionably support the Israeli regime. Western Christians (in particular American and Britain) have, for a variety of reasons, tended to show greater sympathy towards the state of Israel than towards the worsening condition of the Palestinian people. This alliance can be traced back as far as 1917, when the United Kingdom issued the Balfour Declaration and established Palestine as a "national home for the Jewish people". More recently the Nixon administration in 1973 provided Israel with a full replacement of all its tanks, planes and ammunition during the October War against Egypt and Syria.
However, Western Christian alliances with Israel go beyond a political alliance. Throughout the 20th Century there has been a significant influence of Christian theological attitudes toward Israel which has been devastating on the indigenous Palestinian Christian community. The rise of Evangelicalism and Christian fundamentalism has fermented the unquestionable support for the state of Israel. As was highlighted by the Pope earlier this month during his visit to Cyprus, "the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories is creating difficulties in everyday life….moreover; certain Christian fundamentalist theologies use Sacred Scripture to justify Israel's occupation of Palestine." A 46-page text published by the Vatican: The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness" stresses how this fundamentalist theology is making the situation for Christian Arabs even more sensitive.iv
Christian Zionist support for Israel is also manifested in the shape of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, encouraged particularly by the Israeli Government Tourist Office.v This support has an objectionable consequence on the indigenous Palestinian Christian communities. Many of the Western pilgrims appear not only ignorant of recent Middle Eastern history, but surprised to find an Arab Christian presence at all. Like their Muslim neighbours, they are subject to daily experiences of humiliation at checkpoints and roadblocks and prevented from making pilgrimage to their Holy places of worship. Palestinian Christians are routinely prohibited from travelling to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, where the church commemorates Jesus' crucifixion, burial, and resurrection from the dead, whilst Palestinian Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza strip are prevented from travelling to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
In December 2009, a group of Palestinian Christians, including Archbishop Michel Sabbah, the retired Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem published "A Moment of Truth" , a call for help to the international community on behalf of the Palestinian Christians. They severely criticised "theologians in the West who try to attach a biblical and theological legitimacy to the Israeli infringement of our rights, urge for non violent resistance tools such as boycott and divestments and call for a stop on Israeli 'racism and apartheid'." In an interview with Sabbah earlier this year, he clearly spoke on behalf of all the Christian Churches in Palestine when stating that "Israeli Occupation is the Main cause of Instability in the Middle East".vi
Palestinian Christians and the Islamic resistance
Contrary to what is propagated in the media, the relationship between Christians and the Islamic resistance in Palestine is one of respect. Although tensions arise between the Christian minority and the rest of the population, these are not the result of a systematic discrimination against them, but are more due to the everyday anguish of the siege and occupation.
With regard to the Islamic resistance Movement (Hamas), Article 31 of its Charter specifically says, "Hamas is a humane movement which cares for human rights and is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes towards other religions…under the shadow of Islam it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security".
An example of the coexistence is the situation of Palestinian Christians in Gaza, contrary to the Israeli propaganda (hasbara). School playgrounds are places where coexistence between Muslims and Christians takes place. The Holy Family School in Gaza City is part-funded by the Vatican. Father Emanuel Musallem explains how he is the priest of more than 4,000 Christians in Gaza. His school has more than 1,200 students, 1,000 of which are Muslim. Father Emanuel explains how many Hamas leaders are sending their children to this school, because he is not preaching "Christianity", he is rather "spreading the light of knowledge in his Palestinian nation". Father Emanuel declares himself first an Arab, then a Palestinian, and then a Christian.
On another level, Hamas has always demonstrated respect for Christmas religious festivities. In December 2003, they were the first to organize an assistance package and donations to families whose houses were damaged by the Israeli Defence Forces in Rafah. The movement went even further and on Christmas Eve 2003 when several officials dressed up as Santa Claus and distributed presents to Christian children in Bethlehem. Another example of the tolerance and respect between the two communities was when Declaration number 67 was issued by Hamas in 1990, cancelling a general strike which coincided with the religious Christmas holidays.
Another issue which is frequently discussed in the media is whether or not Hamas is encroaching upon women's rights in the Gaza strip. Calls to ban male hairdressers from cutting women's hair and a ruling stating that female lawyers had to cover their hair when acting in civil courts were denounced by many in the international community. However, even though, to some extent, the atmosphere in the region is more conservative, these measures were not approved of by the majority of the population and were therefore never implemented. Hana Afana, a 24 year old trainee maths teacher explains how Hamas is imposing a religious code, and how what is really worrying for the women in the region is the siege and the economic situation. Qualified professionals and graduates like her find themselves unable to find a job. According to Mona Ahmad al-Shawa, who runs the women's unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, basic human rights such as access to electricity, running water and medical treatment are what women want.
Muslims and Christians in Palestine are not just bonded at the playground or in the spiritual sphere. They share the sheer disappointment with the Oslo process and the rampant corruption of the Palestinian Authority, which has misappropriated billions of dollars worth of aid from the international community. Hamas winning the elections in the territories reflected the disillusionment of Palestinians, and was a natural reaction to their dissatisfaction. Often regarded as a military organization, the movement engages well beyond its military wing. It runs a network of social, educational, health and economic services, especially in Gaza. Christians in Bethlehem and Ramallah, tired of the PA's corruption and sex scandals, were not afraid to vote for Hamas.
Collaboration between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Israeli State - "The Holy Land is not for Sale or Lease"
The Palestinian Authority is, however, not the only one accused of corruption and scandalous transactions, and there seems to be internal strife between the different Palestinian Christian communities. The Greek Orthodox Church has been portrayed as collaborating with Israel since 1967, due to its involvement in land and political disputes. The Orthodox Church is the biggest private owner of land in Jerusalem and owns most of the land in the West Bank on which the Christian religious sites, including the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem where Christians believe Jesus was born, are built. Much of this land was donated to it by Orthodox Christian Palestinians in the late 1800s. Over the last few decades the church has increased land sales to the Israeli authorities or leased land to them for a period of 999 years. Examples of these transactions include the sale of St. John's property in the Christian quarter on 11th April 1990, the transfer of fifty dunams near Mar Elias monastery, and the sale of two hotels and twenty seven stores on Omar Bin Al-Khattab square near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The church's land sales have come against a background of corruption allegations. Nicholas Papadimas, a previous church treasurer in Jerusalem, was involved some of the sales before he fled the country and was charged in Greece with stealing church funds in a separate case. On being appointed as patriarch in 2005, Theophilos had promised to stop selling Palestinian land, but he was also involved in many shady undertakings with Israel. The current patriarch, Irineos, has also been accused of being behind secret land deals with two international Jewish investment groups.
Another source of tension comes from the fact that the Greek clergy do not allow Arab clergymen from rising in the church. This is the case of the prominent Palestinian Christian clergyman, Abdullah Hanaa. On the 13th of November 2009, Theofilos removed Abdullah from his position as the deputy head from the Orthodox Church. This resulted in widespread condemnation from the Palestinian Greek Orthodox Community, who demonstrated in their thousands in the streets of Ramallah.
The Israeli authorities have used the church's corruption and financial difficulties to their political advantage and applied additional political pressure to ensure that the choice of patriarchs is beneficial to Israel's land acquisition policies. One of the church's Jerusalem properties was purchased by Israel with the involvement of the Ateret Cohanim association which is dedicated to buying Arab property in Jerusalem and settling Jews there.
Both the Christian and Muslim Palestinian communities have suffered at the hands of the Occupation. Excavations near the gate of Maryam in the Western Wall of the Church of the Sepulchre in November 2009 are a recent example of this. Far from collaborating with the Israeli entity, the struggle against the occupation should unite not only the different Christian Churches, but also the Muslim community.
Conclusion
According to Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, "The last 5 years have been very difficult for all the Palestinians - Muslims and Christians". Gaza Baptist Church is one of only three churches serving the 4,000 Christians living among the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million inhabitants. Hanna explains how the siege united the community. Because of the lack of basic food, Christian charities have provided food for families, 99% of which are Muslim. During the 2009 bombings, "the church ceiling fell down up to 6 times".
The plight of the Palestinian Christian is very much connected to that of the Palestinian Muslim in that both, whether in the Occupied Territories or inside Israel itself, are experiencing daily injustices at the hands of oppressive and discriminatory policies imposed on them by the Israeli government. The conflict is therefore not between Muslims and Christians; nor between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Palestinian Christians; it is between Palestinians as a whole and Israel's occupation and apartheid establishment. It is indeed hard to be Palestinian Christian. But it is equally hard being a Palestinian Muslim.
It is hard simply being a Palestinian.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Why hard-line Islam is winning
Why hard-line Islam is winning
By Hans Rustad on Juni 22, 2010 12:08 EM | Permalink | Comments (1)
By Roy Brown
Since the Iranian revolution of 1979 Islam has become far more assertive world-wide. The Iranian revolution showed the Muslim world that Muslims could shake off the “yoke of western economic imperialism” and become the masters of their own fate. But more importantly, Saudi Arabia suddenly woke up to the threat on their doorstep and since the Iranian revolution has spent billions of dollars in promoting its own version of hard-line Islamism world wide.
The Saudi regime is kept in place through a bargain struck with the Wahabis, the dominant sect in Saudi Arabia. The deal is simple: the family can enjoy their jet-setting western life-style, but the quid pro quo is that they spend much of the nation’s oil wealth on promoting Islam – Wahabi Islam.
According to estimates we saw back in 2004, Saudi Arabia spent between 60 and 100 billion dollars on this project between 1980 and 2004 – a process that someone – quite accurately in my opinion – called “stealth jihad”. We believe the Saudi regime is still subsidizing hard-line Islamism to the tune of $8 to $10 billion annually.
First they poured money into the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (the OIC) which represents the 57 Islamic States, and has become the most influential power block at the United Nations where they have succeeded in silencing any criticism of human rights abuse in the Islamic world.
I shall come back to the influence of the OIC at the United Nations in a moment.
Since the early 1980s the Saudis have been supporting local and national Islamic organisations around the world. The support the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR in the United States and Canada, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Geneva Islamic information centre, home of the Ramadan brothers, and a myriad mosques and Islamic information centres around the world.
But most insidiously of all, they have been using their money and influence to replace liberal, moderate leadership in mosques by hard-line imams. Over half of the mosques in England are now controlled by the Deoband – a hard-line Islamist cult that originated in India. Over half the mosques in France are now controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and their sympathisers. I heard just this week in Geneva that over the past 20 years the Saudis have been quietly offering financial support to mosques in India provided they changed their imams to someone approved by them. I have no information on what has been happening in Scandinavia but I would be very surprised if things here were very different.
A new Islamic assertiveness
Right across Europe we are seeing worrying signs of a new Islamic assertiveness: condemnation by self-appointed Islamic leaders of every perceived insult to Islam, demands for special treatment for Muslims in schools, hospitals and the workplace, and for the acceptance of Shari’a law for the settlement of family disputes. But this phenomenon is not confined to Europe. It is part of a global campaign, orchestrated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the OIC, for the world-wide acceptance and adoption of Islamic norms and values.
For the past 20 years, the OIC has been pushing for international recognition of a unique and special status for their particular hard-line interpretation of Islam.
Their first step was the adoption in 1990 of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam[1], a document which the OIC claims is “complementary” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[2] but which actually turns the Universal Declaration on its head, replacing individual rights by “rights” based exclusively on Shari’a law.
When I presented a paper at the UN Human Rights Council in March 2008 on behalf of IHEU, highlighting the incompatibility between the Cairo Declaration and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [3], I was stopped on a point of order by the Pakistani delegate who said that “any discussion of Shari’a law in this forum is insulting to our faith”. This extraordinary objection was actually upheld by the president of the Council [4]. If threats to the universality of human rights cannot be addressed in the world’s supreme human rights body, where can they be discussed?
The OIC have since announced plans for an Islamic Charter of Human Rights based on the Cairo Declaration, and a new international Islamic Human Rights body for which the OIC is seeking, and will probably obtain, UN recognition [5]. Should they succeed the UN will have accepted that the Universal Declaration no longer applies to more than one billion of our fellow human beings living in the Islamic States.
Resolutions in the Human Rights Council
But the ambitions of the OIC are not restricted to their own countries. Every year since 1999 they have introduced resolutions in the Human Rights Council and, since 2006 in the UN General Assembly, “Combating Defamation of Religion”, with the objective of restricting all negative comment about religion, Islam in particular. Every year these non-binding resolutions have been adopted by the Human Rights Council with a comfortable two to one majority, with only the liberal democracies among the 47 member states of the Council voting against. When this resolution was first introduced in the UN General Assembly it was adopted by a similarly impressive majority. Freedom of expression - and the idea that criticism of Islam should be permissible – is anathema to the Islamic States, and combating defamation of religion has been their weapon of choice in their fight against that freedom. But the western liberal democracies, and every child of the Enlightenment, understand that it is freedom of expression that underpins all our other human rights. Without freedom of expression, how are we to expose and challenge tyranny, corruption and intolerance in all its forms? One hopeful sign, however, is that support for these resolutions has been declining in the UN General Assembly every year since 2006, as a result, no doubt, of the massive negative publicity that the concept of defamation of religion has attracted from NGOs and western delegations [6].
In their latest moves this year, the OIC has begun pushing for additional “complementary” clauses in the legally binding Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, the CERD, that would extend protection to religions (for which read “Islam”) thereby making defamation of religion, or blasphemy, a criminal offence under international law.
And just two days ago they pushed through a change to the mandate to the special rapporteur on freedom of expression requiring that defender of freedom to report on abuses of that freedom – to report, in fact, on cases of Islamophoia!
They are winning
However unreasonable the demands of the hard-liners might seem, and how alien to our way of life and values, they are winning the war in the UN and in many western states as well. One of their key strategies has been to label any criticism of Islam or Islamic extremism as “Islamophobia”, and to equate it with racism. In this they were strongly supported by the former UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Doudou Diene, a Muslim from Senegal, who during his term of office succeeded in ignoring every manifestation of the endemic anti-Semitism in the Islamic world while focusing almost exclusively on Islamophobia, which he described as “the worst form of racism”. The OIC were, of course, delighted with his statements and have been quoting him endlessly ever since. So all-pervading has been the malign influence of this man that he is still travelling the world advising governments from South East Asia to Northern Europe on how best to counter this phenomenon.
Diene defined Islamophobia as an “irrational fear or hatred of Islam”, so no-one among the hundreds of advocates of freedom of expression that I know can be described as Islamophobic; their fears of radical Islam, far from being irrational, are well founded. But fear of being labeled Islamophobic – and of violent reprisals – seems to have infected governments and the media throughout the western world. We see writers, comedians, politicians, playwrights and film-makers happy to attack Christianity while steering well clear of Islam. The film 2012 released earlier this year is a good example. We can see the Vatican wiped out as the Earth faces extinction, but not the Kabaa in Mecca. Director Roland Emmerich and co-writer Harold Kloser admitted that they “didn’t want a fatwa on their heads because of a film”.
The future
To see what is in store should the Islamists succeed, we need look no further than Iran or Somalia today where, under Sharia law, young people are being executed for crimes committed while they were still children, men and women are being stoned to death for adultery, homosexuals are killed, and girls as young as eight or nine are being forcibly married off to middle-aged men.
The Islamists are skilful at playing the victimisation card. Yes, they are victims – but victims of an Islamic culture that segregates young Muslims from mainstream society, treats girls and young women as the property of their menfolk, and shows disdain and even contempt for the very values that have enabled them to come to Europe and to prosper.
I am certain that if western employers, the media and governments were prepared to stand up for our values, far from finding opposition from the Muslim community they would hear a collective sigh of relief, that they have indeed come to a country that is proud of its values and prepared to defend them. After all, didn’t the parents and grandparents of today’s young Islamic extremists actually come here in search of a better life, away from the perpetual poverty and intolerance of those states where Islam holds sway?
We must oppose every attempt by the Islamists to introduce Islamic values into our society. Those values are totally alien to the values of the Enlightenment on which our modern democratic societies have been built.
We must oppose attempts to create parallel systems of justice. We must fight every step of the way attempts to create Shari’a courts. All of us, whether Humanists, Christians, Hindus, Jews or especially Muslims, must reject Shari’a law because, as the Islamic scholar Hassan Mahmud has said: “Muslims are the first victims of Islamic law.” And, unless we are very, very careful we will be next.
Where are we heading?
Europe is facing immense demographic changes, and many people are worried about what this will mean for European culture and values in the future. I would recommend an article by Eric Kaufmann in the April addition of Prospect Magazine in which he reports on a research project that has produced the first rigorous projections of the religious composition of 16 European countries to the year 2030.
Even assuming European Muslim fertility declines to the level of the indigenous population by 2030 – which seems unlikely given the increasing influence of fundamentalism – then the Muslim population of Sweden will have reached about 14% by 2030, Austria 11% and France 9%. Since most of the immigrants will be living in our largest cities, we can see that many inner cities will have Muslim majority populations even before that date. And if the assumption about declining Muslim fertility rates is wrong, and the present decline in fertility should stop, we could see far higher proportions of Muslims in our populations by 2050.
But whether we like it or not, and whatever we do now, we are faced with the absolute inevitability of an increasingly Muslim population in Europe.
Misguided policies of uncontrolled immigration and multiculturalism have led to the creation of ghettos in our cities with large numbers of unemployed and effectively unemployable young people who fall easy prey to the rhetoric of the fundamentalists.
So what can we do about it?
I would like to start by making a few suggestions that seem to me to be vital and then I would like to ask you for your ideas about what we can reasonably do about it.
First, I would suggest that what we should not do is attempt to return to the imagined ideal of a Christian continent because of our fear of an Islamic takeover. Talk of our Christian heritage is nonsense. Our heritage is the heritage of the Enlightenment; it was the Enlightenment that led our escape from the tyranny and bondage of medieval Christianity. What we need, and the only system that will enable all Europeans to live together in peace and harmony, is Secularism – by which I mean complete state neutrality in matters of religion and belief.
We should start by adopting a policy of zero tolerance towards incitement to hatred and towards preachers of hate. This is crucially important because incitement to hatred has been shown to play on our human capacity to hate injustice, and to turn that hatred into violent action. The genocides of the Holocaust and Rwanda happened because ordinary people were inspired by their leaders to hate those who were perceived as acting unjustly towards them.
We should therefore have no hesitation in acting severely against anyone who incites hatred of any group. And this applies whether the group in question is Jews, Muslims, immigrants, atheists, homosexuals, Christians, or any other. In fact, our governments are obliged under Article 20 of the ICCPR to act in this way, but unfortunately few of them do so consistently; Islamist imams, for example, seem to have a free pass to preach hatred of the West and of Western values in many of Europe’s mosques.
No religion should be permitted to preach hate simply because such hatred appears in their holy texts. Religious belief cannot and must not be allowed to trump human rights or the law of the land.
We also need to make clear the distinction between – on the one hand - incitement to hatred, and on the other, criticism of religion, no matter how crude and vulgar the criticism. Incitement should be outlawed but criticism permitted as part of our precious commitment to freedom of expression. We must make absolutely clear the distinction between the believer and the belief. Believers should have all their human rights protected, but beliefs are fair game – and there is no human right not to be offended.
Harsh though it may seem on the poor and dispossessed, if we are to avoid major conflicts in the future, we do need to limit immigration to the numbers that can be absorbed and assimilated into our societies. We must do far more to help members of the immigrant communities learn the skills they will need to prosper here, but we must also recognize that the numbers we can absorb depends on their cost to society in education, healthcare, social services and, it must be said, security.
We should support Muslim dissidents, apostates and heretics, groups like the Islamic Reform Movement and the Councils of ex-Muslims which now exist in many European states. Last weekend I attended a conference in Oxford called “Critical Thinking for Islamic Reform”. There were about 60 people there, almost all of them believing Muslims, but all of them totally opposed to the hard-liners, Sharia law, the Muslim Brotherhood and the OIC. We hardly ever hear about these Muslims. I left the conference hugely encouraged. But unless reformers become the dominant voice of Islam in Europe we are heading for serious trouble. We must do what we can to help these dissidents.
We should not accept self-censorship. Every time an editor, out of fear, spikes an article or a cartoon that is mocking or critical of Islam or any other religion, we should publicise the fact, and that it was done out of fear, not respect.
We should oppose all attempts by organized religions to obtain special concessions from government. What we allow for Christianity, we cannit reasonably deny to Islam, Hinduism or any other religion.
We should oppose state funding for religious events, for faith schools, tax-breaks for supposedly charitable activities, or attempts to allow religious courts to adjudicate in matters of family law.
We should promote the teaching of critical thinking. I was pleased that when our two youngest children took the International Baccalaureate, one of the compulsory subjects was the “Theory of Knowledge”: that is, a combination of philosophy and critical thinking.
We should promote the teaching of ethics as rooted in an understanding of our shared humanity. All children should be taught comparative religion, including atheism and Humanism, as an antidote to indoctrination – which today runs unchecked in many schools in Europe. The teaching of ethics should be centred on the humanist ideal – shared by many religions – that we are entitled to be treated with dignity, allowed personal autonomy and have equal treatment before the law, and that we should treat others as we wish to be treated.
We need to promote the teaching of science for the non-scientist: an appreciation of the scientific method, of the discoveries of science, and how we know what we think we know. Respect for the scientific, evidence-based approach to life, politics, society and the world around us will go a long way towards the elimination of superstition and undue religious influence in public life.
We need to understand that the history of European civilisation is the history of of the struggle for freedom - and above all for freedom of the mind. We must not allow religion, this time in the guise of Islam, to erode any more of our hard earned freedom.
Thank you
speech, Free Press Society, Copenhagen, 20. of June 2010
Notes:
[1] http://www.religlaw.org/interdocs/docs/cairohrislam1990.htm
[2] http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
[3] http://www.iheu.org/node/3162
[4] http://www.iheu.org/node/3115
[5] http://www.islamtoday.com/showmenews.cfm?cat_id=38⊂_cat_id=2164
[6] http://www.iheu.org/united-nations-will-violate-human-rights-says-new-report-religious-freedoms
Roy W Brown is main representative at the UN Geneva for the International Humanist and Ethical Union
By Hans Rustad on Juni 22, 2010 12:08 EM | Permalink | Comments (1)
By Roy Brown
Since the Iranian revolution of 1979 Islam has become far more assertive world-wide. The Iranian revolution showed the Muslim world that Muslims could shake off the “yoke of western economic imperialism” and become the masters of their own fate. But more importantly, Saudi Arabia suddenly woke up to the threat on their doorstep and since the Iranian revolution has spent billions of dollars in promoting its own version of hard-line Islamism world wide.
The Saudi regime is kept in place through a bargain struck with the Wahabis, the dominant sect in Saudi Arabia. The deal is simple: the family can enjoy their jet-setting western life-style, but the quid pro quo is that they spend much of the nation’s oil wealth on promoting Islam – Wahabi Islam.
According to estimates we saw back in 2004, Saudi Arabia spent between 60 and 100 billion dollars on this project between 1980 and 2004 – a process that someone – quite accurately in my opinion – called “stealth jihad”. We believe the Saudi regime is still subsidizing hard-line Islamism to the tune of $8 to $10 billion annually.
First they poured money into the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (the OIC) which represents the 57 Islamic States, and has become the most influential power block at the United Nations where they have succeeded in silencing any criticism of human rights abuse in the Islamic world.
I shall come back to the influence of the OIC at the United Nations in a moment.
Since the early 1980s the Saudis have been supporting local and national Islamic organisations around the world. The support the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR in the United States and Canada, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Geneva Islamic information centre, home of the Ramadan brothers, and a myriad mosques and Islamic information centres around the world.
But most insidiously of all, they have been using their money and influence to replace liberal, moderate leadership in mosques by hard-line imams. Over half of the mosques in England are now controlled by the Deoband – a hard-line Islamist cult that originated in India. Over half the mosques in France are now controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and their sympathisers. I heard just this week in Geneva that over the past 20 years the Saudis have been quietly offering financial support to mosques in India provided they changed their imams to someone approved by them. I have no information on what has been happening in Scandinavia but I would be very surprised if things here were very different.
A new Islamic assertiveness
Right across Europe we are seeing worrying signs of a new Islamic assertiveness: condemnation by self-appointed Islamic leaders of every perceived insult to Islam, demands for special treatment for Muslims in schools, hospitals and the workplace, and for the acceptance of Shari’a law for the settlement of family disputes. But this phenomenon is not confined to Europe. It is part of a global campaign, orchestrated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the OIC, for the world-wide acceptance and adoption of Islamic norms and values.
For the past 20 years, the OIC has been pushing for international recognition of a unique and special status for their particular hard-line interpretation of Islam.
Their first step was the adoption in 1990 of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam[1], a document which the OIC claims is “complementary” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[2] but which actually turns the Universal Declaration on its head, replacing individual rights by “rights” based exclusively on Shari’a law.
When I presented a paper at the UN Human Rights Council in March 2008 on behalf of IHEU, highlighting the incompatibility between the Cairo Declaration and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [3], I was stopped on a point of order by the Pakistani delegate who said that “any discussion of Shari’a law in this forum is insulting to our faith”. This extraordinary objection was actually upheld by the president of the Council [4]. If threats to the universality of human rights cannot be addressed in the world’s supreme human rights body, where can they be discussed?
The OIC have since announced plans for an Islamic Charter of Human Rights based on the Cairo Declaration, and a new international Islamic Human Rights body for which the OIC is seeking, and will probably obtain, UN recognition [5]. Should they succeed the UN will have accepted that the Universal Declaration no longer applies to more than one billion of our fellow human beings living in the Islamic States.
Resolutions in the Human Rights Council
But the ambitions of the OIC are not restricted to their own countries. Every year since 1999 they have introduced resolutions in the Human Rights Council and, since 2006 in the UN General Assembly, “Combating Defamation of Religion”, with the objective of restricting all negative comment about religion, Islam in particular. Every year these non-binding resolutions have been adopted by the Human Rights Council with a comfortable two to one majority, with only the liberal democracies among the 47 member states of the Council voting against. When this resolution was first introduced in the UN General Assembly it was adopted by a similarly impressive majority. Freedom of expression - and the idea that criticism of Islam should be permissible – is anathema to the Islamic States, and combating defamation of religion has been their weapon of choice in their fight against that freedom. But the western liberal democracies, and every child of the Enlightenment, understand that it is freedom of expression that underpins all our other human rights. Without freedom of expression, how are we to expose and challenge tyranny, corruption and intolerance in all its forms? One hopeful sign, however, is that support for these resolutions has been declining in the UN General Assembly every year since 2006, as a result, no doubt, of the massive negative publicity that the concept of defamation of religion has attracted from NGOs and western delegations [6].
In their latest moves this year, the OIC has begun pushing for additional “complementary” clauses in the legally binding Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, the CERD, that would extend protection to religions (for which read “Islam”) thereby making defamation of religion, or blasphemy, a criminal offence under international law.
And just two days ago they pushed through a change to the mandate to the special rapporteur on freedom of expression requiring that defender of freedom to report on abuses of that freedom – to report, in fact, on cases of Islamophoia!
They are winning
However unreasonable the demands of the hard-liners might seem, and how alien to our way of life and values, they are winning the war in the UN and in many western states as well. One of their key strategies has been to label any criticism of Islam or Islamic extremism as “Islamophobia”, and to equate it with racism. In this they were strongly supported by the former UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Doudou Diene, a Muslim from Senegal, who during his term of office succeeded in ignoring every manifestation of the endemic anti-Semitism in the Islamic world while focusing almost exclusively on Islamophobia, which he described as “the worst form of racism”. The OIC were, of course, delighted with his statements and have been quoting him endlessly ever since. So all-pervading has been the malign influence of this man that he is still travelling the world advising governments from South East Asia to Northern Europe on how best to counter this phenomenon.
Diene defined Islamophobia as an “irrational fear or hatred of Islam”, so no-one among the hundreds of advocates of freedom of expression that I know can be described as Islamophobic; their fears of radical Islam, far from being irrational, are well founded. But fear of being labeled Islamophobic – and of violent reprisals – seems to have infected governments and the media throughout the western world. We see writers, comedians, politicians, playwrights and film-makers happy to attack Christianity while steering well clear of Islam. The film 2012 released earlier this year is a good example. We can see the Vatican wiped out as the Earth faces extinction, but not the Kabaa in Mecca. Director Roland Emmerich and co-writer Harold Kloser admitted that they “didn’t want a fatwa on their heads because of a film”.
The future
To see what is in store should the Islamists succeed, we need look no further than Iran or Somalia today where, under Sharia law, young people are being executed for crimes committed while they were still children, men and women are being stoned to death for adultery, homosexuals are killed, and girls as young as eight or nine are being forcibly married off to middle-aged men.
The Islamists are skilful at playing the victimisation card. Yes, they are victims – but victims of an Islamic culture that segregates young Muslims from mainstream society, treats girls and young women as the property of their menfolk, and shows disdain and even contempt for the very values that have enabled them to come to Europe and to prosper.
I am certain that if western employers, the media and governments were prepared to stand up for our values, far from finding opposition from the Muslim community they would hear a collective sigh of relief, that they have indeed come to a country that is proud of its values and prepared to defend them. After all, didn’t the parents and grandparents of today’s young Islamic extremists actually come here in search of a better life, away from the perpetual poverty and intolerance of those states where Islam holds sway?
We must oppose every attempt by the Islamists to introduce Islamic values into our society. Those values are totally alien to the values of the Enlightenment on which our modern democratic societies have been built.
We must oppose attempts to create parallel systems of justice. We must fight every step of the way attempts to create Shari’a courts. All of us, whether Humanists, Christians, Hindus, Jews or especially Muslims, must reject Shari’a law because, as the Islamic scholar Hassan Mahmud has said: “Muslims are the first victims of Islamic law.” And, unless we are very, very careful we will be next.
Where are we heading?
Europe is facing immense demographic changes, and many people are worried about what this will mean for European culture and values in the future. I would recommend an article by Eric Kaufmann in the April addition of Prospect Magazine in which he reports on a research project that has produced the first rigorous projections of the religious composition of 16 European countries to the year 2030.
Even assuming European Muslim fertility declines to the level of the indigenous population by 2030 – which seems unlikely given the increasing influence of fundamentalism – then the Muslim population of Sweden will have reached about 14% by 2030, Austria 11% and France 9%. Since most of the immigrants will be living in our largest cities, we can see that many inner cities will have Muslim majority populations even before that date. And if the assumption about declining Muslim fertility rates is wrong, and the present decline in fertility should stop, we could see far higher proportions of Muslims in our populations by 2050.
But whether we like it or not, and whatever we do now, we are faced with the absolute inevitability of an increasingly Muslim population in Europe.
Misguided policies of uncontrolled immigration and multiculturalism have led to the creation of ghettos in our cities with large numbers of unemployed and effectively unemployable young people who fall easy prey to the rhetoric of the fundamentalists.
So what can we do about it?
I would like to start by making a few suggestions that seem to me to be vital and then I would like to ask you for your ideas about what we can reasonably do about it.
First, I would suggest that what we should not do is attempt to return to the imagined ideal of a Christian continent because of our fear of an Islamic takeover. Talk of our Christian heritage is nonsense. Our heritage is the heritage of the Enlightenment; it was the Enlightenment that led our escape from the tyranny and bondage of medieval Christianity. What we need, and the only system that will enable all Europeans to live together in peace and harmony, is Secularism – by which I mean complete state neutrality in matters of religion and belief.
We should start by adopting a policy of zero tolerance towards incitement to hatred and towards preachers of hate. This is crucially important because incitement to hatred has been shown to play on our human capacity to hate injustice, and to turn that hatred into violent action. The genocides of the Holocaust and Rwanda happened because ordinary people were inspired by their leaders to hate those who were perceived as acting unjustly towards them.
We should therefore have no hesitation in acting severely against anyone who incites hatred of any group. And this applies whether the group in question is Jews, Muslims, immigrants, atheists, homosexuals, Christians, or any other. In fact, our governments are obliged under Article 20 of the ICCPR to act in this way, but unfortunately few of them do so consistently; Islamist imams, for example, seem to have a free pass to preach hatred of the West and of Western values in many of Europe’s mosques.
No religion should be permitted to preach hate simply because such hatred appears in their holy texts. Religious belief cannot and must not be allowed to trump human rights or the law of the land.
We also need to make clear the distinction between – on the one hand - incitement to hatred, and on the other, criticism of religion, no matter how crude and vulgar the criticism. Incitement should be outlawed but criticism permitted as part of our precious commitment to freedom of expression. We must make absolutely clear the distinction between the believer and the belief. Believers should have all their human rights protected, but beliefs are fair game – and there is no human right not to be offended.
Harsh though it may seem on the poor and dispossessed, if we are to avoid major conflicts in the future, we do need to limit immigration to the numbers that can be absorbed and assimilated into our societies. We must do far more to help members of the immigrant communities learn the skills they will need to prosper here, but we must also recognize that the numbers we can absorb depends on their cost to society in education, healthcare, social services and, it must be said, security.
We should support Muslim dissidents, apostates and heretics, groups like the Islamic Reform Movement and the Councils of ex-Muslims which now exist in many European states. Last weekend I attended a conference in Oxford called “Critical Thinking for Islamic Reform”. There were about 60 people there, almost all of them believing Muslims, but all of them totally opposed to the hard-liners, Sharia law, the Muslim Brotherhood and the OIC. We hardly ever hear about these Muslims. I left the conference hugely encouraged. But unless reformers become the dominant voice of Islam in Europe we are heading for serious trouble. We must do what we can to help these dissidents.
We should not accept self-censorship. Every time an editor, out of fear, spikes an article or a cartoon that is mocking or critical of Islam or any other religion, we should publicise the fact, and that it was done out of fear, not respect.
We should oppose all attempts by organized religions to obtain special concessions from government. What we allow for Christianity, we cannit reasonably deny to Islam, Hinduism or any other religion.
We should oppose state funding for religious events, for faith schools, tax-breaks for supposedly charitable activities, or attempts to allow religious courts to adjudicate in matters of family law.
We should promote the teaching of critical thinking. I was pleased that when our two youngest children took the International Baccalaureate, one of the compulsory subjects was the “Theory of Knowledge”: that is, a combination of philosophy and critical thinking.
We should promote the teaching of ethics as rooted in an understanding of our shared humanity. All children should be taught comparative religion, including atheism and Humanism, as an antidote to indoctrination – which today runs unchecked in many schools in Europe. The teaching of ethics should be centred on the humanist ideal – shared by many religions – that we are entitled to be treated with dignity, allowed personal autonomy and have equal treatment before the law, and that we should treat others as we wish to be treated.
We need to promote the teaching of science for the non-scientist: an appreciation of the scientific method, of the discoveries of science, and how we know what we think we know. Respect for the scientific, evidence-based approach to life, politics, society and the world around us will go a long way towards the elimination of superstition and undue religious influence in public life.
We need to understand that the history of European civilisation is the history of of the struggle for freedom - and above all for freedom of the mind. We must not allow religion, this time in the guise of Islam, to erode any more of our hard earned freedom.
Thank you
speech, Free Press Society, Copenhagen, 20. of June 2010
Notes:
[1] http://www.religlaw.org/interdocs/docs/cairohrislam1990.htm
[2] http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
[3] http://www.iheu.org/node/3162
[4] http://www.iheu.org/node/3115
[5] http://www.islamtoday.com/showmenews.cfm?cat_id=38⊂_cat_id=2164
[6] http://www.iheu.org/united-nations-will-violate-human-rights-says-new-report-religious-freedoms
Roy W Brown is main representative at the UN Geneva for the International Humanist and Ethical Union
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