|
|
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/876
July 28, 2005
MIM: Michael Graham's article makes an important point - namely that moderate Islam is an oxymoron. MIM research has continually shown that even so called moderate Muslims are linked to radical Islam. The search for moderation in Islam is irrelevant in the context of the threat of global Jihad we are facing.
Graham is mistaken to laud Pakistani president Musharraf for rooting out terrorism. Musharaff himself was on the board of The Rabita Trust, an Al Qaeda funding group directly linked to Bin Laden and his second in command Wael Julaidan. It was the US who insisted that Musharref cut his ties with Rabita. In reality Musharref's position is akin to that of the Saudi ruling family, he and his security forces are working with Al Qaeda, while at the same time aware that they could become the group's target. Proof of this is the fact that the Pakistani region of Waziristan is the new terrorism headquarters for the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and has the status of an Indian reservation. Musharref is not fighting terrorism because it is a worldwide threat, he is concerned that he will lose his hold on power and knows that a semblence of cooperation with the US will yield him money and protection.
THE TRAGEDY OF ISLAM
By Michael Graham
|
| ||
| ||
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/graham072805.php3
I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth:
Islam is a terror organization.
For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.
Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."
But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."
And the reason Islam has itself become a terrorist organization is that it cannot address its own role in this violence. It cannot cast out the murderers from its members. I know it can't, because "moderate" Muslim imams keep telling me they can't. "We have no control over these radical young men," one London imam moaned to the local papers.
Can't kick 'em out of your faith? Can't excommunicate them? Apparently Islam does not allow it.
Islam cannot say that terrorism is forbidden to Muslims. I know this because when the world's Muslim nations gathered after 9/11 to state their position on terrorism, they couldn't even agree on what it was. How could they, when the world's largest terror sponsors at the time were Iran and Saudi Arabia — both governed by Islamic law.
If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder — and the scoutmasters in charge simply said "Could be" — the Boy Scouts would have driven out of America long ago.
Today, Islam has entire sects and grand mosques that preach terror. Its theology is used as a source of inspiration by terrorist murderers. Millions of Islam's members give these killers support and comfort.
The question isn't how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not.
As I've said many times, I have great sympathy for those Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true "religion of peace." I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims. I believe they want peace.
Sadly, the organization and fundamental theology of Islam as it is constituted today allows for hatreds most Muslims do not share to thrive, and for criminals they oppose to operate in the name of their faith.
Many Muslims, I believe, know this to be true and some are acting on it. Not the members of CAIR, unfortunately: As Middle East analyst and expert Daniel Pipes has reported, "two of CAIR's associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large."
But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf admits what CAIR will not. He's called for a jihad against the jihadists. He's putting his life on the line (Islamists have tried to assassinate him three times) in the battle to reclaim Islam and its fundamental decency.
He remembers, I'm sure, that at a time when Western, Christian civilization was on the verge of collapse, the Muslim world was a bastion of rationalism and tolerance. That was a great moment in the history of Islam, a moment that helped save the West.
Let's hope Islam can now find the strength to save itself.
Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."
Precisely what it depends on, news reports did not say. Sadly, given our new knowledge of Islam from the past four years, it probably depends on whether or not you're killing Jews.
That is part of the state of modern Islam.
Another fact about the state of Islam is that a majority of Muslims in countries like Jordan continue to believe that suicide bombings are legitimate. Still another is the poll reported by a left-leaning British paper than only 73 percent of British Muslims would tell police if they knew about a planned terrorist attack.
The other 27 percent? They are a part of modern Islam, too.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is outraged that I would dare to connect the worldwide epidemic of terrorism with Islam. They put it down to bigotry, asserting that a lifetime of disinterest in Islam has suddenly become blind hatred. They couldn't be more wrong.
Not to be mean to the folks at CAIR, but I don't: Care, that is. I simply don't care about Islam, its theology, its history — I have no interest in it at all. All I care about is not getting blown to smithereens when I board a bus or ride a plane. I care about living in a world where terrorism and murder/suicide bombings are rejected by all.
---------------------------------------------
On Point: CAIR's blighted rep
July 28, 2005
This time U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo got it right. Meet with representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations? Not on your life, replied truculent Tom. They're compromised, he maintained.
Oh, how they're compromised.
To begin with, several officials or former officials of CAIR have faced criminal charges associating them with terrorism, and a founding board member of the Texas chapter was convicted on such charges just this year.
Moreover, as Salon.com's Jake Tapper reminded Americans in an article shortly after 9/11, CAIR once deplored the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. In fact, the group repeated "Abdul-Rahman's lawyers' criticisms of the trial as 'far from free and fair' on a 1996 list of 'incidents of anti-Muslim bias and violence,' " Tapper recounts.
In preparing his profile of the group - remember, this is September 2001 - Tapper repeatedly tried to persuade CAIR's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, to condemn Osama bin Laden by name, without success.
"What about prior acts of terror linked to bin Laden?" Tapper wondered. "Or that bin Laden has urged Muslims to kill Americans? Again, Hooper demurred, saying only that he condemns acts of terror." (CAIR did come around to denouncing bin Laden. What choice did it have with bin Laden himself cheerfully acknowledging his guilt?)
These days, CAIR spends most of its time portraying the United States as a nation slipping into the throes of bigotry, intolerance and anti-Muslim repression. But alas for its credibility even on this score, the group's claims of a surge in hate crimes are tainted by sloppy - if not atrocious - research, according to scholars Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha. They describe CAIR as part of the "Wahhabi lobby."
Can anyone blame Tancredo for refusing to endure a lecture on civility by the likes of this outfit?
Smart growth vs. families
"Our cities need kids," proclaimed the lead headline in The Sunday Denver Post Perspective section - an insight, you might suppose, akin to noting that forests need trees. But it turns out that cities might not need kids, as urban centers such as San Francisco, Seattle and Boston are well on their way to proving.
The author of Sunday's article, Hank Baker of Forest City Stapleton, understandably worries about cities' future if they fail to attract more families with children. Naturally, he also considers the Stapleton redevelopment as a model for how to lure them.
Baker might even be right, except that urban renewal on the scale of Stapleton is hardly the norm. Far more common are highly focused developments that push up population densities in neighborhoods of mostly single-family homes. Those densities translate into higher housing prices and traffic volume - both of which are red flags for middle-class families with youngsters.
My neighborhood, for example, is not far from a light-rail station that will open next year. Inevitably, some company is putting up several hundred apartments within walking distance of the train stop, along with shops and restaurants. The apostles of "smart growth" believe this sort of development is a Good Thing, because it helps contain the bogeyman of urban sprawl and reduces our dependence on cars - in theory, at least.
In the real world, unfortunately, most of those apartment dwellers will still hop into a car almost every day, even if they commute by train. How this will enhance my neighborhood is a mystery best explained by the smart-growth lobby.
While they're at it, maybe they can give us the lowdown on why Portland, the Shangri-la of smart growth, ranks a shocking seventh among U.S. cities with the lowest percentage of kids under 18.
Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point Tuesday through Friday. Reach him at [email protected].
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/876