Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Hamza Yusuf Defends Violent Muslim Reaction To Mohammed Cartoons At Interfaith Event From The WEF In Davos
Hamza Yusuf Defends Violent Muslim Reaction To Mohammed Cartoons At Interfaith Event From The WEF In Davos
January 22, 2015
MIM: Despite his radical Islamist track record Yusuf is often touted as a moderate and appeared at an interfaith event on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos where he revealed his true colors.
"...Hamza Yusuf Hanson, a top Islamic scholar, agreed that radical Islam was what he called a "perversion", arguing that traditional Islam was "one of the exceptional religious movements that allowed other religions to live peacefully among them."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Muslim representative Hamza Yusuf Hanson voiced the strongest objections to the prophet's depiction.
The publication of the cartoons was an "absolute lack of civility and common decency," he said.
Noting that the three gunmen that eventually killed 17 people over three days in France were radicalized there, he said: "You can condemn and criticize religion ... all those things are fine but you can't mock and disrespect people."
"Radicalization is very easy when you mock what people hold dear."..."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190295#.VMAA24e9KK1
MIM: About Hamza Yusuf:
Hamza Yusuf was born (in Washington State) as Mark Hanson in 1959, to parents who were American academics. He became a Muslim at age seventeen and then spent ten years studying Islam in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Morocco, and elsewhere. Today he may be the West's most influential Islamic scholar. He commonly appears as a guest speaker at events organized by various chapters of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada.
In 1995, Yusuf described Judaism as "a most racist religion." In 1996 he expressed his contempt for the United States:
"[America] a country that has little to be proud of in its past and less to be proud of in the present. I am a citizen of this country not by choice but by birth. I reside in this country not by choice but by conviction in attempting to spread the message of Islam in this country. I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights."
On September 9, 2001 – just two days before the al Qaeda attacks against America – UCLA's Al-Talib magazine co-sponsored a benefit dinner titled "Justice for Imam Jamil Al-Amin" (a convicted cop-killer formerly known as H. Rap Brown) at UC Irvine. Among the speakers at this benefit was Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, who spoke about the fate he foresaw for America:
"They [Americans] were ungrateful for the bounties of Allah, and so Allah caused them to taste fear and hunger. That is one reason and, I would say, that this country is facing a very terrible fate. The reason for that is that this country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned for what it did…. This country [America] unfortunately has a great, a great tribulation coming to it. And much of it is already here, yet people are too to illiterate to read the writing on the wall."
At this same rally, Yusuf lamented that Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as well as unfulfilled plans to destroy various Manhattan bridges and tunnels, had been "unjustly tried" and "condemned against any standards of justice in any legal system."...
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1062
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