DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: sirs on August 15, 2010, 10:42:46 PM
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This mosque at ground zero, has the making to be quite the "takedown" of the President. Put aside his arrogant talking-down-to-us tone, about Religious freedom and the 1st amendment. Set aside that the fella behind the mosque actually claimed the U.S. kind of had it coming, and refuses to denounce Islamic terrorist attacks. This has little to do with either. It has to do with the location, so those who moronically try to make this about bigotry, know where to stick that.
Try this analogy....my brother kills your brother. A tragedy indeed, but I had nothing to do with it, as it was my brother. You think my going to that victim's funeral is a good idea. Think its just a TAD insensitive on my part, to place myself in front of that family, who had been murdered by my kin?? Think I should go anyways, even if they didn't want me to?
Same concept here, the location of a mosque, that symbolizes the religion of those who mutated it for their justification of the thousands they murdered, in the same spot is about as insensitive as one can get. One can even argue a slap in their face, all the while Usama smiles ear to ear, in some cave, watching his religion put up a symbolic beacon, in practically the best spot he could have wanted.
Anywhere else, which is how this refutes the notion of bigotry
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“I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground,” the president said in remarks prepared for the annual White House iftar, the sunset meal breaking the day’s fast.
But, he continued: “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”
What in the hell does this statement have to do with building a Mosque in the spot where over 3,000 people died in the name of Islam. He can rot in hell!
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The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.
He's right.
But there is nothing that says the funding for the cultural center can't be monitored. I'd much rather have jihadists donating to a symbol than funding IED's.
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So.....you have no problem attending a funeral to someone your brother murdered?
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So.....you have no problem attending a funeral to someone your brother murdered?
Now that would depend, wouldn't it.
What was my relationship with the family of the deceased?
Did i know them? Did I have a relationship with members of that family that was separate from my brother's relationship?
Would I expect that family to hold me accountable for actions that were not my own?
Truth of the matter is, if i were close to that family, my absence would speak louder than my presence.
Now to the best of my knowledge, the Cordoba Initiative is not being led by anyone with direct relations to the 9-11 attackers. So I'm not sure what the point of your analogy would be.
And i really don't buy into group guilt. I don't buy it when Mikey tries to paint all Republicans as racists, nor to I buy it that Islam is a religion of extremists and needs to be shunned.
BTW 28 muslims were killed in the attack. And that number is proportional to their percentage of the population nationwide.
But let's get back to your original point. Do you believe that religious affiliation itself is reason enough for the government to treat an applicant differently than any other citizen?
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So.....you have no problem attending a funeral to someone your brother murdered?
Now that would depend, wouldn't it.
Not really. We're using 911 with the anaolgy
What was my relationship with the family of the deceased?
What is this Imam's with the deceased?
Did i know them? Did I have a relationship with members of that family that was separate from my brother's relationship?
Does the Imam have one with the 911 familes?
Would I expect that family to hold me accountable for actions that were not my own?
Doubtful. However if the family doesn't want you there, as does a majority of both NY and the country, do you go anyways?
Truth of the matter is, if i were close to that family, my absence would speak louder than my presence.
And there in lies the issue. There is no such relationship between this Imam and ANY of those who lost family members during 911.
But let's get back to your original point. Do you believe that religious affiliation itself is reason enough for the government to treat an applicant differently than any other citizen?
You must be mistaken with the person that said the Government should intervene. I'm merely stating its simply the wrong place to allow buidling of a Mosque. Anyplace else would be just fine, and as such, the Government could help to locate an alternate site. The location here opens a very deep wound, and as I said, paints a big smile on the fella that was behind 911, knowing his religion now will sit in direct view and in place of what he took down, in the name of Islam.
Meaning, he wins
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The Cultural Center is not being where the towers were. It is being built 2 blocks away. So let's just do away with the fiction that it is being built on hallowed ground.
But let's dig further into your reply.
Last i heard the Iman held American citizenship therefore he is related to the families the same way you and I are.
or are you saying only relatives of the deceased should be allowed to develop property in proximity to the WTC?
BTW if the government should not be involved in denying the necessary permits for building the center because of religion it should not be involved in helping to find another more "suitable" site because of religion.
Government should be neutral when it comes to religion.
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Too close for me, and most of the rest of the country, and the damage was over far more than 2 blocks, so no fiction need be dispenced. 1/2 mile should do
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Too close for me, and most of the rest of the country, and the damage was over far more than 2 blocks, so no fiction need be dispenced. 1/2 mile should do
I don't see where it is any of your business. Hopefully you aren't arguing a moral or ethical position based on polling.
The fact of the matter is the rights of the property owner trump your rights as an interested bystander.
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Of course not (arguing a moral or ethical position based on polling). My decision, is mine alone. I merely reference the fact I'm in the majority on this issue. And my decision is merely that it's too close. 1/2 mile should suffice for me, and I've provided the reasons why
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Of course not (arguing a moral or ethical position based on polling). My decision, is mine alone. I merely reference the fact I'm in the majority on this issue. And my decision is merely that it's too close. 1/2 mile should suffice for me, and I've provided the reasons why
Then you are confusing me.
Your biggest objections seems to be that any muslim activity within a 2600 ft perimeter of ground zero would be a victory for Osama.
So is it true, in your mind, that all Muslims are linked to Osama and share his guilt and should be treated accordingly, either officially by government agencies or unofficially by the people?
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Let me unconfuse you
The Mosque should not be built 2 blocks from ground zero. Building one so close, indeed gives Usama a major win, now being able to brag that his religion and symbol stand in direct contrast to what he took down, and to the thousands he had murdered
It's the same as you going to the funeral of a person your brother just killed, and the family does not want you there, so no it's never been about associating Muslims with Usama. It's about Usama being associated with a religious symbol that's about to replace that of the WTC. It's offensive, and as insensitive to those families who lossed loved ones on 911, as can be
Now, if you can provide a record that a majority of 911 families support the Mosque, then I would be in error
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The Mosque should not be built 2 blocks from ground zero. Building one so close, indeed gives Usama a major win, now being able to brag that his religion and symbol stand in direct contrast to what he took down, and to the thousands he had murdered
How? Because all Muslims are the same? Show me the link between Bin Laden and the Rahm Faisal and maybe your argument would have a little more legitimacy.
It's the same as you going to the funeral of a person your brother just killed, and the family does not want you there, so no it's never been about associating Muslims with Usama. It's about Usama being associated with a religious symbol that's about to replace that of the WTC. It's offensive, and as insensitive to those families who lossed loved ones on 911, as can be
Bullshit. You just associated the project with Bin Laden in the previous quote.
Ground Zero will have its own memorial and symbolic consecration. I don't see how this Cultural Center will replace that, nor do i see how the center's potential offensiveness nor insensitivity to those families is anything other than an emotional argument.
And i don't see how the 9-11 families have any rights to trump the rights of a property owner to develop their land as they see fit within the confines of any building or zoning laws that exist at the time.
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The Mosque should not be built 2 blocks from ground zero. Building one so close, indeed gives Usama a major win, now being able to brag that his religion and symbol stand in direct contrast to what he took down, and to the thousands he had murdered
How?
Already answered that. I don't need to repeat myself.
It's the same as you going to the funeral of a person your brother just killed, and the family does not want you there, so no it's never been about associating Muslims with Usama. It's about Usama being associated with a religious symbol that's about to replace that of the WTC. It's offensive, and as insensitive to those families who lossed loved ones on 911, as can be
Bullshit. You just associated the project with Bin Laden in the previous quote.
I associated the connection of the mutual religion, they both share, Bt. Please keep it honest
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I associated the connection of the mutual religion, they both share, Bt.
And abortion clinic bombers usually share the same religion as other Christians. So what?
Are you saying all Christians are now abortion clinic bombers or is it somehow different?
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I associated the connection of the mutual religion, they both share, Bt.
And abortion clinic bombers usually share the same religion as other Christians. So what?
Are you saying all Christians are now abortion clinic bombers or is it somehow different?
::) Oy. we're starting to get into Prince-level twisting. Please show me where I ever denounced Islam. Please show me were I ever denounced "all Muslims". You show me that, then we can address your question more accurately
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I associated the connection of the mutual religion, they both share, Bt. Please keep it honest
So you associate a Muslim Terrorist with a Muslim Iman.
How is that different than associating a Christian terrorist with Christians?
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One last time....I associate the religion both are using. Neither however, make one equivalent to the other ::) Is this thing (mic) on?
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So are you stating there is some inherent evil in Islam that Christianities history avoids?
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::)
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You know I hate agreeing with a flaming socialist liberal.
But President Obama has it right.
The organisation that bought the building that was the Burlington Coat factory , that caught Mohammad Attas landing gear on its roof , has a right protected by our constitution to construct a leagal building there and determine its leagal purpose.
But whether it is wise?
Too obvious to need stating.
It is a dumb move and a thumb in the eye of the whole city, an offense to the nation, ridiculous before the whole world.
To make Islam seem stupid , this idea should be supported mostly by Islams bitterest enemies.
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::)
And you accuse T and XO of question avoidance.
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So are you stating there is some inherent evil in Islam that Christianities history avoids?
Well yes, why elese prefer one or the other?
Jesus didn't command war .
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His followers sure did.
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::)
And you accuse T and XO of question avoidance.
When Xo & T are criticized, its because they failed to answer a direct question from the start. Not sure what my repeating of the same answer provides in the way of debate. Folks who mutate the message of either the Koran or the Bible, are the ones that are responsible for their acts, and them alone. The fact remains that the folks who took down the WTC towers, acted in the name of Islam. Putting up an Islamic Mosque, in full view of the WTC site, makes the circle complete.
And apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this. A vast majority of folks have a similar disagreement, including a majority of Democrats.
This isn't a legal or Constitutional issue. Nor is it some Religious intolerance issue. No one is saying that Muslims don't have a right to practice their religion, here in America, or build a mosque on private property. The issue is the location. The issue is the overt insensitivity and slap in the face of the families of the 911 victims.
And a subsequent issue, upon the building's completion will be the firestorm of condemnation if any such further terrorist acts are performed by anyone that attended of was connected to the Mosque, or the effort very likely to be made by radicals here in the U.S. that'd take direct aim at the Mosque, and its worshippers. No wonder Reid has come out to denounce the idea
And on a related note, the President had a great opportunity to demonstrate Presidential leadership at the Ramadan dinner last week. He could have rhetorically referenced the greatness of the Constitution, of the Country, and the right we all have to the freedom of religion, including that of Muslime being able to practice their religion and build mosques all across this great country. He could have then added, that as President of the U.S. the wisdom of placing an Islamic Mosque, so close to ground zero, is perhaps inappropriate. Not illegal, not unconstitutional, simply inappropriate.
Instead he placated the Muslim audience with his support of the idea, then tried to backpedal and say something along the lines that its a legal issue, and he wasn't going to opine on the wisdom of such a location. Exactly the opposite of what he should have done. It's never been about the legality of the Mosque, it's always been about the wisdom of the location, and the overt insensitivity to thousands of families who lost loved ones
And probably why his poll #'s will soon be dropping into the 30's
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Folks who mutate the message of either the Koran or the Bible, are the ones that are responsible for their acts, and them alone. The fact remains that the folks who took down the WTC towers, acted in the name of Islam. Putting up an Islamic Mosque, in full view of the WTC site, makes the circle complete.
Did Bin Laden mutate the message of the Koran?
Do abortion clinic bombers mutate the message of the Bible?
Are they both claiming to act in the names of their respective religions?
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His followers sure did.
True , from time to time war , conquest and atrocity have been done in Jesus name.
Or Mohammed the prophets name.
But I have the distinct impression that Jesus himself would not approve of it.
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This isn't a legal or Constitutional issue. Nor is it some Religious intolerance issue. No one is saying that Muslims don't have a right to practice their religion, here in America, or build a mosque on private property. The issue is the location.
Actually it is a legal issue. This is a nation of laws. And as such we strive to treat people equally regardless of race creed or nation of origin. Apparently that only applies to some of our citizens.
or is valid in only certain locations.
The right thing to do is to accept the property owners rights to do what they wish with their property within existing law.
Because that is who we are and what we do.
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Folks who mutate the message of either the Koran or the Bible, are the ones that are responsible for their acts, and them alone. The fact remains that the folks who took down the WTC towers, acted in the name of Islam. Putting up an Islamic Mosque, in full view of the WTC site, makes the circle complete.
Did Bin Laden mutate the message of the Koran?
It sure would seem so
Do abortion clinic bombers mutate the message of the Bible?
It sure would seem so
Are they both claiming to act in the names of their respective religions?
Those who claim so, yep. Not sure where you're going with this Bt. You're helping to reinforce my point about the symbolism a mosque at ground zero brings with it
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This isn't a legal or Constitutional issue. Nor is it some Religious intolerance issue. No one is saying that Muslims don't have a right to practice their religion, here in America, or build a mosque on private property. The issue is the location.
Actually it is a legal issue.
Actually its not. If it were, I and most folks would be claiming some legal reason a mosque couldn't be built there. Care to demonstrate comments to the contrary?
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Actually its not. If it were, I and most folks would be claiming some legal reason a mosque couldn't be built there. Care to demonstrate comments to the contrary?
Actually it is if we are a nation of laws. And the reason you aren't arguing legal points is because you don't have a legal leg to stand on, so you have downgraded your argument to an emotional one, bolstering your arguments with legions of pundits who agree with you as if that matters.
here's some advice. If you want conservatives to take back the House and possibly the Senate, focus on the economy, don't get drawn into this local issue because it really isn't your concern and you appear to have a problem distinguishing between radical Muslims and those who may not be.
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Actually its not. If it were, I and most folks would be claiming some legal reason a mosque couldn't be built there. Care to demonstrate comments to the contrary?
Actually it is if we are a nation of laws.
Actually it's not, since I don't recall this ever being about denying me my 1st right amendment to criticize the location and opine on the grotesque insensitivity being placed at the feet of thousands of familes who lost someone(s) on 911.
Is it?
And the reason you aren't arguing legal points is because you don't have a legal leg to stand on
LOL.....BECAUSE THIS HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT ANYTHING LEGAL OR ILLEGAL OR EVEN CONSTITUTIONAL, so there was never a leg to even consider or downgrade to anything. oy Why are you trying to refute a point that was never made?? That's generally Tee's tactic, with garbage like refuting how Saddam never did threaten the continental U.S. Whoever said he did??
So, if you don't mind, I'll keep exercising my 1st amendment right to criticize both you and those who think it's a swell idea to place a symbol of the very religion Islamic terrorists invoked, within a rocks's throw of the thousands murdered, in the name of that very religion
But don't fret, I'll have plenty of energy to talk ecomomy, debt, and blatantly desperate accusations that the GOP are out to destroy SS, this coming election cycle
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Folks who mutate the message of either the Koran or the Bible, are the ones that are responsible for their acts, and them alone. The fact remains that the folks who took down the WTC towers, acted in the name of Islam. Putting up an Islamic Mosque, in full view of the WTC site, makes the circle complete.
Did Bin Laden mutate the message of the Koran?
Not really, if we had Osama handy to ask he might be able to quote the shura that he thinks supports him. But he is hardly the first to interpret Mohammeds teaching in this way . Why would not Mohammed himself participate in the raids with Osama , if he were availible?
Do abortion clinic bombers mutate the message of the Bible?
I have mixed feelings about that , do people who defend the right of abortion have a scriptural leg to stand on? Violence in the defense of the lives of innocents can be justified , but is bombing an abortion clinic really going to save any of these lives? Sometimes violence however justified is merely the second best choice because it is bound to fail.
Are they both claiming to act in the names of their respective religions?
Yes , but this claim can be hollow or substantial depending on the real nature of the scripture involved. Is there no diffrence between the message of Mohammed and that of Jesus?
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There is a fundamental difference between the message of Mohammad and the message of Jesus. The similarity is that both claim to be superior experts on the Divine, Mohammad as the last and greatest prophet, and Jesus as an incarnation of God Himself. The difference is that Islam stresses obedience to a rather confusing and illogically organized verses in a tongue foreign to the vast majority of humanity, and Christianity stresses love and the promise of Heaven (a vague place where everyone apparently enjoys singing for all eternally). Of course, Christianity has its looniness as well, in the Book of Revelations, which most resembles parts of the Koran.
Christians are supposed to love God and obey him in his more pleasant New Testament form.
Muslims are supposed to submit to Allah in his more magical and paternalistic Old Testament form.
Both religions want everyone to be prepared for the return of a Messiah, but they define him differently. Mohammad is not coming back as a Messiah, but Jesus is. Maybe. Next Tuesday or perhaps in 3402
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Actually it's not, since I don't recall this ever being about denying me my 1st right amendment to criticize the location and opine on the grotesque insensitivity being placed at the feet of thousands of familes who lost someone(s) on 911.
Is it?
I think your newest concern is misplaced.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The only government action in this issue was the actions of the local board that approved the plans for the building.
In a nutshell, the opponents of this land use are saying the followers of Islam are of the same mindset as Bin Laden and those who perpetrated the attacks on the WTC on 9/11. Because they were followers of Islam. You have said it, I'm sure the families have said it. I'm sure all the pundits who agree with you have said it. Why else would the erection of a Mosque, two blocks from Ground zero be such an insult. Why else would this be a symbolic win for Bin Laden?
And that just strikes me as prejudicial, bigoted and wrong.
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And it strikes me as completely missing the point being made, as well as apparently wishing to deny me my 1st amendment right to disagree with the location of this Mosque.
I guess it is about the law and the Constitution. I just didn't realize it was about my free speech
And one last time....it not, nor has ever been, about some expectation that fellow Mosquettes attending will be of a similar mindset as Usama. That borders on misrepresentation
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And it strikes me as completely missing the point being made, as well as apparently wishing to deny me my 1st amendment right to disagree with the location of this Mosque.
No one on this forum has the power to deny your exercise of free speech. We are not the government.
And one last time....it not, nor has ever been, about some expectation that fellow Mosquettes attending will be of a similar mindset as Usama. That borders on misrepresentation
Then why would a Mosque so close to ground zero be insulting?
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And it strikes me as completely missing the point being made, as well as apparently wishing to deny me my 1st amendment right to disagree with the location of this Mosque.
No one on this forum has the power to deny your exercise of free speech. We are not the government.
Yet, that's the only legal/constitutional issue at hand, since the Mosque issue has never been about either. And since you keep implying it is a legal matter, I'm left to conclude it must be about free speech
And one last time....it not, nor has ever been, about some expectation that fellow Mosquettes attending will be of a similar mindset as Usama. That borders on misrepresentation
Then why would a Mosque so close to ground zero be insulting?
You do understand what symbolism refers to, right? And I'll be sure to pass on your sense of "its just hunky dory..what's the problem?" position to the 911 families. Perhaps you can educate them on how irrational they're being
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You do understand what symbolism refers to, right?
Yes i do.
The Mosque would be insulting because it symbolizes the religion of Islam.
Bin Laden practiced the religion of Islam.
The connection is obvious.
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Close. It symbolizes a religion he mutated to justify killing thousands on 911. Hopefully, you're catching on now
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Did Bin Laden mutate the religion or did he mutate the perception of the religion?
And if it was the perception of the religion that was mutated, was the change in perception rational and realistic?
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(http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz081710dAPR20100817024556.jpg)
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I know how the left likes to trot out P. Buchanon when he's dissing conservatives and Bush Foreign policy, so I'll be interested in how well they embrace his comments, regarding Obama and the Mosque, as the points regarding what the issue is, dovetail on much of what I've been having to repeat myself on, as it relates to the non-legal rationale & wisdom of such a location.
He does go on though to address Islam as a militant religion. But I've seen plenty of militant behavior in both the bible and some extremists who claim to be Christian, so I think he goes too far in his stance stand there. His points on "should we" and how completely tone deaf & clueless a supposed smart university professor is demonstrating, is spot on
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Have we ever had a president so disconnected from the heart of America?
On Friday night, at a White House iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast, Obama strode directly into the blazing controversy over whether a mosque should be built two blocks from Ground Zero.
Speaking as though this were simply an open-and-shut case of constitutional law, Professor Obama declared that Muslims "have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country," including "the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan."
Hailed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also sees this as an issue of tolerance and religious freedom, Obama had poured gasoline on a fire that had him in headlong retreat Saturday morning.
"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That is what our country is about."
Professor Obama finally seemed to grasp the point.
This is not a question of "Can they build a mosque near Ground Zero?"
It is an question of "Should they build a mosque in the shadow of the twin towers, where 3,000 Americans were suffocated, crushed or burned to death by Islamic fanatics whose Muslim faith was integral to their mission of mass murder and to their identify?"
Unless one is without kidney, spleen, heart or common sense, the answer would be "No!"
A decent respect for the opinions of one's fellow Americans would seem to shout out: Put the mosque somewhere else. This is hallowed ground. This is a burial site sacred to the families of those who died, to New Yorkers, to all Americans. A Muslim mosque is out of place there.
Indeed, if, as backers claim, the purpose of this Cordoba mosque and community center were healing, reconciliation and harmony, it has failed in its purpose. It has already had the opposite effect, enraging and dividing the city and country.
Why would backers of the project press ahead when its purpose is impossible of attainment, unless the real purpose were to impose on the people of New York a mosque they do not want there.
With the president's intervention, the issue has metastasized into a major clash in America's religious and culture war. It has gone global, as Hamas has now weighed in on the side of building the mosque near Ground Zero.
"We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church, and Israelis are building their holy places," said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization's chief in Gaza.
His arguments echo Bloomberg's and Obama's: We have the right and we Muslims must now move ahead with the mosque.
With America's head of state enlisted on one side of this quarrel, and most Americans on the other, damage will be done to the national unity and there will be consequences for the president's party.
So be it. For if the president believes the Constitution decides this issue with finality, he is profoundly mistaken. We were a country before we ever had a Constitution. We were a nation, born in the furnace of a revolutionary war. That infant nation wrote its own birth certificate, a dozen years after Lexington and Concord Bridge.
While that Constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief and practice to all Americans, we were a Christian country then. And we remain a Christian country, Barack Obama's dissent notwithstanding.
Three-in-four Americans profess a Christian faith. That reality is not changed because the Warren Court outlawed Bible reading and prayer in public school, ordered the Ten Commandants taken down from classroom walls, purged Christianity from our public institutions or denies to Americans their freedom to put Christmas creches in their public squares.
Islam is a rising faith, the largest on earth, with 1.5 billion adherents. It is a militant faith that believes it will one day encompass all mankind. It holds there is but one God, Allah, that his last and greatest prophet was Muhammad, that Islam, the path of submission, is the path of salvation. It believes that its sacred book, the Koran, should inform the culture, that Sharia should be the basis of civil law.
Where it has become the dominant faith, it has been intolerant of rivals, especially Christianity, the faith of the Crusaders.
By no means are all or most Muslims fanatics of the Osama bin Laden variety, but many are uncompromising in their belief that, once their faith becomes the majority faith in a community or society, Muslims should write the rules and Muslims should make the laws.
And if Americans believe that Islam is consistent with pluralism, ecumenism and a belief in the equality of all religions and all lifestyles, we are headed for what the Chinese call "interesting times."
Our Clueless Professor (http://townhall.com/columnists/PatBuchanan/2010/08/17/our_clueless_professor)
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NEW YORK (CBS 2) - There was a possible resolution in the works Tuesday night in the debate surrounding the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center near ground zero.
CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer has learned it looks as if the developers of the mosque may be willing to budge and move away from the Park 51 location where they originally planned the construction.
So will the mosque be moving?
New York Gov. David Paterson plans to meet with developers of the controversial ground zero mosque as early as this week to offer them state land, at another location , for their cultural and religious center. Paterson told Congressman Peter King about the meeting, and King said the governor asked him to make it public.................
That's all we're saying. (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/08/17/paterson-king-hope-for-mosque-compromise/)
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New York Gov. David Paterson plans to meet with developers of the controversial ground zero mosque as early as this week to offer them state land, at another location , for their cultural and religious center. Paterson told Congressman Peter King about the meeting, and King said the governor asked him to make it public.................
Unless the state sells the land at fair market value, there will be a problem with this compromise.
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Is there a reason it wouldn't be?
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Is there a reason it wouldn't be?
I would think New York doesn't have the best track record in getting top value for the tax payers dollar.
I would also think that in their eagerness to make the controversy go away they might be willing to make concessions they wouldn't otherwise make.
And i would think if i were the guy in charge of negotiating this for the muslims i would leverage the situation to my advantage.
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Is there a reason it wouldn't be?
I would think New York doesn't have the best track record in getting top value for the tax payers dollar.
I would also think that in their eagerness to make the controversy go away they might be willing to make concessions they wouldn't otherwise make.
Yea.....and?
And i would think if i were the guy in charge of negotiating this for the muslims i would leverage the situation to my advantage.
Absolutely. We are talking NY though, and last time I checked, pretty pricey. Should be an interesting negotiation, but one that should be made, as it move the location, which again was the main issue, of the mosque away from ground zero. 6+ blocks works for me, in a compromise, bringing down my idea of 8+
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Should be an interesting negotiation, but one that should be made, as it move the location, which again was the main issue, of the mosque away from ground zero. 6+ blocks works for me, in a compromise, bringing down my idea of 8+
I'm sure the ACLU and the separation people will be watching the deal closely as well.
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That's a given
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(http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz081910dAPR20100819044534.jpg)
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(http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz081910dAPR20100819044534.jpg)
That's a very silly nonsensical cartoon.
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Not at all. Freedom of Religion means freedom to practice and build *almost* anywhere. If The Government were to sell some property to an Imam, on the WH grounds, they absolutely could. The point being it wouldn't be very appropriate for such a location, under such a scenario. Pretty much the same as the current Mosque location site
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It's not just a First Amendment issue. The 14th applies as well.
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Actually it's not a Constitutional issue at all. But we've already gone over that
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But we've already gone over that
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Three miles down the Yellow Brick Road in the Bizarro World of sirs.
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Yea, about those personal attacks that have squat to do with what's being discussed. And folks wonder why so many have left the saloon
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Actually it's not a Constitutional issue at all. But we've already gone over that
Only if the constitution is not applicable to local government procedures, in this case building applications and approvals.
The first gives you the right to express your displeasure about the choice of locations for this Mosque without fearing government repercussions for that expression. And the first gives the Muslims the right to practice their religion without fear of government intrusions. And the fourteenth says you can not treat muslim property rights differently than you would treat christian property rights. Now in a living breathing constitutional interpretation, you "might" have grounds to treat these muslims differently, but that depends on who the judge (Kagan might give you a favorable verdict), who hears the case.
In a strict constructionist viewpoint, which i believe you have said you are in favor of, you really don't have those grounds. And that's the dilemma.
So if the discussion is banned from looking at the issue from a legal, constitutional, moral or ethical viewpoint then really all we are doing is flapping our gums because we have agreed to disagree days ago.
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My grounds are emotional here, empathy towards those thousands who lost loved ones, on perhaps the worst day on American soil, and how overtly insensitive, if not downright disrespectful, to their feelings. My grounds are how completely inappropriate this location is. Not how illegal or unconstitutional, nor intolerant one of us critical folks are to the religion of Islam.
It's merely the wrong place to build such a structure, especially when the supposed notion of building it was one in bringing toghether folks, in the name of diversity & tolerance. It can't get much more opposite in effect.
Especially when you consider the significant likelihood of the probable violent repercussions, upon its theoretical completion. I have no doubt there are zealots in this country that would love to pull a "pay back", with some asanine attempt at "bringing down" the Mosque, analogus to radicals bringing down the WTC
And we won't even go into what might happen if any Islamic terrorist(s) is tracked back to that theoretical Mosque
Negotiate with the Muslims, to move it back about 6 more blocks, and 98% of the outrage will have been silenced
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This Mosque debate parallels the immigration debate in many ways.
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Not really. 1 IS a legal issue. 1 is not. HUGE difference, IMHO. If I were a Supreme Court Justice, and this were a case brought before me, I'd be making the same conclusions you're making Bt. However since the Mosque is neither a contitutional nor legal issue, those conclusions need not be made
In Obama's words, "let's be clear". This Imam has an absolute constitutional right and is completely withing all legal parameters to build a Mosque where he wants to, on private property. Does that make it the right thing to do, where he currently wants to put it? The appropriate thing to do? Hell no. It's gonna have precisely the opposite effect as to what he claims the Mosque will bring.
But legally, he sure can
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I think that there are shamefull things that are constitutionally allowed or even protected.
This seems to be one , a case in which a person has a leagal right to do a shamefull thing.
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Good assessmemt. If anything, it compares much more to the Terry Schivo debate, than anything Immigration
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Not really. 1 IS a legal issue. 1 is not.
I'm sure the immigration issue could be argued from an emotional standpoint, actually from both sides.
We have heard arguments that it is horrible to deprive people of the hope of a better life due to stringent paperwork requirements that legal immigration entails.
And we have heard arguments about how unfair it is to look the other way as illegals take jobs that less skilled americans by gawd should have.
But we know that being a Mexican Immigrant by itself is not a problem, just as long as they got here legally. And they try to learn the language and assimilate ya know. It's like you have good Mexicans , and bad ones.
Kinda like Muslims. You have the good ones and the bad ones. But they best know their place.
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Anything can be argued from an emotional standpoint. However no one is arguing a legal reason why a Mosque can't be built, in downtown Manhattan. The people arguing Immigration reform are frequently arguing how wrong the law is, making it a legal arguement, and it is a legal debate. They want the law changed, or they want to ignore the law. Bottom line, is that it's a legal debate
The Mosque debate is not. No one is arguing that laws need to be changed, modified, etc.
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The Mosque debate is not
I agree the Mosque debate is being waged strictly from an emotional basis. Most likely based on the religion of the applicants.
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not quite.....its based most likely on the severe insensitivity of placing a symbol at the grave site shadow of where thousands murdered, in the name of that symbol. Move the Mosque a mere few blocks, out of eye shot, and all is well. Their religion can be practiced infinitely, since its the location, NOT the religion that's at issue....."Just not there"
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The mosque is the symbol of the religion, which was the religion of the attackers. And Muslims should know that the actions of a few taints them all.
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I would hope not.......then again, it's always the few twits that muck it up for all the rest, in all walks of life
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I would hope not.......then again, it's always the few twits that muck it up for all the rest, in all walks of life
That seems to be the root of the controversy with this particular Mosque and this particular location. The whole Victory Mosque thing is kinda a tip off.
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"Victory Mosque"? Haven't heard the term nor in what context you'd be referring it to
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"Victory Mosque"? Haven't heard the term nor in what context you'd be referring it to
Must have been a different thread.
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Must have. Can you enlighten me?
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http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=11256.msg109343#msg109343 (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=11256.msg109343#msg109343)
http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=11278.msg109130#msg109130 (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=11278.msg109130#msg109130)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=victory+mosque&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS307US307&ie=UTF-8 (http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=victory+mosque&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS307US307&ie=UTF-8)
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Well the 1st link, I have no idea what "Victory Mosque" has to do with it. In the 2nd link, I can see it was a heated derrogatory reference, that can largely be dismissed due to its apparent origin in an angry response. The 3rd link was helpful. It provided a kind of definition of the term. So, who's credibly referring to this as a "Victory Mosque"?
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So, who's credibly referring to this as a "Victory Mosque"?
Isn't that the root of why the mosque at THAT location would be insulting?
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Ummm.....no. That requires a belief that the sole reason for it being built is nefarious, that it IS to be a shrine of Islam looking over a defeated foe, & that the Imam IS in cahoots with Usama & Co. Who here, believes that?
I'll be the 1st to go on record....I don't
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Ummm.....no. That requires a belief that the sole reason for it being built is nefarious, that it IS to be a shrine of Islam looking over a defeated foe, & that the Imam IS in cahoots with Usama & Co. Who here, believes that?
What is the insult then?
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This loop appears endless. ::) Asked and answered already. I'll let Debra sum it up (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=11379.msg109337#msg109337), again
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Debra doesn't answer why it it is insulting. Why is it the worst place in America? Why is it the worst way to do it?
Perhaps you could indulge me (again) and answer as specifically as you can why you think it is insulting that Muslims would like to build a cultural center/mosque two blocks from ground zero.
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Debra doesn't answer why it it is insulting. Why is it the worst place in America? Why is it the worst way to do it?
If you can't figure out the anwer to that one Bt, especially with the current climate associated with it, I can't help you. Here's a hint though. It's not going to be found in the Constitution, it's going to be found inside your soul
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Seems to me if its that simple a concept you should be able to verbalize it. Why the avoidance of the question?
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Because I've answered it numerous times already....oy. It is, and continues to be, grossly insensitive and downright cruel to those familes, to allow a symbol to be parked in the shadow of a gravesite to thousands murdered, in the name of that symbol.
(It remains grossly insensitive and downright cruel for you to attend a funeral, in which your brother murdered the innocent, and the family doesn't want you there. But you insist on being there anyways)
It's the same answer to the same question you keep claiming I'm avoiding, yet you keep asking
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Some pundits have compared this to putting a Catholic Church next to a playground.
Is this the same kind of slur?
Your funeral analogy was weak at best unless you are saying that this Iman and this congregation are literally Bin Ladens brothers.
Do you think the families believe the war is with Islam, instead of terror? Have they conflated the two. Have you?
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Nope and Nope. The congregation is the congregation. The analogy is spot on, because you're not your brother. But you are associated with the murderer, even though you're not one. It would be grossly inappropriate for you to attend that funeral, if the family did not want you there, yet you insisted. Funeral taking place in a public area, so legally you could be there, but it would be wrong
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You have no say in whether they build the mosque or whatever you call it or not.
There is no reason to blather on and on about how it should not be built because some rightwing rantster asshole invented the term "Victory Mosque". It is entirely legal to build the thing, it is NOT in view of "hallowed Ground Zero", and it is of no greater actual importance than the building of a church, a synagogue or a Starbucks. It has become another symbolic and stupid political football for the reactionaries, like flag burning or the ""New Black Panthers", designed on purpose to spread hate and dissent among the mentally challenged.
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You have no say in whether they build the mosque or whatever you call it or not. There is no reason to blather on and on about how it should not be built because some rightwing rantster asshole invented the term "Victory Mosque".
What the frell are you blathering about?? I have every right to criticize the project. I haven't referred to it as a "Victory Mosque". And no one is saying it's illegal. It IS however, in view of ground zero, if you ever took a mere few seconds to see the map. But its so good to know how messers Reid, Dean, and over 50% of not just NY (vast majority being Democrats), but the entire country, are now "reactionaries" bent on spewing hate
::)
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Your criticism is meaningless, since you are utterly powerless to prevent this from being built. And no, you cannot see the site of the proposed mosque from Ground Zero or vice versa. Maybe if they ever rebuild a tower, and you know right where to look, you could see the top of the building where the mosque will be.
Big Whoop.
If you get upset over this, you are a certifiable moron, really. Get a life.
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Your criticism is meaningless, since you are utterly powerless to prevent this from being built.
Thanks for that opinion. I didn't realize the 1st amendment applied to ONLY things you could actually apply hands on ability to. I'll alert the founders. So, I should not expect any more opinions or criticisms from you, as it relates to our military, or Consevative/Republican leaders, since of course, you have no control over them.
And congrats on the continued personal attacks and name calling. Way to keep bringing the level of debate down, to your gutter level
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(http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/sk081910dAPR20100818114556.jpg)
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But you are associated with the murderer, even though you're not one.
Is that association justified? Is it rational?
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Neither, but it still exists, and it would still be inappropriate for you to insist on being at that funeral, when the family doesn't want you there.
Can you respect that?
Can the Imam?
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(http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz082010dAPC20100820014551.jpg)
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Neither, but it still exists, and it would still be inappropriate for you to insist on being at that funeral, when the family doesn't want you there.
Can you respect that?
Can the Imam?
What's the old saying. Your rights end, where mine begin?
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And again since this isn't a rights issue, I can only assume they end, when you say so
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And again since this isn't a rights issue, I can only assume they end, when you say so
Sure it is. The mob wants to restrict a basic freedom in this country to a specific group of individuals in this country because another specific group of individuals might be offended, irrationally at that.
And that is not what rights are about, though in a nutshell that is what this story is about.
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Is there a nice way to erect a swasticka over a Jewish graveyard?
Lets say you make it clear that the swasticka is actually a Bhuddist swasticka and not a Natzi swasticka at all , your motives have nothing to do with offending the visitors to the graveyard , none at all.
Feel free to substite a star of David or cross over a Muslim grave yard or a Yellowjacket over the grave of Uga IV or whatever works to fit the particular situation , as long as the general principal is that no one owes any consideration to the emotions of anyone elese, what are we , our brothers keeper?
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And again since this isn't a rights issue, I can only assume they end, when you say so
Sure it is.
No, its not. Sorry, but your minority constituency is in the wrong here. "The mob" wants to respect those who lost thousands on one of the worst days in U.S. history. If they wanted to "restrict a basic freedom", they'd be lobbying their congress critters for some legislative sleight of hand. They'd be using bullhorns to claim how Islam is evil, and must be purged from the American Psyche.
And what is this "mob" really doing?....asking that folks show a little more respect, and move the LOCATION of this proposed Mosque, just a little further away. Same prayers, same congregation, same religious freedom, simply demonstrating a little more tolerance & sensitivity. Apparently that's just too damn hard a thing to expect
Is there a nice way to erect a swasticka over a Jewish graveyard?
Now Plane, you might offend thousands of Jewish families, who lost whole family trees, in WWII. Oh wait, according to some, such criticism would be intolerant, hateful even. Might offend a whole bunch of Germans
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Is there a nice way to erect a swasticka over a Jewish graveyard?
Now Plane, you might offend thousands of Jewish families, who lost whole family trees, in WWII. Oh wait, according to some, such criticism would be intolerant, hateful even. Might offend a whole bunch of Germans
[/quote]
In Germany the Swatsticka is mostly forbidden as are many symbols associated with that party and regime.
I think modern Germans would like all the rest of us to forget the third reich, I wonder if Muslims calling attention to themselves in connection to 9/11 ... keeps the problem resefresh.
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Is there a nice way to erect a swasticka over a Jewish graveyard?
Is a Mosque the equivalent of a swastika? Would a cross over the cemetary be equally offensive? How about a couple blocks away?
Let's face it, if a mosque is offensive to the families it would offend miles away from ground zero. proximity shouldn't matter. just as a swatika to Jewish person would be offensive no matter where it was.
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Is there a nice way to erect a swasticka over a Jewish graveyard?
Is a Mosque the equivalent of a swastika? Would a cross over the cemetary be equally offensive? How about a couple blocks away?
Let's face it, if a mosque is offensive to the families it would offend miles away from ground zero. proximity shouldn't matter. just as a swatika to Jewish person would be offensive no matter where it was.
Tell me about that Lockerbie Mosque.
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Is there a nice way to erect a swasticka over a Jewish graveyard?
Is a Mosque the equivalent of a swastika? Would a cross over the cemetary be equally offensive? How about a couple blocks away?
Let's face it, if a mosque is offensive to the families it would offend miles away from ground zero. proximity shouldn't matter. just as a swatika to Jewish person would be offensive no matter where it was.
Tell me about that Lockerbie Mosque.
It's closer to Dumphries (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=&q=lockerbie+scotland&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS307US307&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Lockerbie,+Dumfriesshire,+UK&gl=us&ei=haBvTOm-BoOKlweQptXdDQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CB4Q8gEwAA).
and again are you saying a the presence of a mosque = the symbolism of a swastika?
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Islam is not comparable to Nazism. The analogy is incorrect.
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Xo is correct here. Naziism is far more comparable to Communism
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Is there a nice way to erect a swasticka over a Jewish graveyard?
Lets say you make it clear that the swasticka is actually a Bhuddist swasticka and not a Natzi swasticka at all , your motives have nothing to do with offending the visitors to the graveyard , none at all.
Feel free to substite a star of David or cross over a Muslim grave yard or a Yellowjacket over the grave of Uga IV or whatever works to fit the particular situation , as long as the general principal is that no one owes any consideration to the emotions of anyone elese, what are we , our brothers keeper?
False analogy, Plane. The correct analogy would be can you erect a GERMAN flag near a Jewish cemetary. Or perhaps more specifically, could you place a GERMAN cultural center near Auschwitz? Not all Germans are Nazis. Not all Muslims are Al Quaeda. The very fact that you and Sirs use this association is strong evidence that the motivation here is prejudice. Sirs similarly states (to paraphrase) that Muslims are associated with terrorism because Al Quada committed terrorism in the name of that faith. This is no more valid than saying Christians are associated with terrorism because of abortion clinic bombers or Mormons are associated with polygamist sects in Texas. Each of these associations are real, and each is equally unjustified. They are based not on rational understanding but emotional misunderstanding. Personally, I think that conforming your actions to the false perceptions of others in order to be "sensitive" is just like caving to other forms of political correctness.
In fact, erecting a Muslim cultural center near ground zero is a very logical move for an organization that wants to fight the perception that Islam supports terrorism. It makes sense to go to the literal "scene of the crime" to present the message that Islam does NOT want to endorse the act. Where better to reach out, day-to-day, to average citizens, tourists and others who see only the face of Muslim extremism in front of them? I understand that people don't WANT them there, but that is entirely a function of prejudice. There is no more validity to the emotional outrage against Islam in this country than there is to the common perception among Muslims that America is out to persecute and destroy them. If we assume that the cultural center and Mosque are exactly what they claim to be, there is no moral or ethical reason not to build it there. It may be unwise, but only in the sense that it is was unwise for a black man to march in protests in the south, or for a schoolteacher to wear a cross around her neck, or for a gay man to come out of the closet. A lot of people will protest about it, and it may cost you. But freedom isn't free.
If the group compromises and moves the location, it would be a gesture of goodwill and speak loudly to the issue of Muslim cooperation in the community. But I suspect that, rather than acknowledge that, the opponents of the Mosque will hail it as a victory for freedom against extremism. It would be exactly the opposite.
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You're barking up the wrong tree here Pooch ;) Plane was indeed more accurate in his analogy, since this isn't a scenario of a proposed Islamic Cultural Center wanting to be built over a large Islamic atrocity in the Middle East. This is being proposed thousands of miles away, at the gravesite of a large Islamic atrocity, here in the U.S. So, plane is far more accurate in his analogy, than yourself. And if we've decided to redefine what the term prejudice means, to include taking the feelings of thousands who lost loved ones on one of the worst days in American history, into account, then fine, I'm prejudiced.
It was Islamic terrorists who perpetrated this act. It is Islamic terrorists and radicals we are still at war with. It is Islamic terrorists that many Islamic Religious leaders have an apparent acute difficulty in denouncing. This doesn't brand all Muslim, in any way shape or form. They simply are the unfortunate repercussions of the few that screwed it up for them.
My wife and I can't work in the same hospital in the same department, because we are married. When I investigated, it was found that a very few married and unmarried couples would bring their troubles to work. Hospital decided to produce a blanket policy of no couples can work the same dept. My wife and I didn't do anything wrong, but we have to deal with those repercussions caused by a scant few others
I wanted to flex my schedule with Home Health, in order to help save our company money. Taking short days when the case load was light, and working perhaps a little longer on other days, but as long as it was within a 40hour week, it was cool. I'm non-union. Low and behold legislation was passed that made it mandatory for me to take overtime, anything over 8 hours, and to have a fixed schedule, regardless of my not being union. Again, I'm actually trying to keep our Home Health agency afloat, but a minority of both Union activists, and the legislators they'd own in their hip pocket, screwed it up for the rest of us. I can see making it mandatory for all Union Workers, but for those non-union that didn't wish to participate in such, we get screwed.
There are endless examples of the majority being screwed by a minority of the idiotic or even the dangerous. Way back when (my lifetime), we could keep our doors unlocked & windows open at night. We chose not to any longer because of those few dangerous folk that make it inappropriate any longer. The 19 Islamic Terrorists that killed thousands of Americans on 911, on American soil, did so in the name of Islam. Their terrorist act screwed the vast majority of perfectly innocent Muslims, into America accepting an Islamic Cultural Center, so close to the gravesite of those murdered in the name of Islam. And it doesn't help that this Imam is showing no signs of his acknowledgement to that, nor have I heard him take back how America, kinda-sorta had it coming
So, no, this isn't a 1st amendment issue, legal issue, or anthing having to do with the Constitution. Neither is it a religious intolerance issue or one of bigotry, since no one is denying a Muslim's right to practice their religion, or build a mosque/cultural center. The issue is the location of such building, and how completely insensitive & disrespectful folks are being, in insisting that it be built right there, and no where else
And I don't think I need to go into the realm of how this Mosque/Cultural center is having the polar opposite effect of the supposed reason one is to be built there...that of bringing people together, with a supposed sense of Islamic sensitivity and tolerance. Where the hell's the tolerance & respect being shown the families of the 911 victims??
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My wife and I can't work in the same hospital in the same department, because we are married. When I investigated, it was found that a very few married and unmarried couples would bring their troubles to work. Hospital decided to produce a blanket policy of no couples can work the same dept. My wife and I didn't do anything wrong, but we have to deal with those repercussions caused by a scant few others
Those policies are more to prevent nepotism than because of married couples "bringing their problems" to work.
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Whatever the reasons are for your facility Ami, the reasons remain that a small minority screwed it up for the rest of us who have done no wrong
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You're barking up the wrong tree here Pooch ;) Plane was indeed more accurate in his analogy, since this isn't a scenario of a proposed Islamic Cultural Center wanting to be built over a large Islamic atrocity in the Middle East. This is being proposed thousands of miles away, at the gravesite of a large Islamic atrocity, here in the U.S. So, plane is far more accurate in his analogy, than yourself. And if we've decided to redefine what the term prejudice means, to include taking the feelings of thousands who lost loved ones on one of the worst days in American history, into account, then fine, I'm prejudiced.
No, Plane's analogy is ONLY valid if all Muslims are terrorists. ALL NAZI's were evil. Now I know that some poor Nazi private in a foxhole might have been just doing his job and never laid a hand on a Jew (or condoned it) but the very philosophy of the Nazi's was to exterminate the Jews. It wasn't a few Nazi's, it was the whole movement. It wasn't a few quotations taken too literally by a small faction of overzealous SS troops, it was the official philosophy, endorsed and commanded by Der Fuehrer himself. The policy of islam is NOT to murder innocent people. It DOES include going to war for Allah, depending on how literally you interpret it, but the Christian and Jewish religions have exactly the same kinds of scriptural admonishments. In fact, on several occasions in the Old Testament the people of Israel are scolded and punished for failing to commit full-scale genocide against non-believers. Plane is directly comparing a Mosque to a Swastika. That is an invalid analogy.
I have not, in any way, re-defined prejudice. It is, was, and shall remain the simple act of PRE-JUDGING. That's the literal denotation and the general connotation of the word. When you look at a Mosque and think "terrorism" that is prejudice. When you look at a Mosque and think "swastika" that is prejudice. There is no association between Islam and terrorism that cannot also be made between Christianity and terrorism, Judaeism and terrorism or pretty much any faith and terrorism at some level. When I was a young boy I was assaulted and robbed by a gang of black kids. (They took my Halloween candy, the RAPSCALLIONS!) After that, everytime I saw a group of black kids I avoided them. Did I have a rational reason for that fear? Yes. But was it a fair judgement? No. It was simple prejudice. A lot of perfectly good black kids wandered through the park who might have become friends with me had they been white. That was my fault, not theirs - and NOT the fault of those candy-thieving rascals. (Hope they got fat on it!)
It is natural that people would be prejudice in this situation but that does NOT change the reality that it is still prejudice.
Distance is not relevent in this case at all.
It was Islamic terrorists who perpetrated this act. It is Islamic terrorists and radicals we are still at war with. It is Islamic terrorists that many Islamic Religious leaders have an apparent acute difficulty in denouncing. This doesn't brand all Muslim, in any way shape or form. They simply are the unfortunate repercussions of the few that screwed it up for them.
Is this an Islamic Terrorist Mosque? I hadn't heard that. I understood it was an Islamic Mosque. If this is an Islamic Terrorist Mosque well then by all means, stop this right now. Also, please explain to me how, if this doesn't brand all Muslims, what, exactly, are the unfortunate repercussions you refer to? It seems to me that if I want to build a Mosque in New York to reach out to Americans as a gesture of goodwill after a horrible tragedy, the only objection you could have to that is based on my religion's "association" with terrorism. That means you are, in fact, branding me. That also means you are, in fact, judging my religion based on YOUR association of it with terrorism. I am a Christian. Many people associate my religion with the Inquisition, the burning of heretics and witches, centuries of war between factions and against Islam, conquest and subjugation of foreign peoples in the name of Christ. THEY associate me with those things - I don't. I dissassociate myself. I want to tell people about the good news of Christ - not force them to believe it or burn to death. But some people will instantly view me as a fanatic. That's prejudice. Some people think I am a racist because many right-wing extremist groups are avowed racists. The KKK, the Aryan Nation, the Skinheads and a host of little nutcase groups - not to mention the crazy SOBs who bomb gay bars and abortion clinics! They are all (at least most often) Right Wing nutcases. So when MT or XO or someone else comes on here and associates them with us, is that valid? After all, it's just the unfortunate repercussions of a few idiots who screwed it up for the rest of us. No, it's prejudice.
My wife and I can't work in the same hospital in the same department, because we are married. When I investigated, it was found that a very few married and unmarried couples would bring their troubles to work. Hospital decided to produce a blanket policy of no couples can work the same dept. My wife and I didn't do anything wrong, but we have to deal with those repercussions caused by a scant few others
That is an employment policy - and probably not a very fair one. But many companies follow the same sorts of policies. There is no inherent civil right to work in the same office with your wife. There is a codified Constitutional right to build a house of worship where you want to. It is one thing to feel that prudent family hiring practices stop potential problems. It is another to suggest (as this example implies) that keeping a Mosque away from the WTC area will prevent any further similar sorts of troubles. Your work policy is a change to a policy that was abused. There was no Mosque there before 9-11 and nobody but the most out there conspiracy theorists are suggesting this will be a base for another terror attack. So the analogy isn't valid. Your work policy is based on actual problems. It has nothing to do with how people (your boss included) view married people. The objection to the Mosque is based soley on feelings. Prohibiting married couples working together WILL help cut down on marital strife showing up at work. Banning a Mosque near Ground Zero will NOT prevent another terrorist attack.
I wanted to flex my schedule with Home Health, in order to help save our company money. Taking short days when the case load was light, and working perhaps a little longer on other days, but as long as it was within a 40hour week, it was cool. I'm non-union. Low and behold legislation was passed that made it mandatory for me to take overtime, anything over 8 hours, and to have a fixed schedule, regardless of my not being union. Again, I'm actually trying to keep our Home Health agency afloat, but a minority of both Union activists, and the legislators they'd own in their hip pocket, screwed it up for the rest of us. I can see making it mandatory for all Union Workers, but for those non-union that didn't wish to participate in such, we get screwed.
There are endless examples of the majority being screwed by a minority of the idiotic or even the dangerous. Way back when (my lifetime), we could keep our doors unlocked & windows open at night. We chose not to any longer because of those few dangerous folk that make it inappropriate any longer. The 19 Islamic Terrorists that killed thousands of Americans on 911, on American soil, did so in the name of Islam. Their terrorist act screwed the vast majority of perfectly innocent Muslims, into America accepting an Islamic Cultural Center, so close to the gravesite of those murdered in the name of Islam. And it doesn't help that this Imam is showing no signs of his acknowledgement to that, nor have I heard him take back how America, kinda-sorta had it coming
Having served twenty in boots I well understand the concept of mass punishment. That is not, however, a free ticket for those who object to this Mosque. The sole reason given as rejection here is because it IS a Mosque. That's wrong. Nobody would object if it were a church, a synagogue or a Mormon Temple. (Well, except the usual suspects in the atheist world - but they would object equally.) The sole reason that a Mosque alone is rejected is because the objectors UNFAIRLY associate Islam with terrorism due to the acts of a few fanatics. Those same people would NOT object to a Christian church being built there even if the planes were flown by crazed Presbyterians. We would be more aware of the faith, and we all know some Presbyterians who we could go talk to. It's a pretty safe bet a good chunk of Presbyterians would denounce it to us personally - even if they wouldn't come out in public for fear of being murdered by the Fundabyterians. It's also a safe bet some Presbyterians (assuming there was any perception of persecution or such analogous to the middle eastern view of America) would say something like "Well, look it was wrong and all, but you Americans DID invade Presbyteristan and you are constantly giving weapons and support to those damned Martinists in Luthrael.
So, no, this isn't a 1st amendment issue, legal issue, or anthing having to do with the Constitution. Neither is it a religious intolerance issue or one of bigotry, since no one is denying a Muslim's right to practice their religion, or build a mosque/cultural center. The issue is the location of such building, and how completely insensitive & disrespectful folks are being, in insisting that it be built right there, and no where else
And I don't think I need to go into the realm of how this Mosque/Cultural center is having the polar opposite effect of the supposed reason one is to be built there...that of bringing people together, with a supposed sense of Islamic sensitivity and tolerance. Where the hell's the tolerance & respect being shown the families of the 911 victims??
Actually, it IS an issue of religious intolerance. Before the government entities tasked with providing appropriate permits ruled, it was also a constitutional issue. It no longer is. I completely understand the gist of your argument, but this IS an issue of prejudice (not bigotry - different bird).
And since you asked where the hell is the tolerance and respect for the victims of 9-11 I'll ask you - where the hell is the respect for Muslims who are American citizens? I'll tell you where it is - it is in the White House and in the halls of government in New York. That's where it ought to be, and where our constitution mandates (for our own safety) it be. So long as we continue to equate the free practice of religion with an act of aggression, I hope the Muslims stick to their principles (which are, in this case, quintessentially American principles) and I will make a point of visiting after it is done.
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The point is that the Kluxers have always considered themselves to be Christians, and have considered keeping the Negoes on their place, as defined in the Bible, as hewers of wood and bearers of water, eg. lower class workers, servants or slaves.
In the same way, the Al Qaeda types consider themselves to be Muslims, and their mission to wipe out the infidels that sustain the corrupt Saudi family in power in Saudi Arabia.
But most Muslims are NOT Al Qaeda types, just as most Christians are not Kluxers.
So banning the peaceful Sufis from building their community center on the grounds that they are in some way responsible for 9-11 is just ignorance.
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most Muslims are NOT Al Qaeda types, just as most Christians are not Kluxers.
Good thing that NO ONE IS SAYING THAT ::)
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Good thing that NO ONE IS SAYING THAT
Nonsense. That is the crux of your argument.
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BT is right: that is the essence of the Muslimhaters argument.
The argument is that the evil Muslims should not build their community center where all sorts of praying and foot washing and other devious Muslim behavior is likely to go on because it makes the survivors of the 9/11 victims feel bad.
And this is a rather bogus argument, since the main goal of the community center will to unite local Muslims in benign activities, and not in planning another attack.
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Good thing that NO ONE IS SAYING THAT
Nonsense. That is the crux of your argument.
No, it's not. Never has been. I realize that it requires that to be, in order to make your case. But since it isn't, it doesnt
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It is natural that people would be prejudice(d) in this situation but that does NOT change the reality that it is still prejudice.
If I might intrude a moment, I would just like to say I am glad Pooch is still about to try to counter the insanity of some of the more rabid members of both sides here.
I've heard all the arguments for and against building the Islamic center and mosque on the location proposed. All I can say is, in my opinion, all the arguments against boil down to one thing, and Pooch has hit that nail on the head - prejudice. You can hem and haw and stutter all you want, but when you look deep down inside, you know very well yourself that is the only reason you are against it. It has nothing to do with patriotism or being hallowed ground or any of the other horseshit I have seen spouted in the news as reasons to oppose building the center there. It has to do with people who are unreasonably afraid of people who are different, who worship differently, whose customs are different, whose beliefs are different, who are not like us, and that is the very crux of prejudice and bigotry.
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No, it really comes down to compassion & respect, for the 3+thousand families who lost loved ones on 911. There's no really getting around that
But I will echo H's comments about how good it is to see Pooch post. He does bring a level of sanity to the saloon....even when he's wrong ;)
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It was Islamic terrorists who perpetrated this act. It is Islamic terrorists and radicals we are still at war with. It is Islamic terrorists that many Islamic Religious leaders have an apparent acute difficulty in denouncing. This doesn't brand all Muslim, in any way shape or form. They simply are the unfortunate repercussions of the few that screwed it up for them.
Your words. You said it. So it isn't nonsense when i say the crux of your argument is that religion is the common denominator and that the innocent must pay for the wrongful actions of those with the same religion as their own.
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Exactly....my words, and its not prejudice, its reality. The issue is NOT the religion, the issue is those who screwed it up for the rest, be it religion, occupation, domestic safety, etc., etc., etc. The common demominator is the few who screwed it up for the rest.
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The common demominator is the few who screwed it up for the rest.
In this case the ones who screwed it up were Muslims. And other Muslims are being "penalized" for actions they have no control over. But judging a group by the actions of a few is not prejudicial in your eyes?
Understand. I am sympathetic to the families who lost loved ones in the attack including the Muslim casualties that no one seems to remember.
I am also sympathetic to the families who have lost loved ones in the wars ( what are we up to 5-6000? ) that were a response to this attack, including the Muslim ones, who went off to protect the very freedoms some people seem to want to deny because of religious beliefs.
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Close.....they were radical Muslims......NOT to be confused with "normal" Muslims. Similar to the example I provided earlier, inappropriate/unprofessional married couples......NOT to be confused with my wife & I, who now have to deal with the policies put in place because of the former. Or criminals.....NOT to be confused with innocent homeowners, who now need to lock windows, doors, and keep kids inside when it gets dark, because of those who would seek to harm them.
If you "understand", then you'd understand how completely disrespectful everyone apparently is in supporting that the only place this Mosque can be built is right there, and no place else. And most notably, you'd understand how this supposed location is to bring peace, harmony, and a showcase of Islamic tolerance, when in actuality, its providing precisely the polar opposite
If
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If you "understand", then you'd understand how completely disrespectful everyone apparently is in supporting that the only place this Mosque can be built is right there, and no place else. And most notably, you'd understand how this supposed location is to bring peace, harmony, and a showcase of Islamic tolerance, when in actuality, its providing precisely the polar opposite
I would understand if i agreed that a mosque was as symbolic to terror as the swastika is to the Holocaust.
I don't . And i don't think that enabling enabling people who labor under the delusion that the religion of Islam is synonymous with terror, by either acquiescing or remaining silent to their demands is the right or prudent thing to do. And no one has shown that this particular Iman is a terrorist or that his group has been spreading terror from the same building you object to, in the year that they have already been holding services at.
And i don't see how the Iman and his folks are the ones sowing dissent, intolerance and disharmony in this whole scenario. That seems to be coming from those who are opposing the mosque and apparently the religion.
Seems the opposition is heavy on emotion, but shy on facts that would bolster their case.
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If you "understand", then you'd understand how completely disrespectful everyone apparently is in supporting that the only place this Mosque can be built is right there, and no place else. And most notably, you'd understand how this supposed location is to bring peace, harmony, and a showcase of Islamic tolerance, when in actuality, its providing precisely the polar opposite
I would understand if i agreed that a mosque was as symbolic to terror as the swastika is to the Holocaust.
You're getting close. To those radical muslims I was referring to, it is indeed a symbol of their terror, and provides a rather nice "circle is complete" justification of their actions.....tho THOSE few radical muslims
NOT to be confused with "normal" Muslims
The opposition isn't arguing "facts". They're arguing reality
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You're getting close. To those radical muslims I was referring to, it is indeed a symbol of their terror, and provides a rather nice "circle is complete" justification of their actions.....tho THOSE few radical muslims
NOT to be confused with "normal" Muslims
Yet it is the NORMAL Muslims the families and you want to punish for the actions of a few, absent facts that link any of these Normal Muslims to the radicals.
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It'd be realistically punishing if I said they can't practice their religion, period. I've never said such however
We have 2 scenarios that realistically will unfold.
1) The Imam, in his supposed quest for bringing peace and an education of Islamic tolerance to the U.S. people, can acknowledge how this can be seen as insensitive to many, given the events of 911, to want to build an Islamic Mosque in such proximity to a site where thousands were murdered in the name of Islam, and announce a compromise by moving the site a little further away. Everyone can eat, sleep, and pray, to their heart's content
2) The Imam, can legally and constitutionally build his Mosque right where he wants to, and basically say "go pound sand" to the vast majority of the U.S., pissing them off, and accomplishing precisely the opposite of what his supposed intentions are. Not to mention the vast amount of resources he'd have to apply towards security, as the radical nutballs line up to see how quickly they can "bring it down"
Since this has never been an issue of they can't build it there, and far more so that they shouldn't build it there, I wonder which he'll choose
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It'd be realistically punishing if I said they can't practice their religion, period.
It's punishing them for the actions of others as soon as you place qualifiers on their religious rights, in this case by placing limitations on the location of their mosque.
And it doesn't matter one whit whether the families agree with your stance or not. They are as guilty of prejudice as you are.
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That's a bit like Rosa Parks saying to herself:
"I could stay sitting HERE at the front of the bus, and go to jail and get fined and nearly everyone I know will be greatly inconvenienced by having to beg rides for months from people with private cars, maybe people I know maybe jailed or beaten, churches could be bombed, OR I could just go quietly and sit in the back of the bus. "
Rauff could accept that irrational people think that he is some sort of terrorist and forget about his right to build his community center where he has purchased land to do so. Or he could just humbly bow down and accept that the bigots and Islamophobes have won.
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Not even in the same ball park, since neither Rosa nor did 19 militant African Americans take down the Empire State Building
One last time, this isn't a 1st, 2nd, or even 14th amendment issue. This is a Respect issue, a tolerance issue, an inapporpriatness in location issue, given the events of 911.
No one is demanding that Muslims move the Mosque. The issue is they SHOULD move it, IF the notion of such a Mosque were one embracing and advocating tolerance, sensitivity, and respect.
Ball in the Imam's court
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This is a Respect issue
Since when are we to RESPECT those who would make the Bill of Rights situational?
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Must have missed the part where this isn't a Constitutional issue, so the question is moot
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We have 2 scenarios that realistically will unfold.
1) The Imam, in his supposed quest for bringing peace and an education of Islamic tolerance to the U.S. people, can acknowledge how this can be seen as insensitive to many, given the events of 911, to want to build an Islamic Mosque in such proximity to a site where thousands were murdered in the name of Islam, and announce a compromise by moving the site a little further away. Everyone can eat, sleep, and pray, to their heart's content
2) The Imam, can legally and constitutionally build his Mosque right where he wants to, and basically say "go pound sand" to the vast majority of the U.S., pissing them off in the process, and accomplishing precisely the opposite of what his supposed intentions are. Not to mention the vast amount of resources he'd have to apply towards security, as the radical nutballs line up to see how quickly they can "bring it down"
Since this has never been an issue of they can't build it there, and far more so that they shouldn't build it there, I wonder which he'll choose
Ground Zero Imam Says U.S. Worse than al-Qaeda
by Jason Mattera
08/23/2010
New audio has surfaced of the imam behind the controversial mosque near Ground Zero allegedly telling an audience overseas that the United States has been far more deadly than al-Qaeda. "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims," Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a 2005 lecture sponsored by the University of South Australia. After discussing the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Rauf went on to argue that America is to blame for its testy relationship with Islamic countries.
"What complicates the discussion, intra-Islamically, is the fact that the West has not been cognizant and has not addressed the issues of its own contribution to much injustice in the Arab and Muslim world." The audio was uncovered by blogger Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.
I think I can guess which one he's going to choose (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38673)
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Take a good look at that cartoon. Pretty darn accurate depection of current events, I'd say
(http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz082010dAPC20100820014551.jpg)
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Must have missed the part where this isn't a Constitutional issue, so the question is moot
And perhaps you missed the part where this opposition is nothing more than a prejudicial reaction to an action protected by the Bill of Rights.
And you are correct, the first amendment does protect the right of those who choose to espouse prejudicial viewpoints, but it certainly does not make those viewpoints right, and there is no requirement on my part to go along with this mockery of the bill of rights just because some of the opponents lost loved ones on 9/11.
This whole debate can be summed up with two simple questions and two simple answers.
Do you agree with the clause of the first amendment that provides for free religious expression.
I do.
Do you agree with the provision of the 14th amendment that provides for equal protection under the law.
I do.
What you are asking this Iman to do is give in to those vocal ones who wrongly equate all of Islam with terrorism. I don't see how any person of principles could do that.
Just as i don't see the US Government turning its back on Israel just because it would make life a bit easier in the Middle East.
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Must have missed the part where this isn't a Constitutional issue, so the question is moot
And perhaps you missed the part where this opposition is nothing more than a prejudicial reaction to an action protected by the Bill of Rights.
You're arguement falls flat, since no one is arguing or advocating a denial of any rights. We're arguing and advocating a sense of respect, of tolerance, of sensitivity. Apparently that's just too damn hard to ask for. Especially, since the Imam now states we're worse than AlQueada. Yea, real sense of "wanting to bring us all together" mentality there
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Apparently that's just too damn hard to ask for. Especially, since the Imam now states we're worse than AlQueada.
Please provide a quote in context of what he said and when he said it.
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Just scroll above (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/just-not-there/msg109678/#msg109678). Simply posting what's been reported
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Show me, convince me, that the reason you oppose this is not simply because they are Muslim. Give me one example where you have opposed building a Jewish temple in occupied territory in Palestine; show me one example where you have opposed building a Catholic church pretty much anywhere in the world they have oppressed and murdered and wiped out other belief systems in the name of 'saving' the uninitiated pagans' souls and enriching the church, either through plunder or claiming new territory. Show me where you opposed Christians building new churches because a few extremists hung uppity blacks, shot abortion doctors or bombed their clinics, or bombed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Show me where you have opposed whites building churches on Native American reservations, or Mormons building their temples. Go ahead, show me where you have opposed any other religious group using their own property as they wished, when they are in full compliance with all federal, state and local laws, zoning ordinances, and have even gone so far as to ask in advance if their old building is considered any sort of historic landmark that might prevent it from being torn down. Show me anywhere else any of you has advocated that anyone should not be allowed to use their property as they see fit under those same circumstances.
Sirs is fond of crying, "Where's the outrage?" Well, where was it?
Now convince me it's not just a matter of prejudice against just one religious group.
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So apparently, now is 2005. And he is right. We have taken out more Muslims than Al Queada has taken of ours. So yes we are far more efficient than they are.
What were the figures for the Iraqi sanctions 250-500k a year?
Of course, there wouldn't have been sanctions if Saddam was compliant. And he might have been more compliant if we had turned our backs on Israel.
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So apparently, now is 2005. And he is right. We have taken out more Muslims than Al Queada has taken of ours. So yes we are far more efficient than they are.
Ahhh, so you agree with him. Glad you 2 understand now this isn't a 1st amendment issue, as you both espouse hyperbole...the U.S. is worse than AlQeada (in your words, "more efficient" ::)
Show me, convince me, that the reason you oppose this is not simply because they are Muslim.
Been there, done that. Location, NOT religion is the ongoing issue here. If you can't accept that, I can't help you
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Glad you 2 understand now this isn't a 1st amendment issue, as you both espouse hyperbole
Where did i espouse hyperbole. I simply stated he has a point , we are far more efficient than al Queda, but our actions were lawful. The sanctions were blessed by the UN.
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Glad you 2 understand now this isn't a 1st amendment issue, as you both espouse hyperbole
Where did i espouse hyperbole.
In your agreement with the Imam's hyperbolic, and distorted "point"
I simply stated he has a point , we are far more efficient than al Queda, but our actions were lawful. The sanctions were blessed by the UN.
A point most notably absent when the Imam was comparing us to being worse than AlQeada
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Then obviously i must be a horrible person, engaged in hyperbole and all. What next, someone will call me a closet liberal or an asshole? Oh woe is me.
Should never let the facts stand in the way of a good demonization. And the facts are the US Govt has killed far more Muslims than Al Queda has killed Americans. That is the expected result of any war we get involved in. Ask Patton.
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I don't recall saying that. I do seem to say how you're trying to demonstrate how the Imam is "technically" correct in how the U.S. is worse than AlQeada. Be nice to see your 1st amendment application of criticising his 1st amendment criticism of the U.S.
But then, you might be catching on to the underlying points I've been making, especially in what the possible motivating factor(s) are behind's this Imam's insistance that the only place he can build a house of peace and tolerance is the one place that will make those pretty much impossible
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I don't believe i placed a value on the Iman's statement other than that he was correct.
It was you who made the judgment call that he was in cahoots with Al Queda and must be a radical because he made such a statement.
BTW where did he say we were worse than Al Queda? Seems to me he just said we had more blood on our hands. Was it you who modified his statement to meet your perception of him, or are you just parroting some other pundits bias in reporting?
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I don't believe i placed a value on the Iman's statement other than that he was correct.
That the U.S. is worse than AlQeada. Yea, I got that
It was you who made the judgment call that he was in cahoots with Al Queda and must be a radical because he made such a statement.
Nope, that would be a leap of illogic on your part, as i never made such a claim. I referenced his rhetoric is FAR from that which he supposedly seeks, that of tolerance, respect, and a peaceful coexistance with Americans, by way of building a mosque in the one place that'll make that decidely implausible
BTW where did he say we were worse than Al Queda? Seems to me he just said we had more blood on our hands.
oy....you're serious? ::) You're now trying to minimize the rhetoric even more?? IF it was merely a "statement of fact", he would have included precisely what you did....UN support, lawfully undertaken by our military. That was decidely absent....and transparently on purpose.
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oy....you're serious?
Yeah i'm serious. Where did he say that?
I saw where the column you posted put those words in Raufs mouth, but i didn't see where he said it.
Perhaps you can enlighten me, since you repeated (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/just-not-there/msg109681/#msg109681) the false allegation.
Or was his meaning just "obvious".
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I referenced his rhetoric is FAR from that which he supposedly seeks, that of tolerance, respect, and a peaceful coexistance with Americans, by way of building a mosque in the one place that'll make that decidely implausible
Since when is speaking the truth intolerant and disrespectful. Of course we have killed more Muslims in the war on terror than Al Queda has killed of us. That's the whole idea.
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You have an absolute 1st amendment right to your rationalization efforts Bt. You want to minimize this Imam's rhetoric as nothing more than merely "stating a fact"?, whatever makes you sleep better. When one listens to a person, in full context, and the audio was provided, it was clear what was and what wasn't said, your minimization efforts, not withstanding. I like the new twist on we "have more blood on our hands", because of course, that's a good thing, being the "whole idea" and all. ::) Apparently stating we've done a better job at taking out Muslim terrorists than AlQueada has taken out Americans, was too.........bland & unclear. More blood on our hands is so much more..........well, folks can fill in the blanks
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You have an absolute 1st amendment right to your rationalization efforts Bt.
Do you understand how the first amendment works, who it applies to and who it doesn't?
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Yea I do. I also would fight for a person's 1st amendment right, if it were ever being squelched, even from rhetoric I'd oppose. But since this is NOT a 1st amendment issue, I'm not obligated to support this Imam's choice of location
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Perhaps what you don't understand is that the first amendment does not apply to this forum, my posts are not protected by the constitution unless the government barges in and tries to suppress them.
They haven't. So why bring up first amendment rights when they aren't applicable?
BTW i listened to the edited audio. I didn't find anything offensive.
He even used the n word.
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Never was arguing the 1st in this forurm. You simply asked if I knew how it worked, and how it applies. I'm not the one that keeps bringing up the Constitutional angle, as it relates to this Mosque. No one is arguing that. I merely reference that you and the Imam have such rights.
Not sure how that has anything to do with my non-support of this Imam's location choice, or why its wrong to oppose it.
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You have an absolute 1st amendment right to your rationalization efforts Bt.
If you can't keep it honest, there is no sense in continuing this discussion with you.
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I've been 100% honest. Your effort to minimize the Imam's rhetoric is plane as.....plane. Just merely stating a fact we've spilt more blood. Because that's just such a positive, "bring-us-together" kinda of thing to say
And I wouldn't try pulling the "keep it honst" card, with your efforts at trying to paint my comments as claiming the Imam is in cahoots with AlQeada ::)
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Your effort to minimize the Imam's rhetoric is plane as.....plane. Just merely stating a fact we've spilt more blood. Because that's just such a positive, "bring-us-together" kinda of thing to say
And I wouldn't try pulling the "keep it honst" card, with your efforts at trying to paint my comments as claiming the Imam is in cahoots with AlQeada Roll Eyes
You don't believe stating grievances in an open, honest and constructive manner is a prerequisite to reaching understanding and peaceful coexistence?
There was nothing untrue in what he said and i'm not sure why you would think that radicalizes the Iman at all. And i don't see the need to minimize what he said. I agree with it. We have killed more Muslims than Al Queda has killed of ours.
Though he never said we were worse than Al Queda and neither did I. That was simply a dishonest characterization of his statement.
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If I were to believe the intention was to be "open, honest, and constructive". He has yet to persuade me on that....epsecially with rhetoric like we've spilt more blood. Nothing constructive anywhere in that video/audio
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He doesn't need to convince you of his intentions.
You are free to prejudge as you see fit.
But just out of curiosity, do you think the US has killed more of them than they have of us?
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He doesn't need to convince you of his intentions.
He does if he wants me to support any notion, of what I know to be wrong in the 1st place. I'm left to deduce the Imam is demonstrating Obama-like poor judgement......or worse
But just out of curiosity, do you think the US has killed more of them than they have of us?
More Militant Islamic Terrorists? I would hope so. That is what we are trying to do, but sure as hell not conveyed in the same manner as we've "spilt more blood" would imply
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That is what we are trying to do, but sure as hell not conveyed in the same manner as we've "spilt more blood" would imply
How would you have phrased it?
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Exactly how you did. "While, yes, the U.S. has been more efficient at killing Islamic terrorists, than AlQeada has been at killing Americans, we must be cognizant of all the innocent lives taken, in this struggle against those who have co-opted and mutate the message of Islam"
Something like that would have demonstrated both the U.S. committment to taking on AlQeada, and not Muslims in general, as was inferred, as well as noting the tragic loss of innocent life that we all should avoid causing, yet all too often AlQeada hides behind.
He said nothing along those lines, and instead gave a clear impression of just how bad the U.S. is, ironically reinforcing his past statements that basically impled "we had it coming", in reference to 911
Again, not words that inspire a desire to "bring us together", but more so devisive, in pitting those evil Islamophobic Americans against the Muslim world. That's what I saw from the video/audio
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Al Qaeda is a Wahabbi group that arose from a custom of the Saudi monarchy. When unemployment rose among young Saudis, who could not be expected to do the ickier manual labor jobs done by Pakistani and Indian emigrants, the monarchy gave them jobs as Religious Police, The Guardians for the Prevention of Vice and Encouragement of Virtue. When they were trained by the local imams into fanatical fundamentalists, they noticed that the Saudi monarchy was itself hypocritical and corrupt, drinking booze, womanizing in Cairo, Beirut and Europe and such. Then some of these religious police volunteered to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, and they because armed and dangerous fanatics.
The US government policy has always been, give the Saudis what they want. The Saudi monarchy wants to stay in power. The US gives them the arms and the surveillance equipment to do this. Without US help the monarchy is pretty much helpless. The Saudi monarchy has two principles: the royals can do anything they want, and they can buy whatever they need to continue doing it.
The Saudi religious police have no way of influencing the monarchy. To the royals, they are simpletons that have been given stupid make-work jobs. The religious police, on the other hand., blame the corruption of the royals on the US, which has served as a procurer for sinful Western ways: whiskey, loose women, immoral TV shows and films, jet aircraft, whatever. Left exclusively to their own devices the best the Saudi royals could do is have fancy tents and palaces, faster camels, better hunting hawks and perhaps a trove of gems.
The religious police that evolved into Al Qaeda see the world outside Arabia as evil and corrupted by wealth. The most ostentatious symbol of this corrupting wealth was the WTC. The White House and the Pentagon were also sources of support for the corrupt Saudi royals.
Just as the Saudi royals see themselves as exceptional beings that are not bound by their own fundamentalist religion, the American oligarchy sees itself as beyond morality as well, supporting the Saudi monarchy and its whims for the benefits bestowed on Big Oil and Big Everything else by trade with the immensely wealthy Saudi monarchy.
There is a reason that 9-11 was not staged by irate Kashmiris, seething Sikhs, destructive Danes or bilious Bhutanese. It was a foreseeable act of payback for the US supporting the Saudi monarchy.
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The religious police that evolved into Al Qaeda see the world outside Arabia as evil and corrupted by wealth.
And we, the U.S., are apparently worse than they, as implied by the Imam behind the Ground 0 Mosque/Cultural center. Because we've spilt more blood, which is a good thing, because we're supposed to kill more of them than us...oh wait, it's a bad thing, which is why we had it coming. Wow, the spinning used to justify this Imam's opinions are indeed staggering
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And we, the U.S., are apparently worse than they, as implied by the Imam behind the Ground 0 Mosque/Cultural center. Because we've spilt more blood, which is a good thing, because we're supposed to kill more of them than us...oh wait, it's a bad thing, which is why we had it coming. Wow, the spinning used to justify this Imam's opinions are indeed staggering
The only spin i am seeing is the perpetuation of the lie that he said the US was worse than Al - Queda.
And unless you can show where he said those words, then you are complicit in aiding and abetting that lie.
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There is no spinning at all.
This is not a contest, no prizes are awarded. But the government of the US is not blameless. The people working in the WTC were innocent victims for the most part, but as a rule, all civilians killed in acts of terror are innocent victims.
I was just pointing out that the attack was justified in the eyes of the attackers, and that understanding how and why is better than just saying "they hate us for our freedoms", which is just dumb.
Any way you look at it, too much blood has been spilled.
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And we, the U.S., are apparently worse than they, as implied by the Imam behind the Ground 0 Mosque/Cultural center. Because we've spilt more blood, which is a good thing, because we're supposed to kill more of them than us...oh wait, it's a bad thing, which is why we had it coming. Wow, the spinning used to justify this Imam's opinions are indeed staggering
The only spin i am seeing is the perpetuation of the lie that he said the US was worse than Al - Queda.
Yea, because we've "spilt more blood" is meant to be a positive, a good thing in fact....minus all the relevent qualifiers to make it a positive of course. Which then leads us to deduce how on earth did we "had it coming", when what we're doing is a supposed good thing
Contrary to popular miniority opinion, I can see and read the Imam's words in their context, and where he gaive it, which wasn't inside a court room, where lawyers can parse different definitions of "is" or "spilt", or at some deposition, where he was merely pointing out a fact
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Yea, because we've "spilt more blood" is meant to be a positive, a good thing in fact....minus all the relevent qualifiers to make it a positive of course. Which then leads us to deduce how on earth did we "had it coming", when what we're doing is a supposed good thing
Contrary to popular miniority opinion, I can see and read the Imam's words in their context, and where he gaive it, which wasn't inside a court room, where lawyers can parse different definitions of "is" or "spilt", or at some deposition, where he was merely pointing out a fact
I see so you admit to the lie that he said we were worse than Al-Queda.
And no he didn't make his statements in a courtroom. He made them at a University in Australia during a Q&A session with students. Part of an outreach effort I guess. Both Bush and Obama have sent him on State Department speaking tours. Whether he was sent by them to Australia, i don't know. But i seriously doubt the Bush Admin would assign a radical muslim to their speakers roster.
But then again you didn't make your post in a courtroom. either, but that doesn't make it right to make up stuff on the fly.
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If part of his "outreach effort" is painting as negative a light on the U.S. compared to the likes of AlQeada, as palatably possibile without being too offensive, mission accomplished
And I won't be surprised if still more audio/video is produced of this Imam's similar "outreach" efforts
And please....enough with the mispresentation that I'm claiming the Imam is some radical in cahoots with AlQeada. That'll be my last request, on that matter, having already had to correct you
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And please....enough with the mispresentation that I'm claiming the Imam is some radical in cahoots with AlQeada. That'll be my last request, on that matter, having already had to correct you
I see. Then why post the lie that he said we were worse than Al Queda?
What was the purpose?
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It's not a lie, if I've deduced that's what he said, based on the overall context of his comments, and the audience to which it was given
So, we can dispense with the lie that it was a lie now, as well. You inferred something completely innocent, merely some statement of some. I inferred something different, given the context in which it was provided and not done so in a vacuum
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When you say "best" or "worst", that is a value judgment.
If I say that my dog is better than your dog, you can disagree, but it is ridiculous to claim that I am lying. Perhaps my idea of a good dog is one that keeps me warm at night and your idea is one that is really good at fetching dead ducks from the lake.
You really like to accuse others of "lying", it appears.
You can say that the US troops and CIA have been more lethal than Al Qaeda (or vice versa, which could be true, I have no statistics), but whether that is better or worse is a personal value judgment.
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It's not a lie, if I've deduced that's what he said, based on the overall context of his comments, and the audience to which it was given
You said he said the US was worse than Al Queda. He didn't. If he did your statement would be true. If he didn't your statement would be false. He didn't, your statement was false.
This isn't about parsing his statement. That was done by the article you posted and your reiteration of it.
You didn't originate the lie, you simply propogated it, even after being called on it.
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When you say "best" or "worst", that is a value judgment. If I say that my dog is better than your dog, you can disagree, but it is ridiculous to claim that I am lying.
Best take that up with Bt. He's the one pulling up the lying card, currently. Try to pay attention
You really like to accuse others of "lying", it appears.
Oh here we go again....Xo.....the lie here is you lying about my supposed accusing others of lying. I requested examples of these supposed accusations on my part. And as I expected, right on cue, you failed to respond. Bt is the one who has originated the claim of lying this go around, NOT me, yet there you are perpetating the same garbage you couldn't validate the 1st go around
So, put up (examples of this plethora of sirs merely accusing others of lying), or be shown to be either
a) grossly in error
or
b) perpetuating a lie
Your silence & failure to respond with actual examples vs the standard personal attack tact, will merely allow others to decide a) or b), based on your own track record
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It's not a lie, if I've deduced that's what he said, based on the overall context of his comments, and the audience to which it was given
You said he said the US was worse than Al Queda. He didn't.
Did he say it verbatim? no. If I say the Yankees suck, have I said they're the worst team in baseball? No. My statement is true, based on what he said, and how he said it, not to mention who he was saying it too. Again, he didn't give this speech in a vacuum, or in a deposition. He could have provided far more quailifiers and UN support of our actions in his speech. He could have added that we, the U.S. were acting lawfully. He didn't, and I can deduce he did so on purpose.
You don't have to accept that...you can claim he was merely a reporter providing a point of fact, end of story. fine. That's your conclusion. Doesn't make it a lie any more than my conclusion. Mine actually has a fair amount more reality built in, is all
This isn't about parsing his statement.
That's EXACTLY what you're doing, while I'm extrapalating from his statement. You, are taking his exact words, and ...... that's it. We're not to take into consideration anything else, and leave his comments as if he was the local sportscaster simply giving the score of the Dodgers/Mets game
You yourself was opining how he's trying to facilitate outreach by being open and honest. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim he's merely making a statement of fact....period (neutral). But also claim he's trying to be honest about U.S. involvment in causing even more death than AlQeada (a negative). Yet originally opine how we're supposed to be more efficient at killing AlQeada than they are in killing us (a positive)
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Did he say it verbatim? no.
Progress.
My statement is true, based on what he said, and how he said it, not to mention who he was saying it too.
So you read things into his statement that he didn't say. You read between the lines, i suppose. Haven't you gone after T and XO for much the same thing. Extrapolating a quote to mean what you want it to mean?
And the the heck is nefarious about answering questions from college students?
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When I hear someone say something, I read everything about what he is trying to say, including body language, context, other things they have said, both in the past, and in presently, that would be pertinent, etc.
Perhaps if I was a juror, I'd have more limitations placed on me, as you seem to want to place
And to answer your Tee/Xo question, no
And to answer your College question, context, as well as that it wasn't in the U.S. in front of a U.S. audience
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And to answer your College question, context, as well as that it wasn't in the U.S. in front of a U.S. audience
I would expect a speaking engagement in at an australian university to be attended primarily by australians. Would you expect anything different?
BTW i would expect the australians to be a tough audience considering they were the primary targets in the Bali bombings.
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And to answer your College question, context, as well as that it wasn't in the U.S. in front of a U.S. audience
I would expect a speaking engagement in at an australian university to be attended primarily by australians. Would you expect anything different?
::) I hope you're not being purposely obtuse, Bt. Point being, and examples abound a plenty, of pundits, politicians, celebrities, dignataries, etc., who say 1 thing in this country, but when out of the lime light of the U.S., allow for much greater latititude in their criticisms of this country. And that's being kind
Then again, you know that, which is why your above response is rather.......obtuse
BTW i would expect the australians to be a tough audience considering they were the primary targets in the Bali bombings.
Probably why he didn't bring up any spilt blood at the hands of Australians. But that's just a guess
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Which brings us to another point.
The audio of Iman Rauf was "discovered" by one Pamela Geller. Did you know she was a principle in the SOIA (Stop The Islamization of America) organization that was holding all those stop the Mosque rallies.
Do you think she left anything on the cutting room floor when she posted this damning evidence of Rauf's true colors?
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Probably why he didn't bring up any spilt blood at the hands of Australians. But that's just a guess
Australia had troops in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time of the speech.
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The unedited transcript of the Rauf speech and Q&A in Australia:
What does it take to change the relationship between the West and the Muslim World?
A public lecture with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Presented by
The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre/UniSA International and The Migrant Resource Centre
Tuesday 12 July 2005
MS ELIZABETH HO: Well, that's a very nice hush. A moment perhaps to pause and think about this evening. We're very pleased to see you all here braving the cold. It's my job to welcome you and to get things underway today. My name is Liz Ho and I'm director of the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre. We are presenting tonight's occasion with the Migrant Resource Centre and also with the international office of the University of South Australia.
Can I first acknowledge that we are on Kaurna land, and perhaps tonight would be a special moment to think about the importance of virtue and the importance of our respect for Aboriginal people and we thank them for the opportunity to be here this evening. I also would like to acknowledge a few people. Firstly, Mr James Rundle, representing Minister Stephanie Key; the Labor member for Norwood, Vini Ciccarello; the Honourable Basil Hetzel, Hawke Centre Chair; Mr David Klingberg, Chancellor of the University of South Australia and Maggie Klingberg; Mr Marei Al-Nahdi, President of the Islamic Society of South Australia; Professor Lowitja O'Donoghue, Aboriginal Leader and Hawke Centre Patron; also, Linda Matthews, Commissioner for Equal Opportunity in South Australia.
We are co-presenting this lecture, as I said, with the Migrant Resource Centre and I'm very delighted to acknowledge the presence of Mr Rauf Soulio, Chairperson of the Centre. The Migrant Resource Centre supports new members of the South Australian community in many enriching and valuable ways. It also actively encourages respect for diversity, and indeed an excellent partner in tonight's presentation.
Can I just say that we were very honoured to be approached to assist with the visit to Australia by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as part of the Adelaide of Festival of Ideas. The Hawke Centre and Uni of South Australia have a strong commitment to open debate and discussion within the community, especially where that discussion may help to shed light on matters that affect our social cohesion, and that is both a local issue, a national issue and a global issue.
Our esteemed speaker is highly qualified to illuminate our understanding and perceptions of the West in relation to Islam. He is the founder of the American Sufi Muslim Association and has dedicated his life to building bridges between Muslims and the West through programs in interface, culture, arts, academia and current affairs. Many of you may have had the privilege of hearing him address a number of issues at the Festival of Ideas. Some of you may know that he is the Imam of Masjid Al-Farah, a mosque in New York City, 12 blocks from Ground Zero, where he preaches a message of peace and understanding between people regardless of creed, nationality or political beliefs.
He has asked that we treat this evening in that very spirit of dialogue of a conversation between himself and between you. He will start with a short presentation and then we will move to questions and a discussion. So I invite you now to think about the questions that you would like to pose and to have those ready. To make them questions rather than very long comments so that we can include as many people as possible from the audience. And I hope at the end of the session that we will have a new perspective because I certainly felt, over the weekend, that the Imam had given me one, for which I'm personally grateful. As I said, we're honoured to have you with us and I would like to invite you to address the audience now. Thank you.
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: Thank you very much, Liz, for that very warm and very generous introduction. I would also like to extend my thanks to all of the hosts, the special guests and those who made this evening possible, and it seems that the Festival of Ideas, at least as far I'm concerned, hasn't quite ended yet. I gather, from the discussions we had outside, that a large number of you present here this evening were present during my presentation, at least one of them, during the long weekend when the Festival was on.
I just wish to do a synopsis of the points that I made and then, as Liz indicated, really engage in dialogue with you. My trip to Australia has been marked by a great learning on my part about what makes Australia so special and I'm very much impressed by how Australia has, in my mind, even overtaken the United States and parts of western Europe in terms of developing a multicultural sense of itself and identity. It's hard work indeed and I believe that the United States needs to reconsider considering Australia as "down under" in the sense that under the radar screen and really bring it up, bring it up above and learn from the examples that you have so well initiated and implemented in this great land.
My role as an American Muslim and a spokesman for Islam has involved a number of things. It has involved creating, participating and developing coalitions across the religious divide to address issues of common concern and also issues that have, on one hand, divided us and on another hand unite us. We are united with Christians and Jews in terms of our belief in one God. In the tradition of the prophets. In our tradition of scriptures. The Jewish prophets, Jesus Christ and John the Baptist and Mary are in fact religious personalities and prophets of the Islamic faith as well.
What divides us is less theology, to my mind, than history. History which has wound itself and gotten bound up in issues of politics and to some extent perceptions of economics and therefore we affirm the value of dialogue and especially religious dialogue in shaping what we have called shared convictions and for the action that we can and hope to accomplish together.
One of the challenges in engaging in this kind of debate in the public square in the West, the United States in particular, and perhaps more so in Europe, is the Western understanding, or perhaps misunderstanding in many quarters, of the separation of Church and State and what it actually means. It is my conviction that even the framing of this issue of Church State separation came about in the history of western Europe because of the need to allow a variety of religious voices in the public square in shaping the debate on how and what a good society would be.
From the point of view of Islamic theology, Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic history, the vast majority of Islamic history, it has been shaped or defined by a notion of multiculturalism and multireligiosity, if you might use that term. From the very beginning of Islamic history Islam created space for Christians of various persuasions, of Jews and even of Muslims of different schools of thought within the fabric of society.
Many are unaware that the Ottomans, the Ottoman Empire, ruled over a vast multicultural group of societies. The Ottomans ruled over not only Turks but Arabs and Greeks and Kurds and Armenians and a variety of different religions. It was actually the end of the Ottoman Empire and the end of what you might call multiculturalism within our own historical norms of Islam and the adoption of a Nation State paradigm and a nationalism which identified the nation and the national identity with one culture or one ethnicity or one language, and the rise of modern Turkey at the end of the Ottoman caliphate meant there was no more space for Greeks and Kurds and Armenians and Arabs.
The fomenting by the British of Arab Nationalism, in fact, at the end of the 19th Century contributed to some of the problems and friction between the Arabs and the Turks. For those of us who remember watching Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, that was one of the incidents of the chapters in breaking apart the Ottoman Empire by arousing or rousing the flames of Arab nationalism.
We adopted, other Muslims adopted, religious nationalisms. Something which, in my viewpoint, is fundamentally at odds and inconsistent with the principle of Islam as embodied in the verse of the Koran in which God says, to those of us who believe it is the word of God, where God says:
Indeed we have created you. All people, we have created you from one male and one female and fashioned you into various communities and tribes and nations in order that you may get to know each other.
The implication is not to hate each other on the basis of ethnic diversity.
The best of you -
the verse continues -
in the eyes of God are the most noble, and noblest of you in the eyes of God are those who are most pious, most devote. Those who evince or practice the highest form of ethics.
And thus the need to understand this history, to unpack the various strands of this history and to see how we can now restate, within the orthodoxy of Islamic thought, a road map and a vision for how we can cooperate together to move forward.
And thus a need for effective and articulate interlocutors. Those who understand both the nuance history, at such a level of nuance, both of the development of Western thought, enlightenment thought, its origins in Greek thought and the same on the Islamic side. To both understand the language of thought, the paradigms of history and then to take from such an analysis, to map out and chart the course for an effective future that will in fact be multicultural and multireligious.
A necessary part of this is to embrace and to welcome and to invite the religious voices in the public square, in the public debate, on how to build a good society. So multiculturalism, in my judgment, involves not only differences of culture and ethnicity but also multireligiosity, and that's where the challenge and the rub comes in for many because there is a perception that multireligiosity must mean the potential conflict between different religious voices in the public square.
I, for one, believe that that is not in fact the case. I believe that all Religions, all Religion in general, with a capital "R", consists of two components. One, how each religious tradition addresses the existential questions of why we are here as human beings, of the nature of being human and our relationship to the creator or to the absolute, by whatever name we choose to call it, God, Allah, the great unknown, brilliant darkness, whatever name you wish to attribute to the ultimate or the absolute truth, and how we are to relate to that absolute truth in an existential fashion.
And in that domain there is room for every individual or group of individuals to adopt its own ideas, and the Koran itself is quite explicit on that when it states:
There shall be no compulsion in religion.
Thus the need to create and allow the space for different religious opinions, in terms of what we call in Christianity, the vertical dimension or the first commandment of loving God. When it comes to the horizontal dimension, the dimension of loving our neighbour, almost all religions have pretty much the same basis of ethics. All religions condemn murder, condemn theft, condemn liable, condemn adultery, condemn all these ills of society.
All religions encourage the furtherance of the family and family bonds and family values, encourages the notion of being kind and generous to the stranger, of feeding the poor and helping the weak and not oppressing our fellow human beings. These are the principles on which the second commandment of: love thy neighbour, belongs. And as I pointed out in the session on liberating the law, Jesus Christ, after mentioning these two commandments as the major commandments, added the words:
Upon these two commandments hang all of the law and all of the prophets.
Which means that our law, our sense of justice, our articulation of justice, must flow from these two commandments of loving our God and loving our neighbour, and if we are not sure of how to articulate the love of God in the public square we certainly can allow each person and each group of each religious group to choose to love God in the vernacular and in the liturgy that it chooses and it prefers, but it gives us a broad basis of agreement on which we can love our fellow human beings and this, I suggest, is the mandate that lies before us today as we embark on this 21st Century and is the mandate and the homework assignment that lies ahead of us.
I would like to, with your permission, stop at this point and encourage a dialogue because I would like very much to learn from you as well. Thank you very much.
MS ELIZABETH HO: We have a microphone that we are going to bring to you. If you would like to just speak very clearly. We are recording today's session, so I would ask that you stand up. If you can't stand, at least speak very clearly and we will pass the microphone to you. Now, do we have any person out there willing to go first?
SPEAKER: I was very impressed with your opening address.
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: Thank you.
SPEAKER: The question I have, being Christian, and brought up a Christian but having a great tolerance of other religions, having been privileged to visit middle eastern countries and Africa and having been into mosques and understood Muslim people sharing with me their beliefs, all of that sits really well.
The issue that I don't know the answer to is that where in Islam there are fanatical people who teach their young people to do atrocities, like they have done, like our near neighbours and Jamia Islamia have done, and they do that in the name of Islam, they do it because they regard people like ourselves as infidels, etcetera, and they poison the minds of these young boys and girls to commit these atrocities in the name of Islam with a view to gaining eternal reward.
Why is it that the broader Muslim community, who we can co-exist very peacefully with great acceptance of one another's beliefs, why can't the broader community see that that sort of thing doesn't happen and control it and teach their young people that what those people are doing is really poisoning their minds and it is against their Islamic beliefs which you have alluded to earlier?
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: Thank you. That's a very important and excellent question. The answer is it is being done. The broader community is in fact criticising and condemning actions of terrorism that are being done in the name of Islam. I just came from a conference in Jordan, Amman where there were over 170 leading Muslim scholars from almost every part of the Muslim world, including some of the most important names like Sheikh Tantawi of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, who is the Chief Mufti of Egypt, the Chief Mufti of Jordan, the Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, who is a very very well known Islamic jurist, highly regarded all over the Muslim world. They included fatwas obtained from people like ..... Istani who could not attend but also issued a fatwa condemning acts of terrorism and stating that the attribution of infidel to others is not something that should be done and is outside of the ethics of Islam.
Islamic law, the text of Islam, the Koran is quite explicit on describing Christians and Jews as people of the book, and throughout Islamic history even Islamic scholars in India have actually included Hindus as being people of the book because Hindus were not yet involved - were not part of the society, of Arabic society, at the time of the prophet.
The complexity arises, sir, from the fact that - from political problems and the history of the politics between the West and the Muslim world. We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US lead sanction against Iraq lead to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it.
What complicates the discussion, intra-Islamically, is the fact that the West has not been cognisant and has not addressed the issues of its own contribution to much injustice in the Arab and Muslim world. It is a difficult subject to discuss with Western audiences but it is one that must be pointed out and must be raised.
How many of you have seen the documentary: Fahrenheit 911? The vast majority - at least half here. Do you remember the scene of the Iraqi woman whose house was bombed and she was just screaming, "What have they done." Now, I don't know, you don't know Arabic but in Arabic it was extremely powerful. Her house was gone. Her husband, I think, was killed. What wrong did he do? I found myself weeping when I watched that scene and I imagined myself if I were a 15-year old nephew of this deceased man, what would I have felt?
Collateral damage is a nice thing to put on a paper but when the collateral damage is your own uncle or cousin, what passions do these arouse? How do you negotiate? How do you tell people whose homes have been destroyed, whose lives have been destroyed, that this does not justify your actions of terrorism. It's hard. Yes, it is true that it does not justify the acts of bombing innocent civilians, that does not solve the problem, but after 50 years of, in many cases, oppression, of US support of authoritarian regimes that have violated human rights in the most heinous of ways, how else do people get attention?
So I'm not - I'm just providing you with the arguments that are happening intra Islamically by those who feel the emotion of pain. Half a million Iraqi - there's a sense in the Arab and Muslim world that the European world and Western world is just - does not care about our lives or human lives. There's a perception in much of the Arab world and the Muslim world that the issue is about race. That the Palestinian Israeli issue is less about religion than it is about race because about 25 per cent or more of the Palestinians or the Arabs are Christian. Many people in the West are unaware that Palestinians are not uniformally Muslim.
There is a large number of Arab Christians but they are not regarded as being equal. These issues have to be looked at, have to be recognised, have to be addressed and have to be solved. And this is why in our initiative we have urged a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict as being number one on the list of things that need to be done because you address this problem and a whole host of problems will be addressed automatically.
How many of you have read the book: The Tipping Point? Are you familiar with that book? It is a fascinating book. I strongly recommend it. It talks about, and a very lovely example, there are many examples that I don't remember, about crime in New York City and how just the removal of graffiti on the subways, New York City subways, reduced crime in New York City. Now, how would you argue the link between graffiti on the walls of the subway and crime? It's hard to determine but in fact it was proven to be so.
It is much more evident to many people what the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict will do, and as Tony Blair is urging, urging, the resolution of this crisis and the lethargy with which the Bush administration has been actually engaged in trying to resolve this crisis amplifies the perception, in the Arab and Muslim world, that our pain is not heard. Our anguish is not heard. And simple things like when President Bush went to Iraq on Thanksgiving to address the United States troops based in Iraq, he did not speak at all to the Iraqi people.
He could have left a taped message addressing the Iraqi street congratulating them on removing a tyrant that they all wanted to have removed, and saying, you know: I have asked Congress to allot 70 billion dollars of which I'm hoping to have so much for education. Speak to the people. He does this every year in the United States. Imagine if he came to this country and there were US troops stationed here, spoke to them, didn't speak to the Australian people. How would you feel?
How many of you have seen the documentary: The Fog of War? It is an important documentary in which Robert McNamara was interviewed and it's a documentary which is supported by 11 or 12 - I think 11 lessons, if I'm not mistaken - and the first lesson he points out is empathise with the other side. The number one thing that we need on the part of the West is to empathise. To see yourselves from the eyes of the other.
If it's a man who wants to have a wonderful relationship with a woman, you have to see how you look from the eyes of a woman. If you are a white man seeking to deal in Australia with the Aborigines, you have to learn to look at yourself from the eyes of the Aborigines, and you will see things that you cannot see otherwise. The West needs to begin to see themselves through the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world, and when you do you will see the predicament that exists within the Muslim community.
I'm not saying this to condone. Acts like the London bombing are completely against Islamic law. Suicide bombing, completely against Islamic law, completely, 100 per cent. But the facts of the matter is that people, I have discovered, are more motivated by emotion than by logic. If their emotions are in one place and their logic is behind, their emotions will drive their decisions more often than not, and therefore we need to address the emotional state of people and the extent to which those emotions are shaped by things that we can control and we can shape, this is how we will shape a better future. Is that hand still up there?
SPEAKER: Thank you very much. I was interested that your starting point this evening was that in the West there has been a misunderstanding of the concept of separating Church and State and I wanted to ask a question in relation to that. Western historiography generally argues that that separation of Church and State comes out of the 18th Century enlightenment and that that in turn was partly the consequence of the 17th Century Protestant reformation.
Now, what we have heard a lot of over the last couple of years, particularly from neo-conservative American commentators, is that Islam needs a comparable reformation. A reformation that will put the Koran into the vernacular instead of keeping it in a scholarly language and that will also allow Muslims to debate the scriptures in the Koran in the same way that Christians have engaged in very detailed exiguous and biblical criticism even to the point of, you know, many Christians now no longer believing that the Bible is the received word of God yet still identifying themselves as part of a Christian faith.
So what I'm interested in is your response to the idea of an Islamic reformation and also if you could explain a little bit more the significance of the Koran as a Holy object in itself, which is a part of Islam but I think many of us in the West find curious and need help with. Thank you.
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: Thank you very much. There was at least three questions that I heard you say, each of which could take a two-hour lecture. Very briefly, let me describe Church-State separation which has been a term of phrase which is not necessarily that which is expressed even in the American Constitutional document, the First Amendment, rather, which speaks about that the State shall not establish any religion.
England does not have separation of Church and State. The Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed by the Queen and any aspects of theology of the Church of England requires the tacit approval of Parliament. But what you do have in England is separation of religion and politics. Now, take the opposite example of India where you have a separation of temple and state but you don't have separation of religion and politics in India. It's almost impossible to have politics without - religion plays a very powerful role in politics in India. This is just two examples to highlight the difference between separation of Church and State and separation of religion and politics.
The United States is somewhat - we do have separation of Church and State but I would daresay that politics kind of like osmoses into religion. Also, it's very hard for people who are in, you know, the Congressmen or Senators, or like you have here, Members of Parliament, when they are making decisions to not have their decisions being formed by their ethical values and principles. And therefore their religion - whether their religion or whether their sense of ethics and ethical values comes from their professed religion or whether their religion is secularism and secular humanism, those values somehow percolate into the decisions that they make.
Most of the time it is not a problem but there will be issues on which their values intersect the decisions. A prime example, certainly in America today, and a very controversial one, is the abortion rate and the attempts by some people to overturn what is the historical Rowe v Wade US Supreme Court decision, I think in '73, on religious reasons, on principles of fundamental principles of belief. So those are the moments when what we normally attribute or point to and we call "Church-State separation" comes about.
Let me now just, with that very brief and rather incomplete description, just add to it that Church-State separation, as what we normally refer to it, is really intended to mean that, in its broadest terms and much more than that, that the state powers shall allow adherence of difference religious faith traditions an equal footing in society. That there will be no preference of one over another or the oppression of any religious society. That there shall in fact be no compulsion in religion and all religions shall be given an equal footing. This is the intent of the Church-State separation as it emanated in European history.
That particular aspect of allowing space in a society for different religious societies on an equal footing is something which, within the history of Islam, always existed. Was it perfect? Could it be made more perfect? Certainly it can be made more perfect, but by and large people of different religious traditions were allowed their religious freedoms from the very earliest times in Islamic history. Were there incidents where some rulers did not? Yes, but that is not the broad aspect of Islamic history that brought precedent nor is it the interpretation of the Muslim jurists.
On the issue of the reformation, in terms of what is again intended by it, Islam does not need a reformation. It needs just a going back to its basic principles of application. From the very beginning the prophet urged his followers to seek knowledge, even if they went as far as China. And Muslim scholars have interpreted that Hadith, or teaching of the prophet, to mean obviously they didn't go there to understand religion but it was to understand what we would call secular knowledge.
So the importance of knowledge was something which was very important to the Muslims of early times and within a couple of centuries the Muslim thinkers had absorbed all of the known thought, from Greek neo-Platonic and esoterian thought, to Hindu thought and mathematics, and they absorbed and translated all of those works into Arabic, which was the lingua franca, if you will, of the empire, and translated it and improved upon it and added upon it. So the notion of a reformation or an enlightenment to embrace knowledge from sources outside the traditional sources of religion, of what is called traditional religious sciences, was something that was part of Islamic tradition.
What has happened, paradoxically, is that the Muslim world has adopted the paradigms of thought and attitudes of pre-enlightenment Europe and somehow it is as if we bequeathed to Europe the enlightenment and we took from them the Dark Ages. And the parallels are very much there down to the attitudes that many Muslims have today and that is why people like Professor Ali Mazuri at the University of New York, Binghamton, who has pointed out these and described very well this notion of differentiation between Church-State separation and religion and politics in a very, very lovely paper that he delivered. Mentions also that Islam began as modernist, has now become pre modernist.
So now basically what is needed is not a reformation in the sense of something new and not done but really to go back to what we used to do before and that's an important - it may sound like just, you know, semantics, but it's more than just semantics because the way to convince Muslims is by using their own language. Islam is a religion of law, just like Judaism.
The way you approach Muslims is very much the way you approach a jury in a courtroom. You have a system of law that they operate under. They may not be very informed about it. It doesn't matter. If you inform them and educate them about the principles of jurisprudence, like a judge gives before a jury, and it is within a system of law, I don't know if the laws of South Australia are identical to the laws of Victoria or New South Wales, but I presume that in every State there is its own interpretation and precedents on certain issues.
We have the same in Islamic law. We have - not only do we have different schools of law within Sunni and Shia thinking, we have established precedents. So analogously to debate or to engage with the Muslim world, the way to do it is to engage within the thinking patterns that Muslims themselves engage in. So when you tell Muslims: what we need to do is to revert back to our own earlier history, that appeals to Muslims and it sounds like something from within the tradition rather than something without.
So if there is a reformation that is required it is not so much a reformation but as a reaffirmation of that which we used to do in the past when we absorbed the knowledge of other parts of the world and assimilated into our own. Was there a third part of your questions? The Koran as the
MS ELIZABETH HO: Do you want to repeat that part of your question on the Koran?
SPEAKER: As a Christian with a very wavering faith, the way I would try to explain how I understand how Muslims see the Koran is that it is in some ways similar to the way people of orthodox Christianity would view icons, religious icons. That it is an object that - the Koran is an object that is itself imbued with holiness. Is that right and is that what causes such distress to the Muslim world when events like the alleged flushing of pages of the Koran down a toilet in Guantanamo Bay causes extreme distress to many Muslims across the spectrum of belief, in a way that Christians wouldn't necessarily be as perturbed if such a thing were to happen to Christian holy scriptures.
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: Thank you, very good question. Well, the Koran is regarded by Muslims analogously to the person of Jesus Christ is regarded by Christians. Where Jesus Christ is the word of God that has descended onto earth, the word of God made flesh, so to speak, and the Koran is viewed by Muslims to be the literal word of God made sound. The Koran is defined as a recitation more than it is a book. It is primarily a recitation. It is therefore the sounds of the Koran which are important.
Naturally the pages itself of the Koran, to many Muslims, has a certain iconic value. It is considered the script, if you will, of the sacred sound and therefore there's a natural sense of respect that people give to it. The emotionality which Muslims feel upon the deliberate desecration of the Koran by those in Guantanamo would be - it's more an emotional thing. It's like, you know, if you're angry with someone and you just destroy something that they respect and love. That's a, you know: I'm angry with you so I take your beloved mother's picture and tear it apart, or let's say a husband and a wife having a spat and, you know, something that is a very valuable thing from your family, I just take it, a plate or something, destroy it.
It is destroying something which you respect, which you love. It's like, you know: I step upon you. I spit upon that which you respect. That is just emotional, pure emotional, you know, power expression over the other and it is more an emotional response, a psychological response, than it is an intellectually thought through response based upon issues of theology. It's about sensitivity to others and it's like what happened at Abu Ghraib, the deliberate humiliation of another human being, of subjugating them, of discounting their humanity and that which they value, and that is something which naturally arouses the deep discomfiture and nausea of anybody who believes in the importance of human beings respecting each other.
SPEAKER: Imam, I would like to make an observation and then ask you a question. I wouldn't want you to leave Adelaide without thinking that we're actually going some way towards getting better in our interaction with the Muslim faith and the Muslim world. I work in Carrington Street and there's a hotel there called the Saracen's Head. Until recently, I'm talking a couple of years ago, it used to depict on the front wall, just above the front door, the severed head of what was obviously a Muslim person. Fortunately, that sign has now been painted over but the name still remains. So I do think we are going some way towards learning to respect Muslim ideals in South Australia.
My question relates to the role of and rights accorded to women under Islam. There are many questions you could ask on this topic but really my limited reading of the Alkoran tends to suggest that the rights of and role of women as stated by the prophet are somewhat greater than the rights and roles accorded to women in some of the Islamic states which are close to Australia. I wonder if you would agree with that or disagree with that comment.
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: I certainly most agree with you, very, very well. I thank you for both your comment and your question. It is in fact the case that the prophet was revolutionary in his time in according women parity and equality and he pushed the envelope as far as he could. There is a great body of law that states that the law, when it comes to areas of human affairs, this is where there is greater leeway, greater room for us to interpret the law and the intent of the law as well. Those who interpret that to mean that the intent of the law is parity, certainly have interpreted the rights of women in a much more equivalent manner.
Let me also add that what is perhaps of even more importance in gender relations, both within Islam and the non-Muslim world, has to do far more with culture than with religion itself. If one were to visit various parts of the Muslim world, from West Africa to Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Persia to Indonesia, you'll find a great variety of interpretations in the issue of the role of women. There have been five women Heads of State, for example, in Muslim countries; Turkey, Pakistan. Bangladesh today has its second woman Prime Minister. Indonesia has had - these are the among the nations which have had women Heads of State. The current Vice President of Iran - well, the recent one, I am sorry, before this last election, was a woman.
One cannot therefore unilaterally state that the role of women throughout the Muslim world is of, you know, of a different status. So whereas you have Turkey and Malaysia having women Heads of State and Indonesia having a woman president, women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. But these are cultural and these are bound to change and will change. We've seen the rights of women to vote now being given in Bahrain and I think they're just about to win or have just about won it in Kuwait and this is why I push for democracy in much of the Arab and Muslim world because democracy gives people - it creates constituencies.
When people have the right to vote, they began to vote for people who will address issues of importance to them. So with democracy and with suffrage given to women, within a matter of a generation or less, which is a very short time-span in the history of nations, we will see major improvement in this area. Theology will certainly match it but any student of law will tell you that law lags need. It is need which creates the laws and people's desires and objectives which then shapes the law and shapes - even shifts in our interpretations of law.
SPEAKER: I've compared the soiling of the Koran to the burning to the ground of the Vatican as that which would be the equivalent in emotional response in our world. The question is this. Can Sharon survive politically or physically the eviction from their holy ground of the people that he and his party gave it to?
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: That is a question which is probably more correctly addressed to the Israeli community and to the Jewish community than to me. All I can say is that from my own communications with friends of mine who are Israelis and who are Rabbi's and who are actively involved in trying to effectively implement dialogue across the divide and create an Israel that would be part of the region, there is a lot going on in Israel. Israelis have moved beyond Zionism.
We now have post-Zionism movements in Israel. We have a very broad spectrum of people in Israel who regard Israel as a nation state, as a secular state, as a multicultural state. The very fabric and demographic, and I would say even identity, of Israel has shifted enormously in the last 60 years since its founding. There's always a danger. It only takes one individual to kill someone like Rabin. Rabin was assassinated by a fundamentalist, and there's no doubt that there are those who are against Sharon. But my sense, again from what I've learned, is that those who are supporting the withdrawal from the territories are in the minority - I am sorry, those who support the withdrawal are in the majority. If not, I don't think Sharon would have had the broadbase to do that.
The differences, perhaps, may lie on whether the solution lies in the two-state solution or in a one-state solution. I believe that you had someone here recently who spoke about having a one land and two people's solution to Israel. And I personally - my own personal analysis tells me that a one-state solution is a more coherent one than a two-state solution. But anyway it goes, there is no doubt in my mind that once there is peace, and there will have to be a peace in the region, the fallout of that will be enormously positive.
The result of that will be important bonds of trade between Israel and Palestine and Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and Syria and with increasing trade relationships. Trade has a very bonding power indeed to many people. I even suggested, partly only tongue-in-cheek, that if the now approaching $200 billion that the United States expended in Iraq were to be spent in Israel it would have been the equivalent of about maybe $40,000 to every Israeli and every Palestinian in the region. And with that kind of funding you can transform a lot of people's hearts and minds. You know, a bumper sticker which says: $150,000 for a family of four, is quite appealing to many, especially if you add permanent residence to South Australia.
MR KRIS HANNA: Thank you. I'm Kris Hanna, one of the members of Parliament here. I therefore have a question which is political in its point but I want to throw in a second question first and it's about your answers to earlier questions. When people are asking you questions from an evidently Christian perspective, why do you not reflect back on Christian scripture and practice so that when you're asked about why in the Muslim world are young people not stopped from being terrorists, why do you not pose the question: why does a Christian nation elect a Government which avows it will go to war? And when you were asked about why people are upset about the Koran being defaced, why do you not pose a question: what would happen if a person looking like an Arab burnt a Christian Bible in our town square? Is it because you're too polite? That is one question.
But really the question I wanted to ask was: where do you go beyond the ecumenical message that you have? It's a message that I deeply appreciate but once we get to the point where we say: it's not really religious differences that divide Islam and the West, are you willing to say that we should be exposing an economic imperative on behalf of the ruling elites of Western nations and the resistance to it by those who would represent those wretchedly poor in Islamic areas of the world as the true basis for conflict between Islam and the West?
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: Thank you. On the first question I certainly agree with you that the analogies are very powerful in helping people understand it, which is why I used the example, you know, of Bush visiting Australia if there were US troops and not speaking to the Australians. I'm not always able to think of all things and I welcome your analogies, they are very helpful. But I have refrained from deliberately saying that: well, you know, the Bible also has things about killing the infidels and so forth, because that doesn't really help the issue.
The fact of the matter is I personally believe that two wrongs do not make a right. If someone does a wrong to me, my response should not be to do a wrong back. I can understand the emotionality behind doing the wrong but we would like to hope that we hold ourselves to higher standards, but I think it is important also to understand the power of emotion and politics. In studies that have been made by political historians of terrorism, defined as militancy against non-combatants and civilians, the point has been made by political historians that terrorism has been done ever since the beginning of time practically, since the time of the Romans for sure, and they were designed to achieve very specific target political objectives.
And when we observe terrorism, whether it was done by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or by al Qaida or whoever is behind the bombings in London or those in Madrid, we can see that they were target political objectives. So political objectives and economical objectives, in my mind, I agree with you, are the driving forces and then religion gets co opted along the way, or any ideology can very easily be co-opted or be the wrapping for such movements. And certainly what has happened in the Muslim world is that the secular liberation movements have failed.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was unable to liberate Palestinians. Arab Nationalism has failed. Many of the non-religious attempts to provide, you know, the good society to the Muslim world has failed, and it becomes very easy to wrap liberation movements and issues of aspirations for social justice within the vocabulary of religion, especially a religion that is based upon law and for which justice and legal justice is very important and paramount.
So I certainly share your sentiment and I welcome your cooperation and thoughts on how to present the arguments more powerfully and this is what a coalition of like-minded people across the religious divide or whatever, is very helpful in helping us collectively make people understand the issues and how to address them because unless those underlying issues are addressed, you will have these symptoms repeating themselves again.
MR DENNIS VOIGT: Dennis Voigt, I'm the Refugee Project Worker with the State Council of Churches, so if people will permit me a theological musing for you. In Christianity the underpinning base is sin, fall, redemption, sacrifice, salvation. My understanding with Islam there is a saying in the Koran that God says for us to know that God is closer to us than our jugular vein. It is a very comforting, attractive thought to me as a non-Muslim to hear that.
When I bring Christians together, especially those who are involved with refugee work and interaction with people from the Middle East and they want to know more about Islam and we bring Islamic people together with the Christians, we have a lot in common. Yes, the oneness of God, the revelation, the prophets, many things to share. Even in some of our traditions; fasting, alms giving, abstinence, what have, you but the whole thing seems to come unstuck always with our fitting together of sin and the sense of the need of redemption.
So for a Christian, for example, increasingly it's almost impossible for theologians to justify execution, the death sentence, for example, because it denies the fact that a person can be redeemed, can be changed. So that concept of sin has a positive sort of outcome. Would you like to make some comment about these basic differences of - where does sin fit in Islam and salvation, I guess. Thank you, Imam.
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: That's a very lovely question. Sin is part of the human condition. There's a Hadith, so-called the Hadith Goodseed, which means a teaching of the prophet in which God is speaking in the first person, in which God says:
If you were a people who did not sin, I would have replaced you with a people who did and who would then ask me for my forgiveness and I would then give it to them.
The picture that has been described by some Muslim thinkers is that the attribute that the creation of man as a creature that freely sins, is a requirement that comes from the attribute, the divine attribute of forgiver. For the attribute of forgiver to manifest, every attribute requires its correspondent. So God, as creator, has to create for his attribute of creator to be manifest.
The attribute of God as forgiver requires a free agent who freely choses to sin, feels remorse, asks God for forgiveness, turns to God and pleads with God for forgiveness and God then grants it to him or to her. So the picture of sin in Islam is fundamental and intrinsic to the human condition, but, however, the fault of human beings is to end there, to stop at the level of sin and not to seek to use sin as a launching pad for greater intimacy with God.
Coming at it from another angle, I'm reminded of a statement that Rabbi Hartman once mentioned at a panel I was in in Schtakwa Institution in New York State where someone asked him: would Jews feel better if Christians gave up the idea of Jesus Christ as being the son of God? He said, "I don't care what you believe about Jesus Christ as God or not God, as long as you don't eject me from the party on the basis of my disagreement with that principle." So at the end of the day you can believe what you want about my faith tradition. You can believe that my belief about, you know, God is absurd.
I am reminded once of someone who was in Malaysia, Indonesia, an Englishman, and said, "How could you, an educated person, believe that, you know, this tree is haunted? How could you believe in spirits? That's absurd." He said, "How could you, as an educated man, believe that God came down to earth and in the form of a man? That to me is even more absurd." So we are free to regard each other's beliefs as absurd but the point is not to make that a basis of excluding you from your rights in society. Not to exclude you from your participation in the two issues which people want participation in; power and economics.
If people have that, they don't care what else you think about their thoughts. You know, you may think that this an absurd attire. That Armani is not the right thing to wear, that, you know, Hugo Boss is better. But if you make that the basis of allowing people to participate in Parliament, or to, you know, enter college, then that becomes the basis of conflict.
In fact, I write about what I call the genesis of conflict in my book. You know, people will have a disagreement. Once they have a disagreement they look at what is different. So if it is a man and his wife has a disagreement
SOUND FAILURE
So men will say: women, you know, they're emotional, ..... whatever, whatever, and women will say: men, they're brutes, insensitive, etcetera, and you have the beginning of a gender conflict. If gender is not what distinguishes us we'll look at skin colouring and say: niggers or whities, or whatever, and we create an ethnic conflict. Or we look at whatever it is which differentiates it, and thus we have tribal problems in Rwanda between Hutus and Tutsis. We have conflicts in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, but if you look at Protestant or Catholic theology you won't find the roots of the Irish conflict there. It lies in issues of politics and economics.
So the issue really, people fight over those issues and when a husband and wife fight over: should we get a yellow rug or a blue rug or, you know, any kind of a disagreement, it is really about power. It's about who gets to decide what about what. So conflicts are almost always really about issues of power and economics. Now, belief enters it because belief is an asset so people will kill each other over issues of belief when that belief becomes a threatening thing.
So if, for example, the Department of Biology, the head of the Department believes in the theory of evolution and you do not, you will not get tenure. You will risk the danger of not getting tenure because you're a threat to the system. So belief becomes a factor when it plays into issues of power or issues of economics, as I see it, and therefore an understanding of the genesis of conflict and how it comes about.
So the Israeli conflict, in my opinion, is not about theology, it's about land and it's about the acquisition of that land and how it was acquired. That is the aetiology of this particular conflict. So if we address the underlying issue, if we figure out a way to create condominiums, to condominiamise Israel and Palestine so you have two peoples co-existing on one state, then we have a different paradigm which will allow us to move forward.
SPEAKER: I was just wondering, I've heard what I am sure is nothing other than a rumour, something along the lines of that Muslim men are told things like: when you go to heaven there will be a thousand virgins waiting for you, and that's why they're so - I mean, I think it stems from the belief that there is something in the Koran or something in Muslim religion or culture that makes them more willing to go off and commit, you know, be suicide bombers or more willing to go off and fight in the Holy War. I understood what you said about you thinking it was more driven by emotion than religion. I just wondered if there was anything at all? I certainly hear things like that and can't help but wonder if there is something about their religion or their culture that makes them more prepared to go off and die in the belief that they will be closer to God or that, you know, it's such an amazing act, that's maybe different for Christians or people of other religions.
IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF: That's a very common question. In fact, just about two months ago I was interviewed by Barbara Walters, who is doing a special on heaven and she's interviewed suicide bombers who are expecting the embraces of 72 virgins in paradise, and she asked me do women get the same privilege as well, and I answered her telling her: well, the Koran says you shall have whatever your heart desires. And after that interview I was rushed over to the synagogue, a reformed synagogue in which the Rabbi, who was a woman, introduced me to couple of ladies in her association and I just repeated what happened with Barbara Walters. One of the ladies says, "I don't want those 72 virgins, I want the guy after he's done with the 72 virgins." A day in the life if an Imam, I suppose.
Look, there have been people who have been encouraged to become suicide people. The kamikaze pilots in World War II, for instance. I mentioned earlier the Sri Lankan Tigers who commit suicide. Suicide is, again, suicide - people commit suicide for political purposes, for militaristic purposes, that usually happens by people when they don't have other means or they're losing the battle or they don't have parity in military hardware. It's very easy to find people who will give up their lives. I mean, it's not hard.
In other contexts, I've taken a poll of people, and let me ask a question: how many people in this audience have at some point in their life thought about taking their own lives? See. I've found that roughly about 20 per cent of the audience answers that. So there is always, at any given point in time, people who are in a sort of depression, who are upset about something in their lives, who are prepared, almost on the verge of taking their own lives. Give them a little bit of an incentive. You know, if you put an advertisement on the wall saying: if you're willing to give up your life we will give $100,000 to anyone you love or your family. There will be takers in Adelaide.
So it does not take very much. The notion of making it even nicer on the other side by quoting such things, you know, that paradise - well, yes, there is a description of paradise in Islam. Paradise is where you will have your heart's desires. Most things are granted. Both men and women. Great companionship. Sexual companionship to your heart's content. We are promised wines of greatest vintages, although we are prohibited from having wine in this life we are promised great wines in Islamic version of paradise. Gardens.
But it is not only the satisfaction of the physical senses, of the emotional senses and the spiritual senses as well. In fact the last Hadith of ..... says that God will ask in the heavens of paradise: are you satisfied? They'll say: yes, you've forgiven our sins, you've admitted us into paradise and we are comfortable, we have all the things and comforts of life. Is there anything else you want? Anything else I can do for you? And they'll say: we can't think of anything. And then the Hadith says:
God will unveil the veil on his countenance and the inhabitants of paradise will swoon with ecstasy, where they will know no joy greater than gazing upon the face of God.
But what makes people, in my opinion, commit suicide for political reasons have their origins in politics and political objectives and worldly objectives rather than other worldly objectives. But the psychology of human beings and the brittleness of the human condition and how many of us have thought about taking our own lives, we may be jilted, had a bad relationship, you know, didn't get tenure at the university, failed an important course, there's a host of reason why people feel so depressed with themselves that they are willing to contemplate ending their own lives. And if you can access those individuals and deploy them for your own worldly objectives, this is exactly what has happened in much of the Muslim world. Thank you for your question.
MS ELIZABETH HO: That brings our questions to a close. I'm just going to invite the Imam to perhaps take a seat for a minute. I want to just comment that I think that once again, and I have to say the program for the Imam has been punishing since last week. He's been at the Festival of Ideas, he's been in Sydney, he's been back here again. So once again, on behalf of everybody here, we would like to thank you for the energy that you've given us tonight, but especially I'd like to say: the ripples on the pools of our complacency in encouraging virtue are in the way that we look at our brothers and sisters. I want to call on Rauf Soulio, the Chairman of the Migrant Resource Centre, to deliver a vote of thanks. Thank you.
MR RAUF SOULIO: Thank you, Liz. On behalf of the Migrant Resource Centre, I'd like to thank Liz Ho and the Hawke Centre and the University of South Australia and also Kim and Kelly for their efforts in having the Imam come to visit us, for giving up a New York summer for a South Australian winter, and we are constantly reminded by world events of the importance of and the need for his ideas and his work and I can do no better than to quote the Imam from: What's Right with Islam, when he said:
Interfaith dialogue sincerely conducted has the power to reveal the fundamental truth that all human beings share a great deal in common at their deepest spiritual level.
Thank you, Imam, for your visit here.
MS ELIZABETH HO: Can I just note that on the Hawke Centre website we will include a transcript of tonight's proceedings but it is also being recorded, I think, by Radio Adelaide, and I'd also like to note for those of you who have an interest in this particular topic that a few years ago we were addressed by a wonderful woman from Malaysia, Zuriah Aljeffri, who spoke on the status of women in Islam and her address is also on our website, and the details are out in the foyer. So if you would like to keep in contact with this subject, I encourage you to have a look at those papers. Once again, thank you all for being here tonight and thank you, Imam.
This is a verbatim transcript and may contain grammatical and spelling errors
http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkecentre/events/2005events/Imam_transcript.asp (http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkecentre/events/2005events/Imam_transcript.asp)
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Probably why he didn't bring up any spilt blood at the hands of Australians. But that's just a guess
Australia had troops in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time of the speech.
And probably why he didn't bring up any issues of spilt blood at the hands of the austrailians. Compliments though on providing a transcript. Does nothing however to refute the message being sent. Unless of course you wish to point to the qualifiers I was referring to in answering your question of what he should have said
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Australia is considered a Western government. So yeah they were included in his alleged slur.
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LOL......riiiiiight. And singling out the U.S. was.......what again?
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The complexity arises, sir, from the fact that - from political problems and the history of the politics between the West and the Muslim world. We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US lead sanction against Iraq lead to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it.
What complicates the discussion, intra-Islamically, is the fact that the West has not been cognisant and has not addressed the issues of its own contribution to much injustice in the Arab and Muslim world. It is a difficult subject to discuss with Western audiences but it is one that must be pointed out and must be raised.
In another section of the transcript he talks about Britains role in the middle east.
Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and many other countries are commonly referred to as the West.
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And who was it that has "spilt more blood" than AlQeada? That's the issue of contention here. THAT's the comparison being made
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And who was it that has "spilt more blood" than AlQeada? That's the issue of contention here. THAT's the comparison being made
You were the one who insisted context was instrumental in forming your opinion about the man.
I gave you the unedited transcript of his remarks. And a clear reading of both paragraphs shows that the west is a contributor to the tensions in the middle east.
And yes the US has spilt more blood than Al Queda. That is to be expected as we have the largest number of military forces in the middle east. I don't see where that is a slur. Especially in context.
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Yes, the context is indeed helpful. Now, who again was he singling out as having spilt more blood than AlQeada? The U.S., thank you very much. Of course, now your context is back to some neutral, simply reporting a fact, tact. Why you keep trying to gloss over and minimize it is indeed eye opening
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Why you keep trying to gloss over and minimize it is indeed eye opening
What is eye opening that a true statement somehow damns the man. What was he supposed to do lie?
From a Muslim perspective do you think the US's unilateral support of Israel causes tension in the middle east?
From a Muslim perspective do you think a relative's house and inhabitants blown up by an errant bomb might cause tensions in the middle east?
I certainly can understand that point of view.
It doesn't matter anyways. The man will continue holding prayers in the Burlington Coat Factory building and if he gets the necessary funding he will build his Cultural Center/ Mosque. And if it so moves you, boycott it.
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Why you keep trying to gloss over and minimize it is indeed eye opening
What is eye opening that a true statement somehow damns the man. What was he supposed to do lie?
Asked and answered. He could have provided qualifiers to his statment that doesn't make the U.S out to look worse than AlQeada
And the circle is complete
The man will continue holding prayers in the Burlington Coat Factory building and if he gets the necessary funding he will build his Cultural Center/ Mosque. And if it so moves you, boycott it.
"boycott it"? Naaaa, I'll just keep exercising my 1st amendment rights in criticising it, and the piss poor judgement associated
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Naaaa, I'll just keep exercising my 1st amendment rights in criticising it, and the piss poor judgement associated
And i'll continue questioning your judgment and your willingness to advocate denial of religious freedoms based on nothing more than emotion and oh yeah location.
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Question all you want. Gets refuted each and every time when you'll note my support of Muslims praying & building anywhere they want, outside of such close proximity to thousands killed in the name of their religion
You do realize people aren't allowed to lawfully carry a firearm on school grounds or in Government buildings, outside of law enforcement. Location has nothing to do with that dispicable infringement of the 2nd amendment, right? Are all kids criminals? Anyone that enters a Federal building??
You'd have a leg to stand on, if I were denouncing Islam, and claimed they have no place here in America. That's bigotry. That's ignorance of the Constitution. Since this has nothing to do with the Constitution, you have no leg
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Gets refuted each and every time when you'll note my support of Muslims praying & building anywhere they want, outside of such close proximity to thousands killed in the name of their religion
Who says it was done in the name of their religion?
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Bin Laden, last I checked. The fella behind the attacks. Not to mention that's the theme of AlQeada, sprinkled with how terrible the U.S. and Israel are supposed to be. A bunch of virgins apparently await, following thier "courageous" act, in the name of Allah
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Could you provide some authoritative reference that shows Bin Laden has the authority to speak for Islam?
And could you show the exact quote where Bin Laden claimed he was acting in the name of Islam and that he wasn't acting against US foreign policy?
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Sorry, we're not in a court of law, where one must prove that Bin ladin is the spirtual leader for Islam. If he were THEN we could entertain your notion that all Muslims are terrorists.
Good thing, no one is arguing that
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Sorry, we're not in a court of law, where one must prove that Bin ladin is the spirtual leader for Islam. If he were THEN we could entertain your notion that all Muslims are terrorists.
Good thing, no one is arguing that
So i just should take your word for it, because it's what ..... obvious... that Bin Laden speaks for Islam?
Looks to me like he is appealing to Islam to rise up against the "occupiers and the custodians of Mecca"
Here is the text of Bin Ladens declaration of Fatwa:
The following text is a fatwa, or declaration of war, by Osama bin Laden first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper, in August, 1996. The fatwa is entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places."
Praise be to Allah, we seek His help and ask for his pardon. we take refuge in Allah from our wrongs and bad deeds. Who ever been guided by Allah will not be misled, and who ever has been misled, he will never be guided. I bear witness that there is no God except Allah-no associates with Him- and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and messenger.
{O you who believe! be careful of -your duty to- Allah with the proper care which is due to Him, and do not die unless you are Muslim} (Imraan; 3:102), {O people be careful of -your duty to- your Lord, Who created you from a single being and created its mate of the same -kind- and spread from these two, many men and women; and be careful of -your duty to- Allah , by whom you demand one of another -your rights-, and (be careful) to the ties of kinship; surely Allah ever watches over you} (An-Nisa; 4:1), {O you who believe! be careful- of your duty- to Allah and speak the right word; He will put your deeds into a right state for you, and forgive you your faults; and who ever obeys Allah and his Apostle, he indeed achieve a mighty success} (Al-Ahzab; 33:70-71).
Praise be to Allah, reporting the saying of the prophet Shu'aib: {I desire nothing but reform so far as I am able, and with non but Allah is the direction of my affair to the right and successful path; on him do I rely and to him do I turn} (Hud; 11:88).
Praise be to Allah, saying: {You are the best of the nations raised up for -the benefit of- men; you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah} (Aal-Imraan; 3:110). Allah's blessing and salutations on His slave and messenger who said: (The people are close to an all encompassing punishment from Allah if they see the oppressor and fail to restrain him.)
It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves.
The people of Islam awakened and realised that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.
The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").
Under the present circumstances, and under the banner of the blessed awakening which is sweeping the world in general and the Islamic world in particular, I meet with you today. And after a long absence, imposed on the scholars (Ulama) and callers (Da'ees) of Islam by the iniquitous crusaders movement under the leadership of the USA; who fears that they, the scholars and callers of Islam, will instigate the Ummah of Islam against its' enemies as their ancestor scholars-may Allah be pleased with them- like Ibn Taymiyyah and Al'iz Ibn Abdes-Salaam did. And therefore the Zionist-Crusader alliance resorted to killing and arresting the truthful Ulama and the working Da'ees (We are not praising or sanctifying them; Allah sanctify whom He pleased). They killed the Mujahid Sheikh Abdullah Azzaam, and they arrested the Mujahid Sheikh Ahmad Yaseen and the Mujahid Sheikh Omar Abdur Rahman (in America).
By orders from the USA they also arrested a large number of scholars, Da'ees and young people - in the land of the two Holy Places- among them the prominent Sheikh Salman Al-Oud'a and Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali and their brothers; (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah"). We, myself and my group, have suffered some of this injustice ourselves; we have been prevented from addressing the Muslims. We have been pursued in Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan, hence this long absence on my part. But by the Grace of Allah, a safe base is now available in the high Hindukush mountains in Khurasan ; where--by the Grace of Allah-the largest infidel military force of the world was destroyed. And the myth of the super power was withered in front of the Mujahideen cries of Allahu Akbar (God is greater). Today we work from the same mountains to lift the iniquity that had been imposed on the Ummah by the Zionist-Crusader alliance, particularly after they have occupied the blessed land around Jerusalem, route of the journey of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) and the land of the two Holy Places. We ask Allah to bestow us with victory, He is our Patron and He is the Most Capable.
From here, today we begin the work, talking and discussing the ways of correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general, and the Land of the two Holy Places in particular. We wish to study the means that we could follow to return the situation to its' normal path. And to return to the people their own rights, particularly after the large damages and the great aggression on the life and the religion of the people. An injustice that had affected every section and group of the people; the civilians, military and security men, government officials and merchants, the young and the old people as well as schools and university students. Hundred of thousands of the unemployed graduates, who became the widest section of the society, were also affected.
Injustice had affected the people of the industry and agriculture. It affected the people of the rural and urban areas. And almost every body complain about something. The situation at the land of the two Holy places became like a huge volcano at the verge of eruption that would destroy the Kufr and the corruption and its' sources. The explosion at Riyadh and Al-Khobar is a warning of this volcanic eruption emerging as a result of the sever oppression, suffering, excessive iniquity, humiliation and poverty.
People are fully concerned about their every day livings; every body talks about the deterioration of the economy, inflation, ever increasing debts and jails full of prisoners. Government employees with limited income talk about debts of ten thousands and hundred thousands of Saudi Riyals . They complain that the value of the Riyal is greatly and continuously deteriorating among most of the main currencies. Great merchants and contractors speak about hundreds and thousands of million Riyals owed to them by the government. More than three hundred forty billions of Riyal owed by the government to the people in addition to the daily accumulated interest, let alone the foreign debt. People wonder whether we are the largest oil exporting country?! They even believe that this situation is a curse put on them by Allah for not objecting to the oppressive and illegitimate behaviour and measures of the ruling regime: Ignoring the divine Shari'ah law; depriving people of their legitimate rights; allowing the American to occupy the land of the two Holy Places; imprisonment, unjustly, of the sincere scholars. The honourable Ulamah and scholars as well as merchants, economists and eminent people of the country were all alerted by this disastrous situation.
Quick efforts were made by each group to contain and to correct the situation. All agreed that the country is heading toward a great catastrophe, the depth of which is not known except by Allah. One big merchant commented : '' the king is leading the state into 'sixty-six' folded disaster'', (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah"). Numerous princes share with the people their feelings, privately expressing their concerns and objecting to the corruption, repression and the intimidation taking place in the country. But the competition between influential princes for personal gains and interest had destroyed the country. Through its course of actions the regime has torn off its legitimacy:
(1) Suspension of the Islamic Shari'ah law and exchanging it with man made civil law. The regime entered into a bloody confrontation with the truthful Ulamah and the righteous youths (we sanctify nobody; Allah sanctify Whom He pleaseth).
(2) The inability of the regime to protect the country, and allowing the enemy of the Ummah - the American crusader forces- to occupy the land for the longest of years. The crusader forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition, particularly in the economical aspect of it due to the unjustified heavy spending on these forces. As a result of the policy imposed on the country, especially in the field of oil industry where production is restricted or expanded and prices are fixed to suit the American economy ignoring the economy of the country. Expensive deals were imposed on the country to purchase arms. People asking what is the justification for the very existence of the regime then?
Quick efforts were made by individuals and by different groups of the society to contain the situation and to prevent the danger. They advised the government both privately and openly; they send letters and poems, reports after reports, reminders after reminders, they explored every avenue and enlist every influential man in their movement of reform and correction. They wrote with style of passion, diplomacy and wisdom asking for corrective measures and repentance from the "great wrong doings and corruption " that had engulfed even the basic principles of the religion and the legitimate rights of the people.
But -to our deepest regret- the regime refused to listen to the people accusing them of being ridiculous and imbecile. The matter got worse as previous wrong doings were followed by mischief's of greater magnitudes. All of this taking place in the land of the two Holy Places! It is no longer possible to be quiet. It is not acceptable to give a blind eye to this matter.
As the extent of these infringements reached the highest of levels and turned into demolishing forces threatening the very existence of the Islamic principles, a group of scholars-who can take no more- supported by hundreds of retired officials, merchants, prominent and educated people wrote to the King asking for implementation of the corrective measures. In 1411 A.H. (May 1991), at the time of the gulf war, a letter, the famous letter of Shawwaal, with over four hundred signatures was send to the king demanding the lift of oppression and the implementation of corrective actions. The king humiliated those people and choose to ignore the content of their letter; and the very bad situation of the country became even worse.
People, however, tried again and send more letters and petitions. One particular report, the glorious Memorandum Of Advice, was handed over to the king on Muharram, 1413 A.H (July 1992), which tackled the problem pointed out the illness and prescribed the medicine in an original, righteous and scientific style. It described the gaps and the shortcoming in the philosophy of the regime and suggested the required course of action and remedy. The report gave a description of:
(1) The intimidation and harassment suffered by the leaders of the society, the scholars, heads of tribes, merchants, academic teachers and other eminent individuals;
(2) The situation of the law within the country and the arbitrary declaration of what is Halal and Haram (lawful and unlawful) regardless of the Shari'ah as instituted by Allah;
(3) The state of the press and the media which became a tool of truth-hiding and misinformation; the media carried out the plan of the enemy of idolising cult of certain personalities and spreading scandals among the believers to repel the people away from their religion, as Allah, the Exalted said: {surely- as for- those who love that scandal should circulate between the believers, they shall have a grievous chastisement in this world and in the here after} (An-Noor, 24:19).
(4) Abuse and confiscation of human rights;
(5) The financial and the economical situation of the country and the frightening future in the view of the enormous amount of debts and interest owed by the government; this is at the time when the wealth of the Ummah being wasted to satisfy personal desires of certain individuals!! while imposing more custom duties and taxes on the nation. (the prophet said about the woman who committed adultery: "She repented in such a way sufficient to bring forgiveness to a custom collector!!").,
(6) The miserable situation of the social services and infra-structure especially the water service and supply , the basic requirement of life.,
(7) The state of the ill-trained and ill-prepared army and the impotence of its commander in chief despite the incredible amount of money that has been spent on the army. The gulf war clearly exposed the situation.,
(8) Shari'a law was suspended and man made law was used instead.,
(9) And as far as the foreign policy is concerned the report exposed not only how this policy has disregarded the Islamic issues and ignored the Muslims, but also how help and support were provided to the enemy against the Muslims; the cases of Gaza-Ariha and the communist in the south of Yemen are still fresh in the memory, and more can be said.
As stated by the people of knowledge, it is not a secret that to use man made law instead of the Shari'a and to support the infidels against the Muslims is one of the ten "voiders" that would strip a person from his Islamic status (turn a Muslim into a Mushrik, non believer status). The All Mighty said: {and whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are the unbelievers} (Al-Ma'ida; 5:44), and {but no! by your Lord! they do not believe (in reality) until they make you a judge of that which has become a matter of disagreement among them, and then do not find the slightest misgiving in their hearts as to what you have decided and submit with entire submission} (An-Nissa; 4:65).
In spite of the fact that the report was written with soft words and very diplomatic style, reminding of Allah, giving truthful sincere advice, and despite of the importance of advice in Islam - being absolutely essential for those in charge of the people- and the large number who signed this document as well as their supporters, all of that was not an intercession for the Memorandum . Its' content was rejected and those who signed it and their sympathisers were ridiculed, prevented from travel, punished and even jailed.
Therefore it is very clear that the advocates of correction and reform movement were very keen on using peaceful means in order to protect the unity of the country and to prevent blood shed. Why is it then the regime closed all peaceful routes and pushed the people toward armed actions?!! which is the only choice left for them to implement righteousness and justice. To whose benefit does prince Sultan and prince Nayeff push the country into a civil war that will destroy everything? and why consulting those who ignites internal feuds, playing the people against each other and instigate the policemen, the sons of the nation, to abort the reform movement. While leaving in peace and security such traitors who implement the policy of the enemy in order to bleed the financial and the human resources of the Ummah, and leaving the main enemy in the area-the American Zionist alliance enjoy peace and security?!
The advisor (Zaki Badr, the Egyptian ex-minister of the interior) to prince Nayeff -minister of interior- was not acceptable even to his own country; he was sacked from his position there due to the filthy attitude and the aggression he exercised on his own people, yet he was warmly welcomed by prince Nayeff to assist in sins and aggressions. He unjustly filled the prisons with the best sons of this Ummah and caused miseries to their mothers. Does the regime want to play the civilians against their military personnel and vice versa, like what had happened in some of the neighbouring countries?!! No doubts this is the policy of the American-Israeli alliance as they are the first to benefit from this situation.
But with the grace of Allah, the majority of the nation, both civilians and military individuals are aware of the wicked plan. They refused to be played against each others and to be used by the regime as a tool to carry out the policy of the American-Israeli alliance through their agent in our country: the Saudi regime.
Therefore every one agreed that the situation can not be rectified (the shadow cannot be straighten when its' source, the rod, is not straight either) unless the root of the problem is tackled. Hence it is essential to hit the main enemy who divided the Ummah into small and little countries and pushed it, for the last few decades, into a state of confusion. The Zionist-Crusader alliance moves quickly to contain and abort any "corrective movement" appearing in the Islamic countries. Different means and methods are used to achieve their target; on occasion the "movement" is dragged into an armed struggle at a predetermined unfavourable time and place. Sometime officials from the Ministry of Interior, who are also graduates of the colleges of the Shari'ah, are leashed out to mislead and confuse the nation and the Ummah (by wrong Fatwas) and to circulate false information about the movement. At other occasions some righteous people were tricked into a war of words against the Ulama and the leaders of the movement, wasting the energy of the nation in discussing minor issues and ignoring the main one that is the unification of the people under the divine law of Allah.
In the shadow of these discussions and arguments truthfulness is covered by the falsehood, and personal feuds and partisanship created among the people increasing the division and the weakness of the Ummah; priorities of the Islamic work are lost while the blasphemy and polytheism continue its grip and control over the Ummah. We should be alert to these atrocious plans carried out by the Ministry of Interior. The right answer is to follow what have been decided by the people of knowledge, as was said by Ibn Taymiyyah (Allah's mercy upon him): "people of Islam should join forces and support each other to get rid of the main "Kufr" who is controlling the countries of the Islamic world, even to bear the lesser damage to get rid of the major one, that is the great Kufr".
If there are more than one duty to be carried out, then the most important one should receive priority. Clearly after Belief (Imaan) there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land. No other priority, except Belief, could be considered before it; the people of knowledge, Ibn Taymiyyah, stated: "to fight in defence of religion and Belief is a collective duty; there is no other duty after Belief than fighting the enemy who is corrupting the life and the religion. There is no preconditions for this duty and the enemy should be fought with one best abilities. (ref: supplement of Fatawa). If it is not possible to push back the enemy except by the collective movement of the Muslim people, then there is a duty on the Muslims to ignore the minor differences among themselves; the ill effect of ignoring these differences, at a given period of time, is much less than the ill effect of the occupation of the Muslims' land by the main Kufr. Ibn Taymiyyah had explained this issue and emphasised the importance of dealing with the major threat on the expense of the minor one. He described the situation of the Muslims and the Mujahideen and stated that even the military personnel who are not practising Islam are not exempted from the duty of Jihad against the enemy.
Ibn Taymiyyah , after mentioning the Moguls (Tatar) and their behaviour in changing the law of Allah, stated that: the ultimate aim of pleasing Allah, raising His word, instituting His religion and obeying His messenger (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is to fight the enemy, in every aspects and in a complete manner; if the danger to the religion from not fighting is greater than that of fighting, then it is a duty to fight them even if the intention of some of the fighter is not pure i.e . fighting for the sake of leadership (personal gain) or if they do not observe some of the rules and commandments of Islam. To repel the greatest of the two dangers on the expense of the lesser one is an Islamic principle which should be observed. It was the tradition of the people of the Sunnah (Ahlul-Sunnah) to join and invade- fight- with the righteous and non righteous men. Allah may support this religion by righteous and non righteous people as told by the prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM). If it is not possible to fight except with the help of non righteous military personnel and commanders, then there are two possibilities: either fighting will be ignored and the others, who are the great danger to this life and religion, will take control; or to fight with the help of non righteous rulers and therefore repelling the greatest of the two dangers and implementing most, though not all, of the Islamic laws. The latter option is the right duty to be carried out in these circumstances and in many other similar situation. In fact many of the fights and conquests that took place after the time of Rashidoon, the guided Imams, were of this type. (majmoo' al Fatawa, 26/506).
No one, not even a blind or a deaf person , can deny the presence of the widely spread mischief's or the prevalence of the great sins that had reached the grievous iniquity of polytheism and to share with Allah in His sole right of sovereignty and making of the law. The All Mighty stated: {And when Luqman said to his son while he admonish him: O my son! do not associate ought with Allah; most surely polytheism is a grievous iniquity} (Luqman; 31:13). Man fabricated laws were put forward permitting what has been forbidden by Allah such as usury (Riba) and other matters. Banks dealing in usury are competing, for lands, with the two Holy Places and declaring war against Allah by disobeying His order {Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury} (Baqarah; 2:275). All this taking place at the vicinity of the Holy Mosque in the Holy Land! Allah (SWT) stated in His Holy Book a unique promise (that had not been promised to any other sinner) to the Muslims who deals in usury: {O you who believe! Be careful of your duty to Allah and relinquish what remains (due) from usury, if you are believers * But if you do (it) not, then be appraised of WAR from Allah and His Apostle} (Baqarah; 2:278-279). This is for the "Muslim" who deals in usury (believing that it is a sin), what is it then to the person who make himself a partner and equal to Allah, legalising (usury and other sins) what has been forbidden by Allah. Despite of all of the above we see the government misled and dragged some of the righteous Ulamah and Da'ees away from the issue of objecting to the greatest of sins and Kufr. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").
Under such circumstances, to push the enemy-the greatest Kufr- out of the country is a prime duty. No other duty after Belief is more important than the duty of had . Utmost effort should be made to prepare and instigate the Ummah against the enemy, the American-Israeli alliance- occupying the country of the two Holy Places and the route of the Apostle (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) to the Furthest Mosque (Al-Aqsa Mosque). Also to remind the Muslims not to be engaged in an internal war among themselves, as that will have grieve consequences namely:
1-consumption of the Muslims human resources as most casualties and fatalities will be among the Muslims people.
2-Exhaustion of the economic and financial resources.
3-Destruction of the country infrastructures
4-Dissociation of the society
5-Destruction of the oil industries. The presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world. The existence of these forces in the area will provoke the people of the country and induces aggression on their religion, feelings and prides and push them to take up armed struggle against the invaders occupying the land; therefore spread of the fighting in the region will expose the oil wealth to the danger of being burned up. The economic interests of the States of the Gulf and the land of the two Holy Places will be damaged and even a greater damage will be caused to the economy of the world. I would like here to alert my brothers, the Mujahideen, the sons of the nation, to protect this (oil) wealth and not to include it in the battle as it is a great Islamic wealth and a large economical power essential for the soon to be established Islamic state, by Allah's Permission and Grace. We also warn the aggressors, the USA, against burning this Islamic wealth (a crime which they may commit in order to prevent it, at the end of the war, from falling in the hands of its legitimate owners and to cause economic damages to the competitors of the USA in Europe or the Far East, particularly Japan which is the major consumer of the oil of the region).
6-Division of the land of the two Holy Places, and annexing of the northerly part of it by Israel. Dividing the land of the two Holy Places is an essential demand of the Zionist-Crusader alliance. The existence of such a large country with its huge resources under the leadership of the forthcoming Islamic State, by Allah's Grace, represent a serious danger to the very existence of the Zionist state in Palestine. The Nobel Ka'ba, -the Qiblah of all Muslims- makes the land of the two Holy Places a symbol for the unity of the Islamic world. Moreover, the presence of the world largest oil reserve makes the land of the two Holy Places an important economical power in the Islamic world. The sons of the two Holy Places are directly related to the life style (Seerah) of their forefathers, the companions, may Allah be pleased with them. They consider the Seerah of their forefathers as a source and an example for re-establishing the greatness of this Ummah and to raise the word of Allah again. Furthermore the presence of a population of fighters in the south of Yemen, fighting in the cause of Allah, is a strategic threat to the Zionist-Crusader alliance in the area. The Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) said: (around twelve thousands will emerge from Aden/Abian helping -the cause of- Allah and His messenger, they are the best, in the time, between me and them) narrated by Ahmad with a correct trustworthy reference.
7-An internal war is a great mistake, no matter what reasons are there for it. the presence of the occupier-the USA- forces will control the outcome of the battle for the benefit of the international Kufr.
I address now my brothers of the security and military forces and the national guards may Allah preserve you hoard for Islam and the Muslims people:
O you protectors of unity and guardians of Faith; O you descendent of the ancestors who carried the light (torch) of guidance and spread it all over the world. O you grandsons of Sa'd Ibn Abi Waqqaas , Almothanna Ibn Haritha Ash-Shaybani , Alga'ga' Ibn Amroo Al-Tameemi and those pious companions who fought Jihad alongside them; you competed to join the army and the guard forces with the intention to carry out Jihad in the cause of Allah -raising His word- and to defend the faith of Islam and the land of the two Holy Places against the invaders and the occupying forces. That is the ultimate level of believing in this religion "Deen". But the regime had reversed these principles and their understanding, humiliating the Ummah and disobeying Allah. Half a century ago the rulers promised the Ummah to regain the first Qiblah, but fifty years later new generation arrived and the promises have been changed; Al-Aqsa Mosque handed over to the Zionists and the wounds of the Ummah still bleeding there. At the time when the Ummah has not regained the first Qiblah and the rout of the journey of the Prophet (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him), and despite of all of the above, the Saudi regime had stunt the Ummah in the remaining sanctities, the Holy city of Makka and the mosque of the Prophet (Al-Masjid An-Nabawy), by calling the Christians army to defend the regime. The crusaders were permitted to be in the land of the two Holy Places. Not surprisingly though, the King himself wore the cross on his chest. The country was widely opened from the north-to- the south and from east-to-the west for the crusaders. The land was filled with the military bases of the USA and the allies. The regime became unable to keep control without the help of these bases. You know more than any body else about the size, intention and the danger of the presence of the USA military bases in the area. The regime betrayed the Ummah and joined the Kufr, assisting and helping them against the Muslims. It is well known that this is one of the ten "voiders" of Islam, deeds of de-Islamisation. By opening the Arab peninsula to the crusaders the regime disobeyed and acted against what has been enjoined by the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him), while he was at the bed of his death: (Expel the polytheists out of the Arab Peninsula); (narrated by Al-Bukhari) and: (If I survive, Allah willing, I'll expel the Jews and the Christians out of the Arab Peninsula); saheeh Aljame' As-Sagheer.
It is out of date and no longer acceptable to claim that the presence of the crusaders is necessity and only a temporary measures to protect the land of the two Holy Places. Especially when the civil and the military infrastructures of Iraq were savagely destroyed showing the depth of the Zionist-Crusaders hatred to the Muslims and their children, and the rejection of the idea of replacing the crusaders forces by an Islamic force composed of the sons of the country and other Muslim people. moreover the foundations of the claim and the claim it self were demolished and wiped out by the sequence of speeches given by the leaders of the Kuffar in America. The latest of these speeches was the one given by William Perry, the Defense Secretary, after the explosion in Al-Khobar saying that: the presence of the American solders there is to protect the interest of the USA. The imprisoned Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali, may Allah hasten his release, wrote a book of seventy pages; in it he presented evidence and proof that the presence of the Americans in the Arab Peninsula is a pre-planed military occupation. The regime want to deceive the Muslim people in the same manner when the Palestinian fighters, Mujahideen, were deceived causing the loss of Al-Aqsa Mosque. In 1304 A.H (1936 AD) the awakened Muslims nation of Palestine started their great struggle, Jihad, against the British occupying forces. Britain was impotent to stop the Mujahideen and their Jihad, but their devil inspired that there is no way to stop the armed struggle in Palestine unless through their agent King Abdul Azeez, who managed to deceives the Mujahideen. King Abdul Azeez carried out his duty to his British masters. He sent his two sons to meet the Mujahideen leaders and to inform them that King Abdul Azeez would guarantee the promises made by the British government in leaving the area and responding positively to the demands of the Mujahideen if the latter stop their Jihad. And so King Abdul Azeez caused the loss of the first Qiblah of the Muslims people. The King joined the crusaders against the Muslims and instead of supporting the Mujahideen in the cause of Allah, to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he disappointed and humiliated them.
Today, his son, king Fahd, trying to deceive the Muslims for the second time so as to loose what is left of the sanctities. When the Islamic world resented the arrival of the crusader forces to the land of the two Holy Places, the king told lies to the Ulamah (who issued Fatwas about the arrival of the Americans) and to the gathering of the Islamic leaders at the conference of Rabitah which was held in the Holy City of Makka. The King said that: "the issue is simple, the American and the alliance forces will leave the area in few months". Today it is seven years since their arrival and the regime is not able to move them out of the country. The regime made no confession about its inability and carried on lying to the people claiming that the American will leave. But never-never again ; a believer will not be bitten twice from the same hole or snake! Happy is the one who takes note of the sad experience of the others!!
Instead of motivating the army, the guards, and the security men to oppose the occupiers, the regime used these men to protect the invaders, and further deepening the humiliation and the betrayal. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah"). To those little group of men within the army, police and security forces, who have been tricked and pressured by the regime to attack the Muslims and spill their blood, we would like to remind them of the narration: (I promise war against those who take my friends as their enemy) narrated by Al--Bukhari. And his saying (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) saying of: ( In the day of judgement a man comes holding another and complaining being slain by him. Allah, blessed be His Names, asks: Why did you slay him?! The accused replies: I did so that all exaltation may be Yours. Allah, blessed be His Names, says: All exaltation is indeed mine! Another man comes holding a fourth with a similar complaint. Allah, blessed be His Names, asks: Why did you kill him?! The accused replies: I did so that exaltation may be for Mr. X! Allah, blessed be His Names, says: exaltation is mine, not for Mr. X, carry all the slain man's sins (and proceed to the Hell fire)!). In another wording of An-Nasa'i: "The accused says: for strengthening the rule or kingdom of Mr. X"
Today your brothers and sons, the sons of the two Holy Places, have started their Jihad in the cause of Allah, to expel the occupying enemy from of the country of the two Holy places. And there is no doubt you would like to carry out this mission too, in order to re-establish the greatness of this Ummah and to liberate its' occupied sanctities. Nevertheless, it must be obvious to you that, due to the imbalance of power between our armed forces and the enemy forces, a suitable means of fighting must be adopted i.e using fast moving light forces that work under complete secrecy. In other word to initiate a guerrilla warfare, were the sons of the nation, and not the military forces, take part in it. And as you know, it is wise, in the present circumstances, for the armed military forces not to be engaged in a conventional fighting with the forces of the crusader enemy (the exceptions are the bold and the forceful operations carried out by the members of the armed forces individually, that is without the movement of the formal forces in its conventional shape and hence the responses will not be directed, strongly, against the army) unless a big advantage is likely to be achieved; and great losses induced on the enemy side (that would shaken and destroy its foundations and infrastructures) that will help to expel the defeated enemy from the country.
The Mujahideen, your brothers and sons, requesting that you support them in every possible way by supplying them with the necessary information, materials and arms. Security men are especially asked to cover up for the Mujahideen and to assist them as much as possible against the occupying enemy; and to spread rumours, fear and discouragement among the members of the enemy forces.
We bring to your attention that the regime, in order to create a friction and feud between the Mujahideen and yourselves, might resort to take a deliberate action against personnel of the security, guards and military forces and blame the Mujahideen for these actions. The regime should not be allowed to have such opportunity.
The regime is fully responsible for what had been incurred by the country and the nation; however the occupying American enemy is the principle and the main cause of the situation . Therefore efforts should be concentrated on destroying, fighting and killing the enemy until, by the Grace of Allah, it is completely defeated. The time will come -by the Permission of Allah- when you'll perform your decisive role so that the word of Allah will be supreme and the word of the infidels (Kaferoon) will be the inferior. You will hit with iron fist against the aggressors. You'll re-establish the normal course and give the people their rights and carry out your truly Islamic duty. Allah willing, I'll have a separate talk about these issues.
My Muslim Brothers (particularly those of the Arab Peninsula): The money you pay to buy American goods will be transformed into bullets and used against our brothers in Palestine and tomorrow (future) against our sons in the land of the two Holy places. By buying these goods we are strengthening their economy while our dispossession and poverty increases.
Muslims Brothers of land of the two Holy Places:
It is incredible that our country is the world largest buyer of arms from the USA and the area biggest commercial partners of the Americans who are assisting their Zionist brothers in occupying Palestine and in evicting and killing the Muslims there, by providing arms, men and financial supports.
To deny these occupiers from the enormous revenues of their trading with our country is a very important help for our Jihad against them. To express our anger and hate to them is a very important moral gesture. By doing so we would have taken part in (the process of ) cleansing our sanctities from the crusaders and the Zionists and forcing them, by the Permission of Allah, to leave disappointed and defeated.
We expect the woman of the land of the two Holy Places and other countries to carry out their role in boycotting the American goods.
If economical boycotting is intertwined with the military operations of the Mujahideen, then defeating the enemy will be even nearer, by the Permission of Allah. However if Muslims don't co-operate and support their Mujahideen brothers then , in effect, they are supplying the army of the enemy with financial help and extending the war and increasing the suffering of the Muslims.
The security and the intelligence services of the entire world can not force a single citizen to buy the goods of his/her enemy. Economical boycotting of the American goods is a very effective weapon of hitting and weakening the enemy, and it is not under the control of the security forces of the regime.
Before closing my talk, I have a very important message to the youths of Islam, men of the brilliant future of the Ummah of Muhammad (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM). Our talk with the youths about their duty in this difficult period in the history of our Ummah. A period in which the youths and no one else came forward to carry out the variable and different duties. While some of the well known individuals had hesitated in their duty of defending Islam and saving themselves and their wealth from the injustice, aggression and terror -exercised by the government- the youths (may Allah protect them) were forthcoming and raised the banner of Jihad against the American-Zionist alliance occupying the sanctities of Islam. Others who have been tricked into loving this materialistic world, and those who have been terrorised by the government choose to give legitimacy to the greatest betrayal , the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah"). We are not surprised from the action of our youths. The youths were the companions of Muhammad (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him), and was it not the youths themselves who killed Aba-Jahl, the Pharaoh of this Ummah? Our youths are the best descendent of the best ancestors.
Abdul-Rahman Ibn Awf -may Allah be pleased with him- said: (I was at Badr where I noticed two youths one to my right and the other to my left. One of them asked me quietly (so not to be heard by the other) : O uncle point out Aba-Jahl to me. What do you want him for? , said Abdul Rahman. The boy answered: I have been informed that he- Aba-Jahl- abused the Messenger of Allah (), I swear by Allah, who have my soul in His hand, that if I see Aba-Jahl I'll not let my shadow departs his shadow till one of us is dead. I was astonished, said Abdul Rahman; then the other youth said the same thing as the first one. Subsequently I saw Aba-Jahl among the people; I said to the boys do you see? this is the man you are asking me about. The two youths hit Aba-Jahl with their swords till he was dead. Allah is the greatest, Praise be to Him: Two youths of young age but with great perseverance, enthusiasm, courage and pride for the religion of Allah's, each one of them asking about the most important act of killing that should be induced on the enemy. That is the killing of the pharaoh of this Ummah - Aba Jahl-, the leader of the unbelievers (Mushrikeen) at the battle of Badr. The role of Abdul Rahman Ibn Awf , may Allah be pleased with him, was to direct the two youths toward Aba-Jahl. That was the perseverance and the enthusiasm of the youths of that time and that was the perseverance and the enthusiasm of their fathers. It is this role that is now required from the people who have the expertise and knowledge in fighting the enemy. They should guide their brothers and sons in this matter; once that has been done, then our youths will repeat what their forefathers had said before: "I swear by Allah if I see him I'll not let my shadow to departs from his shadow till one of us is dead".
And the story of Abdur-Rahman Ibn Awf about Ummayyah Ibn Khalaf shows the extent of Bilal's (may Allah be pleased with him) persistence in killing the head of the Kufr: "the head of Kufr is Ummayyah Ibn Khalaf.... I shall live not if he survives" said Bilal.
Few days ago the news agencies had reported that the Defence Secretary of the Crusading Americans had said that "the explosion at Riyadh and Al-Khobar had taught him one lesson: that is not to withdraw when attacked by coward terrorists".
We say to the Defence Secretary that his talk can induce a grieving mother to laughter! and shows the fears that had enshrined you all. Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place on 1983 AD (1403 A.H). You were turned into scattered pits and pieces at that time; 241 mainly marines solders were killed. And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you to leave Aden in lees than twenty four hours!
But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.
I say to Secretary of Defence: The sons of the land of the two Holy Places had come out to fight against the Russian in Afghanistan, the Serb in Bosnia-Herzegovina and today they are fighting in Chechenia and -by the Permission of Allah- they have been made victorious over your partner, the Russians. By the command of Allah, they are also fighting in Tajakistan.
I say: Since the sons of the land of the two Holy Places feel and strongly believe that fighting (Jihad) against the Kuffar in every part of the world, is absolutely essential; then they would be even more enthusiastic, more powerful and larger in number upon fighting on their own land- the place of their births- defending the greatest of their sanctities, the noble Ka'ba (the Qiblah of all Muslims). They know that the Muslims of the world will assist and help them to victory. To liberate their sanctities is the greatest of issues concerning all Muslims; It is the duty of every Muslims in this world.
I say to you William (Defence Secretary) that: These youths love death as you loves life. They inherit dignity, pride, courage, generosity, truthfulness and sacrifice from father to father. They are most delivering and steadfast at war. They inherit these values from their ancestors (even from the time of the Jaheliyyah, before Islam). These values were approved and completed by the arriving Islam as stated by the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him): "I have been send to perfecting the good values". (Saheeh Al-Jame' As-Sagheer).
When the pagan King Amroo Ibn Hind tried to humiliate the pagan Amroo Ibn Kulthoom, the latter cut the head of the King with his sword rejecting aggression, humiliation and indignation.
If the king oppresses the people excessively, we reject submitting to humiliation.
By which legitimacy (or command) O Amroo bin Hind you want us to be degraded?!
By which legitimacy (or command) O Amroo bin Hind you listen to our foes and disrespect us?!
Our toughness has, O Amroo, tired the enemies before you, never giving in!
Our youths believe in paradise after death. They believe that taking part in fighting will not bring their day nearer; and staying behind will not postpone their day either. Exalted be to Allah who said: {And a soul will not die but with the permission of Allah, the term is fixed} (Aal Imraan; 3:145). Our youths believe in the saying of the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him): "O boy, I teach a few words; guard (guard the cause of, keep the commandments of) Allah, then He guards you, guard (the cause of ) Allah, then He will be with you; if you ask (for your need) ask Allah, if you seek assistance, seek Allah's; and know definitely that if the Whole World gathered to (bestow) profit on you they will not profit you except with what was determined for you by Allah, and if they gathered to harm you they will not harm you except with what has been determined for you by Allah; Pen lifted, papers dried, it is fixed nothing in these truths can be changed" Saheeh Al-Jame' As-Sagheer. Our youths took note of the meaning of the poetic verse:
"If death is a predetermined must, then it is a shame to die cowardly."
and the other poet saying:
"Who do not die by the sword will die by other reason; many causes are there but one death".
These youths believe in what has been told by Allah and His messenger (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) about the greatness of the reward for the Mujahideen and Martyrs; Allah, the most exalted said: {and -so far- those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will by no means allow their deeds to perish. He will guide them and improve their condition. and cause them to enter the garden -paradise- which He has made known to them}. (Muhammad; 47:4-6). Allah the Exalted also said: {and do not speak of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead; nay -they are- alive, but you do not perceive} (Bagarah; 2:154). His messenger (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) said: "for those who strive in His cause Allah prepared hundred degrees (levels) in paradise; in-between two degrees as the in-between heaven and earth". Saheeh Al-Jame' As-Sagheer. He (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) also said: "the best of the martyrs are those who do NOT turn their faces away from the battle till they are killed. They are in the high level of Jannah (paradise). Their Lord laughs to them ( in pleasure) and when your Lord laughs to a slave of His, He will not hold him to an account". narrated by Ahmad with correct and trustworthy reference. And : "a martyr will not feel the pain of death except like how you feel when you are pinched". Saheeh Al-Jame' As-Sagheer. He also said: "a martyr privileges are guaranteed by Allah; forgiveness with the first gush of his blood, he will be shown his seat in paradise, he will be decorated with the jewels of belief (Imaan), married off to the beautiful ones, protected from the test in the grave, assured security in the day of judgement, crowned with the crown of dignity, a ruby of which is better than this whole world (Duniah) and its' entire content, wedded to seventy two of the pure Houries (beautiful ones of Paradise) and his intercession on the behalf of seventy of his relatives will be accepted". Narrated by Ahmad and At-Tirmithi (with the correct and trustworthy reference).
Those youths know that their rewards in fighting you, the USA, is double than their rewards in fighting some one else not from the people of the book. They have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. An infidel, and enemy of God like you, cannot be in the same hell with his righteous executioner.
Our youths chanting and reciting the word of Allah, the most exalted: {fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them and heal the heart of a believing people} (At-Taubah; 9:14) and the words of the prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM): "I swear by Him, who has my soul in His hand, that no man get killed fighting them today, patiently attacking and not retreating ,surely Allah will let him into paradise". And his (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) saying to them: "get up to a paradise as wide as heaven and earth".
The youths also reciting the All Mighty words of: "so when you meat in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the necks..." (Muhammad; 47:19). Those youths will not ask you (William Perry) for explanations, they will tell you singing there is nothing between us need to be explained, there is only killing and neck smiting.
And they will say to you what their grand father, Haroon Ar-Rasheed, Ameer-ul-Mu'meneen, replied to your grandfather, Nagfoor, the Byzantine emperor, when he threatened the Muslims: "from Haroon Ar-Rasheed, Ameer-ul-Mu'meneen, to Nagfoor, the dog of the Romans; the answer is what you will see not what you hear". Haroon El-Rasheed led the armies of Islam to the battle and handed Nagfoor a devastating defeat.
The youths you called cowards are competing among themselves for fighting and killing you. reciting what one of them said:
The crusader army became dust when we detonated al-Khobar.
With courageous youth of Islam fearing no danger.
If (they are) threatened: The tyrants will kill you, they reply my death is a victory.
I did not betray that king, he did betray our Qiblah.
And he permitted in the holy country the most filthy sort of humans.
I have made an oath by Allah, the Great, to fight who ever rejected the faith.
For more than a decade, they carried arms on their shoulders in Afghanistan and they have made vows to Allah that as long as they are alive, they will continue to carry arms against you until you are -Allah willing- expelled, defeated and humiliated, they will carry on as long as they live saying:
O William, tomorrow you will know which young man is confronting your misguided brethren!
A youth fighting in smile, returning with the spear coloured red.
May Allah keep me close to knights, humans in peace, demons in war.
Lions in Jungle but their teeth are spears and Indian swords.
The horses witness that I push them hard forwarded in the fire of battle.
The dust of the battle bears witnesses for me, so also the fighting itself, the pens and the books!
So to abuse the grandsons of the companions, may Allah be pleased with them, by calling them cowards and challenging them by refusing to leave the land of the two Holy Places shows the insanity and the imbalance you are suffering from. Its appropriate "remedy," however, is in the hands of the youths of Islam, as the poet said:
I am willing to sacrifice self and wealth for knights who never disappointed me.
Knights who are never fed up or deterred by death, even if the mill of war turns.
In the heat of battle they do not care, and cure the insanity of the enemy by their 'insane' courage.
Terrorising you, while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanded duty. It is a legitimate right well known to all humans and other creatures. Your example and our example is like a snake which entered into a house of a man and got killed by him. The coward is the one who lets you walk, while carrying arms, freely on his land and provides you with peace and security.
Those youths are different from your soldiers. Your problem will be how to convince your troops to fight, while our problem will be how to restrain our youths to wait for their turn in fighting and in operations. These youths are commendation and praiseworthy.
They stood up tall to defend the religion; at the time when the government misled the prominent scholars and tricked them into issuing Fatwas (that have no basis neither in the book of Allah, nor in the Sunnah of His prophet (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him)) of opening the land of the two Holy Places for the Christians armies and handing the Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Zionists. Twisting the meanings of the holy text will not change this fact at all. They deserve the praise of the poet:
I rejected all the critics, who chose the wrong way;
I rejected those who enjoy fireplaces in clubs discussing eternally;
I rejected those, who inspite being lost, think they are at the goal;
I respect those who carried on not asking or bothering about the difficulties;
Never letting up from their goals, inspite all hardships of the road;
Whose blood is the oil for the flame guiding in the darkness of confusion;
I feel still the pain of (the loss) Al-Quds in my internal organs;
That loss is like a burning fire in my intestines;
I did not betray my covenant with God, when even states did betray it! As their grandfather Assim Bin Thabit said rejecting a surrender offer of the pagans:
What for an excuse I had to surrender, while I am still able, having arrows and my bow having a tough string?!
Death is truth and ultimate destiny, and life will end any way. If I do not fight you, then my mother must be insane!
The youths hold you responsible for all of the killings and evictions of the Muslims and the violation of the sanctities, carried out by your Zionist brothers in Lebanon; you openly supplied them with arms and finance. More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanction) imposed on Iraq and its nation. The children of Iraq are our children. You, the USA, together with the Saudi regime are responsible for the shedding of the blood of these innocent children. Due to all of that, what ever treaty you have with our country is now null and void.
The treaty of Hudaybiyyah was cancelled by the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) once Quraysh had assisted Bani Bakr against Khusa'ah, the allies of the prophet (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him). The prophet (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) fought Quraysh and concurred Makka. He (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) considered the treaty with Bani Qainuqa' void because one of their Jews publicly hurt one Muslim woman, one single woman, at the market. Let alone then, the killing you caused to hundred of thousands Muslims and occupying their sanctities. It is now clear that those who claim that the blood of the American solders (the enemy occupying the land of the Muslims) should be protected are merely repeating what is imposed on them by the regime; fearing the aggression and interested in saving themselves. It is a duty now on every tribe in the Arab Peninsula to fight, Jihad, in the cause of Allah and to cleanse the land from those occupiers. Allah knows that there blood is permitted (to be spilled) and their wealth is a booty; their wealth is a booty to those who kill them. The most Exalted said in the verse of As-Sayef, The Sword: "so when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters where ever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush" (At-Tauba; 9:5). Our youths knew that the humiliation suffered by the Muslims as a result of the occupation of their sanctities can not be kicked and removed except by explosions and Jihad. As the poet said:
The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets.
The freeman does not surrender leadership to infidels and sinners.
Without shedding blood no degradation and branding can be removed from the forehead.
I remind the youths of the Islamic world, who fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina with their wealth, pens, tongues and themselves that the battle had not finished yet. I remind them about the talk between Jibreel (Gabriel) and the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on both of them) after the battle of Ahzab when the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) returned to Medina and before putting his sword aside; when Jibreel (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) descend saying: "are you putting your sword aside? by Allah the angels haven't dropped their arms yet; march with your companions to Bani Quraydah, I am (going) ahead of you to throw fears in their hearts and to shake their fortresses on them". Jibreel marched with the angels (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on them all), followed by the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) marching with the immigrants, Muhajeroon, and supporters, Ansar. (narrated by Al-Bukhary).
These youths know that: if one is not to be killed one will die (any way) and the most honourable death is to be killed in the way of Allah. They are even more determined after the martyrdom of the four heroes who bombed the Americans in Riyadh. Those youths who raised high the head of the Ummah and humiliated the Americans-the occupier- by their operation in Riyadh. They remember the poetry of Ja'far, the second commander in the battle of Mu'tah, in which three thousand Muslims faced over a hundred thousand Romans:
How good is the Paradise and its nearness, good with cool drink But the Romans are promised punishment (in Hell), if I meet them.
I will fight them.
And the poetry of Abdullah Bin Rawaha, the third commander in the battle of Mu'tah, after the martyrdom of Ja'far, when he felt some hesitation:
O my soul if you do not get killed, you are going to die, anyway.
This is death pool in front of you!
You are getting what you have wished for (martyrdom) before, and you follow the example of the two previous commanders you are rightly guided!
As for our daughters, wives, sisters and mothers they should take prime example from the prophet (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) pious female companions, may Allah be pleased with them; they should adopt the life style (Seerah) of the female companions of courage, sacrifice and generosity in the cause of the supremacy of Allah's religion.
They should remember the courage and the personality of Fatima, daughter of Khatab, when she accepted Islam and stood up in front of her brother, Omar Ibn Al-Khatab and challenged him (before he became a Muslim) saying: "O Omar , what will you do if the truth is not in your religion?!" And to remember the stand of Asma', daughter of Abu Bakr, on the day of Hijra, when she attended the Messenger and his companion in the cave and split her belt in two pieces for them. And to remember the stand of Naseeba Bent Ka'b striving to defend the messenger of Allah (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) on the day of Uhud, in which she suffered twelve injuries, one of which was so deep leaving a deep lifelong scar! They should remember the generosity of the early woman of Islam who raised finance for the Muslims army by selling their jewelery.
Our women had set a tremendous example of generosity in the cause of Allah; they motivated and encouraged their sons, brothers and husbands to fight- in the cause of Allah- in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chechenia and in other countries. We ask Allah to accept from them these deeds, and may He help their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. May Allah strengthen the belief - Imaan - of our women in the way of generosity and sacrifice for the supremacy of the word of Allah. Our women weep not, except over men who fight in the cause of Allah; our women instigate their brothers to fight in the cause of Allah.
Our women bemoan only fighters in the cause of Allah, as said:
Do not moan on any one except a lion in the woods, courageous in the burning wars.
Let me di
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Sorry, we're not in a court of law, where one must prove that Bin ladin is the spirtual leader for Islam. If he were THEN we could entertain your notion that all Muslims are terrorists.
Good thing, no one is arguing that
So i just should take your word for it, because it's what ..... obvious... that Bin Laden speaks for Islam?
Boy, you really are on a roll in putting words in other people's mouths, mine in particular currently. 1st it was that this Imam was a radical in cahoots with AlQeada. Now its that Bin Laden speaks for all of Islam. What next, do I need to refute, never having said or even impled??
Looks to me like he is appealing to Islam to rise up against the "occupiers and the custodians of Mecca"
Ahhh, more in line with what I've actually implied, that of advocating to Muslims to rise up, in the name of Islam, to take on us evil Westerners (and Israel of course). And those who actually take up the call, are the radicals in question that mutate the message of Islam, justifying their murders. Imagine that. ::) And if they die in the process, dozens of virgins behind door #1, per their religion.
Sure wish I knew where you were trying to go with this
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Sure wish I knew where you were trying to go with this
Pretty simple. If he were speaking on behalf of Islam, he wouldn't be appealing to Islam to rise up with him.
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So, bascially you're helping to enfore the point I made in the lower paragrapgh of the previous post...thank you very much
Ironically helping also to debunk what you falsely claimed I was implying
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So, bascially you're helping to enfore the point I made in the lower paragrapgh of the previous post...thank you very much
No. You said Bin Laden spoke on behalf of Islam. His choice of words in his fatwa indicates he doesn't.
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I said he didn't represent Islam. Please keep it honest
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Re: Just not there
? Reply #190 on: Today at 11:08:58 AM ?
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Gets refuted each and every time when you'll note my support of Muslims praying & building anywhere they want, outside of such close proximity to thousands killed in the name of their religion
Who says it was done in the name of their religion?
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Re: Just not there
? Reply #191 on: Today at 11:37:38 AM ?
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Bin Laden, last I checked. The fella behind the attacks. Not to mention that's the theme of AlQeada, sprinkled with how terrible the U.S. and Israel are supposed to be. A bunch of virgins apparently await, following thier "courageous" act, in the name of Allah
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Yea....and?? If you want to get nuts & bolts, Bin Laden represents the mutation of Islam. He however neither speaks as the authority on Islam, nor as its representative, so you can dispense with that misapplied claim to me.
He, as you rightly have referenced, advocates that Islam rise up and take out the evil west. The highjacksers on 911, took up the calling, and at the behest (& planning) of Bin Laden, and in thier screwed up rendition of Islam, murdered 3+thousand American men, women & children.
As screwed up as they were, they did so, in the name of Islam
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You seem to have short term memory loss.
I posted the claim where you stated Bin Laden acted on behalf of Islam. first you denied, then you modified.
You also claimed that Rauf said the US was worse than Al Queda. He never did. Then you modified that though what he did say was true, you didn't like the way he said it. You didn't like who he said it to, where he said it or the context in which he said it because it just shows how far from the truth his claims of bridging intolerance and seeking reconciliation really are. Yet he was invited to Australia to speak to a group whose whole purpose is to bridge gaps between cultures and to foster understanding.
And just a minor quibble:
As screwed up as they were, they did so, in the name of Islam
No they did so as part of the fatwa.
Using your logic the US Government responded in the name of Christianity.
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Yes, as a mutated representative of Islam. His Fatwa is specific to the religion of Islam. His cry is for Islam to rise up and defeat the evil west. 911 Highjackers did precisely that
gads, I don't know why we're going over this AGAIN. And that includes your attempt at rationalizing the Imam's speech. 1st it's a report that's largely positive, in that of course we're taking out more of them than they are of us....we're bigger, and that's our goal. Then its largely neutral, a mere reporting of the facts. Then its negative in providing an attempted bridge of reconciliation, by being honest in how much blood Western Civi.....ooops, just the U.S. has spilt
I love the political ability you have to be everywhere in answering a question, but I'm not one of your consituents
And my logic is specific to current events, thank you very much
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First off I am no longer an elected official.
Secondly, did the US respond to Bin Laden in the name of Christianity?
Simple question.
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First off I am no longer an elected official.
The skills are still impressive
Secondly, did the US respond to Bin Laden in the name of Christianity?
Nope
Simple answer
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Nope
Simple answer
Good we have established that military responses and actions do not necessarily have to be based on religious beliefs.
Woud you consider it a fair statement to say the 911 attacks were a military action in the prosecution of Bin Ladens fatwa?
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...more accurately a terrorist action, in the name of Islam, per the Fatwa, absolutely
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You really like to accuse others of "lying", it appears.
Oh here we go again....Xo.....the lie here is you lying about my supposed accusing others of lying. I requested examples of these supposed accusations on my part. And as I expected, right on cue, you failed to respond. Bt is the one who has originated the claim of lying this go around, NOT me, yet there you are perpetating the same garbage you couldn't validate the 1st go around
So, put up (examples of this plethora of sirs merely accusing others of lying), or be shown to be either
a) grossly in error
or
b) perpetuating a lie
Your silence & failure to respond with actual examples vs the standard personal attack tact, will merely allow others to decide a) or b), based on your own track record
I think we can now put that accusation to rest, not to mention a stark reminder any time it comes up in the future. Thanks, Xo
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...more accurately a terrorist action, in the name of Islam, per the Fatwa, absolutely
terrorist actions often have the same components as a military action, accept the targets are not soldiers they are civilians. You have planning, logistics, target acquisition, choice of weapons, staffing and execution.
I'm not convinced 9-11 was done in the name of Islam. Even mutant islam, whatever that is.
I think it was done as part of Bin Laden's Fatwa.
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You don't have to be convinced. I don't need you to be convinced. I've seen and heard far more than enough to be convinced however. But I do appreciate the dialog