Steve Tasker
Footballguy
The training of these poor creatures to turn them into fighting machines is simply barbaric.
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Muslims in NYC Planning to Build Second Mosque Near Ground Zero (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Chadstroma
- Start date
NorvilleBarnes
Footballguy
I don't get the "This is just a New York issue". I've heard it couple of times and thought it was shtick.
NorvilleBarnes
Footballguy
Parrothead
Footballguy
mad sweeney
Footballguy
Didn think it was a serious question. No, I don't believe it at all,so you won't answer my question?I believe in the 50 Year Canard Storm that's going to push 75' Hyperbolic waves in Leftern Chile. It'll be epic!you actually believe that garbage???As barbaric as the Bible.
Parrothead
Footballguy
you actually believe that garbage???
I believe in the 50 Year Canard Storm that's going to push 75' Hyperbolic waves in Leftern Chile. It'll be epic!
so you won't answer my question?
Didn think it was a serious question. No, I don't believe it at all,
so you consider Islam to be as barbaric as Christianity, correct?
I believe in the 50 Year Canard Storm that's going to push 75' Hyperbolic waves in Leftern Chile. It'll be epic!
so you won't answer my question?
Didn think it was a serious question. No, I don't believe it at all,
so you consider Islam to be as barbaric as Christianity, correct?
Jewell
Footballguy
As practiced by Sharia there is little doubt. No doubt, actually. Particularly with regard to women's rights. There are such extreme human rights violations in Sharia nations to both women and homosexuals that simply should not be tolerated at this point in our evolution as man.The Application of
Sharia Law.
Sharia vs. The law on a Global Scale,
(video)Unfortunately, Sharia is the law most militants want, and generally those who are most militant prevail.
EDIT: Forgot to add that cultural relativism can suck it.
Last edited by a moderator:
ScottyFargo
Footballguy
Well, that's just like, your opinion, man. Working with no facts, only suspicion about the amount of money (The Catholic Church is rich and that doesn't make you blink, but Islam being twice as large and centered around the oil-rich Middle East and you've got a gut feeling that it's terrorist money funding this slap-in-the-face to 9/11).The sponsors of Cordoba House said the name was meant to invoke 8th–11th century Córdoba, Spain, a time and a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews co-existed peacefully.
Yeah you're not grouping moderate American Muslims in with terrorists with no reason at all.
No reason at all?....supporting this project is a pretty good reason. I think this is a very extremist statement in support of the terrorists and they should be called on it. It is good to see you backtracking on the 'all' statement. Moderate Muslims are speaking out against this hate speech, not financing it.
ScottyFargo
Footballguy
No, that's not a good reason, it's a paradox. Simply by wanting a place to worship (+ activity center, whatever) you assume they are being financed by terrorists. Moderates can't win; ie, you're lumping all Muslims in with the terrorists who committed the attacks on September 11th. You. Are. An. Islamophobe.
BobbyLayne
Footballguy
Balancing Act for Imam in Muslim Center Furor
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: August 21, 2010
Not everyone in the Cairo lecture hall last February was buying the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s message. As he talked of reconciliation between America and Middle Eastern Muslims — his voice soft, almost New Agey — some questioners were so suspicious that he felt the need to declare that he was not an American agent.
Muslims need to understand and soothe Americans who fear them, the imam said; they should be conciliatory, not judgmental, toward the West and Israel.
But one young Egyptian asked: Wasn’t the United States financing the speaking tour that had brought the imam to Cairo because his message conveniently echoed United States interests?
“I’m not an agent from any government, even if some of you may not believe it,” the imam replied. “I’m not. I’m a peacemaker.”
That talk, recorded on video six months ago, was part of what now might be called Mr. Abdul Rauf’s prior life, before he became the center of an uproar over his proposal for a Muslim community center two blocks from the World Trade Center. He watched his father, an Egyptian Muslim scholar, pioneer interfaith dialogue in 1960s New York; led a mystical Sufi mosque in Lower Manhattan; and, after the Sept. 11 attacks, became a spokesman for the notion that being American and Muslim is no contradiction — and that a truly American brand of Islam could modernize and moderate the faith worldwide.
In recent weeks, Mr. Abdul Rauf has barely been heard from as a national political debate explodes over his dream project, including, somewhere in its planned 15 stories, a mosque. Opponents have called his project an act of insensitivity, even a monument to terrorism.
In his absence — he is now on another Middle East speaking tour sponsored by the State Department — a host of allegations have been floated: that he supports terrorism; that his father, who worked at the behest of the Egyptian government, was a militant; that his publicly expressed views mask stealth extremism. Some charges, the available record suggests, are unsupported. Some are simplifications of his ideas. In any case, calling him a jihadist appears even less credible than calling him a United States agent.
Growing Up in America
Mr. Abdul Rauf, 61, grew up in multiple worlds. He was raised in a conservative religious home but arrived in America as a teenager in the turbulent 1960s; his father came to New York and later Washington to run growing Islamic centers. His parents were taken hostage not once, but twice, by American Muslim splinter groups. He attended Columbia University, where, during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and Arab states like Egypt, he talked daily with a Jewish classmate, each seeking to understand the other’s perspective.
He consistently denounces violence. Some of his views on the interplay between terrorism and American foreign policy — or his search for commonalities between Islamic law and this country’s Constitution — have proved jarring to some American ears, but still place him as pro-American within the Muslim world. He devotes himself to befriending Christians and Jews — so much, some Muslim Americans say, that he has lost touch with their own concerns.
“To stereotype him as an extremist is just nuts,” said the Very Rev. James P. Morton, the longtime dean of the Church of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan, who has known the family for decades.
Since 9/11, Mr. Abdul Rauf, like almost any Muslim leader with a public profile, has had to navigate the fraught path between those suspicious of Muslims and eager to brand them as violent or disloyal and a Muslim constituency that believes itself more than ever in need of forceful leaders.
One critique of the imam, said Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, was that he had not been outspoken enough on issues “near and dear to many Muslims,” like United States policy on Israel and treatment of Muslims after 9/11, “because of the need that he has had — whether taken upon himself or thrust upon him — to be the ‘American imam,’ to be the ‘New York imam,’ to be the ‘accommodationist imam.’ ”
Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University, said Mr. Abdul Rauf’s holistic Sufi practices could make more orthodox Muslims uncomfortable, and his focus on like-minded interfaith leaders made him underestimate the uproar over his plans.
“He hurtles in, to the dead-center eye of the storm simmering around Muslims in America, expecting it to be like at his mosque — we all love each other, we all think happy thoughts,” Mr. Ahmed said.
“Now he has set up, unwittingly, a symbol of this growing tension between America and Muslims: this mosque that Muslims see as a symbol of Islam under attack and the opponents as an insult to America,” he added. “So this mild-mannered guy is in the eye of a storm for which he’s not suited at all. He’s not a political leader of Muslims, yet he now somehow represents the Muslim community.”
Andrew Sinanoglou, who was married by Mr. Abdul Rauf last fall, said he was surprised that the imam had become a contentious figure. His greatest knack, Mr. Sinanoglou said, was making disparate groups comfortable. At the wedding, he brought together Mr. Sinanoglou’s family, descended from Greek Christians thrown out of Asia Minor by Muslims, and his wife’s conservative Muslim father.
“He’s an excellent schmoozer,” Mr. Sinanoglou said of the imam.
Mr. Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait. His father, Muhammad Abdul Rauf, graduated from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the foremost center of mainstream Sunni Muslim learning. He was one of many scholars Egypt sent abroad to staff universities and mosques, a government-approved effort unlikely to have tolerated a militant. He moved his family to England, studying at Cambridge and the University of London; then to Malaysia, where he eventually became the first rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia.
As a boy, Feisal absorbed his father’s talks with religious scholars from around the world, learning to respect theological debate, said his wife, Daisy Khan. He is also steeped in Malaysian culture, whose ethnic diversity has influenced an Islam different than that of his parents’ homeland.
In 1965, he came to New York. His father ran the Islamic Center of New York; the family lived over its small mosque in a brownstone on West 72nd Street, which served mainly Arabs and African-American converts. Like his son, the older imam announced plans for a community center for a growing Muslim population — the mosque eventually built on East 96th Street. It was financed by Muslim countries and controlled by Muslim diplomats at the United Nations — at the time a fairly noncontroversial proposition. Like his son, he joined interfaith groups, invited by Mr. James of St. John the Divine.
Hostage Crisis
Unlike his son, he was conservative in gender relations; he asked his wife, Buthayna, to not drive. But in 1977, he was heading the Islamic Center in Washington when he and Buthayna were taken hostage by a Muslim faction; it was his wife who challenged the gunmen on their lack of knowledge of Islam.
“My husband didn’t open his mouth, but I really gave it to them,” she told The New York Times then.
Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Abdul Rauf studied physics at Columbia. At first, he recalled in interviews last year, it was hard to adjust to American social mores. By 1967, he and a Yale student, Kurt Tolksdorf, had bonded at summer school over their shared taste in women and fast cars. But Mr. Tolksdorf said his friend never subscribed to the “free love” of the era.
When the 1967 war broke out in the Middle East, Mr. Tolksdorf said, Mr. Abdul Rauf reacted calmly when Israeli students tried to pick a fight. A classmate, Alan M. Silberstein, remembers debating each day’s news over lunch.
“He was genuinely trying to understand the interests of American Jews — what Israel’s importance was to me,” he said. “There was a genuine openness.”
In his 20s, Mr. Abdul Rauf dabbled in teaching and real estate, married an American-born woman and had three children. Studying Islam and searching for his place in it, he was asked to lead a Sufi mosque, Masjid al-Farah. It was one of few with a female prayer leader, where women and men sat together at some rituals and some women do not cover their hair. And it was 12 blocks from the World Trade Center.
Divorced, he met his second wife, Ms. Khan, when she came to the mosque looking for a gentler Islam than the politicized version she rejected after Iran’s revolution. Theirs is an equal partnership, whether Mr. Abdul Rauf is shopping and cooking a hearty soup, she said, or running organizations that promote an American-influenced Islam.
A similar idea comes up in the video of his visit to Cairo this year. Mr. Abdul Rauf, with Ms. Khan, unveiled as usual, beside him, tells a questioner not to worry so much about one issue of the moment — Switzerland’s ban on minarets — saying Islam has always adapted to and been influenced by places it spreads to. “Why not have a mosque that looks Swiss?” he joked. “Make a mosque that looks like Swiss cheese. Make a mosque that looks like a Rolex.”
In the 1990s, the couple became fixtures of the interfaith scene, even taking a cruise to Spain and Morocco with prominent rabbis and pastors.
Mr. Abdul Rauf also founded the Shariah Index Project — an effort to formally rate which governments best follow Islamic law. Critics see in it support for Taliban-style Shariah or imposing Islamic law in America.
Shariah, though, like Halakha, or Jewish law, has a spectrum of interpretations. The ratings, Ms. Kahn said, measure how well states uphold Shariah’s core principles like rights to life, dignity and education, not Taliban strong points. The imam has written that some Western states unwittingly apply Shariah better than self-styled Islamic states that kill wantonly, stone women and deny education — to him, violations of Shariah.
After 9/11, Mr. Abdul Rauf was all over the airwaves denouncing terrorism, urging Muslims to confront its presence among them, and saying that killing civilians violated Islam. He wrote a book, “What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America,” asserting the congruence of American democracy and Islam.
That ample public record — interviews, writings, sermons — is now being examined by opponents of the downtown center.
Those opponents repeat often that Mr. Abdul Rauf, in one radio interview, refused to describe the Palestinian group that pioneered suicide bombings against Israel, Hamas, as a terrorist organization. In the lengthy interview, Mr. Abdul Rauf clumsily tries to say that people around the globe define terrorism differently and labeling any group would sap his ability to build bridges. He also says: “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and, “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”
“If I were an imam today I would be saying, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ ” said John Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. “ ‘Can an imam be critical of any aspect of U.S. foreign policy? Can I weigh in on things that others could weigh in on?’ Or is someone going to say, ‘He’s got to be a radical!’ ”
Reporting was contributed by Thanassis Cambanis and Mona El-Naggar in Cairo, and Kareem Fahim, Sharaf Mowjood and Jack Begg in New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregion...tml?_r=1&hp
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: August 21, 2010
Not everyone in the Cairo lecture hall last February was buying the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s message. As he talked of reconciliation between America and Middle Eastern Muslims — his voice soft, almost New Agey — some questioners were so suspicious that he felt the need to declare that he was not an American agent.
Muslims need to understand and soothe Americans who fear them, the imam said; they should be conciliatory, not judgmental, toward the West and Israel.
But one young Egyptian asked: Wasn’t the United States financing the speaking tour that had brought the imam to Cairo because his message conveniently echoed United States interests?
“I’m not an agent from any government, even if some of you may not believe it,” the imam replied. “I’m not. I’m a peacemaker.”
That talk, recorded on video six months ago, was part of what now might be called Mr. Abdul Rauf’s prior life, before he became the center of an uproar over his proposal for a Muslim community center two blocks from the World Trade Center. He watched his father, an Egyptian Muslim scholar, pioneer interfaith dialogue in 1960s New York; led a mystical Sufi mosque in Lower Manhattan; and, after the Sept. 11 attacks, became a spokesman for the notion that being American and Muslim is no contradiction — and that a truly American brand of Islam could modernize and moderate the faith worldwide.
In recent weeks, Mr. Abdul Rauf has barely been heard from as a national political debate explodes over his dream project, including, somewhere in its planned 15 stories, a mosque. Opponents have called his project an act of insensitivity, even a monument to terrorism.
In his absence — he is now on another Middle East speaking tour sponsored by the State Department — a host of allegations have been floated: that he supports terrorism; that his father, who worked at the behest of the Egyptian government, was a militant; that his publicly expressed views mask stealth extremism. Some charges, the available record suggests, are unsupported. Some are simplifications of his ideas. In any case, calling him a jihadist appears even less credible than calling him a United States agent.
Growing Up in America
Mr. Abdul Rauf, 61, grew up in multiple worlds. He was raised in a conservative religious home but arrived in America as a teenager in the turbulent 1960s; his father came to New York and later Washington to run growing Islamic centers. His parents were taken hostage not once, but twice, by American Muslim splinter groups. He attended Columbia University, where, during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and Arab states like Egypt, he talked daily with a Jewish classmate, each seeking to understand the other’s perspective.
He consistently denounces violence. Some of his views on the interplay between terrorism and American foreign policy — or his search for commonalities between Islamic law and this country’s Constitution — have proved jarring to some American ears, but still place him as pro-American within the Muslim world. He devotes himself to befriending Christians and Jews — so much, some Muslim Americans say, that he has lost touch with their own concerns.
“To stereotype him as an extremist is just nuts,” said the Very Rev. James P. Morton, the longtime dean of the Church of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan, who has known the family for decades.
Since 9/11, Mr. Abdul Rauf, like almost any Muslim leader with a public profile, has had to navigate the fraught path between those suspicious of Muslims and eager to brand them as violent or disloyal and a Muslim constituency that believes itself more than ever in need of forceful leaders.
One critique of the imam, said Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, was that he had not been outspoken enough on issues “near and dear to many Muslims,” like United States policy on Israel and treatment of Muslims after 9/11, “because of the need that he has had — whether taken upon himself or thrust upon him — to be the ‘American imam,’ to be the ‘New York imam,’ to be the ‘accommodationist imam.’ ”
Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University, said Mr. Abdul Rauf’s holistic Sufi practices could make more orthodox Muslims uncomfortable, and his focus on like-minded interfaith leaders made him underestimate the uproar over his plans.
“He hurtles in, to the dead-center eye of the storm simmering around Muslims in America, expecting it to be like at his mosque — we all love each other, we all think happy thoughts,” Mr. Ahmed said.
“Now he has set up, unwittingly, a symbol of this growing tension between America and Muslims: this mosque that Muslims see as a symbol of Islam under attack and the opponents as an insult to America,” he added. “So this mild-mannered guy is in the eye of a storm for which he’s not suited at all. He’s not a political leader of Muslims, yet he now somehow represents the Muslim community.”
Andrew Sinanoglou, who was married by Mr. Abdul Rauf last fall, said he was surprised that the imam had become a contentious figure. His greatest knack, Mr. Sinanoglou said, was making disparate groups comfortable. At the wedding, he brought together Mr. Sinanoglou’s family, descended from Greek Christians thrown out of Asia Minor by Muslims, and his wife’s conservative Muslim father.
“He’s an excellent schmoozer,” Mr. Sinanoglou said of the imam.
Mr. Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait. His father, Muhammad Abdul Rauf, graduated from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the foremost center of mainstream Sunni Muslim learning. He was one of many scholars Egypt sent abroad to staff universities and mosques, a government-approved effort unlikely to have tolerated a militant. He moved his family to England, studying at Cambridge and the University of London; then to Malaysia, where he eventually became the first rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia.
As a boy, Feisal absorbed his father’s talks with religious scholars from around the world, learning to respect theological debate, said his wife, Daisy Khan. He is also steeped in Malaysian culture, whose ethnic diversity has influenced an Islam different than that of his parents’ homeland.
In 1965, he came to New York. His father ran the Islamic Center of New York; the family lived over its small mosque in a brownstone on West 72nd Street, which served mainly Arabs and African-American converts. Like his son, the older imam announced plans for a community center for a growing Muslim population — the mosque eventually built on East 96th Street. It was financed by Muslim countries and controlled by Muslim diplomats at the United Nations — at the time a fairly noncontroversial proposition. Like his son, he joined interfaith groups, invited by Mr. James of St. John the Divine.
Hostage Crisis
Unlike his son, he was conservative in gender relations; he asked his wife, Buthayna, to not drive. But in 1977, he was heading the Islamic Center in Washington when he and Buthayna were taken hostage by a Muslim faction; it was his wife who challenged the gunmen on their lack of knowledge of Islam.
“My husband didn’t open his mouth, but I really gave it to them,” she told The New York Times then.
Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Abdul Rauf studied physics at Columbia. At first, he recalled in interviews last year, it was hard to adjust to American social mores. By 1967, he and a Yale student, Kurt Tolksdorf, had bonded at summer school over their shared taste in women and fast cars. But Mr. Tolksdorf said his friend never subscribed to the “free love” of the era.
When the 1967 war broke out in the Middle East, Mr. Tolksdorf said, Mr. Abdul Rauf reacted calmly when Israeli students tried to pick a fight. A classmate, Alan M. Silberstein, remembers debating each day’s news over lunch.
“He was genuinely trying to understand the interests of American Jews — what Israel’s importance was to me,” he said. “There was a genuine openness.”
In his 20s, Mr. Abdul Rauf dabbled in teaching and real estate, married an American-born woman and had three children. Studying Islam and searching for his place in it, he was asked to lead a Sufi mosque, Masjid al-Farah. It was one of few with a female prayer leader, where women and men sat together at some rituals and some women do not cover their hair. And it was 12 blocks from the World Trade Center.
Divorced, he met his second wife, Ms. Khan, when she came to the mosque looking for a gentler Islam than the politicized version she rejected after Iran’s revolution. Theirs is an equal partnership, whether Mr. Abdul Rauf is shopping and cooking a hearty soup, she said, or running organizations that promote an American-influenced Islam.
A similar idea comes up in the video of his visit to Cairo this year. Mr. Abdul Rauf, with Ms. Khan, unveiled as usual, beside him, tells a questioner not to worry so much about one issue of the moment — Switzerland’s ban on minarets — saying Islam has always adapted to and been influenced by places it spreads to. “Why not have a mosque that looks Swiss?” he joked. “Make a mosque that looks like Swiss cheese. Make a mosque that looks like a Rolex.”
In the 1990s, the couple became fixtures of the interfaith scene, even taking a cruise to Spain and Morocco with prominent rabbis and pastors.
Mr. Abdul Rauf also founded the Shariah Index Project — an effort to formally rate which governments best follow Islamic law. Critics see in it support for Taliban-style Shariah or imposing Islamic law in America.
Shariah, though, like Halakha, or Jewish law, has a spectrum of interpretations. The ratings, Ms. Kahn said, measure how well states uphold Shariah’s core principles like rights to life, dignity and education, not Taliban strong points. The imam has written that some Western states unwittingly apply Shariah better than self-styled Islamic states that kill wantonly, stone women and deny education — to him, violations of Shariah.
After 9/11, Mr. Abdul Rauf was all over the airwaves denouncing terrorism, urging Muslims to confront its presence among them, and saying that killing civilians violated Islam. He wrote a book, “What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America,” asserting the congruence of American democracy and Islam.
That ample public record — interviews, writings, sermons — is now being examined by opponents of the downtown center.
Those opponents repeat often that Mr. Abdul Rauf, in one radio interview, refused to describe the Palestinian group that pioneered suicide bombings against Israel, Hamas, as a terrorist organization. In the lengthy interview, Mr. Abdul Rauf clumsily tries to say that people around the globe define terrorism differently and labeling any group would sap his ability to build bridges. He also says: “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and, “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”
“If I were an imam today I would be saying, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ ” said John Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. “ ‘Can an imam be critical of any aspect of U.S. foreign policy? Can I weigh in on things that others could weigh in on?’ Or is someone going to say, ‘He’s got to be a radical!’ ”
Reporting was contributed by Thanassis Cambanis and Mona El-Naggar in Cairo, and Kareem Fahim, Sharaf Mowjood and Jack Begg in New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregion...tml?_r=1&hp
El Floppo
Footballguy
lefty yellow clap-trap.
mad sweeney
Footballguy
How do you know? You only have a hunch based on your prejudices and parade it around like it's a fact. Because "that's what they do" and your example is 1200 years old.
mad sweeney
Footballguy
you actually believe that garbage???
I believe in the 50 Year Canard Storm that's going to push 75' Hyperbolic waves in Leftern Chile. It'll be epic!
so you won't answer my question?
Didn think it was a serious question. No, I don't believe it at all,
so you consider Islam to be as barbaric as Christianity, correct?
What answer do you want for your trap?
I believe in the 50 Year Canard Storm that's going to push 75' Hyperbolic waves in Leftern Chile. It'll be epic!
so you won't answer my question?
Didn think it was a serious question. No, I don't believe it at all,
so you consider Islam to be as barbaric as Christianity, correct?
What answer do you want for your trap?
Radio Free Homer
Footballguy
Again, your logic. It's faulty.
This project is being supported by radicals.
Why are they radicals?
Because they are supporting this project.
shut it down
Footballguy
I like turtles.
timschochet
Footballguy
drummer
Footballguy
Well, you are slick in not saying it outright, even though you imply it throughout this whole thread. SURRENDER MONKEYS!!!
Parrothead
Footballguy
so you won't answer my question?
Didn think it was a serious question. No, I don't believe it at all,
so you consider Islam to be as barbaric as Christianity, correct?
What answer do you want for your trap?
you used the bible as an example when I pointed out the barbaric proposal to paralyze someone.. so do you beileve Islam to be as barbaric as christianity?
Didn think it was a serious question. No, I don't believe it at all,
so you consider Islam to be as barbaric as Christianity, correct?
What answer do you want for your trap?
you used the bible as an example when I pointed out the barbaric proposal to paralyze someone.. so do you beileve Islam to be as barbaric as christianity?
So why do you guys hate America so much? You are slick in not saying it outright, even though you imply it throughout the whole thread.Oh you don't like when people puts words in your mouth and make false allegations. You.guys.are.Hypocrites.
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I dont think Liberals care. They find out what "white america" doesnt like and poof, they are their best friends...
Gigantomachia
Footballguy
have you actually read the bible?you actually believe that garbage???As barbaric as the Bible.
Jewell
Footballguy
The moderate Muslim: An endangered species? – by Nazeeya FaarooqThere is an endangered species out there – strangely it is not an animal, or bird or plant but is in fact a human being – it is the moderate Muslim. Many hundreds of years ago, the moderate and modern Muslim was alive and well and vocal. It was they who engineered and flourished in the great Islamic empires of old. Education, Science, literature, astronomy, architecture, travel, mathematics and other spheres of knowledge blossomed and prospered under the moderate thinking Muslim. Today, the moderate Muslim has either died out or in danger of dying out. They are in fact under threat. And what is worse is that the threat comes from within their own community.
What has replaced the moderate Muslim is a pernicious breed of human beings who would like to be called the only true guardians of the faith. This invasion of extremists, vocal in their righteousness target the moderate or modern Muslim as being un-Islamic and are in fact the criminal hunters of ijtihad, thought, reason and rationale. It is said that they are well funded by the Saudi government who export Wahhabi versions of Islam for the growth of religious extremism throughout the Muslim world.
Look at any country in the world that has a thriving population of radical Muslims and you will find the Saudi’s behind the madrasahs, the mosques, the community networks. They encourage the development of powerful intellectual, political and other networks which explains how a small minority of radicals can influence and control large numbers. Sri Lanka is no exception. While radical Islam can be defined in many different ways (and of course they would never see themselves as being radical, but simply being true Muslims) a constant feature of radical Muslims is their arrogant self-confidence that it is their interpretation of the religion (Quran, Hadiths, Shariah,) that is correct. There is absolutely no other interpretation in their eyes that could also be Islam. How ironic that attitude exists in a religion that says: “Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth has been made clear from error. Whoever rejects false worship and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks. And Allah hears and knows all things.” [sûrah al-Baqarah: 256]
While around the world Muslims like: Chandra Muzaffar in Malaysia, Tarik Ramadan in Europe, Maulana Waheeduddin Khan and Asghar Ali Engineer in India, Khalid Abul Fadl and Louay Safi in the US, Karim Soroush and Muhammad Khatami in Iran are vocal and committed moderate Muslims, we in Sri Lanka have consistently lacked a strong moderate Muslim voice.
What exactly is moderate Islam? It is in short the aspiration for a society within a Muslim framework that will treat people with dignity and respect. Ijtihad, which is, independent reasoning to articulate Islamic law is used to allow Islam predominant place while allowing the mind to experience freedom of thought. A moderate Muslim is one who while recognizing the importance and necessity of faith, cherishes reflective, self-critical, pro-democracy and pro-human rights contemplation. In fact the two are not an either or option, but co-exist harmoniously complimenting all aspects of life in a moderate Muslim.
What we need are the moderate Muslims of Sri Lanka to speak out at every opportunity, give sermons at Friday jumma, write their opinions, in short not be afraid to speak their minds. Intellectuals, artists, performers, housewives, professionals, students, activists, farmers, fishermen, carpenters, salespeople all have a role to play. There is no qualification in being a moderate Muslim other than in believing that Islam is more than terrorism, gender inequality, intolerance, violent, rigid and judgemental. Islam is one of the few religions where the believer has a direct relationship with Allah. There is no necessity for mediators, no role for priests. Therefore, keeping quiet, is allowing others to speak for you. Taking no action is allowing other to hijack your belief.
It is important that moderate Muslims participate in the definition of what Islam is, instead of allowing others to define it for them. It is ironic but some non-Muslims who may not have Islam’s interest at heart and radical Muslims both have the same agenda – and the victim for both will be the moderate Muslims. While perhaps those particular non-Muslims would like to see a watered down version of a Muslim, similar to the nominal or non-practicing Christian or Jew, the radical Muslim would like to see only one type of Muslim – rabid, unyielding, and judgemental. This is therefore a plea. If you don’t want to see Islam being practiced in a manner that is inherently contrary to the spirit of Islam – speak up. You have nothing to be afraid. Your religion has everything to gain and you have nothing to lose.
Jewell
Footballguy
Even if he was a moderate Muslim, the "gentlemen" who committed the following also identify themselves as moderate...A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission
SRI LANKA: An Appeal to the women’s movement against inhuman treatment of a young woman on religious grounds
This is a narrative of the husband of the victim, a 17 year old woman with a two month old child, who was subjected to the horrible experience of being beaten about 100 times with the hard centre stem from a coconut frond in the presence of the committee members of the mosque situated in Gokarella in the district of Kurunagalle. This woman had given a birth to a child as a result of an extra marital relationship. She has since married and has been living peacefully.
One day the husband of the woman was asked to come to the mosque with his wife by the committee members. He was forced by them to sign a document consenting to the punishment of his wife. The man did not agree and argued against the punishment. He also pointed out that his wife was sick. Regardless, she was beaten in the presence of other men of the village in front of the mosque.
Sri Lanka has been a multi cultural, multi linguistic secular society for a thousand years. Emerging social trends shows the tendencies of more extreme forms of horrible social practices which are threatening the inherent civil political rights and individual liberties. Many societies in Asia and Africa struggle with these most horrible forms of extreme practices of human suffering in the name of religion like the adoption of Sharia law or implementation of the decisions of Jirgas. The following story is an eye opener to what is happen is happening in Sri Lankan society.
LINK w/ Husband's Firsthand Account
BobbyLayne
Footballguy
Parsing the Record of Feisal Abdul RaufThe Internet is crowded with claims and counterclaims about Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the proposed Muslim community center and mosque two blocks from ground zero. The following is a sampling of some of the most often quoted complaints, combined with writings and statements from Mr. Abdul Rauf and his Cordoba Initiative, which has posted a frequently asked questions page on its Web site about the proposed project and the planners’ views.
Terrorism
In his book “What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America,” Mr. Abdul Rauf writes:
“The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong — and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people, no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth. ... Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar ‘collateral damage.’ ”
The book also includes a copy of the fatwa, a religious ruling, issued by senior Middle Eastern Muslim clerics that called the 9/11 attacks un-Islamic. The ruling, requested by the United States military’s top Muslim chaplain, gave permission to Muslims in the United States armed forces to fight in the war in Afghanistan.
In the book, the imam also elaborates on an argument that may make some Americans uncomfortable but has been put forward by many mainstream American analysts: that terrorism is viewed differently by different populations and that understanding those various views, whether or not one agrees with them, is central to resolving disputes.
“In the West,” he writes:
“Terrorism is usually defined by the acting party’s intent to harm innocent people. If a suicide bomber intentionally takes the lives of innocent people, he is obviously guilty of terrorism. By contrast, if the United States and its coalition forces drop bombs on the wrong buildings in Baghdad (or any other city) and the bombs kill hundreds or thousands of innocent people, including many women and children, we define this as collateral damage, not terrorism. We draw this distinction because we had no intent to kill civilians. ...“By contrast, however, many Muslims in the Middle East look primarily at the result of our actions. ... The result is a common view in the Middle East that the U.S. is perfectly willing to kill innocent civilians when it suits America’s goals.”
The imam applies the same analysis to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
“Israel points to the intentional repeated killing of innocent civilians as obvious proof that the Palestinians are guilty of terrorism — and the horrible images of bomb victims cannot be denied. Palestinians, however, counter that the overall number of civilians killed is higher on their side, and they rage with equal passion against Israeli terrorism.’ ”
United States Policies
Perhaps the most often quoted statement used to portray Mr. Abdul Rauf as a “terrorist sympathizer,” as the New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio calls him in a campaign advertisement, is this, from “60 Minutes” on Sept. 30, 2001:
“I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”
Mr. Abdul Rauf’s supporters say he was expressing a view common among American policy advisers: that dissatisfaction with American policies is one, if not the only, driver of anti-American sentiment and attacks.
Following are portions of a transcript dealing with this issue:
ED BRADLEY: How — how do you feel as a Muslim knowing that people of your faith committed this act that resulted in the loss of probably 6,000 lives?
MR. ABDUL RAUF: It’s painful. But when this thing first happened, everybody in the community said, “Oh, God, let this not be a person from our faith, tradition or from our background.”
MR. BRADLEY: What would you say to — to people in this country, who, looking at what happens in the Middle East, would associate Islam with fanaticism, with terrorism?
MR. ABDUL RAUF: Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. That’s — that’s just as absurd as associating Hitler with Christianity or — or David Koresh with Christianity. There are always people who will — who will do peculiar things and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion. But — but the Koran — you know, God says in the Koran that they think that they’re doing right, but they’re doing wrong. ...
MR. BRADLEY (voiceover): And throughout the Muslim world, there is also strong opposition to America’s foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, because of its support of Israel and economic sanctions against Iraq.
MR. ABDUL RAUF: It is a reaction against the policies of the U.S. government, politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights and where we ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries.
MR. BRADLEY: Are — are — are you in any way suggesting that we in the United States deserved what happened?
MR. ABDUL RAUF: I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.
MR. BRADLEY: O.K. You say that we’re an accessory?
MR. ABDUL RAUF: Yes.
MR. BRADLEY: How?
MR. ABDUL RAUF: Because we have been an accessory to a lot of — of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, it — in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the U.S.A. ...
The Cordoba Initiative elaborates: “The ‘60 Minutes’ piece was completely incorrect, as the statement was edited out of context. In the full interview, Imam Feisal describes the mistake the C.I.A. made in the 1980s by financing Osama bin Laden and strengthening the Taliban. This view is widely shared within the U.S. and the U.S. government today, and Imam Feisal underlines the importance of not supporting ‘friends of convenience’ who may in the future become our enemies.
“Imam Feisal is an American who takes his role as a citizen-ambassador very seriously. He is frequently requested by the U.S. State Department to tour Muslim majority and Western countries to speak about the merits of American ideals and Muslim integration into Western society. At the request of the F.B.I. after 9/11, he provided cultural training to hundreds of F.B.I. agents.”
Hamas
Mr. Abdul Rauf is often described as having refused to call Hamas — the Palestinian group that pioneered suicide bombings in Israel, prevailed in Palestinian elections in 2006 and now controls the Gaza Strip — a terrorist organization.
On 77 WABC radio on June 18, the talk radio host Aaron Klein asked him, “Do you believe that the State Department is correct in designating Hamas as a terrorist organization?”
There ensued a long conversation with many interruptions, in which Mr. Abdul Rauf said:
“Well, I’m not a politician. ... The issue of terrorism is a very complex question. ... I am a bridge builder. My work is ... I do not want to be placed nor will I accept a position where I am the target of one side or another. My attempt is to see a peace in Israel. ... Targeting of civilians is wrong. It’s a sin in our religion, whoever does it. ... I am a supporter of the State of Israel.”
The Cordoba Initiative’s Web site elaborates:
“Imam Feisal has always condemned terrorism (see his ... hundreds of speeches). Hamas is both a political movement and a terrorist organization. Hamas commits atrocious acts of terror. Imam Feisal has forcefully and consistently condemned all forms of terrorism, including those committed by Hamas, as un-Islamic.”
Muslim Brotherhood
Opponents have claimed that Mr. Abdul Rauf or his father, Muhammad Abdul Rauf, had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that pioneered religious militancy in Egypt starting in the 1930s, attacking government officials and influencing the founders of Hamas. In recent decades, the group has renounced violence.
Some have claimed that the son’s book was published in Arabic by a publisher with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Cordoba Initiative’s list of frequently asked questions says, “The Arabic translation rights to his book were arranged by the Arabic book program at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, United States of America.”
A post by Alyssa Lappen on the Web site Pajamas Media, declares, “Feisal Rauf’s Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as authentic as it gets.”
But the only evidence she offers is this:
“Rauf’s father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf (1917-2004) — an Egyptian contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna — conveyed to Feisal his family’s long tradition of radicalism, which he acquired at Islam’s closest equivalent to the Vatican, Al-Azhar University.”
In other words, he was the same age as the Brotherhood’s founder and attended Al-Azhar University, a leading educational institution of mainstream Islam. Mr. Abdul Rauf’s father worked at the behest of the Egyptian government during decades in which the Muslim Brotherhood was a greater threat to Egyptian security than it is now, and Egypt’s secular government was working hard to root them out.
At Al-Azhar last week, Abdel Moety Bayoumi, the former dean of a department studying Islamic law, said of Muhammad Abdul Rauf: “He is well known in Azhar and he is known for his moderation. During his time, there wasn’t this battle between moderation and terrorism. ... The general picture of Islam and its scholars was one of moderation. The extremists at that time were a minority and they were in isolated pockets in the Muslim world. Extremism had not entered the mainstream.”
Apostasy
Bloggers have asserted that the American Society for Muslim Advancement, an organization led by Mr. Abdul Rauf’s wife, Daisy Khan, “refuse to sign” a pledge rejecting punishment by death for apostasy sent to its office by Former Muslims United. The pledge read, “We now pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to achieve for former Muslims their unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We claim these rights as the foundation for our right to freedom from Shariah. We urge you to join us.”
Ms. Khan said that she was unaware of the letter but that both she and her husband rejected punishment by death for apostasy. She said they did not reject Shariah per se, as it was a body of religious law subject to many interpretations that governs the ritual practices of Muslims and prescribes social and legal ideals. She said the Cordoba Initiative’s Shariah Index Project aimed to hold governments accountable that claim hypocritically to be implementing Islamic law and attempted to dispel beliefs among some Muslims that the proper practice of Shariah includes human rights violations like stoning women and cutting off people’s hands.
In his book, Mr. Abdul Rauf describes the struggles that religions face trying to bridge the gap between their best ideals and the realities of practice and the surrounding society. In the years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death, he writes, a series of “pre-Islamic ideas” combined “to erode human liberty and freedom.” One of them, he says, was “the ruling that apostasy, being equivalent to treason, was punishable by death.”
In a May 14, 2008, post on the “On Faith” blog in The Washington Post, Ms. Khan argued that there was no consensus among Muslim scholars about apostasy:
“More significantly, innumerable contemporary Muslim jurists understand the issue of apostasy differently from their predecessors. This includes even prominent conservative scholars like Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, rector of the world’s most important Islamic university, Al-Azhar. They contend that the injunctions upon Muslims to fight apostates always occurred within the context of the latter’s active rebellion against the Muslim community, not the changing of religion alone. Whereas in the past, rejecting Islam constituted a political act of treason and a serious threat to the state, today’s circumstances have fundamentally changed. Consequently, these scholars are revisiting Islam’s primary sources to offer cogent interpretations of this contentious issue.”
We can play these games of parsing quotes all day trying to get inside people's heads. The facts are the people behind this are publically claiming the purpose of this building is to promote engagement, build bridges and peaceful coexistance between the west and Islam. The other fact is the majority of people in the west think this building is divisive. So if this project is clearly not meeting their stated goals, why are they militantly still pushing forward on this and unwilling to even meet with moderate people to discuss alternatives? Their actions do not match their words, that is why I think they are total BS.
mad sweeney
Footballguy
Jewell
Footballguy
In this thread, I take that as a compliment.And, to be completely honest with you, I'm aware that opinions are like ###holes. That's why I usually opt not to interject mine, and instead link to firsthand accounts. If I'm guilty of "Jonning it up", then so is that Sri Lankan Moderate Muslim who wrote the article I linked and so is the Asian Human Rights Commission by noting the injustices done in the name of religion.
Excuse me for giving more credence to a Muslim who lives in a Muslim nation and the Asian Human Rights Commission than some guy named Mad Sweeney on the Internet.
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mad sweeney
Footballguy
You're using the CANARD of comparing other nations to the US. What happens in Muslim countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia are not templates for what happens here in America. America is not a Muslim nation, nor can it ever be unless we toss out our Constitution and laws. Same goes for a Christian or Jewish nation. So forgive me if I deal with what happens here in America and not the CANARD of what happens in some country without our democratic foundations named Sri Lanka. The Imam repeatedly talks modernizing the ideas of Shariah and Islam to fit in with modern society and America's 3 branch government system. If that sounds parallel to you in regards to the CANARD of Sri Lanka's experience, then you're just sadly mistaken.
mad sweeney
Footballguy
They think it throws people off the scent that what they usually want to do is actually counter to what being America stands for. So they call their opponents un-American while they proceed with their un-American activities.
BobbyLayne
Footballguy
I'm a few hours away this weekend, but I see there are two opposing protests downtown today. Massive NYPD presence. Crappy all-day rain should keep the crowds (and tempers) down.
ScottyFargo
Footballguy
We are so happy to see you have recently discovered a new word which you have shown an amazing ability to insert into every sentence to conclusively illustrate your ability to properly use it and dazzle us all with your vast wisdom.
drummer
Footballguy
The phrase is so 2003. I'm just surprised people still use it.
timschochet
Footballguy
The answer is pretty simple: it was the original intention to build the community center for the reaasons you stated, but not only for the reasons you stated, but also to have a community center similar to the Jewish community centers which exist in every major city in the United States. I've been to JCCs plenty my entire life- they offer a variety of social programs including preschool, child care, youth athletics, music, theatre, holiday celebrations, lectures, etc. The Imam and his wife visited a local JCC in New York several times and hoped to created a Muslim version.When the controversy started, the situation changed. Suddenly every Muslim American in this country, most of whom had not been aware of this proposed building previously, were aware of it now. And it has now come to represent something quite different. Muslim Americans almost uniformly see the opposition to this as bigotry against them and their religion. They believe that to move the building at this point would be a tacit agreement on their part to the unstated theory behind the oppositon: that they (Muslim Americans) are alien, not part of America, and in some way connected to the events of 9/11. That cannot be accepted; it is a surrender to prejudice. So they have dug their heels in. I fully support them on this.John555 said:
Thanks for missing the whole point of the post. Not that that isn't expected from you two.
drummer
Footballguy
I understood the context. You ended your post with the word Hypocrites. It's really a cheap phrase to throw out there, like it was during the War in Iraq debate in 2003. I don't know what you expect to come out of it when you use it.Thanks for missing the whole point of the post. Not that that isn't expected from you two.
You have a tendency to see bigotry everywhere, even where it does not exist. The vast majority of Americans are very tolerant as witnessed by Obama's elections. Despite his Islamic name and his race, Obama did as well in a national election as any Democrat has in my lifetime. The vast majority of American are 100% against discrimination of any kind. To cast the 60-70% of Americans as bigots is an unbelievably incorrect characterization of what is going on here. I would really like to see some polling done in the American Muslim community to see what the consensus of opinion is. There has been a significant number of Muslims saying this is a bad idea.
If I was allowed more quoted, I would have included Scotty'sI understood the context. You ended your post with the word Hypocrites. It's really a cheap phrase to throw out there, like it was during the War in Iraq debate in 2003. I don't know what you expect to come out of it when you use it.Thanks for missing the whole point of the post. Not that that isn't expected from you two.
My response was in reference to all the false allegations, adding words that aren't there, and labling that has been done on this thread. My point was, if you don't like being called anti-American, you shouldn't go around injecting -phobe words and throwing out accusations of bigotry into every discussion. Yes it was cheap, but I was responding to several cheap shots that have been consistantly thrown about here.
timschochet
Footballguy
First, I didn't say the vast majority of Americans are bigoted. I don't believe they are. I think they're simply misinformed on this issue, as I have pointed out before. What I wrote is that if the community center is not built at this point, it will be a victory for bigotry. I have given my reasons why this is so which you have apparently chosen to ignore. If you disagree with those reasons, please explain why.Second, you are incorrect that a "significant" number of Muslims have said this is a bad idea. There have been one or two editiorials written by Muslims with extreme right affiliations. Some of these have been posted in this thread, and these articles were so full of lies and misinformation that it is astonishing that any reasonable person would take them seriously. But to your point- I will bet you or anyone else $100 right now that if a poll is taken of Muslim Americans, at least 80% of them or more will firmly be in favor of the community center being built as planned.
People I have heard discussing this issue are very well informed about this issue, so I am not buying if people were more informed they would have a different opinion. This reminds me of Obama thinking if only he had one more 60-minute prime time spot people would finally support his health care plan. I see more people coming out against this as more information is getting out. Many informed people who are clearly not bigots are firmly against this idea, so I am not buying your characterization.You might be right on polling Muslims. Clearly a majority will support it, maybe not 80% but close. But I also think a majority would support an alternative location. I see the more militant types digging in their heels about this location.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe YOU are misinformed or a bit "naive" on this issue?
ScottyFargo
Footballguy
It is inherently Islamophobic to assume that building a religious center for Muslims must be funded by or a statement approving of terrorist activity with zero facts to back that up, and even more so to continue such a charade when it goes against the American principles of religious freedom. There's no other excuse for it. I didn't determine that jon_mx was islamophobic lightly, it became quite evident from his posting pattern. When the only interpretation of one expressing their religion is hatred and bigotry, as jon has concluded this mosque represents, then we're entering the sphere of tunnel vision induced by islamophobia.
ScottyFargo
Footballguy
Why do you assume one would have to be militant to expect the same rights as anyone else who lives in this country?
Gigantomachia
Footballguy
do we still all agree they have every legal right to build their center? if we do, do we also agree that by forcing them not to build it we spit in the face of exactly what this country was founded on?
just checking.
just checking.
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