Islamism - 6

01-16-2007, 02:37 AM

QUOTE They must not exhibit their beauty to anybody except their husbands, brothers, nephews, womenfolk, servants, eunuch employees and children
What about father, father-in-law, grand father, uncles etc?

ramana · 01-16-2007, 02:38 AM

Book Review in Pioneer, 15 Jan., 2007
QUOTECivilisations under assault

Ram Gopal

The World Comes Under Islam, Gangadhar Nanda; Kaveri Books, Rs 400

The book, The World Comes Under Islam: Transformation of Civilisations, by Gangadhar Nanda is an important reading for at least two reasons: First, it brings out that in the near future the population of Muslims in the non-Muslim world would mark a sharp increase. Second, Muslims, because of their religious compulsions, are bound to wage jihad against non-Muslims. Eventually, it would result in civilisational conflicts within non-Muslim countries as well as between Islamic and non-Islamic nations.

The author says, "The first phase of Islamic renaissance began in the 1950s, after the detection of oil reserves stretched over a vast area under the whole of the Arabian peninsula. Muslims own the world's largest oil wealth which has brought them prosperity and strength to fight in the name of Allah... They spend a large portion of it to feed mujahids and to spread Islam through jihad. The second phase started with the Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979, when Iran threw away the monarchical regime of its king, Rezah Shah Pahalavi Arya Mehr, who was supported by the Western countries."

Dealing with the US's role in preparing Muslims as jihadis in Afghanistan to subdue its arch-rival, the USSR, the author makes a novel observation: "The USSR was defeated neither by Afghanistan nor by Pakistan and never by the US. It was disintegrated by itself by the upsurge of Islamic wave in its own territory. Its soldiers denied fighting against their co-religionist Afghans. Now, it is the turn of the US, which is going to face the same trauma that Communist USSR faced."

Britain is the country in the Christian world that breeds jihadi fighters or European Islamic militants, the author says. Some 600 British Muslim nationalists have already enlisted their names in jihadi groups to voluntarily work in different parts of the world. In addition, there are about 3,000 British Muslim supporters who have joined jihad in different countries of the world.

About Pakistan, the author says that the creation of an entirely new Muslim state gave the greatest impetus to global pan-Islamic movement. Few people know that it was started in West Asia in the second half of the 19th century. One of its greatest torch-bearers was Jamal al-Din Afghani, (1839-97). In his opinion, the chief enemy of Islam was Europe, especially the UK, the imperial power in India and Egypt. Afghani had come to India and met Muslim leaders in Bombay, Calcutta and other places to prepare them for a global confederation of Muslim states. He was the first man to give the idea of Pakistan to Indian Muslims.

Nanda rightly says, "Pakistan is the key Islamic country in the world that produces professional jihadi fighters to be deployed in different countries for the spread of Islamic terrorism.". The irony, however, is that Pakistan itself is the biggest recipient of the West's generosity. Even while the US is signing civil nuclear deal with India, it is supplying sophisticated weapons to Pakistan.

At many places, however, the book reads like Bhavishya Purana, a book of prophesies. It predicts: The anticipated Third World War would be a global civil war, if it occurs after 2020; human beings would be used as the best weapons in this global war; Euro-America's social system and guarantee of equal or special rights to non-Christian minorities would bring them entirely under the shadow of Islam; the first decade of the 21st century would signify the division of world powers into Christianity and Islam, instead of earlier classification of "capitalism and communism"; the world population would be divided into two entities, Islamic and non-Islamic; political slogans of different political parties of different nations will rebound against the invincible wall of Islamic communalism saturating the second phase of transformation of civilisations; etc.

According to the author, if a concerted attempt is not initiated to resist the Islamist assault, no power on earth would be able to stop the process of the great transformation of civilisations into Islamic mould.

ramana · 01-18-2007, 03:00 AM

Is there a Islamic theogny available? By this I mean is there a list of all the other worldly beings acknowledged by Islam_ Angels Gabriel, Malik, Djinns etc. And a definition of the different levels of Islamic heaven.

Bharatvarsh · (This post was last modified: 01-18-2007, 05:04 AM by Bharatvarsh.)

Anyone catch "Undercover Mosque" on Channel 4 in UK, excellent program it was, exposed the kind of things being taught in many UK mosques which are supposed to be moderate, watch it online at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peFQWuk4nuo

The links for the other parts are on the right hand side.

Can you believe any Indian channel daring to do such a thing in India even though we have been facing jihad for the last thousand years, no no, instead they have the time to bash Hindus 24 hrs a day.

Also check out al-faisal in part 3 of the dispatches where he quite clearly states that "You have to bomb the Indian businesses and kill the jews physically".

This guy was arrested for inciting race hatred but he is out of jail now and probably brainwashing more people, is it any wonder that Hindu and Sikh owned shops were burned down during the Bradford riots.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 01-18-2007, 06:41 AM by Bodhi.)

Great programming. Has created shockwaves.

By the way this undercover journalist is a Hindu(?)/Indian - Bobby Pathak - who has investigated and created this program.

Bharatvarsh · 01-18-2007, 09:34 AM

QUOTEBy the way this undercover journalist is a Hindu(?)/Indian - Bobby Pathak - who has investigated and created this program. 
Bodhiji thanks for the info, I thought the journo was a Muslim himself.

01-18-2007, 05:41 PM

More Australian Islamic clerics. Another one opens his mouth to speak the islamic mind and lodges his foot in it. At least no apologists this time.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/070118/23/1245r.html
QUOTEThursday January 18, 08:42 PM
Cleric could face hatred charges
By 7News
A Muslim cleric could face criminal charges, after preaching hatred against Jews on a DVD whish is being sold over the internet.
Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, from Sydney, appears on the recording calling Jewish people pigs, and saying they should be killed.

New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma says the Sheikh has incited acts of terrorism.

"What they're being exhorted to do on this DVD is akin to an act of terror.

"They are disgusting, outrageous comments and he should withdraw them immediately," Mr Iemma said.

The extremist cleric's comments have been condemned by both Muslims and Jews, who want him charged for racial vilification.

"Deplorable isn't it?" said Tom Zreika, of the Lebanese Muslim Association. "It is inexcusable, regrettable. We're ashamed of those comments."

"It is vital that the full weight of the law in this state come down upon him," said Vic Alhadeff, of the Jewish Board of Deputies.

The Federal Police have begun an investigation into the Australian-born Sheikh, who is currently living in Lebanon.

"We do not believe that hatred and remarks of this nature should be made or imported into Australia," said acting Attorney General Kevin Andrews.

A spokesman for the DVD's Australian distributor, One Islam, told 7News he had no idea its contents were so controversial, and that it had now been withdrawn from sale.

Bharatvarsh · 01-19-2007, 01:28 AM

Another dumb girl experiences Islamic love.
QUOTEMan kills wife in Bangalore, arrested in Delhi
By IANS
Thursday January 18, 02:41 PM
New Delhi, Jan 18 (IANS) A 32-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly killing his computer professional wife in Bangalore, Delhi Police said Thursday.

According to police, Mohammad Nazran, alias Ashish Malhotra, had murdered his wife Brijlata Das in front of their six-year-old daughter on Jan 12 at her home in Bangalore.

'Nazran was arrested from near the electric crematorium in outer Ring Road in Delhi late Wednesday. He had allegedly killed his wife in front of their six-year-old daughter,' said a police official.

The case is entirely based on the eyewitness version of the couple's six-year-old daughter who told a local court in Karnataka that her father stabbed Brijlata 15 times after an argument.

Bangalore police had been searching for him and had informed their counterparts in Delhi about the case.

Nazran, who will be handed over to Bangalore police, was caught with a knife and two cartridges.

Brijlata was studying in a Delhi convent school when she fell in love with Nazran and married him after changing her religion. The couple was separated with Brijlata staying in Bangalore.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/070118/43/6ba4h.html

Husky · (This post was last modified: 01-20-2007, 06:14 AM by Husky.)

More concerning the cleric representing Islamic peace and love, mentioned in post 47:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story....jectid=10419907
QUOTECharge sheik or ban him from Australia, NSW premier says
12:10PM Friday January 19, 2007

SYDNEY - NSW Premier Morris Iemma has urged whatever action is necessary against controversial Sydney cleric Sheik Feiz Mohammed, including criminal charges or a ban from living in Australia.

Australian born Sheik Mohammed, the leader of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Liverpool, in Sydney's west, sparked outrage with a DVD urging young Muslims to become holy warriors and calling Jewish people pigs.

The Australian Federal Police yesterday announced it was investigating whether the comments constituted a breach of sedition laws by inciting racial hatred or acts of terror.

Mr Iemma welcomed the police probe, saying he was "offended and outraged" by the sheik's comments.

"The federal police ought to test whether this material or these statements come into the new laws," Mr Iemma told ABC Radio.

"We toughened up the laws to meet these changed circumstances and the dangerous world that we live in today with the threat of international terror.

"Leaders of communities, clerics and others inciting, exhorting, encouraging people to commit acts of violence and terror are precisely why we need to take these steps."

The premier also called for the Islamic accreditation authority to take action against the outspoken cleric.

"They make these statements as individuals, but they also make them as leaders and they have official standing," Mr Iemma said.

"Well that standing ought to be removed.

"He has authority from this accreditation, this sanction that he's given, and it ought to be removed."

Mr Iemma rejected the sheik's claim he had been taken out of context and misunderstood.

"I don't accept that from watching him in action," he said.

"What I find him very clearly saying 'jihad' (this) meant 'rise up, commit an act of violence, a suicide act, to kill others'."

Mr Iemma said the community needed to continue supporting moderate Muslims to stand up to extremists such as Sheik Feiz.

- AAPThat last statement of Mr Iemma, that the Australian islamic "community needed to continue supporting moderate Muslims to stand up to extremists such as Sheik Feiz", is a bit confusing. Does he mean a moderate Muslim such as that other famous (notorious) Australian islamic religious leader 'mufti Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali'?

Bharatvarsh · 01-21-2007, 02:15 AM

QUOTEThree killed in southern ThailandÂ
Â
Suspected Islamic militants have beheaded a Buddhist man and shot dead two others in southern Thailand.
A man and wife were found dead at the entrance of a rubber plantation in Yala province - the man had been shot and then decapitated, police said.

A handwritten note was found saying "We will kill all Thai Buddhists." Another man was shot dead in a separate attack.

Almost 2,000 have died in three years of violence in three southern provinces with majority Muslim populations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pa...260245.stm

Husky · (This post was last modified: 01-21-2007, 06:34 AM by Husky.)

Very funny, Sheik Alhilali:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/070111/2/121be.html
QUOTENSW premier Morris Iemma has challenged controversial Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali to stand in the March 24 elections, saying people won't vote "for lunacy".

Earlier media reports indicated Sheik Alhilali would stand for Mr Iemma's Lakemba electorate in Sydney's south-west.

Sheik Alhilali's spokesman Keysar Trad said that the mufti will not stand but the Muslim community and the cleric will consider backing Muslim candidates for Sydney's south-western seats of Lakemba, Bankstown and Auburn.
He said politicians need to stop singling out Muslims when incidents including violence and racial tensions arise in Sydney.

"We need to make sure that we are taken seriously ... getting them to stop picking on us every time there's an issue but also in terms of acknowledging that there are strong (Muslim) candidates who are capable of serving this nation in (the) political arena," Mr Trad told ABC radio.

But Mr Iemma wants to challenge Sheik Alhilali head-on, saying the mufti will lose in a debate on Australian values.

"Stand yourself, and if he does I would welcome the challenge of contrasting my values with his," Mr Iemma told ABC radio.

"For example, I love Australia and its people and he doesn't.

"I believe that a great majority of people in my electorate won't be voting for lunacy, no matter who's putting it forward."

Naresh · 01-21-2007, 11:08 PM

[center]Dutch top diplomat says Muslims lack tolerance 'gene' <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' />[/center]

[center]Dutch ministry says FM was misinterpreted, stresses majority of Muslims in Netherlands are tolerant.[/center]

BRASILIA - Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot says Muslims lack a tolerance "gene," in an interview with the Brazilian daily Correio Braziliense.

"We always have been a tolerant country, and we still are. You have to look at the facts: 10 percent of our population comes from Muslim countries. They have gone on to become Dutch citizens, but they have different genes from ours. They are less tolerant," Bot said in the interview published Wednesday.

"The murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh teach us a lesson: ... the million Muslims who live in Holland should become truly Dutch," Bot said in the interview held Tuesday as he paid a visit to Brazil's capital.

"We underestimated this necessity precisely because we are a tolerant nation," Bot added, noting that "some immigrants have not adapted automatically to our model."

On the possibility of Turkey joining the European Union, Bot said that "for the Dutch" the Turkish people have a different culture, could take our jobs and not integrate in a satisfactory way."

"The religious issue may have some weight but in and of itself has not been a decisive factor in my country," he said. "The problem is that the Turks who settled in the Netherlands in the 60s were the poorest in their country of origin ... a bit underdeveloped and poorly educated.

"That (in the Netherlands) created a certain image of Turkey. People are frightened that 80 million people like that could join the EU," he said.

Dutch ministry says FM was misinterpreted

However, the Dutch foreign ministry Thursday denied that Foreign Minister Bernard Bot had accused Muslims of lacking a tolerance gene, saying he had been misinterpreted.

"When talking about integration problems in the Netherlands the minister said there was a small group of extremist Muslims that seem to have 'intolerance in their genes' while mimicking quotation marks with his hands as he spoke," Bot's spokesman Herman van Gelderen said in The Hague.

Bot's spokesman said: "The minister stressed that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands is tolerant and wants to co-exist peacefully but said there is a small minority of extremists with other views."

Van Gelderen added that Bot also said he was in favour of Turkey joining the European Union if they meet certain conditions.

"The comments he made about the Turkish having a different culture were to illustrate some of the fears the population of the Netherlands and other EU countries have when thinking about Turkey joining the EU," Van Gelderen added.

"Bot has a positive attitude towards Turkish accession. He trusts that it will happen but it could be a process of years," the spokesman said.

Cheers <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' />

Bharatvarsh · 01-22-2007, 08:43 PM

My comments in blue:
QUOTEFacing the Islamist Menace
Christopher Hitchens

Mark Steynâs new book is a welcome wake-up call.

In the prologue to his new book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Mark Steyn sarcastically alludes to two people whom, in different ways, I know well. The first is novelist Martin Amis, ridiculed by Steyn for worrying about environmental apocalypse when the threat to civilization is obviously Islamism; the second is Jack Straw, formerly Tony Blairâs foreign secretary, mocked for the soft and conciliatory line he took over the affair of the Danish cartoons. The dazzling fiction writer and the pedestrian social-democratic politician are for Steyn dual exemplars of his bookâs main concern: the general apathy and surrender of the West in the face of a determined assault from a religious ideology, or an ideological religion, afflicted by no sickly doubt about what it wants or by any scruples about how to get it.

I might quibble about Steynâs assessmentâAmis has written brilliantly about Mohammed Attaâs death cult, for example, while Jack Straw made one of the best presentations to the UN of the case for liberating Iraq. But itâs more useful to point out two things that have happened between the writing of this admirably tough-minded book and its publication. Jack Straw, now the leader of the House of Commons, made a speech in his northern English constituency in October, in which he said that he could no longer tolerate Muslim women who came to his office wearing veils. The speech catalyzed a long-postponed debate not just on the veil but on the refusal of assimilation that it symbolizes. It seems to have swung the Labour Party into a much firmer position against what I call one-way multiculturalism. Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed the shift with a December speech emphasizing the âdutyâ of immigrants to assimilate to British values. And Martin Amis, speaking to the London Times, had this to say:

Thereâs a definite urgeâdonât you have it?âto say, âThe Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.â What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportationâfurther down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like theyâre from the Middle East or from Pakistan. . . . Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. . . . They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugsâwell, theyâve got to stop their children killing people.
I know both of these men to be profoundly humanistic and open-minded. Straw has defended the rights of immigrants all his life and loyally represents a constituency with a large Asian population. Amis has rebuked me several times in print for supporting the intervention in Iraq, the casualties of which have become horrifying to him. Even five years ago, it would have been unthinkable to picture either man making critical comments about Islamic dress, let alone using terms such as âdeportation.â Mark Steynâs book is essentially a challenge to the bien-pensants among us: an insistence that we recognize an extraordinary threat and thus the possible need for extraordinary responses. He need not pose as if he were the only one with the courage to think in this way.

The most alarming sentences that I have read in a long time came from the pen of my fellow atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, at the end of a September Los Angeles Times column upbraiding American liberals for their masochistic attitude toward Islamist totalitarianism. Harris concluded:

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization [italics mine].
As Martin Amis said in the essay that prompted Steynâs contempt: âWhat is one to do with thoughts like these?â How does one respond, in other words, when an enemy challenges not just your cherished values but additionally forces you to examine the very assumptions that have heretofore seemed to underpin those values?

Two things, in my experience, disable many liberals at the onset of this conversation. First, they cannot shake their subliminal identification of the Muslim religion with the wretched of the earth: the black- and brown-skinned denizens of what we once called the âThird World.â You can see this identification in the way that the Palestinians (about 20 percent of whom were Christian until their numbers began to decline) have become an âIslamicâ cause and in the amazing ignorance that most leftists display about India, a multiethnic secular democracy under attack from al-Qaida and its surrogates long before the United States was. And you can see it, too, in the stupid neologism âIslamophobia,â which aims to promote criticism of Islam to the gallery of special offenses associated with racism.

The second liberal disability concerns numbers. Any emphasis on the relative birthrates of Muslim and non-Muslim populations falls on the liberal ear like an echo of eugenics. It also upsets one of the most valued achievements of the liberal consensus: the right if not indeed the duty to limit family size to (at most) two children. It was all very well, from this fatuously self-satisfied perspective, for Paul Ehrlich to warn about the human âpopulation bombâ as a whole, just as it is all very well for some âGreenâ forces to take a neo-Malthusian attitude toward human reproduction in general. But in the liberal mind, to concentrate on the fertility of any one group is to flirt with Nuremberg laws. The same goes for âracial profiling,â even when itâs directed at the adherents of an often ideological religion rather than an ethnic group. The Islamists, meanwhile, have staked everything on fecundity.

Mark Steyn believes that demography is destiny, and he makes an immensely convincing case. He stations himself at the intersection of two curves. The downward one is the population of developed Europe and Japan, which has slipped or is slipping below what demographers call âreplacement,â rapidly producing a situation where the old will far outnumber the young. The upward curve, or curves, represent the much higher birthrate in the Islamic world and among Muslim immigrants to Western societies. Anticipating Harris in a way, Steyn writes:

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you canât buck demographyâexcept through civil war. The Serbs figured that outâas other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you canât outbreed the enemy, cull âem. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosniaâs demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.
This is a highly reductionist view of the origin and nature of the Bosnian warâit would not account, for example, for Croatian irredentism. But paranoia about population did mutate into Serbian xenophobia and fascism, and a similar consciousness does animate movements like the British National Party and Le Penâs Front Nationale. (Demographic considerations do not appear to explain the continued addiction of these and similar parties to anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.)

Nor can there be much doubt that the awareness of demography as a potential weapon originates with the Islamists themselves. Anybody who, like me, has publicly criticized Islamism gets used to the accusation that he has âinsulted a billion Muslims.â A vague but definite threat underlies this absurd charge, and in parts of Europe it already intimidates politicians. Gilles Kepel, the French scholar of Islam, once told me that when he lectures in North Africa his listeners often ask how many Muslims live in France. If he replies that he believes the official figures to be mostly correct, scornful laughter erupts. The true figure, his listeners say, is much higher. France is on its way to becoming part of the dar-al-Islam. It is leaving the dar-al-Harb (âHouse of Warâ), but without a fight. Steyn has no difficulty producing equally minatory public statements from Islamist triumphalists. And, because his argument is exponential, it creates an impression of something unstoppable.

Yet Steyn makes the same mistake as did the late Oriana Fallaci: considering European Muslim populations as one. Islam is as fissile as any other religion (as Iraq reminds us). Little binds a Somali to a Turk or an Iranian or an Algerian, and considerable friction exists among immigrant Muslim groups in many European countries. [they may have their differences but they are united in their hatred for the kaffir, Bangladesh is a perfect example, separated from Pakistan because of discrimination but today it is on the way to becoming a full fledged Islamic state and is purging the minority population] Moreover, many Muslims actually have come to Europe for the advertised purposesâseeking asylum and to build a better life. A young Afghan man, murdered in the assault on the London subway system in July 2005, had fled to England from the Taliban, which had murdered most of his family. Muslim women often demand the protection of the authorities against forced marriage and other cruelties. These are all points of difference, and also of possible resistance to Euro-sharia.

The main problem in Europe in this context is that many deracinated young Muslim men, inflamed by Internet propaganda from Chechnya or Iraq and aware of their own distance from âthe struggle,â now regard the jihadist version of their religion as the âauthenticâ one. Compounding the problem, Europeâs multicultural authorities, many of its welfare agencies, and many of its churches treat the most militant Muslims as the minorityâs ârealâ spokesmen. As Kenan Malik and others have pointed out in the case of Britain, this mind-set cuts the ground from under the feet of secular Muslims, encouraging the sensation that many in the non-Muslim Establishment have a kind of death wish.

Steyn cannot seem to make up his mind about the defense of secularism in this struggle. He regards Christianity as a bulwark of civilization and a possible insurance against Islamism. But he cannot resist pointing out that most of the Christian churches have collapsed into compromise: choosing to speak of Muslims as another âfaith community,â agreeing with them on the need for confessional-based schooling, and reserving their real condemnation for American policies in the war against terrorism.

This is not to deny Steynâs salient point that demography and cultural masochism, especially in combination, are handing a bloodless victory to the forces of Islamization. His gift for the illustrative anecdote and the revealing quotation is evident, and if more people have woken up to the Islamist menace since he began writing about it, then the credit is partly his. Muslims in one part of England demand the demolition of an ancient statue of a wild boar, and in another part of England make plots to blow up airports, buses, and subway trains. The two threats are not identical. But they are connected, and Steyn attempts to tease out the filiations with the saving tactic of wit.

I still thinkâor should I say hope?âthat the sheer operatic insanity of September 11 set back the Islamist project of a âsoftâ conquest of host countries, Muslim countries included. Up until 9/11, the Talibanization of Pakistanâincluding the placement of al-Qaida sympathizers within its nuclear programâproceeded fairly smoothly. Official Pakistani support for Muslim gangsters operating in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India went relatively unpunished. Saudi funds discreetly advanced the Wahhabist program, through madrassa-building and a network of Islamic banking, across the globe. In the West, Muslim demands for greater recognition and special treatment had become an accepted part of the politically correct agenda. Some denounced me as cynical for saying at the time that Osama bin Laden had done us a favor by disclosing the nature and urgency of the Islamist threat, but I still think I was right. Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have had to trim their sails a bit. The Taliban will at least never be able to retake power by stealth or as a result of our inattention. Millions have become aware of the dangerâincluding millions of Shiâa Muslims who now see the ideology of bin Laden and Zarqawi as a menace to their survival. Groups and cells that might have gotten away with murder have wound up unmasked and shut down, from Berlin to Casablanca.

Of course, these have not been the only consequences of September 11 and its aftermath. Islamist suicide-terrorism has mutated into new shapes and adopted fresh grievances as a result of the mobilization against it. Liberalism has found even more convoluted means of blaming itself for the attack upon it. But at least the long period of somnambulism is over, and the opportunity now exists for antibodies to form against the infection.

Steyn ends his book with a somewhat slapdash ten-point program for resistance to Islamism, which includes offhand one-line items such as âEnd the Iranian regimeâ and more elaborate proposals to get rid of the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Authority, and (for some reason) NATO. His tenth point (âStrike militarily when the opportunity presents itselfâ) is barely even a makeweight to bring the figure up to ten.

Steyn is much more definite about the cultural side of his argument, in other words, than about the counterterrorist dimension. If I wanted to sharpen both prongs of his thesis, I would also propose the following:

1. An end to one-way multiculturalism and to the cultural masochism that goes with it. The Koran does not mandate the wearing of veils or genital mutilation, and until recently only those who apostasized from Islam faced the threat of punishment by death. [Hitchen's is clearly mistaken on 2 of the 3 counts, the prophet himself put to death people who apostised and the veil is mandatory as Taslima has shown in her recent article, don't know about female genital mutilation] Now, though, all manner of antisocial practices find themselves validated in the name of religion, and mullahs have begun to issue threats even against non-Muslims for criticism of Islam. This creeping Islamism must cease at once, and those responsible must feel the full weight of the law. Meanwhile, we should insist on reciprocity at all times. We should not allow a single Saudi dollar to pay for propaganda within the U.S., for example, until Saudi Arabia also permits Jewish and Christian and secular practices. No Wahhabi-printed Korans anywhere in our prison system. No Salafist imams in our armed forces.

2. A strong, open alliance with India on all fronts, from the military to the political and economic, backed by an extensive cultural exchange program, to demonstrate solidarity with the other great multiethnic democracy under attack from Muslim fascism. A hugely enlarged quota for qualified Indian immigrants and a reduction in quotas from Pakistan and other nations where fundamentalism dominates.

3. A similarly forward approach to Nigeria, SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe, and the other countries of Western Africa that are under attack by jihadists and are also the location of vast potential oil reserves, whose proper development could help emancipate the local populations from poverty and ourselves from dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

4. A declaration at the UN of our solidarity with the right of the Kurdish people of Iraq and elsewhere to self-determination as well as a further declaration by Congress that in no circumstance will Muslim forces who have fought on our side, from the Kurds to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, find themselves friendless, unarmed, or abandoned. Partition in Iraq would be defeat under another name (and as with past partitions, would lead to yet further partitions and micro-wars over these very subdivisions). But if it has to come, we cannot even consider abandoning the one part of the country that did seize the opportunity of modernization, development, and democracy.

5. Energetic support for all the opposition forces in Iran and in the Iranian diaspora. A public offer from the United States, disseminated widely in the Persian language, of help for a reformed Iran on all matters, including peaceful nuclear energy, and of assistance in protecting Iran from the catastrophic earthquake that seismologists predict in its immediate future. Millions of lives might be lost in a few moments, and we would also have to worry about the fate of secret underground nuclear facilities. When a quake leveled the Iranian city of Bam three years ago, the performance of American rescue teams was so impressive that their popularity embarrassed the regime. Iranâs neighbors would need to pay attention, too: a crisis in Iranâs nuclear underground facilitiesâan Iranian Chernobylâwould not be an internal affair. These concerns might help shift the currently ossified terms of the argument and put us again on the side of an internal reform movement within Iran and its large and talented diaspora.

6. Unconditional solidarity, backed with force and the relevant UN resolutions, with an independent and multi-confessional Lebanon.

7. A commitment to buy Afghanistanâs opium crop and to keep the profits out of the hands of the warlords and Talibanists, until such time as the countryâs agricultureâ especially its once-famous vinesâhas been replanted and restored. We can use the product in the interim for the manufacture of much-needed analgesics for our own market and apply the profits to the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

8. We should, of course, be scrupulous on principle about stirring up interethnic tensions. But we should remind those states that are less scrupulousâIran, Pakistan, and Syria swiftly come to mindâthat we know that they, too, have restless minorities and that they should not make trouble in Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Iraq without bearing this in mind. Some years ago, the Pakistani government announced that it would break the international embargo on the unrecognized and illegal Turkish separatist state in Cyprus and would appoint an ambassador to it, out of âIslamic solidarity.â Cyprus is a small democracy with no armed forces to speak of, but its thenâforeign minister told me the following story. He sought a meeting with the Pakistani authorities and told them privately that if they recognized the breakaway Turkish colony, his government would immediately supply funds and arms to one of the secessionist movementsâsuch as the Baluchisâwithin Pakistan itself. Pakistan never appointed an ambassador to Turkish Cyprus.

When I read Sam Harrisâs irresponsible remark that only fascists seemed to have the right line, I murmured to myself: âNot while Iâm alive, they wonât.â Nor do I wish to concede that Serbo-fascist ethnic cleansing can appear more rational in retrospect than it did at the time. The Islamist threat itself may be crude, but this is an intricate cultural and political challenge that will absorb all of our energies for the rest of our lives: we are all responsible for doing our utmost as citizens as well as for demanding more imagination from our leaders.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_ur...steyn.html

01-23-2007, 01:45 AM

Commentary: Hindus can attest to Muslims cruelty to force conversionQUOTEBy K.S.N. Rao

There has been in these pages a controversy concerning Islam and other religions. Adverting, however, specifically to Saad Ahmad's letter (Sept. 6), wherein he impugns papal remarks and asserts, "Islam's invitation to mankind is primarily on rational grounds and not through force," I must say nothing can be farther from truth â certainly from the point of view of India's experience.

With the advent of Islamic intrusion in the beginning of the seventh century, the glorious period of ancient India ends, and with it, the British author Arthur Basham appropriately closes the pages of his book The Wonder That was India. The medieval period of India's history, the Islamic period, is the darkest and bloodiest period with its lurid pages marked by mass murders of Hindus and other Kafirs, as the Muslim conquerors contemptuously called them.

Muslims were attracted first by ancient India's fabulous wealth and, even more strongly, by their religious zeal to damage and destroy the temples of the Hindus. By one account, they destroyed at least 20,000 temples. Even today many of the damaged temples may be seen across the length and breadth of India. Just a few examples: Sultan Mahamud of Ghazni "vowed to wage a holy war against the infidels of India" and invaded it seventeen times from 1000 to 1026 and sacked and plundered and damaged the famous temple of Somnath in Gujarat. Ala-ud-din of Khalji plundered the temples in the southern part of India. Aurangzebe, the most bigoted of the most bigoted anywhere in the world, built Jam-I-Masjid in the center of the holy city of Mathura.

As for their cruelty, there was no end. Not only did they ravage or raze to the ground some temples, but also they even erected in Delhi a monument, still standing today, with an inscription on it, which says, from how many temples its materials had been gathered. What is even more unforgivable is what Muslims did to some of the oldest and most sacred temples of Hinduism in Kashi (Benares), Ayodhya, and Mathura. They built a dome of rock adjoining the holy shrine in each place leaving only a narrow footpath on the side for pilgrims to approach the shrine. One wonders what that divine logic is that impels them to choose and establish a place as their own sacred in exactly the same place where another and much older religion had been holding it holy a thousand and more years even before the birth of Islam. How could a place in distant India, a thousand and more miles away from Mecca, become holy for them too? If anyone wants a modern example of this Islamic intolerance, they need only to look at what happened to the colossal Buddha statue in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan in March of 2001.

As for force and cruelty remorselessly used by the Muslim conquerors, here are some examples. Almost all of them (with the exception of Akbar) offered Zimma contract, which said you either become a Muslim or pay the tax called Jizya. Some of the Muslim kings did not offer even that choice. It was Islam or death. Thus, famous Sikh Gurus â Guru Nanak, Guru Arjun, and Guru Teg Bahadur â were tortured and executed. Hindu Brahmins were put to death for publicly practicing their religion. The Bahamni King Ahmad Shah massacred 20,000 people and celebrated a feast. King Babur records in his Memoirs an instance of the wholesale butchery of Hindu prisoners in front of his royal pavilion. Prithvi Raj, a Hindu prince who lost the battle, was beheaded on the battlefield. Kashmir was conquered in the 14th century, and Hindu conversion followed. The most celebrated Kashmiri, Jawaharlal Nehru, mentions in his writings how people in the 19th century desired to return to their ancestors' religion. So the Hindu king asked the Pandits (Brahmins) to reconvert them, but the Brahmins refused because there was no mechanism by which they could do that. Hinduism honestly believes that all religions are equally valid paths to the same Supreme Being, and, therefore, no one can become a Hindu except be born one.

These are some of the things that refute the claim that Islam does not force but seeks conversion through understanding and rationality. For other things, I recommend a reading of Muslim writer Ibn Warraq's book Why I am Not a Muslim (Prometheus Books, 1995).

K.S.N. Rao is an Oshkosh resident

Bharatvarsh · 01-23-2007, 04:40 AM

QUOTEThey built a dome of rock adjoining the holy shrine in each place leaving only a narrow footpath on the side for pilgrims to approach the shrine.
Wrong they built these mosques over existing Hindu mandirs after demolishing them, it was Hindus who later constructed new mandirs adjacent to these mosques (atleast the one at Kashi) because they were closest to the original site of the mandir.
QUOTEThus, famous Sikh Gurus â Guru Nanak, Guru Arjun, and Guru Teg Bahadur â were tortured and executed.
Only Guru Arjun and Guru Teg Bahadur faced torture and execution not Guru Nanak.
QUOTESo the Hindu king asked the Pandits (Brahmins) to reconvert them, but the Brahmins refused because there was no mechanism by which they could do that. Hinduism honestly believes that all religions are equally valid paths to the same Supreme Being, and, therefore, no one can become a Hindu except be born one. 
So far no primary sources for the claim that Pandits refused shuddhi, nextly Hinduism only believes that those who practice dharma will achieve moksha not ideologies founded upon hate, also anyone can become a follower of Sanatana Dharma and does not necessarily need to born into a Hindu family just like anyone can become a dharma drohi once he decides to follow ideologies like communism.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 01-23-2007, 07:47 AM by Husky.)

Post 53 (Bharatvarsh):
QUOTE1. An end to one-way multiculturalism and to the cultural masochism that goes with it. The Koran does not mandate the wearing of veils or genital mutilation, and until recently only those who apostasized from Islam faced the threat of punishment by death. [Hitchen's is clearly mistaken on 2 of the 3 counts, the prophet himself put to death people who apostised and the veil is mandatory as Taslima has shown in her recent article, don't know about female genital mutilation]A while back, I was looking up whether there was any substantiation for the Christian Council of Macon mentioned in the What They Don't Tell You about Christianity site. What I found had more than just information on the 6th century christian bishops who voted on whether women are human in christianity.

Anyway, on the same page, I found the following on Islam and female genital mutilation:
http://atheiststation.org/mpc/docs/Site/...0View.html
QUOTE"Reduce, but do not destroy. Cut slightly, without exaggeration, because it is more pleasant for your husbands."
Mohammed's words to Muslim women, in response to questions about the Muslim law regarding female circumcision. Its goal is to suppress sexual desire and destroy sexual pleasure for women.So you see, it all comes from mohammed himself: the mouthpiece of the ever-invisible, ever-unknowable Allah.
And that's why today there's still Genital mutilation of women in Iraq's Kurdistan and many other islamic countries. Not just in islamic parts of Africa where it has been documented but also among muslim in the Middle-East:
QUOTEWith these activities in Iraqi Kurdistan, that were conducted by a courageous group of Kurds â both men and women â it is now known and proofed that FGM is not solely an African problem.

The first-mentioned web page ( http://atheiststation.org/mpc/docs/Site/...0View.html ), in wanting to be equally dismissive of all religions in general, states the following about Confucius:
QUOTE"One hundred women are not worth a single testicle."
From the Confucian Marriage Manual
Confucius (551-479 BCE)Now there's a big difference between this on one hand, and Allah's right-hand-man mohammed pronouncing all of his Pink Unicorn's commands and the 'divinely inspired' christian councils determining the (non-)humanity of women.
The difference is simple: Confucius does not claim any divine mandate, he's not speaking for any God, nor is he 'Divinely guided' by any God.
He was a philosopher-statesman, who was not aiming to create a religion, but only trying to set some guidelines for Chinese society. Among the many sensible things he suggested and observed, he, being very human and therefore flawed, stated something obviously ridiculous, comparing testicles with a hundred women. And as any Confucian can tell you, they are free to set aside and ignore any suggestions offered by Confucius, particularly any incorrect or irrational ones.

QUOTEand until recently only those who apostasized from Islam faced the threat of punishment by deathI think Hitchens agrees with you that islam has always murdered/tried to murder apostates, but what he appears to be saying (I find the sentence confusing myself) is that islam has now expanded this to murdering non-(ex-)muslims - any who are critical of the terrorist religion.
Even this is not strictly true. Once again, mohammed and his invented religion being the example: he's the one to command death or conversion of all unbelievers (non-muslims). Now, that means even unbelievers who don't say anything about islam, good or bad, are to be converted or killed.
Since Islam doesn't tolerate criticism at all (nor did christianity when it was in power, and if it were to regain power today it will slowly go back to like how it was in the Dark Ages), this is all the more the case with those critical of Islam.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 01-23-2007, 08:51 AM by Husky.)

http://au.news.yahoo.com/070123/2/125vm.html
QUOTEAustralia 'to train imams locally'
Development of expertise in Islamic studies will enable Australia to produce its own trained imams, the head of the new national Centre of Islamic studies says.

Melbourne University professor Abdullah Seed, who trained at the conservative Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, will run the federally funded centre at three universities in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

Professor Seed, who says he strongly favours the more moderate mainstream views of Islam, said the $8 million school would work to promote moderate, mainstream views of Islam.

"Australia has a fairly significant Muslim community here. Our closest neighbour, Indonesia, is the largest Muslim country," Professor Seed told ABC radio.

"Australia is engaged with Muslims around the world so we desperately need to develop that sort of expertise in Australia and of course Muslim community needs could be met through such a centre."

He said the expectation of imams in Australia was different to the expectations placed on imams in an average Muslim majority country.

"I don't think the primary objective of the centre is to train home-grown imams as such, although it will be a by-product of the centre," he said.

Muslim and non-Muslim students would be welcome to complete the program, he said.

"Students of Muslim background who might want to become community leaders, religious leaders, imams or whatever, they also could join the program," he said.

Those students might require training at a community level before taking on leadership positions, he said.Australia ought to nip this in the bud. Within a few years, the proposed school will be a centre of hate and terrorist activity. Eventually they might grow into an Australian kind aligarh muslim university or the organisational centre for their local type of SIMI activists.
Guess one can't be wise for other people.

01-24-2007, 01:51 AM

QUOTEAustralia 'to train imams locally'
Biggest blunder and stupidity of highest order. In place they should put restriction on immigration.
They should learn from UK and France.

01-24-2007, 01:57 AM

Confucius or Manu or Socrates never sad they have divine power or God told them something which they called religion.

QUOTESince Islam doesn't tolerate criticism at all (nor did christianity when it was in power, and if it were to regain power today it will slowly go back to like how it was in the Dark Ages), this is all the more the case with those critical of Islam.
Islam is going through turning point, either they change, modernize or pack.

Bharatvarsh · 01-24-2007, 02:29 AM

QUOTEI think Hitchens agrees with you that islam has always murdered/tried to murder apostates
Yes I realized after you pointed it out that I was mistaken, I read it as the opposite of what he is trying to say in a hurry which is why I commented.

Login




Remember me Lost Password?