Islamism - 4

[Guest]

List of thing which are un-islamic
1) using credit card
2) interest account
3) TV
4) Cinema
5) Photo
6) Photo/picture of PBUH
7) DNA test
8) Abortion
9) Medical Insurance

please add if you know more.

[Sunder]

(*) CHESS. (Playing chess is equivalent to washing your hands with pig's blood.)
(*) Any music (as per Taliban)
(*) Shaving the beard (as per taliban.)
(*) Valentines day.
(*) Any entertainment that's unislamic.

[Guest]

I think working for a living is unislamic so long as there are kafirs/non-believers whose wealth can be confiscated/looted or there is oil under your soil. Also so long as there are people of the book paying jirza, it is unislamic to even consider an honest day's work.

[Guest]

it is also unislamic to not kill non muslims.

[Guest]

Add to the unislamic list:
Not marrying and not having concubines, (if you have concubines it is ok) and
family planning

[Guest]

EDITORIAL: <b>Extremism of the mosque </b> - Daily times
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->..........
The jihad in which Pakistan participated in the 1980s brought it a lot of dollars that remained unaccounted for. It also brought in an alien version of Islam that is equally unaccounted. Pakistani society was forced to think that only stringency of faith could set things right in the country. What actually resulted from this stringency was extremism that today radiates not only from the khateebs but also from the TV channels that sell religion with an eye to the market. Money came with this hard brand of Arab Islam, symbolised originally by Islamabad’s International Islamic University funded by Saudi Arabia

..........
The connection went to the extremist chief cleric of Saudi Arabia, the blind and now <b>late Sheikh Bin Baz, who thought that our planetary system was geocentric and that the earth was flat.</b>  <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> Last year a praising report printed in a Lahore-based newspaper stated that the famous Madina Islamic University, which began with Bin Baz as its first chancellor, had welcomed 6,000 foreign students who formed almost 80 percent of the total student population. It gave generous scholarships plus an air ticket back home during vacations to all foreigners. Pakistani students came from Lahore, Faisalabad, Turbat, Mamo Kanjan, Karachi, Kasur, Gujranwala, Peshawar, Nowshehra, Haripur, Gilgit and Mekran. There used to be 300 Pakistanis in the university but now there were less than 200. There was a report that mosques in Dipalpur in Punjab were preaching the khutbas of Sheikh Bin Baz.

The Wahhabi creed of Saudi Arabia was once considered a <b>khariji phenomenon </b>that had pushed Islam to an extreme posture. It was based on xenophobia and an original version of the jahiliyya creed as explained by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, the founder of extremist Islam in Najd. He looked at Muslims not following his strict creed as reverters to the condition of pre-Islamic days and held them to be not erring Muslims but apostates who should be violently stopped. This idea was revived by Syed Qutb in the 1930s and today forms the central pillar of the creed of Osama bin Laden and Aiman al Zawahiri. The irony is that the House of Ibn Saud is straining to exorcise the genii of extremist faith today but the clerics there are convinced that extremism is the right way to go.
................
<b>Extremism of the mosque in Pakistan goes in tandem with the extremism of the madrassa,</b> which President Musharraf has not been able to tame. The rejectionism that informs the mind of the khateeb comes from the seminary. President Musharraf’s political opponents in the MMA and the ARD are bound to ignore this phenomenon simply because his strategy has strengthened the clergy and weakened the political mainstream. *<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

I had read somewhere that 2D images are fine but 3D images are not.

Dont laugh, making jokes is haraam.

Added later : Found it in google..

http://islamtoday.com/showme2.cfm?cat_id...cat_id=811

I think the guy is serious.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1247400.ece

Norway's most controversial refugee, Mullah Krekar, told an Oslo newspaper on Monday that <b>there's a war going on between "the West" and Islam. He said  he's sure that Islam will win,</b> and he also had praise for suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

"We're the ones who will change you," Krekar told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in his first interview since an uproar broke out over cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims.

<b>"Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes," Krekar said. "Every western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same  countries are producing 3.5 children.</b></span>

"By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim."

<b>He claimed that "our way of thinking... will prove more powerful than yours." He loosely defined "western thinking" as formed by the values held by leaders of western or non-islamic nations. Its "materialism, egoism and wildness" has altered Christianity, he claimed.</b>

Krekar, who's been supported by the Norwegian government since arriving as a refugee from northern Iraq in the early 1990s, now faces deportation after violating the terms of his refugee status and being deemed a threat to national security.

Krekar told Dagbladet that he favours Islamic rule where political and
religious leaders are one and the same. One such leader he respects, he
said, is Osama bin Laden.

<b>"Osama bin Laden is a good person,"</b> Krekar said. He claimed Osama bin Laden is considered a terrorist simply because he lacks his own state.

"Those who say Osama bin Laden is a terrorist are themselves killing our women and children," Krekar said.

Attempts to "spread democracy," he claimed, are merely a ruse to wage war against Islam, adding that "the West destroyed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan" because "it feared the Islamic state."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Bharatvarsh]

Oriana Fallaci asks: Is Muslim immigration to Europe a conspiracy?

By BRENDAN BERNHARD
Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - 8:00 pm

In The Force of Reason, the controversial Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci illuminates one of the central enigmas of our time. How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?

How did Islam go from being a virtual non-factor to a religion that threatens the preeminence of Christianity on the Continent? How could the most popular name for a baby boy in Brussels possibly be Mohammed? Can it really be true that Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 people? That Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close to having Muslim majorities? How was Europe, which was saved by the U.S. in world wars I and II, and whose Muslim Bosnians were rescued by the U.S. as recently as 1999, transformed into a place in which, as Fallaci puts it, “if I hate Americans I go to Heaven and if I hate Muslims I go to Hell?”

In attempting to answer these questions, the author, who is stricken with cancer and has been hounded by death threats and charges of “Islamophobia” (she is due to go on trial in France this June), has combined history with snatches of riveting firsthand reportage into a form that reads like a real-life conspiracy thriller.

If The Force of Reason sells a lot of copies, which it almost certainly will (800,000 were sold in Italy alone, and the book is in the top 100 on Amazon ), it will be not only because of the heat generated by her topic, but also because Fallaci speaks for the ordinary reader. There is no one she despises more than the intellectual “cicadas,” as she calls them — “You see them every day on television; you read them every day in the newspapers” — who deny they are in the midst of a cultural, political and existential war with Islam, of which terrorism is the flashiest, but ultimately least important component. Nonetheless, to give the reader a taste of what Muslim conquest can be like, in her first chapter, Fallaci provides a brief tour of the religion’s bloodiest imperial episodes and later does an amusing job of debunking some of its more exaggerated claims to cultural and scientific greatness.

The book is also animated by a world-class journalist’s dismay that she could have missed the story of her lifetime for as long as she did. In the 1960s and ’70s, when she was a Vietnam War correspondent and a legendarily ferocious interviewer — going mano a mano with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat, Fallaci was simply too preoccupied with the events of the moment to notice that an entirely different narrative was rapidly taking shape — namely, the transformation of the West. There were clues, certainly. As when, in 1972, she interviewed the Palestinian terrorist George Habash, who told her (while a bodyguard aimed a submachine gun at her head) that the Palestinian problem was about far more than Israel. The Arab goal, Habash declared, was to wage war “against Europe and America” and to ensure that henceforth “there would be no peace for the West.” The Arabs, he informed her, would “advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.”

Fallaci thought he was referring simply to terrorism. Only later did she realize that he “also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens … In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism.” It is a low-level but deadly war that extends across the planet, as any newspaper reader can see.

Fallaci is not the first person to ponder the rapidity of the ongoing Muslim transformation of Europe. As the English travel writer Jonathan Raban wrote in Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth (1979), in the mid-1970s Arabs seemed to arrive in London almost overnight. “One day Arabs were a remote people … camping out in tents with camels … the next, they were neighbors.” On the streets of West London appeared black-clad women adorned with beaked masks that made them look “like hooded falcons.” Dressed for the desert (and walking precisely four steps ahead of the women), Arab men bestrode the sidewalks “like a crew of escaped film extras, their headdresses aswirl on the wind of exhaust fumes.”

Writers far better acquainted with the Muslim world than Raban have been equally perplexed. In 1995, the late American novelist Paul Bowles, a longtime resident of Tangier, told me that he could not understand why the French had allowed millions of North African Muslims into their country. Bowles had chosen to live among Muslims for most of his life, yet he obviously considered it highly unlikely that so many of them could be successfully integrated into a modern, secular European state.

Perhaps Bowles would have been interested in this passage from Fallaci’s book: “In 1974 [Algerian President] Boumedienne, the man who ousted Ben Bella three years after Algerian independence, spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations. And without circumlocutions he said: ‘One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.’ ”

Such a bald statement of purpose by a nation’s president before an international forum seems incredible. Yet even in British journalist Adam LeBor’s A Heart Turned East (1997), a work of profound, almost supine sympathy for the plight of Muslim immigrants in the West, a London-based mullah is quoted as saying, “We cannot conquer these people with tanks and troops, so we have got to overcome them by force of numbers.” In fact, such remarks are commonplace. Just this week, Mullah Krekar, a Muslim supremacist living in Oslo, informed the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Muslims would change Norway, not the other way around. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes,” he said. “By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim.”

In other words, Europe will be conquered by being turned into “Eurabia,” which is what Fallaci believes it is well on the way to becoming. Leaning heavily on the researches of Bat Ye’or, author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Fallaci recounts in fascinating detail the actual origin of the word “Eurabia,” which has now entered the popular lexicon. Its first known use, it turns out, was in the mid-1970s, when a journal of that name was printed in Paris (naturally), written in French (naturally), and edited by one Lucien Bitterlin, then president of the Association of Franco-Arab Solidarity and currently the Chairman of the French-Syrian Friendship Association. Eurabia (price, five francs) was jointly published by Middle East International (London), France-Pays Arabes (Paris), the Groupe d’Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva) and the European Coordinating Committee of the Associations for Friendship with the Arab World, which Fallaci describes as an arm of what was then the European Economic Community, now the European Union. These entities, Fallaci says, not mincing her words, were the official perpetrators “of the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created,” and Eurabia was their house organ.

Briefly put, the alleged plot was an arrangement between European and Arab governments according to which the Europeans, still reeling from the first acts of PLO terrorism and eager for precious Arabian oil made significantly more precious by the 1973 OPEC crisis, agreed to accept Arab “manpower” (i.e., immigrants) along with the oil. They also agreed to disseminate propaganda about the glories of Islamic civilization, provide Arab states with weaponry, side with them against Israel and generally tow the Arab line on all matters political and cultural. Hundreds of meetings and seminars were held as part of the “Euro-Arab Dialogue,” and all, according to the author, were marked by European acquiescence to Arab requests. Fallaci recounts a 1977 seminar in Venice, attended by delegates from 10 Arab nations and eight European ones, concluding with a unanimous resolution calling for “the diffusion of the Arabic language” and affirming “the superiority of Arab culture.”

While the Arabs demanded that Europeans respect the religious, political and human rights of Arabs in the West, not a peep came from the Europeans about the absence of freedom in the Arab world, not to mention the abhorrent treatment of women and other minorities in countries like Saudi Arabia. No demand was made that Muslims should learn about the glories of western civilization as Europeans were and are expected to learn about the greatness of Islamic civilization. In other words, according to Fallaci, a substantial portion of Europe’s cultural and political independence was sold off by a coalition of ex-communists and socialist politicians. Are we surprised? Fallaci isn’t. In 1979, she notes, “the Italian or rather European Left had fallen in love with Khomeini just as now it has fallen in love with Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and Arafat.”

Considerably less intemperate than her last book on the topic of radical Islam, the volcanically angry The Rage and the Pride, The Force of Reason is despairing, but often surprisingly funny. (“The rage and the pride have married and produced a sturdy son: the disdain,” she writes with characteristic wit.) And, Fallaci being Fallaci, it is occasionally over the top and will no doubt be deeply offensive to many, particularly when, in a postscript the book might have been better off without, she claims that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Nonetheless, the voice and warmth and humor of the author light up its pages, particularly when she takes a leaf out of Saul Bellow’s Herzog by firing off impassioned letters to the famous both living and dead. She is savage about the Left, the “Peace” movement (war is a fundamental, if regrettable, condition of life, she states), the Catholic Church, the media and, of course, Islam itself, which she considers theological totalitarianism and a deadly threat to the world. She is much more optimistic about America than Europe, citing the bravery of New Yorkers who celebrated New Year’s Eve in Times Square despite widely publicized terrorism threats, but here one feels that she is clutching at straws. Though Fallaci now lives in New York, little amity has been extended to her by her peers since the post-9/11 publication of The Rage and the Pride, and she remains almost as much of a media pariah here as she does in Europe. The major difference is that we’re not putting her on trial.

As that Norwegian Mullah told Aftenposten, “Our way of thinking … will prove more powerful than yours.” One hopes he’s wrong, but if he is, it will be ordinary Americans and Europeans, including courageous Arab-Americans like L.A. resident Wafa Sultan and the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali (two women openly challenging Islamist supremacism), who prove him so, and not our intellectual classes (artists, pundits, filmmakers, actors, writers …). Many of the latter, consumed by Bush-hatred and cultural self-loathing, are perilously close to becoming today’s equivalent of the great Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun, who so hated the British Empire that he sided with the Nazis in World War II, to his everlasting shame. The Force of Reason, at the very least, is a welcome and necessary antidote to the prevailing intellectual atmosphere.

Staff writer Brendan Bernhard is the author of White Muslim: From L.A. to New York to Jihad, a study of converts to Islam in the West (Melville House).

http://www.laweekly.com/index.php?option=c...12921&Itemid=47

[Guest]

Must watch
<b>London protest by Radical Muslim - Video</b>

[acharya]

<b>Malaysia offers help for Khadir Mohideen College's growth</b>
Special Correspondent
We can take up collaborative research in higher education:Consul General
# Willing to give grant
# To monitor recruitments from India

Adhirampattinam: Malaysia is willing to cooperate to Khadir Mohideen College for the development of the institution, Rosli Ismail, Consul General of Malayasia, said here on Saturday.

"We can take up collaborative research and studies in higher education. We can bring donations and grants to Khadir Mohideen College from Malaysian Government," he said while speaking at the golden jubilee celebrations of the college in Thanjavur district.

Speaking about the education policy followed in Malaysia, he said the emphasis is laid on higher education with a view to the developmental interests of the country.

Mr.Ismail said that Malaysia, which once remained very backward,

is giving emphasis on education under the Government's new economic policy. The Prime Minister has introduced the policy of `Islamic Hadhari' aimed at inculcating Islamic values in students.

Islam is the official religion of Malaysia. But, people are allowed to adhere to any religion of their choice. Islamic Hadhari is aimed at inculcating Islamic values and healthy practices in Government administration.

Malaysia is a small country and is multiracial, multilingual and

multireligious. Islamic Hadhari is an approach as to how we should conduct ourselves in life. It is to propagate the ideals of Islam. It is very practical and pragmatic. It is aimed at containing extremism. Most of the Islamic countries are poor and under developed, he said.

Stating that a lot of Indians worked in Malaysia, the Consul General said that thousands are sent from here to Malaysia for work every month. Unfortunately some of the workers are cheated by the irresponsible agents. We are now carefully monitoring the recruitments.

The Consul General appreciated the Khadir Mohideen College management for starting the college 50 years ago in a backward area with a view to providing education to the students of the region. Founders of the college felt the importance of establishing a centre of higher education to cater to the needs of the people. From 1995 onwards the college has become a post-graduate institution.

Mrs.Mariana Alias Rosli Ismail, distributed the prizes and laid the foundation stone for the golden jubilee memorial building.S.Mohammed Aslam, secretary and correspondent, said that soon the college would get its autonomous status. Postgraduate courses in Economics, English and Tamil are introduced from this year. MPhilresearch will be introduced in Chemistry and Zoology. The college has received B++ grade from National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). He said that the Consul General of Malaysia has agreed to construct an administrative block for the college. Dr.S.Mohan, Retired Supreme Court Judge, unveiled the plaque of the founder. M.Syed Ibrahim, managing director, Kalaiman Group of Companies, laid the foundation stone for men's hostel. A.Abdul Hadi, former High Court Judge and Dr.K.E.N.Nalla Mohammed, Principal of the college participated in the function.

[Guest]

Here you go London's Dhimmi

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Brown to boost Islamic banking</b>
GORDON BROWN is drawing up plans to turn Britain into the most Islam-friendly economy in the western world.
The chancellor has given Muslim leaders private assurances that he wants to create a “level playing field” in the economy, so that more and more “sharia compliant” financial products can be offered to British Muslims.

To comply with sharia law, financial products must not charge or earn interest, which is regarded as usury.

Brown hopes his proposed changes would remove barriers to many British and foreign Muslims participating fully in the financial system. They would help make London the natural home for Islamic funds from around the world, and increase the inflow of investment from oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.

<b>“Making the UK and London a centre for Islamic finance means putting in place the tax and legislative framework that is supportive of Islamic products,”</b> said a senior Treasury official.

<b>“On top of this, we’re also looking at promoting the City abroad as a centre for Islamic finance.” </b>

Officials insist the changes will not compromise the government’s determination to root out and cut off sources of terrorist finance.

The Muslim Council of Britain will host a large conference in June to showcase Britain to Muslim investors as a “gateway for trade with the Islamic world”. The chancellor will be a keynote speaker at the conference, which is expected to have a delegation from every leading Muslim country.

<b>The sharia finance industry is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and is estimated to be worth between £200 billion and £300 billion globally.</b>

<b>Industry projections suggest it will grow by 15% a year over the next decade, and will account for 50-60% of the savings of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims within that time. The Treasury believes London, with its financial and legal expertise, is strongly placed to benefit from this. </b>

<b>Sharia-compliant alternatives to conventional financial arrangements include ijara products, in which rent rather than interest is paid on a mortgaged house, and musharaka, in which a share of ownership is transferred rather than interest paid</b> <!--emo&<_<--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dry.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='dry.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[acharya]

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Study for new thinking in Islamic societies

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: A new study has concluded that Arab Islamic countries need to clear up the “gray zones” that have come to characterise Islamist movements in order to move towards democracy.

The study, carried out by Nathan Brown and Amr Hamzawy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, identifies the “gray zones” in the thinking and practice of mainstream Islamist movements as Islamic law, violence, pluralism, civil and political rights, women’s rights, and religious minorities. “The resolution of these issues will determine whether the rise of Islamist movements leads the countries of the Arab world, finally, toward democracy or, conversely, to a new form of authoritarianism with an Islamic character,” the authors believe.

Brown and Hamzawy maintain that the ambiguous position of many Islamist movements on these crucial issues is a matter of concern because such movements are emerging as major players in the changing political landscape of the Middle East. Further political openings will only enhance the importance of Islamist parties for the foreseeable future. For international organisations and foreign governments convinced that democratic transformation of the Middle East is crucial to the security of the rest of the world, the fact that the most important opposition movements in most countries appear stuck between religious dogma and democratic political choices is problematic.

The argue that it would be both reassuring and desirable if the major political actors in the Middle East were secular organisations with impeccable liberal credentials and a clear track record of democratic politics. But liberal organisations capable of mobilising large constituencies simply do not exist in Arab countries today. As a result, Islamist groups will remain the most important opposition force for the foreseeable future, whether or not secular Arabs and Western governments like it, they predict. Only repression could curb the influence of Islamist movements. They cite the experience of Algeria, which suffered a bloody civil war after elections were cancelled in 1992 to deny the expected victory to Islamists, as a reminder that repression has a high cost.

The authors write, “No ideology in the Arab world has at present the appeal of the Islamist message, which powerfully combines a religious ideal with the concept of social justice - a concept concretely embodied in the network of service organisations that Islamist parties have set up in many countries. Liberal democrats have been unable so far to fashion a message attractive to large numbers of their countrymen. Their abstract message about democracy resonates only at a very general level and has failed to serve as the basis for political mobilisation. Arab citizens are not averse to democracy, as a growing number of public opinion surveys shows. When provided with an opportunity to participate in an open political process, they do so. Yet, when they vote, they do not choose to cast their ballots for liberal democratic parties.”

Brown and Hamzawy find it remarkable that Islamist movements have managed to incorporate key elements of the liberal platform - demands for accountability, constitutional reform, an end to political repression, and clean government - into their agenda. Indeed, the only true ideological competition Islamist parties face in the Arab world is ethnic or religious nationalisms.”

The authors note that because of the ideological advantage enjoyed by Islamist groups and the years of work that many have invested in organising, the possibility that the already existing or new non-Islamist parties will be able to compete effectively with them in the near future is not good. “We are not implying that

Middle East countries will never be able to generate effective secular parties; rather, that Islamists have had a headstart, and in the next electoral cycle and beyond, they will likely be the most important opposition force in most countries,” they predict. Direct funding or training of secular parties and liberal civil society organisations will not alter this. The future direction of moderate Islamist movements depends greatly on how they work their way through the murkiness of the gray zones as they react to the challenges of the changing political context in their countries.

Brown and Hamzawy argue that Turkey is proof that Islamist parties can embrace democracy. “Uncertainty is a fact of life in politics. Evidence suggests that the reformist currents in the Islamist movement are real, that they are becoming much more sophisticated and flexible in their thinking, and that recent political success in some countries is increasing their influence within their respective organisations. It also suggests that gray zones remain extensive. We conclude that engagement with Islamist organisations is the only constructive option open governments that believe in democratic development,” they recommend.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Thursday, March 23, 2006  
‘<b>Child abuse rampant in UK madrassas’</b>

LONDON: <b>One of Britain’s leading Muslims demanded on Wednesday the government crackdown on “widespread” child abuse at Islamic schools in Britain</b>.

Doctor Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain forum, said the 700 or so madrassas were operating “outside the law”. Siddiqui co-wrote a report on the dangers facing some of the 100,000 youngsters in Britain attending the schools, which are usually attached to mosques. “Our understanding is that physical abuse is widespread,” he said.“We would like to see mosques and madrassas come into contact with local authorities and police and put together guidelines, and the teachers are trained and parents and children are involved and they are told what their rights are if ever an allegation is made.” AFP
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<b>What Islamism Shares With Nazism</b>
Forward
11-09-2001

As Americans grapple with the new ideological "evil" of radical Islamic fundamentalism, the old benchmark of ultimate evil, Nazism, has been invoked in the effort to understand the origins and implications of September 11. While President Bush has predicted that radical Islam will soon join Nazism among the "discarded lies" of history, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has controversially compared U.S. coalition building efforts among Arab states to western appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s. Journalists and pundits have made similar comparisons.

Andrew Sullivan recently wrote in The New York Times Magazine that radical Islam is a more serious threat to the West than Nazism was. Such a comparison is overstated. As the greatest economic and industrial power in Europe of the era, Nazi Germany posed far more of an existential danger to the West than radical Islamic groups do today. Whereas the Nazis possessed both the will and the means to achieve world domination, Islamic fundamentalism, largely based in the underdeveloped world, can at present wreak little more than havoc. Still, despite significant structural differences between both movements, the historical experience of Nazism does in fact provide us with lessons in the struggle to understand and defend against the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

<b>Both Nazism and Islamic fundamentalism emerged as ideologies opposed to the modern world. Nazism originated in the late 19th century "volkisch" movement's rejection of industrialization, urbanization and capitalism in favor of the ideas of blood, soil and race. Around the same time, Islamic fundamentalism began to emerge as a response to the gradual secularization of the Muslim world. In both cases, the perceived threat of universalizing modern forces generated a vigorous defense of particularistic traditions. </b>

These longstanding cultural resentments against modernity remained largely dormant in both societies until catalyzed by more short-term political events. The economic and political instability resulting from Germany's loss of World War I and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles after 1918 produced new support for the extremist anti-modern ideas of the Nazis. In the Muslim world, the 1967 overwhelming military defeat by Israel was decisive in defeating the dominant secular ideology of pan-Arabism and creating a vaccuum that has since become effectively filled by Islamic fundamentalism. <b>Both movements, finally, identified scapegoats for their societies' perceived ills -- Jews, in the German case, "infidels," in the case of the Muslim world -- and believed that expelling them from their midst would enable the respective creation of purified racial and religious empires. </b>

<b>Beyond the anti-modern origins of their goals, both Nazism and Islamic fundamentalism have paradoxically been willing to use modern means to achieve them.</b> Both have used modern methods of communication to convey their propaganda, employed modern economic practices to finance their agendas and embraced modern weaponry in their assault on their enemies.

Given the ideological similarities between Nazism and radical Islam, the historic response of the West toward the former may provide lessons for our current response to the latter. First, it is important to recognize the deep roots of both ideologies in the cultures from which they emanate. <b>We should be just as suspicious of attempts to exonerate Islam for its fundamentalistic offshoots as we would be of attempts to portray German traditions as guiltless for Nazism. Recognizing both movements' deep roots in tradition is crucial, for it reminds us that many "ordinary" Germans and Muslims have sympathized with the two ideologies' respective goals (if not necessarily the violent means to achieve them)</b>. Also, eliminating figures such as Hitler or Osama bin Laden will do little to eliminate the deep-seated resentments they have so effectively exploited.

Addressing this problem is more challenging. Many have cited the need to address Muslim grievances against the West if the threat of terrorism is ever to be banished for good. There are many reasons to take such recommendations seriously. But addressing grievances has its limits. After all, the Nazis had their own grievances, too. In railing against the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler enjoyed the sympathy not only of Germans but many Europeans and Americans. Western diplomats attempted to deal with these grievances through a policy of appeasement during the 1930s but this did nothing to satisfy the Nazis' more irrational ideological objectives. So, too, with Islamic fundamentalism. Many sympathize with bin Laden's grievances about Palestinian nationhood and sanctions against Iraq. Yet if both problems were solved tomorrow, the larger rebellion of radical Islam against secular modernity would continue.

<b>Ultimately, the experience of Nazism teaches us that certain grievances can only be addressed after the defeat of the uncompromising ideologies that have exploited them</b>. After 1945, the United States embraced a peace that helped to reintegrate Germany back into the western community of nations. Although we may not be able to pursue a policy of unconditional surrender toward terrorism, we might consider an eventual Marshall Plan for the Middle East. Just as democratic elements within Germany needed western support in order to triumph over their extremist compatriots, so too will moderate Muslims need support to have their voices heard above those of militant extremists.

<b>This time, however, it will not be the job merely of America. All the world's great powers -- the European Union, Russia, China and India -- have something to lose by the continuation of terrorism. </b>Ultimately, such a plan for renewal may well offer the only way to broach the yawning gulf between the secularized wealthy nations of the world and those whose poverty and mismanagement drive them into the camp of religious fanaticism.

<i>Mr. Rosenfeld is assistant professor of German history at Fairfield University and author of "Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich" (University of California Press).
Article copyright Forward Newspaper, L.L.C.</i>

[Guest]

Yesterday, TV-townhall meeting on Islam and West in Bay Area. More on Hijjab and how woman are happy with hijjab. Lot of poll comparision etc. Iraq, Israel, Palestian etc.
I am waiting for transcript.

<b>Town Hall: Islam And The West</b>

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Extremists know extremism will hurt</b>
FT
Columnist Nazeer Naji wrote in Jang that Muslim extremists all over the Islamic world were aware that if they succeeded, then religious extremists will come to power in many Muslim states and will soon begin to damage the country they are ruling while damaging the economic and social fibre of their societies with their extremist programmes. While the religious parties hurt their own populations, the West will still get away with achieving its objectives. The Islamist governments will provide the West with a new enemy and will promote the idea of the clash of civilisations. But they will clash with themselves on the question of doctrine and buy weapons from the West to fight with one another, thus squandering their scarce resources.
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[Guest]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html
<b>Karzai 'gives pledge' to save Christian convert from execution</b>
By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad
(Filed: 25/03/2006)

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Mar 25 2006, 12:44 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Mar 25 2006, 12:44 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html
<b>Karzai 'gives pledge' to save Christian convert from execution</b>
By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad
(Filed: 25/03/2006)
[right][snapback]49059[/snapback][/right]
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Karzai's end is in sight. We will shortly see either Karzai getting killed by his bodygaurd or get blown to bits.

[Guest]

I think we may see coup, Recently Karzai had removed Northern Alliance people from his cabinet. US is in control so it may get delayed.
It will increase hatred against US in other Islamic countries