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Post by sandwiches on Dec 6, 2009 11:54:53 GMT
Here's a take by a muslim woman. www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2812/However, she said, the only European country with a muslim "problem" is England, where there are genuinely radical "imams" actively working for jihad. The Turks in Germany for the most part want to be Germans; the Algerians in France want to be French. (The Europeans haven't figured out how to do this yet.) The British, who actually have the most experience in forging a nation (out of Britons, Gaels, Welsh, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Norsemen, Normans, French Huguenots, etc.) have paradoxically the worst problem. There are many muslims there who do not want to become British and who want to subvert and overthrow the West. Not sure the research supports that e.g.: Muslim youths in UK feel much more integrated than their European counterparts
British Asian youngsters expressed very little interest in the politics of their parents' country - a sharp contrast to Turks living in Germany and North Africans in France.
Ethnic disadvantages within education were pronounced in Germany but far less evident in Britain, according to the study.
For example, Turks living in Germany and North Africans in France did relatively poorly at school and in college.
And Indians and Pakistanis living in Britain were three times more likely to enter a university than their counterparts in France and Germany.
Religion remained an important part of the day to day lives of British Asian youngsters with 59 per cent of Indians attending a place of worship regularly along with 38 per cent of Pakistanis.
However only 15 per cent of Indians and 8 per cent of Pakistanis were members of a religious organisation.
The research is to be published in a new book out tomorrow, titled Children of International Migrants in Europe.
Professor Roger Penn, from Lancaster University, who co-authored the book said: 'Perceptions of discrimination were lowest in Britain and highest in Germany, reflecting the failure of the German model of exclusive 'ethnic nationalism'.Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1207935/Muslim-youths-UK-feel-home-European-counterparts.html#ixzz0YuP5osxz |
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Post by himself on Dec 7, 2009 6:33:17 GMT
I passed that on to my friend and her reply was: IMO, Britain is the only country where radicalization of Muslim youth happens in numbers that merit concern. This is something that is a quietly not-verbally-acknowledged concern in the western Muslim culture. It is certainly, in my experience, talked about somewhat openly among British Muslims who have achieved some measure of financial success. The now-defunct Q-News and its publisher is an example; their government backed project Radical Middle Way is another. RMW’s objective has been to serve as a counterpoint to the radical Deobandi and Salafi / Ahle Hadith / Al Muhajiroun ranting and raving that has dominated the young British Muslim culture since the late 1980s. They may be a minority of Asian youth but they’re a loud minority that has caused considerable ruckus in England; a recent example is making headlines by tossing eggs at a Muslim peer, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.
The issue in France is one of *poverty*, racism, injustice, not radicalization, although I think there is ample opportunity for it to happen. In Germany, I don’t know, but you just don’t hear of radical imams or daiyees coming from France or Germany or even Italy. It’s always England, England, England, and then America and maybe Australia and Canada tailing behind. They translate the English speakers’ talks into other European languages to rebroadcast, but not the other way around. Germany’s community has an ingrained sufi community / heritage as well, which maybe plays a part in it or maybe it doesn’t. A lot of Pakistanis in England come from sufi backgrounds and some of the bigger masjids are sufi ones (like Gamkhol Sharif); two young British sufi Muslims blew themselves up in Israel a few years ago. Then again, sufism isn’t quite the passive, pacifist movement that some people would have us believe it is.
The leadership of the jihadi movement are, for the most part, middle and upper class, educated men. The way the literature is written is in a style that appeals to those who fancy themselves a little more educated, a little brighter, smarter, a little more responsible for what happens to the little people. The very people who are supposed to have been integrated and assimilated, happily and comfortably hyphenating their identities in the west. I was speaking to a friend of mine tonight, a long time Muslim activist, organizer, rain maker, whatever you want to call it about this very issue and his position was this: It is ideology, not “I don’t fit in,” not “I feel alienated,” not “White people don’t like me,” but plain ideology. Quran says, hadith says, ibn al Taymiya said, ibn al Qayyum said… this is the basis of what Azzam, Qutb, and the rest of them have written, a blatant appeal to authority and authenticity by using and naming the both the foundational sources of sunni Islam and some of its respected stars of the past. Watch a jihadi lecture on YouTube. It is all “Qala rasulallah,” and “Qala allah ta’ala” and “Qala sheikh ul Islam ibn Taymiya.” Friday khutbas, Saturday lessons, books, tapes, CDs, movies – all constantly extolling the the virtuous sahaba who didn’t hesitate to fight and die fisibillillah: jihad. Umar fought, Abu Bakr fought, Hamza was a warrior, the prophet was a warrior. How easy it is to persuade a young Muslim man, full of the hormones and anxiety experienced by all boys, that the true Islamic way, pleasing to god, is jihad. Why should someone who is middle class and educated NOT be affected by this, when his imam, his parents, his community tells him “You must do as allah and his messenger say, you must respect the sahaba and the ulemaa of the past?”
They have been blessed by their god and so they have more of a responsibility than the man in the camp or the ghetto to engage in jihad fisibillillah. The founding thinkers of this movement were educated, and often middle class or well to do men. Abdullah Azzam had a PhD. Osama bin Ladin comes from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Zawahiri was a doctor. Syed Qutb was a teacher and critic. Speaking just from my own personal experience, which is of course mere anecdote, I’ve never met a member or supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood who didn’t have a college degree and a solid middle class lifestyle, not even when I was in the Mideast. They laugh at the would-be warriors arrested here in the States, the bumbling “salafee” jihobbiysts who had plans to “join al Qaida” and blow up some malls. Padilla? Maldonado? Reid? Please. Osama bin Ladin cleans his teeth with their likes.
Meanwhile, in the refugee camps near my old home, the young men aspired to be like Usher, like pop star Amro Diab, like Beckham, with their slicked, spikey hair, pointy shoes, and super tight jeans. It isn’t Quran that blares so much – though that does go on – as it is Haifa Wehbe, Nancy Ajram, Usher, Beyonce, and whoever the latest Rotana dolls and guys are. Go to the mosque and listen to old men spit and scream at them? They don’t have time for that. In the camps near my home it was not the Ikhwani politicians who held sway over the people, but the secular politicians who actually delivered services like water, sewage, etc. In places like Egypt and Palestine, the Ikhwan have delivered with hospitals, food, and other desperately needed resources and people vote for them. So perhaps following jihadi ideology is not what the poor mindlessly do, but rather they vote for those who deliver for them. Yes, the rhetoric may find a place in the ‘hood, they might find some comfort in the words and the yelling and the blaming, but the jihadi movement is not one of the camps, nor is it one of the banlieus. I don’t know why this is.
As for “member of a religious organization” that means almost nothing in an Islamic context. Religious organizations are the homes of the uncles, the old men, the migrants from the villages of Sindh and NWFP, or they’re the uncle Toms or they’re full of corrupt ideology and innovations – bidaa. There is no concept of “join the Muslim youth group” or “join this masjid” in Islam (in addition to the fact that a lot of groups aren’t established, official organizations… it’s a study circle, meeting in someone’s living room, not “affiliated” with anyone’s masjid or only loosely affiliated with it.) They’ve introduced this concept here and while people *do* pay their $400 / yr to be a “member” of the masjid, far more people look at the membership forms with puzzled faces and move on. |
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Post by zameel on Dec 7, 2009 14:57:36 GMT
RMW’s objective has been to serve as a counterpoint to the radical Deobandi and Salafi / Ahle Hadith / Al Muhajiroun ranting and raving that has dominated the young British Muslim culture since the late 1980s Such lumping together of "Deobandi and Salafi/Ahle Hadith/ Al Muhajiroun" is foolish and ignorant. It is true they each have their own issues but they are not all "radical" in like nature. Most madrasas in Britain are in fact Deobandi-run. Deoband is a city in Northern India in which a famous Darul Uloom was created in the 1860s to opposed the politicisation of the Muslim youth and return them to traditional Islamic education. The Deobandi orientation eventually came to dominate Indian, Pakistani, Afghan and Bangladeshi madrasas. In India the organisation of Jamiatu Ulama Hind (Congregation of Indian Ulama) was run and is still run by Deobandis; they favour integration into the Indian community, are of a nationalist bend and promote democracy and freedom; their greatest scholar was the Shaykh al-Islam of India Hussain Ahmed Madani (d. 1957) whose sons now run the JUI. The Deobandis were therefore generally opposed to creation of Pakistan and favoured an indigenous Indian religion that would coexist with their Hindu counterparts. In this context, therefore, it is no wonder the "Indian debates" would consume many Muslims in Britain who are from that background. Deobandis in the turn of the nineteenth century were opposed to British rule so allied with Gandhi's Indian National Congress to overthrow them, so the Deobandi Britons have inherited an antipathy to British politics. This however does not mean they are "radical" or "extreme", although some are. Moulana Yusuf Motala of Bury is the spiritual leader of Deobandis in Britain, and he has a friendly and welcoming attitude to his non-Muslim neighbours (he, for instance, gives out Christmas gifts to his Christian neighbours). The BBC had a look inside some Deobandi madrasas and found they are indeed attempting to integrate British and traditional Islamic education: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3355803.stm . The same is being attempted by Timothy Winter in the Cambridge Muslim College which selects students from these madrasas to teach them about British culture, history and politics (http://www.cambridgemuslimcollege.org/) I live in Birmingham, England, and my uncle runs a madrasa the Darul Uloom Birmingham www.darululoom.org.uk/ one of the oldest madrasas in the country (started in the eightees). My uncle has a PhD from Glasgow University, and the madrasa is currently undergoing some reforms in order to accomodate British students and forego its Indian heritage (e.g. it is taking Urdu out of the curriculum and teaching Arabic through an English medium - other Deobandi madrasas like the Leicester Darul Uloom have done the same). This effort by the Deobandi madrasa from the top and from the grassroots is hurt by those who seek to group them all under a single essential category. Such alarmists include the Quilliam Foundation and individual journalists. As for Salafis and Ahle Hadith in England, it is again unfair to call them radical. By radical is obviously meant "political radicalisation" and it is in fact the case that many Salafis are often puritanical and therefore do not involve themselves in politics; instead, they grow their beard, wear traditional clothing, do not take out a mortgage and live a happy life in Britain without getting involved in politics - this is for example the case with the mosque on Wright Street in Birmingham. The Ahle Hadith e.g. the famous Green Lane Mosque, are generally moderate, although some groups stop at nothing to attack all Muslim groups (we now know the Channel 4 Dispatches "undercover mosque" programme was "deeply unfair" in the words of the BBC). The most famous Ahle Hadith forbear of this last century is Al-Albani (d 1999) and he strongly opposed suicide terrorism and Muslim extremism. The Wahhabi scholars from Saudi Arabia similarly oppose suicide terrorism and targetting civilians and specifically condemn al-Qaeda tactics. a recent example is making headlines by tossing eggs at a Muslim peer, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi Yes this was by the same group of people that carried around banners saying "behead those who insult the Prophet" and the same group that protested Wilder's speech; we see the same faces posted in the media over and over again. They are not different people, see: www.ummahpulse.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=533:cameron-muslim-vote-part1&catid=22:jumahpulses&Itemid=130 which clearly shows that we do indeed see the same faces when we talk about British Muslim radicalisation Al-Muhajiroun does not represent any of those major religious groups mentioned. They are an extremist branch of the Hizb al-Tahrir with a political and ideological agenda. Religion is only their outward symbol. Hardly any of them are ulama (unlike my uncle, Molana Yusuf Motala and others); in fact their head Anjem Choudhary is a lawyer educated in Britain with no Islamic qualifications (he has difficulty reciting in Arabic). An MI5 report some time ago found most radical Muslims are religiously illiterate and speak only of British and American foreign policies; they do not represent any traditional Islamic circles - they're university kids that are simply hyper-radicalised. two young British sufi Muslims blew themselves up in Israel a few years agot Killing three, yes, but do you have proof they were from any of the backgrounds you claim (Deobandi, Brelwi, Ahle Hadith, Salafi). Ideologies like that of al-Muhajiroun are often independent of religious orientation, they radicalise Muslims using politics not religion, hence why the MI5 have said there is nothing remarkable about their religious backgrounds www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/20/uksecurity.terrorism1 . The founding thinkers of this movement were educated, and often middle class or well to do men. Abdullah Azzam had a PhD. Osama bin Ladin comes from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Zawahiri was a doctor. Syed Qutb was a teacher and critic. Speaking just from my own personal experience, which is of course mere anecdote, I’ve never met a member or supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood who didn’t have a college degree and a solid middle class lifestyle, not even when I was in the Mideast Now here I agree. But I do not draw the same conclusion. You seem to conclude that because they are educated men, they draw their inspiration directly from Islamic tradition. This is not true. What is surprising is none of these are ulama (i.e. traditional Islamic scholars) and are/were opposed by the ulama. Qutb, Zawahiri, Choudhary, Bin Laden, Abdu Salam Faraj, Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, Zarqawi etc. are electricians, engineers, literary critcs, businessmen, doctors, lawyers and the like. It is secular and Western education that creates this mindset. Not traditional Islamic education. In fact al-Qaeda is a better reflection of modernisation than it is Islamic tradition; John Gray wrote "No cliche is more stupefying than that which describes Al-Qaida as a throwback to medieval times. It is a by-product of globalisation. Its most distinctive feature - projecting a privatised form of organised violence worldwide - was impossible in the past. Equally, the belief that a new world can be hastened by spectacular acts of destruction is nowhere found in medieval times. Al-Qaida’s closest precursors are the revolutionary anarchists of late nineteenth-century Europe" (Al-Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern (London, 2003), 1-2) As for Abdullah Azzam (d. 1989), he was indeed an alim and a mujahid. However, he did not agree with Bin Laden's tactic nor that of the extremist Egyptians. He mostly advocated a defensive war in Afghanistan. His son today (although a Palestinian fighter) was issued a death threat by Zarqawi as the Azzam family oppose those methods (precisely because they have traditional education): www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/03/23/schuster.column/index.html . Resistance in Chechnya, Bosnia, Palestine, Kashmir, etc. without the tactics used by al-Qaeda is what nearly all ulama agree with and promote. The Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps the only major mainstream Islamist organisation, and contains many ulama, but it opposes suicide terrorism and targetting civilians and embraces democracy, the rule of law, equality of all before the law etc. - see their official website www.ikhwanweb.com/It may be true the Muslim Council of Britain is to some degree connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is a far cry to say the MCB is extreme. Only nutjobs like Melanie Phillips and her Muslim counterpart the Quilliam Foundation say so. But libelous claims and misrepresentations are the means used to defame MCB, not an honest and fair analysis. Overall, your friend's analysis is deeply flawed and one-dimensional. It does not take into consideration the complexities of religous orientations or the ideological and political factor in radicalisation. Furthermore, Islamic radicalisation in Europe is not one sided. The Serbian genocide of Bosnians (92-95) was an extreme example the fascist and bigoted tendencies in Europe. Other examples include: In Italy, the Archbishop of Bologna has called for the closure of the country’s mosques and an end to immigration by Muslims, who are, he believes, ‘outside our humanity.’ In [Kamchatka], at the furthest end of European settlement, the Orthodox bishop has backed opposition to the construction of a mosque for the region’s large Muslim community. The mosque would be ‘a direct insult to the religious and civil feelings of the Slavic population,’ according its local opponents, and would encourage further Muslim immigration, with the result that ‘given their mind-set, they won’t let us live normally here.’ For more on European Islamophobia as the "New Antisemitism" driving fasicst tendencies, see: www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/right.htmAs for actual hate crimes, just a couple of months ago a Muslim pensioner in London was brutally murdered for being a Muslim (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211556/Devout-Muslim-dies-savage-beating-race-hate-gang-granddaughter-three.html#ixzz0QgTGzDFH), and Muslim students were beaten for defending a woman wearing the hijab (http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2009/11/27/muslim-students-beaten-for-defending-woman-wearing-hijab.html) and several months ago a Muslim charity shop was destroyed by arson in Glasgow (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8137021.stm). |
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Post by himself on Dec 8, 2009 0:27:19 GMT
I'm not sure why you think her "analysis" is flawed, since you agreed with many of her points. I think there is a defensiveness in your answers that assumes that she [and her friends, from whom she gathered the information] are drawing a more general conclusion than she is. No one is saying All X are Y, which is very different from noticing that All Y are X. Sure, taqwa and husn al-dhann can get in the way of self-examination, esp. when talking with outsiders. And good old tu quoque can always be used for deflection.
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Post by zameel on Dec 8, 2009 0:44:23 GMT
I'm not sure why you think her "analysis" is flawed, since you agreed with many of her points One can agree with specific points but point out that overall the analysis is deeply flawed. No one is saying All X are Y, which is very different from noticing that All Y are X I think you should write clearly rather than in codes. I merely defended the specific accusations she made of calling Deobandis, Salafis and Ahle hadith "radical". Sure, taqwa and husn al-dhann can get in the way of self-examination What has taqwa and husn al-dhann got to do with self-examination? Taqwa is a deep consciousness of God which is the objective of all acts of worship (Qur'an 2:21) and husn al-dhann is the Islamic concept of avoiding suspicion and thinking good of people (49:12). These I would have thought are good qualities. The Qur'an forbids self-righteousness, and its opposite is declared as "taqwa": "ascribe not purity unto yourselves. He is Best Aware of him that has taqwa" (53:32). And good old tu quoque can always be used for deflection. My argument was not tu quoque. Tu quoque would be something like the Chinese are abusing their people so its ok for Saudi Arabi to oppress theirs. Here we are talking about a contextual analysis - European oppression or perceived aggression is directly responsible for Islamic radicalisation; Serbian genocide, France hijab ban, Swiss minaret ban, proposed mosque ban, arson attacks on Muslim charities, destruction of Muslim graves, murders of Marwa Sherbini and Ekram Haque, foreign policy and general bias and rhetoric of hate all certainly add to the mix. This is very different to a tu quoque fallacy. |
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Post by penguinfan on Dec 10, 2009 21:26:37 GMT
Hi Zameel.
Could you please quote Noam Chomsky regarding this 'genocide'? I seem to recall Chomsky making the point that before NATO air strikes, a majority of the victims were Serbian - although the point of the NATO intervention was because Western media had claimed the exact opposite !
Fascinating. So now a ban that was passed through a democratic process (against the wishes of the Swiss government, btw) a few days ago is responsible for Muslim radicalism.
I believe the ban also affected religious Jewish and Sikh students. Could you please clarify this for me?
I'm sure there have been attacks on Synagogues and Jewish graves in Britain and France in which the suspects were believed to have been Muslim. However, you won't (hopefully) see Jews claim that these attacks results in the manifestation of radical Judaism.
Anyways, it's interesting (though not surprising) for you to play the victim card.
I mean, it's not like many more people who are Christians haven't suffered from the North-South civil war in the Sudan (which claimed far more lives than in Yugoslavia) or that Christians face religious discrimination in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where Christian Pakistanis are often attacked after they are accused of verbally attacking prophet Muhammad.
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Post by zameel on Dec 12, 2009 0:19:05 GMT
Could you please quote Noam Chomsky regarding this 'genocide'? I seem to recall Chomsky making the point that before NATO air strikes, a majority of the victims were Serbian - although the point of the NATO intervention was because Western media had claimed the exact opposite ! You have confused two different conflicts. What you refer to is the Serbian-Kosovo (1998-9) conflict (which as Noam Chomsky correctly states NATO was resposible for exacerbating) not the Serbian ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia during 92-95; for the latter some of the perpetrators have been tried and convicted for genocide. Christians haven't suffered from the North-South civil war in the Sudan (which claimed far more lives than in Yugoslavia) The reason this is an unfair comparison is because European countries are supposed to be first world liberal democracies whereas African nations are post-colonial third world states. If you want to compare Sudan to something compare it to the Congo conflict which has generated Africa's World War and the main perpetrators are Christians backed by the Church; the conflict has resulted in the loss of 5 million lives (compared to 200-400 thousand in Sudan, which is not very different from the Bosnian 200 thousand) and is a continuation of the church backed genocide in Rwanda of 1994 which Muslims actively opposed (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53018-2002Sep22.html) or that Christians face religious discrimination in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where Christian Pakistanis are often attacked after they are accused of verbally attacking prophet Muhammad In fact human rights violations in Muslim countries are no worse than other countries with the same factors known to affect human rights. As Daniel Price concludes in his study on this topic which challenges simple stereotypes: “The data have provided strong evidence supporting the assertion that government rooted in Islam does not facilitate the abuse of human rights, as the variable representing Islamic political culture was consistently statistically insignificant” (Islam and Human Rights: A Case of Deceptive First Appearances, Daniel Price, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 213-225) |
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Post by penguinfan on Dec 12, 2009 6:51:29 GMT
Ok, I didn't know that Yugoslavia was supposed to be a first world liberal democracy. Thanks for setting me straight. Why would I? Are you claiming that Muslims are the victims in that conflict? Really? Because Wikipedia is saying that close to two million civilians have died in the conflict and two hundred thousand have been enslaved. So, either your numbers are way off or Wikipedia's are. Two hundred thousand, huh? Once again, that's way off the mark from what the casualties Wikipedia has provided: 31,270 soldiers killed 33,071 civilians killed 5,439 soldiers killed 2,163 civilians killed 20,649 soldiers killed 4,075 civilians killed en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_WarDo you have any sources that say 200 thousand Muslim civilians were massacred in the conflict by any chance? Cool - so we agree that Muslim nations have a poor record in regards to religious toleration. If we extend this further and use your own logic for the causes of Muslim radicalism, then it stands to reason that Jewish, Sikh, Pagan, and Christian radicalism is directly related to how religious minorities are treated in Muslim countries, either officially, as in Saudi Arabia, or both officially and unofficially, as in Pakistan which experiences regular anti Christian pogroms by Muslims accusing Christians of blaspheming Muhammad. Anyways, would you like to compare the number of attacks against Christians in Muslim majority countries with Muslims who are attacked in the Western Europe and North America? We can go ahead and limit the number of Muslim countries to just one. I currently have Pakistan in mind and we can see if Christians are victims in Pakistan more often than Muslims are in the West. Perhaps the stats would make it difficult for Muslims to play the victim card, but it would show that Christians should logically be more radicalized than Muslims. |
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Post by zameel on Dec 12, 2009 11:41:24 GMT
Because Wikipedia is saying that close to two million civilians have died in the conflict I assumed you were referring to the Darfur conflict not the Sudanese civil war which ended about fifteen years ago (and in which a major actor in crushing the southern rebels was the Ugandan radical Christian group Lord's Resistance Army). The Darfur conflict would have been a more sensible comparison as it is thought to be a genocide by some (just like Bosnia) and not simply a war/conflict. Africa is notorious for civil wars, and is not unique to Sudan. The Mozambican Civil War (77-92) resulted in nearly a million deaths; the Liberian civil wars from 86-03 have resulted in the loss of about half a million lives; the Angolan Civil War (75-02) also half a million deaths. Of course the deadliest of these wars was Africa's World War (which to some extent is still ongoing) which killed over five million people, and was partly a continuation of the Rwanda genocide. Two hundred thousand, huh That is the number given by the International Committee of the Red Cross according to the article you linked. it would show that Christians should logically be more radicalized than Muslims The genocide against Bosnians was Christian radicalisation and trumps any persecution of Christians in Pakistan (which is an unfair comparison anyway due to a history of colonialism - see Abd al-Ghaffar Khan's non-violent resistance against the British in Pakistan - and differences in economic development); Michael Sells wrote "The violence in Bosnia was a religious genocide in several senses: the people destroyed were chosen on the basis of their religious identity; those carrying out the killings acted with the blessing and support of Christian church leaders; the violence was grounded in a religious mythology that characterized the targeted people as race traitors and the extermination of them as a sacred act; and the perpetrators of the violence were protected by a policy designed by the policy makers of a Western world that is culturally dominated by Christianity". But it is not as though there isn't a "Christian al-Qaeda" or a "Christian Taliban". Blackwater USA is a radical Christian US paramilitary group responsible for civilian massacres in Iraq (and responsible for the cycle of violence that is now endemic in that area); it is also involved in many secret assassinations in Pakistan and elsewhere. Christian Reconstructionists would like to see Biblical law (including the death sentence for murderers, homosexuals and adulterers) in America. The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda (which was initially supported by churchgoers from America) led by Joseph Kony which seeks a Christian theocracy in Africa has a far more organised army than Bin Laden and has caused far more devestation, death and destruction than al-Shabab. Nonetheless, many Islamic groups throughout the world are locked in war due to external intervention (e.g. Ethiopia in Somalia; America in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq; Russia in Chechnya), so a proper comparison would not be possible. |
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Post by penguinfan on Dec 12, 2009 18:08:33 GMT
You assumed that I was referring to the Darfur conflict even though I explicitly referred to the North-South civil war in which Christians were the primary victims, huh?
And once again, Wikipedia does not say the conflict ended 15 years ago, more like 4 years ago.
Radical Christian group - translation for a movement that was started by a guy who claims to be the Holy Spirit, was influenced by a woman who said she was possessed by the spirit of a dead Italian soldier, in addition to mixing beliefs from Islam and local pagan/occult beliefs in for good measure.
Let's try to get real here.
So you're taking the highest casualties figures, when the official civilian death toll is much lower (30,000).
That doesn't sound too honest on your part.
Really? Is Christianity a requirement to being a member of Blackwater? Do they have some kind of manifesto calling for the establishment of a Christian theocracy?
Or is this more lame attempts of conflating individual statements of members of Blackwater to claim the entire organization is a Christian fundamentalist movement?
Hopefully you can show that the company itself is a religious fundamentalist movement. Additionally, what of statements made by individual members of HAMAS? Should we claim that Hamas seeks to reconquer Spain because of Hams propoganda or that Hamas wants to attack the United States because past spiritual leaders supported suicide attacks inside the US?
Please, at least remain consistent with your reasoning. I dislike it when someone flip-flops, whether it is on providing exaggerated death tolls or comparing a company to al-Qaeda based on statements made or beliefs held by individual members.
How many Christians would actually like to see the death penalty introduced for homosexuals and adulterers and how does this compare to the amount of Muslims who support the death penalty for the above, let alone the number of Muslim nations where the above is punishable by death, let alone illegal?
Hopefully you have numbers to provide outside of Africa.
I already discussed the LRA and some of their unorthodox beliefs. Unlike the LRA, al-shabaab, al Qaeda and the Taliban are a manifestation and representation of Islamic Law. They appeal to the mainstream texts and teachings of Islam and their beliefs in Jihad and crime and punishment are within the boundaries of what mainstream Islam teaches.
Even their more controversial tactics, such as suicide bombings and killing of Muslim civilians are justified through the past opinions of Islamic scholars.
Regardless, what is more important is that these groups, despite their tactics, are fighting for the establishment of Islamic theocracies, which is what many Muslims would like to see implemented.
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Post by himself on Dec 12, 2009 19:25:11 GMT
The muslim woman I was speaking to said that it is characteristic esp. of muslim men to perceive all failings in muslim societies as due to someone else, much as the child who cries, "Joey made me do it!"
That is, muslims in this way are not perceived as moral actors, but only as passive recipients of "forces" beyond their control. For example, to cite nearly a century of half-hearted colonialism as the reason for failings that existed even before the colonial era. Syria, for example, was a French-administered mandate under the League of Nations for less than 30 years, from the break-up of the Turkish Empire in 1918-20 until the French bailed out in 1944-46. (The French even tried to give independence to Syria in 1934, albeit on French terms; and later WWII intervened, with Free French, British, and Jordanian forced liberating Syria from Vichy French forces. In 1946, for the first time in history, there was a Syrian State.)
OTOH, the Serbians are regarded as independent moral actors, even though their territory was held under colonial control by Turkish imperialists for 400 years, from 1459-1867. (Even Hungary was under Turkish colonial occupation for 150 years.) Serbian hostility lies in nationalism, not religion per se. History has conflated the two. There had been a Serbian State before the Turkish Occupation.
So why is "colonialism" an excuse for muslim behavior? (And when was Saudi Arabia colonized?) But colonialism is irrelevant for Serbian behavior? Sauce for the goose!
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Post by zameel on Dec 27, 2009 13:03:02 GMT
www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1238213/This-England-On-trail-English-Defence-League.html[btw himself, your analogy between Ottoman "colonialism" and European colonialism is disingenuous; the Ottomans were an empire where authority was extended but not enforced, and many regions, in particular the Hijaz and N Africa and much of the Middle East was held under local control - the Ottoman "colonialism" comes much closer to hegemony over a large anarchic empire, and the example of Serbia is in fact very interesting - the Ottomans not only left them alone, they allowed a full flowering of their Christian culture and language (see Michael Sell's response to Bat Ye'or which I reproduced here: jameshannam.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=history&action=display&thread=210&page=2 ). European colonialism on the other hand changed the legal system (which in some colonies, like India and Egypt, led to married women losing their property, which Islamic law granted them but Western law did not), the religious culture and destroyed traditional institutions replacing them with the colonial culture including in Syria (for some examples see www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0212#PhaseThreeColonialRuleItsImpactandResponses ); this was directly responsible for the abolishment of the political authority of the ulama which till today no longer exists (except in Saudi Arabia and Iran, but with interesting differences to the traditional model - see Noah Feldman's explanation and mention of these exceptions (better elaborated in his book, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State): www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 ). Furthermore, there was a massive economic decline when the colonialists left (and all the wealth went to self-interested corrupt rulers), and worst of all they divided the Muslim lands into borders and instilled a nationalist fervour in their elites as had never existed before - this is clearly outlined in David Fromkin's A Peace to End all Peace, where he describes the crucial point in the 1920s when the colonialists decided to install pro-Western dictators as rulers, and consequently create a tragic power struggle between the Muslim majority and the corrupt rulers propped up by Western powers (which has still not ended after 90 years). This is not to deny Muslim responsibility and the fact they are moral actors. I'm a big fan of the freedom fighters like Omar Mokhtar in Libya (immortalised in the great movie Lion of the Desert); Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi in Algeria and Damascus (where he fought the Druze in support of the French, for reasons to do with justice even in war); Abdullah Hasan al-Somali (the "mad mullah"); the peaceful freedom struggle of Husayn Ahmad Madani in India; and the non-violent resistance in what is now Pakistan of Abdul Ghaffar Khan etc. But this does not change the fact corruption was purposely built into the postcolonial states as was poverty - and the human rights violations this has led to is no different from other countries with the same history and socio-economic status. The "Muslim woman" you were talking to is an Irshad-Manji-type claimant of reform, which involves a lot of self-righteous feminism and distortion of reality]
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Post by zameel on Dec 27, 2009 13:34:57 GMT
Muslim youths in UK feel much more integrated than their European counterparts Survey shows Muslims are more loyal to their countries than non-Muslims. The feeling of "isolation" does not come from Muslims but from non-Muslim suspicion: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8038398.stmSurvey reveals Muslim attitudes
European Muslims have much more loyalty to the countries they live in than is generally believed, a survey says.
The report by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation says 77% of British Muslims identified with the UK, compared with 50% of the general public.
There was a similar finding in Germany, the survey says.
The authors say their report counters a commonly-held view that measures to combat Islamic militancy may have alienated many European Muslims.
"This research shows that many of the assumptions about Muslims and integration are wide of the mark," said Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co-author of the report.
"European Muslims want to be part of the wider community and contribute even more to society," she said.
The findings of the report are surprising, because since the 11 September attacks in the US commentators have repeatedly questioned the loyalties of European Muslims to the countries they live in, the BBC's Rob Broomby says.
The research - which focused mainly on European Muslims in Britain, France and Germany - polled around 500 Muslims and 1,000 members of the general public in each country.
'Isolated'
In Britain, the report found that more than three-quarters of Muslims identified with the country and its institutions - far more even than the general population did.
But whereas the vast majority of British Muslims (82%) felt Muslims were loyal citizens, the general public remained suspicious of them.
In Germany, 40% of Muslims identified with the country against 32% of the wider public.
German Muslims were also found far more likely than the general public to have confidence in the judicial system, financial institutions and the honesty of elections.
They had higher levels of confidence in their national government than society as a whole, but much less faith in the media.
In France, 52% of Muslims identified with the country, compared with 55% of the general public.
However, the report found that French Muslims had much less confidence in the nation's institutions, including police.
The survey also said that European Muslims felt far more isolated than those living in the United States and Canada. |
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Post by penguinfan on Dec 27, 2009 15:46:33 GMT
That's an interesting survey, here are some others: Survey: Many British Muslims Put Islam First
Some answers are provided by the most comprehensive survey to date of Muslim opinion in Britain. The results from NOP Research, broadcast by Channel 4-TV on August 7, are startling.
Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments. This figure is more than twice as high as those who say it was not a conspiracy. Tragically, almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year's 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the U.S.-led war on terror.
When asked, "Is Britain my country or their country?" only one in four say it is. Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law. According to the report, "Half of those who express a preference for living under Sharia law say that, given the choice, they would move to a country governed by those laws."
Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state. This comports with last year's Daily Telegraph newspaper survey that found one-third of British Muslims believe that Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to end it.
The news is no less alarming on the question of freedom of speech. Seventy-eight percent support punishment for the people who earlier this year published cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed. Sixty-eight percent support the arrest and prosecution of those British people who "insult Islam." When asked if free speech should be protected, even if it offends religious groups, 62 percent of British Muslims say No, it should not.www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/14/opinion/main1893879.shtmlThanks for the laughs, Zameel, I mean it. |
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Post by zameel on Dec 27, 2009 19:54:13 GMT
The problem with the above survey, as compared to the gallup poll, is that there are too many prior assumptions (which feed off public misunderstanding) and this is clearly reflected in the way the questions are worded (vague, closed, leading). Similar things were done to hype up “anti-semitism” by using misleading words in the question some decades ago as Finkelstein has shown in one of his books (The Holocaust Industry). The gallup poll however is different in that it takes a more scientific approach: a representative sample is interviewed with broad and open-ended questions from which the surveyors are able to draw a better picture. The survey above appears to have an agenda beforehand hoping for particular answers. Many of the questions single out Muslims, when the sentiment is often common to all. E.g. a poll showed nearly 40% of Americans believe 9/11 was either an inside job or the CIA had a hand in it (even the FBI after an extensive research claimed only to “believe” Bin Laden was behind the attack – it was never decisively proven); and most of the propaganda vehicles for 9/11 conspiracy (e.g the documentary Loose Change and Farenheit 9/11) do not come from Muslims but liberals. As for the bombings in London, “justification” is a difficult word, which is why the gallup poll grades the level of justification. Most people “understand” the reaction – as the American intelligence have said 9/11 was a reaction to American intervention elsewhere, and Bush’s statement “they attack us for our freedoms” has no real grounds (otherwise the “freer” countries would be attacked not those bombing Muslim countries) – even Ron Paul tried in vain to explain the very real concept of “blowback” to Rudi Guiliani. Some are sympathetic. But only a small minority believe the attacks to be “completely justified”, and the gallup poll in fact showed the majority that believed such attacks were prohibited used religion as the reason, while those who believed it “completely justified” used politics as the reason. The question “is Britain my country or their country” already assumes division, non-integration and a binary view – so it’s what’s called a “leading question” and does not achieve accurate results (even the title assumes from the start there is an Islam-Britain duality before assessing whether they are in a clash or embrace; a good article on this: www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/british.htm ). Throwing around words like “shariah” (the surveyors clearly had the warped understanding that it is a set of laws) and “fundamentalism” which have a variety of meanings and are not understood generally in the same way by Muslims and their Western counterparts. Western decadence is not only a belief of Muslims; most of the NHS money goes towards treating people who smoke, drink and are obese, yet because the government makes revenue out of these industries it won’t shut them down – that’s capitalist greed and a sign of decadence; depression rates, suicide rates are sky high as are promiscuity, anti-social behaviour, divorce rates, pornography, teenage pregnancies, illegitimate children etc. which are problems in the West, and which many believe can be curtailed using laws already in place within Britain (like banning marketing of alcohol which the BMJ recommended the government as it would save thousands of lives). Context is important. And surveys like the above which serve an agenda have no concern for context – “text, without context, is pretext”. |
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