Posts Tagged ‘radical islam’

Wishful thinking from the Ahmadiyya Muslims

Posted: February 7, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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I’ve mentioned the Ahmadiyya Muslims on my blog before, they have a mosque on main street Fitchburg and march regularly in our 4th of July parade. They are good people and they certainly mean well with this effort:

“Our hope is to emphasize to our fellow Americans,” Sayed said, “that it is the religious duty of a Muslim to be loyal to the country where he resides…Number two that there are negative influences being exerted — upon especially the Muslim youth in the United States — by people like al Awlaki on the Internet and third the press pays attention to violent acts that people commit in the name of Islam….If we just sit by, more and more these extremists will take hold the banner of Islam and say this is what Islam is.”

I’m torn by this. It’s a worthy effort and a necessary one, and Islam needs reforms from within. Unfortunately many Muslims consider the Ahmadiyya’s a breakaway sect, they have been targets of terror and murder for their peaceful views. I don’t know if western support would simply marginalize them further within greater Islam.

So as I applaud their efforts I don’t have a lot of hope that we will see more of their point of view and less of this:

An Afghan physiotherapist will be executed within three days for converting to Christianity.

Said Musa, 45, has been held for eight months in a Kabul prison

and remember this is not Pakistan, this is Afghanistan!

He claims he was visited by a judge who told him he would be hanged within days unless he converted back to Islam.

But he remains defiant and said he would be willing to die for his faith.

He told the Sunday Times: ‘My body is theirs to do what they want with.

‘Only God can decide if my spirit goes to hell.’

Defence lawyers have refused to represent him, while others have dropped the case after receiving death threats.

As long as Islam is generating these headlines it will be a tough sell.

You can tell a lot about a person by what they bold when quoting

Posted: February 4, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, middle east
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Yglesias links and quotes Ayaan Hirsi Ali on what is coming in Egypt

Ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali warns us to be very afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt. And maybe she’s right. But it’s difficult to take her word for it. After all, she thinks that Islam in general needs to be extirpated from the planet:

He then quotes her piece, bolding certain bits:

“I’ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate – a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren’t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.”

Now of course bolding a piece is meant to draw your eyes to the bolded section and to avoid the unbolded sections. Yglesias having a liberal audience is trying to stress Ali “intolerance”. How dare she be intolerant of Islam. Now lets look at the same piece with different words bolded:

I’ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate – a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren’t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.”

Now I would think that these things about Islam and Sharia law would be significant to liberals. After all if I as a believing Roman Catholic am repressive because I oppose sex before marriage, gay marriage and believe in God, how much more would they oppose Sharia, which stones women, beats (and kills) gays and slays apostates.

But we can’t stress these facts, because it promotes “intolerance of Islam”. Maybe it’s just me but I think we shouldn’t tolerate Sharia law, stoning of women, beating of gays, and killing of apostates.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali “intolerance” of Islam is based on a standard of Islam’s actions. Yglesias critique of Ali and defense of Islam is based on a standards of her thoughts.

That to me is the perfect illustration of how liberalism works.

This one might be a little harder for the MSM to ignore…

Posted: February 1, 2011 by datechguy in middle east, opinion/news
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…since instead of Iranian TV this one was on CNN proper:

The Blaze caught this and, as they explain, the truth-telling starts at about the 1:30 mark, including a woman who says of Hosni Mubarak:

“All the people hate him. He’s supporting Israel! Israel is our enemy. We don’t like him … Israel and America supported him. We hate them all!”

Then, at 2:20, the guy shoves himself in front of the camera and says:

“It is revolution, yes, but who supports Hosni Mubarak? The United States of America, British government, German government, French government . . . The people in Egypt, we got to be free. . . . We got to go free Palestinians. We got to go destroy Israel. The country that controls [unintelligible] is Israel.”

Nope nothing to see here. I suspect we won’t see this repeated on CNN or MSNBC. You can count on Rush to play this today.

And we aren’t sure if hitting yourself with a hammer is bad for you

Posted: February 1, 2011 by datechguy in media, middle east
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There is ignorance and there is ignorance:

More troubling questions. Will Islamic fundamentalists, well organized almost everywhere, fill the power vacuum, and is that good or bad?

That’s NBC’s Martin Fletcher. Lisa Graas has this to say:

We can only speculate about what “reasoning “Fletcher might use to defend such a preposterous claim that it is somehow an open question whether or not Islamic fundamentalism may be an acceptable form of government. I do not want to think he is intentionally shoring up the notion in people that Islamist regimes can be good. Rather, in giving him the benefit of the doubt, I should think this is a claim based in cowardice such as we find time and time again in history. As evil advances in the world, cowards slide further and further down the slippery slope of denial

It’s like looking at this film.

and concluding that we aren’t quite sure if getting a wrench in the head will hurt you.

Update: Richard Cohen actually sees what is in front of him:

Egypt’s problems are immense. It has a population it cannot support, a standard of living that is stagnant and a self-image as leader of the (Sunni) Arab world that does not, really, correspond to reality. It also lacks the civic and political institutions that are necessary for democracy. The next Egyptian government – or the one after – might well be composed of Islamists. In that case, the peace with Israel will be abrogated and the mob currently in the streets will roar its approval.

His analysis is a sobering dose of reality.

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