[Magharebia] Just as Sheikh Ferkous took a stand opposing violence against Mohammedan leaders, al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri called for the downfall of Pakistain's government.
Good that they're having this discussion so openly. Even if it is because the smart jihadis have realized that they're losing the hard jihad of the sword, and it's time to switch to the soft jihad of the law.
In the same mid-September week, a leading Algerian Salafist issued a fatwa banning armed opposition to the government and al-Qaeda's second-in-command released an audio tape endorsing political violence.
"From a doctrinal point of view, the present jihadist groups cannot be in jihad except under the command of their rulers and fighting under their banner," declared Salafist theologian Sheikh Mohamed Ali Ferkous, alias Abou Abdelmouaâz Mohamed, in the September fatwa.
That's what they think they're doing, Sheikh Ferkous.
"Any opposition must occur in a peaceful context and must be marked by the need not to fall into violence in any form: riots, demonstrations, sit-ins, and even insults," Ferkous added.
Sheikh Ferkous, who used to officiate as a holy man in the district of Kouba in Algiers, is greatly demanded by the Islamists and his views are well respected. His latest fatwa against al-Qaeda's version of jihad follows a request from GSPC founder Hassan Hattab and other former jihadists for Islamic scholars to clarify their positions on terrorism.
Al-Zawahiri, meanwhile, prodded Pak youth to pursue jihad and violence.
The near-simultaneous statements differ in more than the message; Ayman al-Zawahiri's new message is failing to gain any traction in the Maghreb.
"The Mohammedan world is tired of al-Zawahiri tapes that call to overthrow governments and therefore, these tapes no longer have any value neither in the Islamic world nor in any other," Brahim Ould Mohamed, a Mauritanian media specialist in Islamic groups told Magharebia.
Many people were particularly opposed to al-Qaeda's message calling for the violent removal of the Pak government. "The invitations issued from the caves cannot bring down governments; even if they are weaker than a spider's web," said Imam Izid Bih Ould Teghy, head of the al-Furqan mosque in Nouakchott.
"This is not the first time that Zawahri calls Mohammedan rulers infidels and calls for people to get out of their rule. And calls by Al-Qaeda generally do not find any echo in the community. It has become sure enough that people who respond to such calls, are people who suffer from psychological and social problems. Al-Zawahiri is known as a doctor, but instead of choosing to treat people, he chose to kill them, and this choice in itself is an indication that the mental abilities of this man aren't sane," said Driss Moussaoui, President of the Moroccan Association for Social Psychiatry.
Furthermore, many were uninterested in listening to any new message from al-Zawahiri or al-Qaeda.
"Young people do not care about the messages of Al-Qaeda and believe that bin Laden and his followers are not clear and they do not know to what side they belong and therefore, do not trust them," said Tunisian professor Saloua Chorfi. She added "The messages of Al-Qaeda specifically do not have credibility and it is questionable, as they talk more than they do acts."
Mohammed Ouardani, a 25-year-old Moroccan, told Magharebia that he had not heard anything about the audiotape of Ayman al-Zawahiri. "Even if I was told that the tape of al-Zawahiri or bin Laden will be broadcast at a particular time by a specific channel, I wouldn't watch it nor give it any attention," he said.
"Al-Qaeda has ended a long time ago, and in fact, it has become a pariah, and is seen as an evil virus that brought malicious damage to Islam and Mohammedans," Moroccan journalist Abdeliah Sakhir said.
For his part, young Tunisian Mehdi offers a solution: "To solve the problems of Islamic and Arab countries and to find peace and avoid wars according to our Islamic religion, we must renounce terrorism in all its forms."
"There is only a small number of young people who are affected by the messages of al-Qaeda," he added. "I personally do not trust them."
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10/13/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
AFRICA as a Continent is being promoted as the "NEW/NEXT FRONTIER" OF WORLD OIL-ENERGY EXPLORATION + DEVELOPMENT.
#4
This is not Elisabeth being prosecuted. I am just a proxy. What is burdening me is the burden of history. I am part of history now. I am doing this for millions and millions of people in the Western world, in Europe, in the US, in Canada, who are also champions of freedom, freedom of speech, human rights.
An obvious hate-monger. Good thing the Austrian attorney general is on the job!
#5
perhaps it has always been the way but lawfare is the way people attack each other in Western society now.
We have successfully stomped out violence as a dispute resolution method - anybody who hits or physically attacks someone has their life ruined with a criminal record.
But cunning people who wish ill on others now wage lawfare. They simply use the law as a weapon of assault.
They can do it by, for example, making up lies about people and telling police:
he/she abused me.
he/she raped me when i was drunk
he/she sexually harassed me at work
he/she is stalking me
There doesn't have to be any validity. Any person who is alone in a room with any other person in our societies is at risk of that person turning on them and making malicious allegations.
If that person wants to.
Most normal people don't want to. But sometimes people decide for some reason or other they don't like you and then: watch out.
Blogger Sappho has all the details, in English (scroll down past the photo).
I turned around to look at the journalist of the high brow Trouw (Loyalty), a newspaper which had originated in the Second World War as Dutch Resistances pamphlet. All week I had sat next to him and today he confided to me what most of his colleagues had said earlier: Wilders is an obnoxious fellow, but he got his facts and figures right. His perspective is highly defendable. Ive now seen Fitna for the first time in one go, its extrapolation can be criticized, but its not bad at all. Its like those legal experts claimed: there are no grounds for a conviction. People feel insulted, but thats no justification to shut him up.
The trial is being broadcast live, so everyone can see to draw their own conclusions.
#3
The judges of the Court of the city of Amsterdam, however, decided that Wilders had to face charges on racism, group insult, discrimination, hate speech and blasphemy.
These are crimes? Then why don't they ban the Koran? These people better wake up before it's too late.
However, prosecutors have dropped one charge against him, of insulting a group on the basis of its religion, noting that his statements have been mostly directed toward Islam as an ideology, rather than Muslims.
He is still charged with inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims. Under Dutch law, it is illegal to insult or incite hatred against a group of people on the basis of gender, religion, race or sexuality.
It remains to be seen whether the judges will agree with the prosecutors' recommendation -- they didn't agree with the original prosecutorial decision not to prosecute, after all.
a newspaper which had originated in the Second World War as Dutch Resistance's pamphlet.
could be prosecuted for insulting or inciting hatred against a group of people, ie Germans? [rhet question] Given that a number of the Dutch seemed to have supported them, I make a reasonable bet that the prosecutor in this case probably would.
#7
So if he was to insult the Church of the SubGenius, that would be a crime? I mean, if you disagree with the tenets of a religion doesn't that also imply that the followers of that religion are, to say the least, mistaken? And is that not then an insult? So how are we to discuss the relative merits of different religions? Does Dutch law say we cannot do this? Then Dutch law is a jackass.
...It should be taken as an axiom of political life that if your argument is about the other sides advertisements, youre losing. If your argument is about whos funding the other sides advertisements, youre losing badly. And if your argument is about how foreigners might lack of evidence notwithstanding be secretly funneling cash into the other sides advertisements, youre losing in a historic landslide....
Posted by: Mike ||
10/13/2010 06:11 ||
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#1
Fighting with the Chamber of Commerce is a dumba$$ thing to do. But on the other hand, keep it up Obummer.
That was the motion of a fascinating, highly charged debate last Wednesday night at NYUs Skirball Hall sponsored by Intelligence Squared, whose series of topical debates with experts in the field are always timely, lively and thought-provoking.
While the sentiment of the large audience at NYU was somewhere between liberal and confused going in - 41 percent favored the motion, 25 percent opposed and 34 percent were undecided, in an electronic tally taken at the outset - it seems clear that most of the undecideds came away swayed by the arguments of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the outspoken Muslim critic of how Islam is practiced, particularly in its treatment of women, and Douglas Murray, a journalist, author and student of Islam who managed to lighten some tense moments with his very British humor.
After the 90-minute debate, the final tally found 55 percent of the audience opposed to the motion, 36 percent in favor and only 9 percent undecided.
I recommend that you listen to the full debate on NPR or watch it on Bloomberg television this week. (Go to www.intelligencesquaredus.org for details)
Details include the full almost two hours of video and the transcript.
For now, trust me that each of the four debaters has a fascinating biography. On the For side, young Zeba Khan is a religious Muslim from Toledo, Ohio who attended a Jewish day school for nine years and speaks Hebrew, and Maajid Nawaz, a former Muslim radical, spent 12 years in an Egyptian jail before having a change of heart. He now spends his time in counter-Islamist social activism.
On the Against side, Murray, a best-selling author and journalist who was raised Christian, says his research into the life of Mohammed "made me an atheist."
Hirsi Ali escaped an arranged marriage in her native Somalia, settled in the Netherlands and served in the Dutch parliament. She received death threats for her public criticism of Islam and now is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.
She travels under heavy security, and John Donvan, the ABC-TV reporter who serves as moderator for the series, noted that airport-style security was employed for this debate because of Hirsi Ali's situation - a sign of the times and metaphor for the evening.
(Though he doesn't call attention to himself, Donvan is a key to the debate series' success, combining probing questions and a light touch to keep the proceedings moving. He said this debate was the "most spirited we've ever had.")
All four panelists argued forcefully. And the topic, and points raised and countered, speak to the heart of the issue of whether Islamic militancy is motivated by politics or the religion itself.
The For side insisted that the real Islam has been hijacked by a few militants who give the religion a bad name. They noted that the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims are peace-loving citizens.
The Anti side maintained that the source of Islamic militancy is to be found in the teachings of Mohammed and the Koran and that the leaders of the religion today are the radicals.
"It's an absurd situation we're in," Douglas Murray noted, "where nothing that anyone does whilst being Muslim is any responsibility of Islam."
This story doesn't go at all with me; I'm from Missouri, you've got to show me.
I'll believe it when it starts behaving like a "religion of peace" and repudiates the violent parts of the Koran like Christianity and Judaism have done with the Bible.
#2
Seems that many years ago a certain King Canute also tried to force a differetnt unrelenting force of reality with a equally inane resolution.
Posted by: abu do you love ||
10/13/2010 1:39 Comments ||
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#3
Actually Canute was proving that the power of kings is nothing, he was making a point that kings were nothing compared to God. They always forget to tell the second half of that story.
#5
What do you expect when 'institutions of higher learning' don't teach real history, but 'studies'?
How did the religion spread from the sparsely populated Arab Peninsula to the reaches of the world? By the sword.
What were the Crusades? A military response to the military conquest of the lands of the Middle East which were previously the domains of the Byzantine [Eastern Roman Empire] and the Sassanid Persians taken by the sword.
Was this just an isolated incident? No, direct threats to Western civilization stretched from the Battle of Tours, 732 to the Battle of Vienna, 1683, nearly a thousand years of constant non-peace. The Spanish word for their experience is Reconquesta (710-1492), the re-conquest from the Islamic military seizure of their land.
They're the perps not the victims, although the normal modus operandi is to portray all perps as the victims in today's bankrupt ruling class, particularly in academia which still worships the godless butchers of the 20th Century in various shades of socialism.
#6
I'll believe it when it starts behaving like a "religion of peace" and repudiates it
That is a akin to asking the KKK to repudiate racism or the Nazis to repudiate antisemitism. The (Jewish) Bible is basically a history book nothing more. It says: "/Moses/Joshua/the Jews/ did this and that". Nowhere it tells that these actions were right or just, nowhere it tells that Moses or Joshua were faultless men whose example had to be followed, nowhere it tells that G.d could not modidfy its message once times would have changed and nowhere it tells that everything is in the Bible itself. Rabbinic Judaism was created precisely on the basis that the Bible is only part of G.d's message and that, for instance, allowed to say that women were no longer to be put to death by stoning no matter what is told in the Pentateuch.
But Islam is based upon the precept that Muhammad is the last, in fact the only prophet as the teachings of both Christian and Jewish ones are distorted to match those of Muhammad. That God himself cannot change a single comma in it. That the solution for everything is to be found in Muhamad's sayings or what Muhammad said G.d had dictated to him. That no matter how repellent, depraved and immoral his actions Muhammad is to be praised and imitated in everything (including in how he dressed or how he cleaned himself). That he is to be the subject of a personality cult of Kim il Sungesque proportions (every Muslim having to tell "Peace and Blessings Upon Him" when mentionning him).
Stop dreaming about Islam repudiating violence because that is impossible and start thinking about how to demuslimify its followers
#8
wrong spelling of the word and needs a plural tense:
"pieces".
Fixed.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
10/13/2010 9:53 Comments ||
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#9
The debate on what each religious groups holy book contains is pretty much irrelevant when clerics can pick a choose passages to influence (in a good way or bad) their congregants and established their brand. Bottom line: One should care less about what anyone's holy book says and more about how the follower acts upon it. In Islam there are far too many clerics including the Saudi Apartheid Islamic Republic that have disseminated hate against non-Muslims via the Muslim World League. Please go to these two sites:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=383&report=45 (Saudi hate literature study)
(In the above are the Koranic passages that justified Mohammed Taheri to mow down student at NC State in 2006. Ironically, the 2nd edition of Inspire and Al-Qaeda on-line publication came out yesterday and asks Muslims to mow down US citizens in this fashion. Inspire is peppered with Korans verses too.
Posted by: Jack Salami ||
10/13/2010 10:16 Comments ||
Top||
#10
The debate on what each religious group's holy book contains is pretty much irrelevant when clerics can pick a choose passages to influence (in a good way or bad) their congregants and established their brand
Nope. Koran says clearly which passages are to be repealed when two of them conflict: the earlier one (that is the "peaceful" one). Because unlike the warlike passages in the Bible who apply only for certain place in time and space, the commandment to "fight the infidels until they submit and pay the Jizya" in Koran is permanent and unlimited in space.
What you are saying is as absurd as pretending that Mein Kampf is pro-democracy and philosemitic it is just that bad "clerics" quote it the wrong way.
#12
I think most Rantburg readers have read enough about Islam and all pretty much agree. I understand that the translation of peace and submission from Arabic are essentially the same. if so I'd like to see people refer to the Religion of Submission from time to time.
#14
I understand that the translation of peace and submission from Arabic are essentially the same.
Nope. Peace = Salam, Submission = Islam. Now I don't read Arabic and since Arabic omits vowels it is not impossible that Islam and Salam are written the same.
Having presented several examples of men and women who are genuine moderates, I now turn to the question apparently on everyone's mind: How do you tell the real moderates from the frauds?...
If you're serious about distinguishing real moderates from faux-moderates, however, here are two quick and easy ways to start. Look for Saudi financing, and look for connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Both are apt to be opaque--sometimes not very opaque at all, but opaque enough that most people don't notice--and both should immediately raise your suspicions that you're not dealing with a moderate.
I'm going to start slowly with the list of American organizations that accept large donations from the Saudis and have close connections to the Brotherhood, because there are a lot, and I'm hoping these names really sink in. The Muslim Students Association was founded by the Brothers. The Council on American Islamic Relations--loads of well-documented Muslim Brotherhood ties. The Islamic Society of North America and Fiqh Council of North America (they're associated): pure Brotherhood goodness, enriched with nourishing Saudi vitamins.
This final observation would have some wry comic value if it weren't so unfunny. ISNA insists on its website that it has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood and "does not accept funding from foreign governments."
On the very same site, it announces the HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal ISNA Fellowship program.
I suppose they think most people won't notice that. Alas, they're right.
From the comment thread, about how to find the ones who're faking moderation while taking money from from the Magic Kingdom or are connected to the Brotherhood:
But if you've got access to Google and you're aware that the first words to look for are Saudi financing and the words "Muslim Brotherhood," you can rule people and groups out of the category "moderate" pretty quickly. Most of this stuff is no secret at all--people just don't realize that it should ring alarm bells. I've cut this down for copyright reasons. The entire article, at the link, is very informative -- and entertaining.
#1
f you're serious about distinguishing real moderates from faux-moderates, however, here are two quick and easy ways to start. Look for Saudi financing, and look for connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Both are apt to be opaque--sometimes not very opaque at all, but opaque enough that most people don't notice--and both should immediately raise your suspicions that you're not dealing with a moderate.
The emphasis obviously is on "start", as in being a good first-cut approximation that filters out most of the heavy hitters. Obviously won't work for individuals working on their own or being funded by the likes of Al Quada.
For me, a good (but not perfect) filter would be outrage at Muslim outrages: Comment #4 at this post provides excellent test material. Don't use one or two, but hit the test subject with the whole nasty mess and see how they react.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
