Nearly a year after a top FBI official said the agency does not monitor students at UCI, police are investigating an incident in which a Muslim student says he was threatened by a federal agent. The incident occurred Monday night in view of campus police and dozens of Muslim student spectators, who were helping to disassemble a large wooden representation of the wall that Israelis have built in occupied Palestine.
Monthly Archives: May 2007
Mad Mel explains Islamism
“Islamism is the politicised version of Islam which mandates jihad, or holy war against the infidel and conquest of the non-Islamic world for Islam. I’m well aware of the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam: that’s a theological argument for others to have….
“The Islamist goal is to destroy the virus of freedom and modernity before it infects the Islamic world, and to replace it with Islam. That is the core of the profound threat it poses to the west, a threat mounted through the pincer movement of both terrorism and cultural takeover. This cultural takeover, or the aim to Islamise the west, was explicitly laid out in a programme of subversion for Europe by the Wahabbi [sic] Muslim Brotherhood almost 30 years ago….
“And for Islamists there is no room in a liberal society. True liberals never thought they had a duty to accommodate fascism. True liberals always fought it. So must we do with religious fascism.”
‘Ed’ Husain and the Muslims’ dirty linen
Yusuf Smith reviews Ed Husain’s book The Islamist.
OIC deplores Islamophobia, discrimination against Muslims
The Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM) on Thursday adopted the “Islamabad Declaration”, deploring the bogey of Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslims.
“We condemn the growing trend of Islamophobia and systematic discrimination against the adherents of Islam. We call upon the international community to prevent incitement to hatred and discrimination against the Muslims and take effective measures to combat defamation of religions and acts of negative stereotyping of people based on religion, belief or ethnicity,” the declaration said.
Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri read out the declaration at the concluding session, chaired by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. “We request the Secretary General to continue the OIC initiatives to effectively counter Islamophobia through discussions and debates at various international fora,” it said.
Bernard Lewis’ latest call to arms
“Bernard Lewis’ op-ed piece in the May 16, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal deserves swift rebuttal. This is the same man who advised President Bush prior to the Iraq war that the only language Arabs understood was the language of force. While Presidents may self-select advisors who tell them what they want to hear, these advisors bear as much responsibility, specially when they pose as ‘experts’…. Lewis’ op-ed article is a call to arms against Islam.”
Badruddin Khan writes in Counterpunch, 17 May 2007
In an article entitled “Islam’s War for World Mastery” Efraim Karsh takes up Lewis’s arguments. He writes:
“Mr. bin Laden and other Islamists’ war is not against America per se but is rather the most recent manifestation of the millenarian jihad for a universal Islamic empire, the umma. As the preeminent world power for quite some time, and the only remaining superpower after the collapse of the Soviet empire, America blocks the final realization of this goal and hence is a natural target for aggression. In this sense, the House of Islam’s war for world mastery is a traditional, indeed venerable, quest that is far from over.”
‘Know your enemy’
John Cassady invites readers of the Asheville Citizen-Times to test their knowledge of “radical Islam”.
Eurabia is a dystopian nightmare, says author Philip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins, author of God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis, answers questions from his publishers. Asked “Where is Eurabia and what do you think it will look like?” Jenkins replies:
“Eurabia is a dystopian nightmare land where white Europeans have very few children while their Muslim neighbors have many, so that Muslim immigrants swamp traditional Europe, making it what Bernard Lewis calls ‘part of the Western Maghreb’. I have real problems with the idea because I think it’s based on shaky demography, but also because it recalls for me so many nativist campaigns in bygone years – against Catholics in nineteenth century America, Jews in early twentieth century Britain, and so on.
“It is quite possible that in sixty or eighty years, some fifteen or twenty percent of Europeans might have family roots in Muslim countries, but that is quite different from assuming that they will all be stereotypical ‘Muslim fanatics’, or even Muslim at all. My guess is that Muslims in Germany will be very German, Muslims in Britain very British, and so on. By all means, let Europe and the United States suppress extremists and violent radicals, but that’s quite different from panicking over people who happen to be from the Middle East or South Asia.”
Rehashing Orientalist cliches
“Worse than classical Orientalists are modern American writers who rehash classical Orientalist cliches but who lack the rigor, erudition, knowledge, and language skills of classical Orientalists.
“This guy is a good example. So much of the treatment (especially on page 15) is so far off but have no time to elaborate. You read this article and you think that Zarqawi is the Prophet of Islam, and not Muhammad.”
As’ad AbuKhalil responds to the article “Muhammad: The Warrior Prophet” by one Richard A. Gabriel, in the military history magazine MHQ.
‘US opens door to millions of Muslims’, right-wing blogger warns
“The new immigration bill will allow hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Muslims to come into the United States over the next decade. Many of them have been indoctrinated all their lives to hate the United States, but that’s not on the immigration qualifications. Nobody asks newcomers ‘have you been taught to hate the United States?’ But that is exactly how France and Britain created their domestic terrorist threat: By importing hundreds of thousands of unassimilated people under the guise of multicultural love and peace. Almost all vote for the Left.”
Thoughts Of A Conservative Christian, 18 May 2007
Note also the citing of Christopher Hitchens’ recent Vanity Fair article.
Man found guilty of mosque arson
A man has been convicted of deliberately setting fire to a mosque in West Sussex. Richard John Hall, 29, from Westbourne Avenue in Worthing, was found guilty of burglary and arson at Chichester Crown Court on Friday.
The court heard that Hall, who has learning difficulties, set fire to the Islamic Cultural Centre on Ivy Arch Road, Worthing, on 11 March 2005. He has been released on bail to be sentenced next month.
The fire was discovered by two members of the Muslim community on their way to prayers at the mosque.
Hall was linked to the crime after his DNA was found at the scene.
Update: See “Man who set fire to mosque jailed for three years”, The Argus, 11 June 2007