“‘War is deceit’, said Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, and deception remains a potent and little-recognized weapon in the hands of international jihadists. Radical Muslims today charge ‘racism’ against anyone who dares to point out their motives and goals…. The problem is not racism, but precisely a clash of civilizations, or a clash between two radically opposing views of how society should be ordered.”
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch in Front Page Magazine, 11 November 2004
The Council on American Islamic Relations released a poll in October, concluding that nearly one-third of Americans hold negative stereotypes of Muslims, such as: Islam encourages oppression of women; Islam teaches violence and hatred; Muslims value life less than other people, and Muslims teach their children to hate unbelievers.
Steven Stalinsky of the Middle East Media Research Institute says Americans are quite correct.
Angry cries from several far-left and Jewish student groups demanded Tariq Ramadan’s removal from the European Social Forum (ESF), which was held two weeks ago in London.
In an emergency motion put forth by the National Union of Students (NUS), the renowned European Islamic scholar was deemed a threat to student interests because of his support of Shari’ah (Islamic Law), which the resolution states “denies basic human rights for women and homosexuals.”
The move enraged Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), the umbrella federation group of student Islamic societies in Britain, who said it was passed without any sound proof or consultation with a Muslim organisation. “They provided no evidence whatsoever,” said Jamal El-Shayyal, an executive member of FOSIS.
“If any of these people were to read one chapter of Ramadan’s [book] To Be a European Muslim they would see that any of the accusations levelled against him are not only false but ludicrous. Particularly seeing as he has recently been promoted by the Foreign Office as a model for integration and positive participation in Western societies.”
“If you’re going to call Ramadan an extremist then who’s next?” he added.
Swiss Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan is at the center of a vile campaign by rightist French magazines and newspapers, which accuse him of spearheading what they called the political Islam drive in Europe.
Seeking to blemish his reputation after he had been catapulted into the limelight as a paradigm for moderate Muslims, L’Express magazine ran a front-page photo of Ramadan titled, “The man who wants to establish Islamism in France”.
The ferocious attack came hard on the heels of Ramadan’s success in grabbing the attention of the third round of the European Social Forum, which concluded on October 17. Ramadan took part in three fringe symposiums, calling on Muslims in Europe to fully integrate into their societies, stop casting in the victim mould and get rid of the minority complex.
L’Express further published excerpts from Ramadan’s lectures and seminars recorded on audio tapes, branding them as an outspoken call for Islamizing French society.
It also quoted Ramadan as encouraging Muslims to respect European constitutions so long as they were in line with Islam. “It means that Ramadan has no respect for European constitutions,” the magazine said.
“At a convention on the subject of ‘Pluralism in Islam’ which took place in late August, 2004 at the Egyptian Journalists’ Union in Cairo, Sheikh Dr Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and one of the most important religious authorities in Islamist circles, issued a religious legal opinion permitting the abduction and killing of American civilians in Iraq in order to pressure the American army to evacuate its forces.”
For MEMRI Special Dispatch No.794, “Reactions to Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi’s Fatwa Calling for the Abduction and Killing of American Civilians in Iraq”, see here.
For an article by Egyptian journalist Fahmi Hawaydi exposing the falsity of the charge against Qaradawi, see here.
“On Tuesday, US authorities diverted a United Airlines London-Washington flight to Bangor, Maine, where the ex-pop singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, now as Yusuf Islam, was questioned by federal security agents, and then ordered deported back to Britain. Yusuf Islam, it turns out, is on the official ‘no-fly list’.
“This action will doubtless provoke loud and prolonged guffaws from those who consider American security policies to be excessive. But a look at the career and associations of Yusuf Islam since he became a Muslim in 1977 shows that the decision was correct.”
Stephen Schwartz in Front Page Magazine, 23 September 2004
Swiss Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan is at the center of a vile campaign by rightist French magazines and newspapers, which accuse him of spearheading what they called the political Islam drive in Europe.
Seeking to blemish his reputation after he had been catapulted into the limelight as a paradigm for moderate Muslims, L’Express magazine ran a front-page photo of Ramadan titled, “The man who wants to establish Islamism in France”. The ferocious attack came hard on the heels of Ramadan’s success in grabbing the attention of the third round of the European Social Forum, which concluded on October 17.
“Claiming Muhammad’s teachings are the root of terrorism, a website founded by an ex-Muslim attempts to dispel the oft-quoted statement ‘Islam is a religion of peace’. Headed by Ali Sina, FaithFreedom.org presents articles and commentaries that debunk much of the Quran and charge that Islam’s founder, Muhammad, was a rapist, pedophile, mass murderer and an ‘evil man’. On the site, which features the description ‘Islam and Quran denounced by ex-Muslims as the root of terrorism’, Sina promises that if anyone can prove him wrong in his assertions about Muhammad and Islam, he will take the site off the Internet.”
A European commissioner set off a furious row yesterday after warning that Europe’s Christian civilisation risked being overrun by Islam.
Fritz Bolkestein, the single market commissioner and a former leader of the Dutch liberals, said the European Union would “implode” in its current form if 70 million Turkish Muslims were allowed to join.
He predicted that Turkish accession would overwhelm the fragile system and finish off any lingering dreams of a fully-integrated European superstate.
In a speech at Leiden University, he compared the EU to the late Austrian-Hungarian empire, which took so many different peoples on board in such a haphazard fashion that it eventually became ungovernable.
Calling demography the “mother of politics”, he said that while America had the youth and dynamism to remain the world’s only superpower, and China was the rising economic power, Europe’s destiny was to be “Islamised”.
“The liberty of an open society can never be a suicide pact, and the freedom of the academy is never absolute.” Predictably, Fouad Ajami adds his voice to the chorus of right-wingers supporting Professor Ramadan’s exclusion from the US.
Wall Street Journal, 7 September 2004
For a profile of Ajami – “the bigot’s favorite native, always ready to provide the needed soundbites to rationalize the latest racist thinking or imperial adventure” – see Muslim WakeUp! 7 September 2004