Is there a nice side to radical Islamism?

Salah Uddin Shoab Choudhury has paid dearly for his struggle against radical Islamism in his native Bangladesh. His voice needs to be heard. Is there a non-nasty side to radical Islamism? Besides suicide bombing, repression and violence against women and despotic regimes, I guess they are OK if you like that sort of thing.

Nasty side of radical Islam
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

Many nations having Shariah Law or Mullah rule in the world are continuing to commit various forms of notoriety in the name of Islam. I know, what Islamists and people like Ahmadinejad or Wahhabis or notorious groups like Hamas, Hezbollah or Al Qaeda are doing, is not Islam at all. To get more specific answer as to why I have drawn such conclusion, we need to carefully read this entire article to understand, what is happening in those nations, which are having Shariah law or laws of Mullahs. Here we have reports on sexual assualt inside Iranian prison by the prison guards by taking the refuge of sermons issued by Mullahs. It is evidently proved that such practices are continuing in Iran since the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

A highly influential Shi'a religious leader, with whom Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly consults, apparently told followers last month that coercion by means of rape, torture and drugs is acceptable against all opponents of the Islamic regime. In the wake of a series of publications worldwide regarding the rape and torture of dissident prisoners in Iran 's jails, supporters of Ahmadinejad gathered with him in Jamkaran, a popular pilgrimage site for Shi'ite Muslims on the outskirts of Qom , on August 11, 2009. According to Iranian pro-democracy sources, the gathered crowd heard from Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad himself regarding the issue.

According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center [ITIC], an independent intelligence analysis organization, Mesbah-Yazdi is considered Ahmadinejad's personal spiritual guide. A radical totalitarian even in Iranian terms, he holds messianic views, supports increasing Islamization, calls for violent suppression of domestic political opponents, and, according to the ITIC, "declared that obeying a president supported by the Supreme Leader was tantamount to obeying God."

At the Jamkaran gathering, Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad answered questions about the rape and torture charges. The following text is from a transcript by Iranian dissidents to be a series of questions and answers exchanged between the Ayatollah and some of his supporters.

Asked if a confession obtained by applying psychological, emotional and physical pressure was valid and considered credible according to Islam, Mesbah-Yazdi replied: "Getting a confession from any person who is against the Velayat-e Faqih [Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists], or the regime of Iran's mullahs] is permissible under any condition."

The Ayatollah gave the identical answer when asked about confessions obtained through drugging the prisoner with opiates or addictive substances.

He was asked, "Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?", which was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric.

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed."

This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?

Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape."

A related issue, in the eyes of the questioners, was the rape of virgin female prisoners. In this instance, Mesbah-Yazdi went beyond the permissibility issue and described the Allah-sanctioned rewards accorded the rapist-in-the-name-of-Islam:

"If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala."

One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi'a Muslim."

Meanwhile, the same devil Ahmadinejad in another live interview with state run radio station said that that any rape or torture of political prisoners in Iranian detention centers in recent months had been carried out by "enemy" agents, not the government."

Recently two prominent members of Iran 's human rights community, the feminist lawyer and journalist Shadi Sadr and the blogger and activist Mojtaba Samienejad, published essays online from inside Iran arguing that far from being a new phenomenon, prison rape has a long history in the Islamic Republic.

In her essay Ms... Sadr wrote:

"Published reports are available about these types of torture committed against women political prisoners after the 1979 Revolution. The most systematic type of reported rape has been the rape of virgin girls who were sentenced to death by execution because of political reasons. They were raped on the night before execution.. These reports have been substantiated by frequent statements from the relatives of women political prisoners. On the day after the execution, authorities returned their daughter's dead body to them along with a sum considered to be the alimony. Reports state that in order to lose their virginity, girls were forced to enter into a temporary marriage with men who were in charge of their prison. Otherwise it was feared that the executed prisoner would go to heaven because she was a virgin!

"It is known beyond a shadow of a doubt, that during the 1980s, the rape of women political prisoners was prevalent. It was so prevalent as to make Ayatollah Montazeri, who was Khomeini's deputy at the time, write the following to Khomeini in a letter dated October 7, 1986: "Did you know that young women are raped in some of the prisons of the Islamic Republic?""

Recently Mr. Samienejad, who was imprisoned in the past for blogging but has managed to avoid detention this year, published a post, in English, headlined, Memories of Prison and Raped Prisoners. Mr. Samienejad's post began:

"The practice of rape on prisoners, brought up by [reformist Mehdi] Karoubi in his letter to [former President Ali Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, has existed for the last three decades in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many prisoners have written about it in their memoirs, and rumors have always existed about the issue... Prisoner rape is one of the most horrific forms of human rights violations in Iran , but not much has been said about it until now, despite its widespread practice. Social stigmas have made people reluctant to discuss the issue, and an admission of the practice would have had grave implications for the Islamic Republic. However the taboo is broken now; Rafsanjani, the second most powerful figure of the regime, has now publicly been informed about rape in prisons. A door has been opened and the issue must now be discussed. I saw and heard about many rape cases during my prison term. With the issue now open for discussion, I want to retrieve from my memories some of the stories and retell them, so we can better know who these rapists are.

In the first of five harrowing memories, Mr. Samienejad writes that during his detention four years ago:

"The terms 'coke bottle' and 'baton' were constantly used by my interrogators, who were threatening to use these objects on me."

Mr. Samienejad also describes his unsuccessful attempt to get prison authorities to accept a letter of complaint he wrote on behalf of another prisoner who appeared to have been raped. He concludes:

"Prison authorities never investigate these cases and do not take them seriously. If I were to write all my memories of such cases I would have to write about many cases. What you just read in this article are only a few examples of what I saw. In my two years of imprisonment, I witnessed and heard about hundreds of cases of rape. I will write about them gradually in the future."

Despite what he says is this first-hand knowledge of brutal abuses by Iranian authorities, Mr. Samienejad contacted The Lede to say that it is important to him that outsiders understand that the blame lies within specific individuals. According to Mr. Samienejad he and other Iranian activists were upset that an editorial about prison rape in New York Times was headlined "Shame On Iran ."

Iranian pro-democracy activist and eminet journalist Shirin Sadeghi wrote in an article: "On Friday June 19, a large group of mourners gathered at the Ghoba mosque in Tehran to await a speech about the martyrs of the post-election protests by presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. According to one Iranian blog, 28-year-old Taraneh Mousavi was one of a group of people that was arrested by plainclothesed security forces for attending the gathering.

"Taraneh, whose first name is Persian for "song", disappeared into arrest.

"Weeks later, according to the blog, her mother received an anonymous call from a government agent saying that her daughter has been hospitalized in Imam Khomeini Hospital in the city of Karaj, just north of Tehran -- hospitalized for "rupturing of her womb and anus in... an unfortunate accident".

"When Taraneh's family went to the hospital to find her, they were told she was not there.

"According to another Iranian blog which claims to have original information about Taraneh from her family, Iranian security forces contacted Taraneh's family after the hospital visit warning them not to publicize Taraneh's story and not to associate her disappearance with arrests made at post-election protests, claiming instead that she had tried to harm herself because of feeling guilty for having pre-marital sex.

"Witnesses have come forward to the various Internet sites who are covering Taraneh's story, stating that she was mentally and physically abused in Tehran's notorious Evin prison and also that a person who matches her physical description and injuries had been treated at the Imam Khomeini Hospital, was unconscious when witnessed and was later transferred out of the hospital while still unconscious.

"Taraneh's is not the first allegation of brutal raping of a post-election protester -- according to the UK Guardian, an 18 year old boy in Shiraz was repeatedly gang raped by prison officials while in detention after being arrested for participating in the protests on June 15. That boy's father won't let him back in the family home."

Despite its agitations for reform, Iranian society remains traditional, according to Iranian-British blogger Potkin Azarmehr, and it's the stigma of rape that is being used as a weapon against the protesters. "By killing protesters, the government makes martyrs of them, but by raping them and allowing them to live, it makes them shunned in society," Azarmehr said.

Not that the stigma of rape is exclusive to Iran and other more traditional societies. A friend of Azarmehr's who is presently in Iran told him that he's sick of hearing that people like Taraneh are better off dead" from friends abroad, just because they can't handle the fact that she's been raped.

The psychology of threatening protesters and political activists is not a new science. The strategies and ultimate goals are the same for any kind of torture: to humiliate, disembody [through denying the victim authority over his/her own physical self], extract confessions [whether true or false] and ultimately permanently terrorize the victims to prevent further 'disturbances'... The last part often fails spectacularly, as victims tend to feel even more antagonism toward the perpetrators, and even more of a 'do or die' mentality about agitating for change at any cost.

Prison abuse and torture is also about marking these victims as defiled human beings -- it's like a scarlet letter of social isolation against them, to deny them the community support and strength which they need to move past those memories and not be defined by them. This is where others can step in and change the very attitudes toward abuse which so many institutions count on when they commit these crimes.

The story of Taraneh's condition is still unfolding and there are no certain confirmations of its details beyond the reports of bloggers who are obliged to remain anonymous for safety reasons -- but the idea that political prisoners are being mistreated in this way is not new to Iran and is a significant element of a program of terror which has sustained the current system in Iran.

With allegations of sexual assault in prisons brought to the fore in Iran , authorities meet with Mehdi Karroubi, the figure who broached the taboo subject, to look into the claims.

Rapporteur of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazem Jalali, who heads a Parliament committee tasked with probing into the death and detention of those arrested in the post-election frenzy, said the board met with the leading opposition figure on August 24, 2009 for examination of evidence provided on alleged jail rape.

The three-hour meeting took place after Karroubi wrote a letter to the influential Head of the Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, on July 29, claiming that jailers brutally raped post-vote protesters in Iran 's detention centers.

The publication of the letter caused an uproar inside and outside Iran , with many clerics saying that if true, the issue would be a catastrophe for the Islamic Republic.

Jalali told Mehr News Agency that six lawmakers -- including himself, Omidvar Rezaei, Ali Motahhari, Mehdi Sanaie, Parviz Sorouri and Farhad Tajari -- met Karroubi in his office on Monday where he talked about four alleged victims of jailhouse rape at the hands of security personnel.

According to Jalali, the two-time former Majlis speaker will introduce the alleged victims to the probe committee for further investigation.

Karroubi, however, said that while these four victims are ready to testify before Parliament, they do not feel safe to do so.

The head of the Majlis probe committee said it would be scheduled that the four alleged victims speak up about their torment in front of the board.

He added that the committee is also set to hold a meeting on the issue with Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani and the country's newly-appointed Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani.

Alongside the meeting with the probe committee, Karroubi's party Etemad-e-Melli [National Trust] published a report on its website which made public remarks by an inmate who had allegedly been subject to sexual abuse.

The victim says defeated candidate Karroubi helped him get through difficult times after his dreadful experience and get rid of suicidal thoughts.

The victim adds that he had met with a representative of the former general prosecutor who after listening to his account expressed his sympathy to him, saying "alas" in reaction to the situation.

A 15-year-old boy, Reza, has alleged that he was locked up in Iran 's Basij militia base for 20 days, where he was beaten up, raped repeatedly and subjected to sexual humiliation and abuse.

Reza is so horrified with the incident that he refuses to go outside and is terrified of being left alone.

"My life is over.. I don't think I can ever recover," The Times quoted Reza, as saying.

A doctor who is treating him, has confirmed that he is suicidal, and bears the appalling injuries consistent with his story.

Reza's family is also enduring the pain with him and is exploring ways to flee Iran .

Reza's ordeal began in mid-July, when he was arrested along with 40 other teenagers during an opposition demonstration.

He claimed that the arrested teenagers were taken to the Basij militia base, where they were blindfolded, stripped to their underwear, whipped with cables and then locked in a steel shipping container.

Reza claims that three men on the first night singled him out and pushed him to the ground... He further said that one held his head down, another sat on his back and the third urinated on him efore raping him. [Source: Asian News International].

And here is another disturbing information from Bangladesh , on persecution of religious minorities and forceful conversion of Hindus by influential Muslim thugs. Bangladesh Minority Watch [BDMW] - Dhaka received an appeal from Ajoy Kumar Dey and his wife Mrs. Dolly Rani Dey of 84/1 Nagar Khanpur under Police Station and District – Narayanganj on the allegation that their only minor son –Suvashish Dey [17] was abducted on 30.07.2009 at about 12-30 p.m. from their house and forcefully converted to Islam. Suvbashis is a meritorious student and he passed Secondary School Certificate and Higher School Certificate examinations with credit. But the police neither assisted to recover their children nor arrested any perpetrators despite specific allegations made to police. [General Diary Entry No. 1713 dated 31.7.2009 filed by Ajoy Kumar Dey]. Ajoy Kumar and Dolly Rani believe that their only son was abducted for forceful conversion by the thugs belonging to Islamic fundamentalists groups.

Both the news on rape inside prison in Iran or forceful conversion in Bangladesh are matters of great concern. The global population favoring peace should raise voice against such atorocious attitude of the Islamist regimes or nations with majority Muslim population before one more male or female prisoner is sexually abused in Iran or another religious minority member is abducted for forceful conversion in Bangladesh .



SALAH UDDIN SHOAIB CHOUDHURY
Journalist, Columnist, Author & Peace Activist
Skype: shoaibnoca
Editor & Publisher, Weekly Blitz www.weeklyblitz.net
Director, FORCEFIELD NFP
PEN USA Freedom to Write Award 2005; AJC Moral Courage Award 2006
Key to the Englewood City, NJ, USA [Highest Honor] 2007; Monaco Media Award, 2007

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Saudi Prof: TV channel owners as bad as Zionists and Crusaders and should be executed. Islam casts fear...

TV channel owners who show the "wrong" materials are as bad as the Zionist enemy and the crusader Americans and therefore should be tried and executed, according to a Saudi professor.

The professor was frank about the nature of Islam in his view:

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Islam itself casts fear...

Interviewer: No, it doesn't. Islam is a religion of tolerance and leniency, Sheik.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Allah says otherwise. Islam is lenient, but the infidel West trembles in fear of it. Allah has ordered us to prepare: "Prepare for them what force and steeds of war you can, to cast fear in the hearts of Allah's enemies and of your own." Our human nature may tell us that stoning is unacceptable, but this is a punishment decreed by Allah. If Allah decrees death – this is how it should be. If the Islamic scholars ruled that the punishment for drug dealers is death, this is how it should be.

I believe that [the TV channel owners] are more dangerous than all of these. Forget about whether or not they should be killed – we demand that they face trial in an Islamic court of law. I call upon the good, honorable businessmen to contribute their millions in order to hire lawyers to file Islamic lawsuits against these TV channels owners, and to persecute them legally. I call upon lawyers and good people in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf states, in Egypt, in Yemen, and everywhere, to banish them from all Muslim countries.

The religion of fear...

Ami Isseroff

MEMRI August 8, 2009 Clip No. 2216

Saudi University Professor Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Al-Walid bin Talal and Other Owners of Saudi TV Channels Should Be Executed According to Islamic Law

Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad, a professor of Islamic law at Al-Imam University, Riyadh, which aired on Daleel TV on August 8, 2009.

Interviewer: A year ago, Sheik Saleh Al-Lahidan issued a fatwa that made all hell break loose. He demanded that owners [of liberal Arab TV channels be placed on trial] and repent. Do you support Sheik Al-Lahidan's demand?

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: I believe all Muslim scholars support him in this.

[...]

I believe that one of our problems is that we continue to bury our heads in the sand, and talk about "Lebanese" TV channels, as if we are being honest. Take LBC, for example. We all know who owns it. We should say to [the owner] Al-Walid bin Talal: Beware. The same is true of MBC TV, Al-Arabiya TV, the ART and Rotana channels – all these [Saudi] channels serve to destroy Islam and the Muslims.

[...]

Regarding these base channels that I have mentioned, and others like them – I have no doubt whatsoever that their danger to the Islamic nation is no less than that of the Zionist Jews, or of the Crusader Americans in Iraq and elsewhere.

Interviewer: What led you to such an extremist view? Note that you are equating channels owned by Muslims, by Saudi citizens, with the Jews.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: I wasn't equating them. I said they are more dangerous. I was being precise. in my view, the deadly poison that they are spreading has reached the bone marrow.

[...]

The people who spread corruption in the land – whether highway robbers, drug dealers, or the owners of these TV channels, who are even more dangerous... These channels broadcast corruption and nudity. They are all people who spread corruption in the land, and they should be tried in an Islamic court of law and sentenced to death. This [fatwa] is clearly in accordance with Islamic law. There's no doubt about it.

Interviewer: The ferocity of this fatwa has cast fear in the hearts of...

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: ... of the hypocrites.

Interviewer: In everybody's hearts. Even in the West, it received much attention.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Islam itself casts fear...

Interviewer: No, it doesn't. Islam is a religion of tolerance and leniency, Sheik.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Allah says otherwise. Islam is lenient, but the infidel West trembles in fear of it. Allah has ordered us to prepare: "Prepare for them what force and steeds of war you can, to cast fear in the hearts of Allah's enemies and of your own." Our human nature may tell us that stoning is unacceptable, but this is a punishment decreed by Allah. If Allah decrees death – this is how it should be. If the Islamic scholars ruled that the punishment for drug dealers is death, this is how it should be.

I believe that [the TV channel owners] are more dangerous than all of these. Forget about whether or not they should be killed – we demand that they face trial in an Islamic court of law. I call upon the good, honorable businessmen to contribute their millions in order to hire lawyers to file Islamic lawsuits against these TV channels owners, and to persecute them legally. I call upon lawyers and good people in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf states, in Egypt, in Yemen, and everywhere, to banish them from all Muslim countries.

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Osama Bin Laden's son says dad is evil because he gasses dogs

Like wow! Osama Bin Laden gasses dogs. Is that the worst thing he ever did? I guess he's not dead after all. His son would know.

 

Osama Bin Laden's son, Omar, says dad is evil in new memoir

 

BY James Gordon Meek
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

 

Friday, July 10th 2009, 4:00 AM

 

 

OSAMA BIN LADEN'S son Omar first realized the depth of his father's evil when his beloved dogs were taken away and gassed in a chemical warfare experiment, he says in a new memoir.

 

Omar also confirms what U.S. officials have long believed - that his father was tipped off to a 1998 U.S. attempt to kill him.

 

He writes that Bin Laden got a secret communication and fled his Afghan camp two hours before cruise missiles struck it.

 

He does not identify the source of the tip, which the U.S. suspects was Pakistani intelligence.

 

Omar's book, "Growing Up Bin Laden," written with his mother, Najwa - the Al Qaeda leader's first wife - describes the ultimate dysfunctional family.

 

The Bin Ladens lived austerely as their father staked his horrific claim as the world's most wanted man. His son eventually concluded Bin Laden hated his enemies more than he loved his family.

 

Omar, 28, describes weeping as a teenager when told that Al Qaeda needed his pets to conduct chemical warfare tests.

 

"After I learned the truth about the puppies, I turned even further away from my father," whose jihad led only to death, Omar writes in the book set for release by St. Martin's Press later this year.

 

It has been widely reported that Bin Laden's goons tested nerve agents at the Derunta camp in Afghanistan. In 2002, CNN obtained and showed video of dogs - fully grown - being gassed by visible toxic fumes.

 

Bin Laden's fourth son admits he knew in advance of plots against targets like the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, where 224 perished.

 

He called the 9/11 attacks "horrific." They occurred after he was told by his best friend - Al Qaeda operative Abu al-Haadi - that a "new mission" would be much bigger than the embassy bombings. Omar mourned al-Haadi's death in the resulting U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

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A bit behind schedule, Saudi Arabia moves into the twentith century - with Movies

In 1961, Saudi Arabia took a bold step into the nineteenth century, when, under the pressure of the evil, colonialist, petroleum driven imperialist Americans, it abolished slavery. This step threatened the traditional Saudi way of life, and is a prime example of Western arrogance. Now, succumbing to the evil blandishments of the west, the Muslim monarchy has introduced, horror of horrors, the cinema. into the capital city of Riyadh. Protesters rightly pointed out that films violate Islamic values. There is no telling where this degeneracy will end. Will they grant women the right to vote? Drivers' licenses? Will they stop punishing homosexuality with death? Will they stop cutting off the hands of theives? Will they, horror of horros, allow Jewish sons of dogs and apes, or Christian sons of dogs and pigs, to practice their own religions or to enter the holy city of Mecca?  

Protests as Saudi film screened in Riyadh

Conservative protesters believe the film undermines Islamic values

People in the Saudi capital Riyadh are being allowed to go to the movies for the first time in 30 years.

 

The film is a Saudi-made offering called Menahi, a comedy about a naive Bedouin who moves to the big city.

A few religious hardliners have tried to turn movie-goers away, or to disrupt the performances.

No women were allowed into the performance, which followed similar initiatives in other Saudi cities with more liberal Islamic traditions.

The country has begun to open up to the arts since King Abdullah came to the throne in 2005.

But it still took the film's producers five months to gain government permission for showings in Riyadh, at a government-run cultural centre, and there was little advance publicity.

Public cinemas were shut down in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, as the country's deeply conservative leaders feared they would lead to the mixing of the sexes, and undermine Islamic values.

Since then, there's been little public entertainment, except for horse and camel racing, and festivals celebrating traditional Saudi culture.

Saudi Arabia is also the base of the Arabic entertainment company Rotana, owned by the billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

The Rotana network has produced Menahi, and it has already been showing it in several other Saudi cities, including Jeddah and Taif.

Woman were allowed into screenings outside Riyadh, although they sat on the upper floor while the ground floor was reserved for men. But Islamic practice is even stricter in Riyadh.

Popcorn

The film has been showing in Riyadh since Friday, at the King Fahd Cultural Centre, with two performances a day attracting near capacity audiences of about 300.

On Saturday, a group of conservative men gathered outside the centre, trying to persuade people from going in.

Most cinema-goers politely ignored them, as they queued up for soft drinks and popcorn, and for a chance to pose with the film's stars.

Prince Alwaleed, a nephew of King Abdullah, has said he believes that cinemas will eventually open in Saudi Arabia. And last year the kingdom held its first Saudi film festival.

The audience for Menahi has been enthusiastic, with one movie-goer, quoted by AFP news agency, calling it "the first step in a peaceful revolution".

In 2005, the Saudi authorities allowed a hotel in Riyadh to screen foreign cartoons dubbed into Arabic to audiences - but only to women and children.

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

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See how a strong Muslim strikes

Legitimate criticism of Israel?

 

The [Jews] say: We are the second most powerful force on the face of the Earth. And America keeps supporting them – may Allah blow up all of them. The EU supports them with all its might – may Allah annihilate its leaders.

See how a strong Muslim strikes:

 

Then, Hamza landed a blow, which cut his hand and shoulder, and split his chest down to the navel, until his lung was exposed. See what bravery. See how a strong Muslim strikes. He landed a blow that cut his hand and his shoulder, and all the way to his navel, exposing his lung. A single blow of the sword, and he went straight to Hell.

 

MEMRI
January 12, 2009  Clip No. 2012
Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Al-Zughbi Draws Lessons from the Battles of Early Islam and Prays for the Annihilation of the US and European Leaders

Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian cleric Muhammad Al-Zughbi, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 12, 2009:

 

Muhammad Al-Zughbi: The accursed Europe stood by the accused Jews, as is its custom. The pulverized United States – I pray that Allah destroys it and saves the Muslims from it – stood by these [Jews]. Today, it sent them over 40,000 tons of weapons, bullets, mortars, and missile launchers. Yes, they sent them crushing weapons. They sent them bombs.

 

[...]

 

[In the Battle of Uhud,] Abu Shaiba challenged [the Muslims] to a duel. He was such a champion that even the Muslims nicknamed him "the Ram of the Battalion." The Ram of the Battalion – he was strong. He was one of the Qureish horsemen. He cried: Who dares to fight me? Hamza stepped up against him. See what self-confidence! He placed his trust in Allah. They exchanged two blows. Then, Hamza landed a blow, which cut his hand and shoulder, and split his chest down to the navel, until his lung was exposed. See what bravery. See how a strong Muslim strikes. He landed a blow that cut his hand and his shoulder, and all the way to his navel, exposing his lung. A single blow of the sword, and he went straight to Hell. .

 

[...]

 

There was a strong man from among the polytheists, who was finishing off any wounded Muslims he saw. He would look for the wounded, cut off their heads, and mutilate their bodies. Whenever he found a wounded man, he would kill him. He would kill him! Not only that, but he would mutilate their bodies. Abu Dujana approached him. The polytheist was like a mule. A big jackass – like that accursed, shoe-stricken, big jackass from the White House, the one with the two big ears. A Jackass. A big jackass. Or like that lowlife [Olmert], who slaughters the Palestinians, who faces 13 corruption charges, including one for sexual harassment. May Allah curse him and all his supporters.

 

The big jackass came up to him. Al-Zubeir says: [Al-Dujana] was small, but the other one was a real mule. He was like all those Jewish and American mules. Zubeir said: I followed them to see what they were doing. They exchanged two blows. Abu Dujana deflected the blow with his shield. Then Abu Dujana jumped on him and finished him off. He killed him on the spot.

 

Zubeir said: I kept following him. I saw him turn towards a horseman, who was tearing Muslims to pieces. He crept up behind him, but as he was about to bring his sword down on his neck, he suddenly heard loud wailing of women. You know how it goes... He was surprised, so he lifted his sword rather than bring it down on the man's neck. It turned out it was a woman – Hind bint Utbah, the wife of Abu Sufyan. She was slaughtering Muslims, sowing death among them. Hamza said: No, the sword of the Prophet is too lofty to be used to kill a woman. By Allah, I will never do it. I will never strike a woman with the sword of the Prophet.

 

The Jewish dogs should learn moral values from us. He defeated this woman, who slaughtered Muslims and mutilated their bodies, but he refused to kill a woman with the sword of the Prophet – not a woman or a child. Have these dogs learnt this lesson? They slaughter women and children, and the other dogs keep sending them weapons. May Allah finish all of them off. May Allah destroy them completely.

 

[...]

 

The [Jews] say: We are the second most powerful force on the face of the Earth. And America keeps supporting them – may Allah blow up all of them. The EU supports them with all its might – may Allah annihilate its leaders.

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US Prosecutors: Holy Land Foundation was Hamas in USA

The case against the USA Holy Land Foundation "charity" seems pretty clear. This group worked on behalf of Hamas. But they got off once before and shall probably do so again.

Last update - 11:05 12/11/2008

Prosecutor: U.S. Muslim charity glorified Jihad and killing Jews By The Associated Press

Defense attorneys and prosecutors battled over allegations that a U.S. Muslim charity broke the law by funneling money to Hamas institutions, speaking in closing arguments at the Holy Land Foundation's second trial for allegedly financing terrorism.

"Look at all those videos. It seems like every song was about support of Hamas, about martyrdom, about jihad, about killing Jews," said prosecutor Jim Jacks.

He was reminding jurors of videos from the 1980s and early 1990s of Palestinian festivals where speakers and musicians openly praised Hamas and Holy Land raised money. Jacks made the comments in the government rebuttal Tuesday - the final word before deliberations begin.

"Can there be any doubt that these men were the leaders of Hamas in the United States, and that they were the fundraising mechanism?"

Last year's trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ended in no convictions and a mistrial on most charges in the government's biggest terror-financing trial since Sept. 11, 2001.

Prosecutors say Holy Land funneled more than $12 million to Palestinian schools and charities controlled by the militant group Hamas after the U.S. government declared Hamas a terrorist group in 1995, which made supporting it illegal.

Holy Land was the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. before it was shut down in December 2001.

Defense attorneys, for their part, argued that the charity did not break the law by casting politics aside and aiding Palestinians under brutal Israeli occupation.

Elashi and former Holy Land chief executive Shukri Abu Baker are each charged with conspiracy, supporting a foreign terrorist organization, money laundering and filing false tax returns.

Tightening their case from the initial trial, prosecutors dropped most of nearly 30 counts against Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh. The men still face three conspiracy counts.

Mohammed El-Mezain, a former Holy Land chairman acquitted on most charges in the first trial, is charged with one conspiracy count.

Linda Moreno, attorney for former Holy Land co-founder Ghassan Elashi, stressed the former Richardson, Texas-based charity's humanitarian work Tuesday and lambasted government evidence as old and irrelevant.

"For those who have been impoverished by politics and history and failed leadership, for all those generations of refugees that he helped feed and clothe and educate, Ghassan Elashi does not apologize for serving them, she told jurors," The Dallas Morning News reported online. "He knew the work of the Holy Land Foundation attracted enemies."

Continued (Permanent Link)

Saudi op-ed protests against anti-Mickey Mouse crusade

This is not really about a mouse. It is about freedom:

 

This kind of hasty judgment reminds us that what we really miss in Saudi Arabia is the ability to discuss matters, and to have the right to disagree if we think differently on issues being discussed.

Amen brother!

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Death to Mickey Mouse!
Abeer Mishkhas | abeermishkhas@arabnews.com

A sheikh was recently on Al-Majd TV and spoke in great detail about rats. He went on and on about how bad rats and mice are, listing all the benefits gained by eliminating them. I don't know how informative that section of the sheikh's talk was but I am sure most people who were watching the program were either not listening or shaking their heads in disbelief. But the talk did not end with any obvious statements of harm caused by rats and mice; the sheikh continued by denouncing the fact that children these days are not getting the message about mice and rats because they have been influenced by Western cartoons that represent mice as funny and clever. Think Tom and Jerry and Mickey Mouse. To conclude and drive his point home he said, "They like Mickey Mouse whereas in reality Mickey Mouse should be killed." Thus ended the talk, and although it was as absurd as can be, it seems that such talks have become a normal thing on TV these days. As satellite channels proliferate, they pack their broadcasts with as much as they can of what they feel will attract viewers and religious programs are sure winners, especially in Ramadan.

The problem lies not only with the channels. Many of the programs often depend on people's calls and questions. Those questions can vary from asking for advice about a religious duty to asking the sheikh's opinion on any subject under the sun - hence the mouse question. On a panel of women scholars on an Egyptian channel last week, one of the interesting things the three women agreed upon was that some people ask for scholars' opinions on almost anything, whether it is a worthy matter or just a mundane everyday triviality. I have to say that those women's opinions were refreshing. They wanted people to stick to major, sensible and important issues. Which brings us back to the death sentence against Mickey Mouse.

This was not the first - and will not be the last - of verdicts that will make us question the person who issues it, or the stream of religious verdicts that almost everyone comes up with everyday and which have to be countered with questions, debates and discussions. We cannot just sit and listen and accept anything. When people hear these opinions, they rightly ask and question and criticize if need be. That is what reason dictates and it in no way contradicts faith. But this is not what a prominent Saudi scholar said last week. He actually demanded that journalists and writers who criticize or object to prominent Saudi scholars' pronouncements and fatwas be punished, and eventually sacked from their jobs. The punishment he asks for ranges from lashes to long imprisonment to firing them from their jobs.

I certainly understand that if a writer has insulted or lied about a sheikh or any other person, he must face the legal consequences of his actions. The offended party has the right to sue the offender and this is how it should be. But what the sheikh has asked for is simple punishment for even criticizing and questioning the opinions of religious scholars. With all due respect to the sheikh, I beg to differ. Criticism and debate does not mean that writers are crossing any lines; writers and journalists are citizens and are affected - like everyone else - by religious discourse, and if they choose to discuss a religious issue, or differ with a scholar that does not warrant that they be lashed, imprisoned or lose their jobs.

This kind of hasty judgment reminds us that what we really miss in Saudi Arabia is the ability to discuss matters, and to have the right to disagree if we think differently on issues being discussed. And as a reminder we mention a small incident from Islamic history. When the second caliph, Omar, said in one of his sermons that women should not ask for high dowries, a woman who was present raised her voice and disagreed with him and provided proof from the Qur'an in support of women's rights for dowries. What did Omar do? He acknowledged his mistake in front of everyone. Just a reminder!

Continued (Permanent Link)

Ahmadinjad: Zionists control world, prevent peace [Full text of Speech]

In his UN speech, the Iranian dictator Ahmadinejad blamed "Zionism" for the world monetary crisis and the Georgia crisis, as well as "Palestine." He predicted the demise of the United States and of Israel. "Zionists," he claims, are "acquisitive and invasive." Excerpts:

In Palestine, 60 years of carnage and invasion is still ongoing at the hands of some criminal and occupying Zionists. They have forged a regime through collecting people from various parts of the world and bringing them to other people's land by displacing, detaining, and killing the true owners of that land. With advance notice, they invade, assassinate, and maintain food and medicine blockades, while some hegemonic and bullying powers support them. The Security Council cannot do anything and sometimes, under pressure from a few bullying powers, even paves the way for supporting these Zionist murderers. It is natural that some UN resolutions that have addressed the plight of the Palestinian people have been relegated to the archives unnoticed.


The lives, properties and rights of the people of Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia are victims of the tendencies and provocations of NATO and certain western powers, and the underhanded actions of the Zionists.

The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.


This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.

Today, the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters. The Islamic Republic of Iran, while fully respecting the resistance of the oppressed people of Palestine and expressing its all-out support for it, submits its humane solution based on a free referendum in Palestine for determining and establishing the type of state in the entire Palestinian lands to the distinguished Secretary General of the UN.

American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders. Today, the thought of hegemony quickly becomes a demerit.

President Ahmadinejad`s Speech Addressing the U.N. General Assembly (Full Text)
Posted: 2008/09/24
From: Mathaba

The full text of Iran`s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 23, 2008.

mathaba.net/news/?x=607091

In the Name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful


"All praise be to Allah, the Lord of the universe, and peace and blessing be upon our Master and Prophet, Mohammad, and his pure household, and his noble companions."

"Oh God, hasten the arrival of Imam Al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers
and those who attest to his rightfulness."


Mr. President,
Excellencies,

I am grateful to the Almighty for granting me another opportunity to be present in this world Assembly.

In the last three years, I have talked to you about great hopes in the bright future of human society, and some solutions for achieving sustainable peace and expanding love, compassion, and cooperation. I have also talked about unjust systems governing the world; pressures exerted by some powers seeking to trample the rights of other nations, oppression imposed on the majority of the global community, especially on the people of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Africa, Latin America, and Asia; about challenges we are faced with, such as efforts to shatter the sanctity of families, destroy cultures, humiliate lofty values, neglect commitments, expand the shadow of threats, as well as about the arms race and the unfairness and inability of the systems governing world affairs in reforming the status quo.

With the occurrence of various new developments, the debility of existing mechanisms has been revealed even more. However, at the same time, an encouraging trend, which has originated in the thoughts and beliefs of peoples, has blossomed and become stronger. Posed against the despairs caused by the new developments, this trend has ignited the ray of hope for a brilliant, desirable and beautiful future in the hearts of men.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Colleagues,
Today I would like to talk to you about the main reasons behind the conditions ruling the world and the means to tackle them. Of course, you are already aware of what I am talking about, but I think it is necessary to remind ourselves.

It seems that the roots of problems lie in the way one views and perceives the world and humankind, as well as in the important issues of freedom, obeisance to God, and justice. The world, humankind, freedom and obeisance to God, and justice, have been of utmost importance to humans throughout history.

1. The World:
God Almighty purposefully created the world. This world is the bedrock for the evolution and growth of a creature called man, and the laws governing the world and all other creatures are at the service of man's quest for loftiness. The world should provide the needed opportunities for the fulfillment of the purpose behind man's creation. No phenomenon, creature, or indeed anything has been created in vain. Together they all pave the ground for the flourishing of mankind in a complex and purposeful system, and they are, each, one of the signs of God Almighty. All are His creations and He is the sole creator and ruler of the world. All existence including power, knowledge and wealth come from Him.

2. Humankind:
God created the world for humans and humans for Himself. He created humans from mud and in the soil, but He did not want them to remain in the soil and with animal instincts. He kindled the light of guidance in their souls and asked them to rise from the soil to the heavens and to Him with the help of wisdom, prophets and perfect men.

The world will ultimately disappear, but God has created man for eternity and has made them a manifestation of Himself. Creativity, mercifulness, kindness, knowledge, wisdom, zeal, concealment of sins, splendor, justice, bounteousness, generosity, greatness, love, glory, dignity, forgiveness, insight, kingship and all other goodness and beauty are attributes of God.

God has not created humans for aggression, bloodshed, rancor, selfishness and destruction. He made humans His vicegerents on earth and has asked them to, on the one hand, make earth prosper by using their God-given potentials and to prepare the ground for the growth of divine attributes in all humans, and to provide all with a life full of beauty, amity, freedom, justice and goodness; and on the other hand in pursuance of this path, to prepare for a prosperous, everlasting life endowed by God's mercy.

God has obligated humans to live divinely and socially, for it is only through social life and interactions with others that divine attributes may emerge.

3. Obeisance to God:
God Almighty has tied their perfection and true freedom of humans to their devotion and obedience to Himself. True freedom and obedience to God are in balance and in fact are two sides of the same coin.

Obeisance to God means confessing to monotheism and obeying His commands, and to be free from ungodly worship.

Obeisance to God means the acceptance of the absolute truth, the absolute light, and the absolute beauty.

Obeisance to God means abandoning selfishness and animal instincts, power-seeking and aggression, surrendering to righteousness, justice, love, and perfection.

And in this way, humans can achieve their true freedom and flourish, they can grow and manifest divine attributes, have affection for others, stand up for justice, and fear no power or threat, and defend the oppressed. In such an environment, one's freedom will not impinge on any others'. Contention and conflict are characteristic of materialistic freedom and animal instinct. The essence of all divine religions and obeisance to God and true freedom is disassociating from oppressors and instead obeying and worshiping God, for:

- God is omniscient and knows all that is revealed or kept secret, and He is kind and merciful.
- All creatures are humble before Him and resign to His will.
- God is alive and is the Creator of the universe and all life.
- God loves His creatures and desires nothing but goodness, blessings, and perfection for them, and is against bullying, injustice, selfishness and domination.

4. Justice:
Justice is the foundation of the creation of humankind and the whole universe. Justice is tantamount to placing every phenomenon in its own place, and providing humans with opportunities to actualize all their divine capabilities. Without it, the order of the universe will collapse and the opportunity for perfection will fade away. Without justice, it would be impossible for human society to taste real peace, beauty, joy and happiness. Justice is the main pillar of social life and without it, social life cannot continue or grow.

Humans need to know God in order to realize a prosperous society in this world as well as to strive for a beautiful eternal life, and to this end they first have to know themselves and strive for loftiness in themselves and their societies. However:

- as long as the world is construed as closed, limited and aimless,
- as long as eternal life is considered imaginary and illusory and afterlife and the Judgment Day as well as reward and punishment are thought of as fictional and unreal,
- as long as morals and commitment to them are called backwardness, and immorality, lies, deceit and selfishness are considered desirable, and humans are limited to a materialistic life in this world,
- as long as attempts are made to replace obedience to God and following His prophets and true freedom with servitude to materialistic tendencies and animal instincts and servitude to oppressing human beings, and contention reaches its pinnacle,
- as long as the aggressors, because of their financial, political and propaganda powers, not only escape punishment but even claim righteousness,
- and as long wars are started and nations are enslaved in order to win votes in elections,
not only will the problems of the global community remain unsolved, but they will be increasingly exacerbated.

Friends and Colleagues,
Let's look at the situation of the world today:

Iraq was attacked under the false pretext of uncovering weapons of mass destruction and overthrowing a dictator. The dictator is toppled and WMDs are not uncovered. A democratic government is established by the votes of the people but, after 6 years, the occupiers are still there. They insist on imposing colonial agreements on the people of Iraq by keeping them under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Millions of people have been killed or displaced, and the occupiers, without a sense of shame, are still seeking to solidify their position in the political geography of the region and to dominate oil resources.

They have no respect for the people of Iraq and disregard any dignity, rights or status for them. The UN is not capable enough to solve the problems and to remove aggression, occupation and imposition.

In Palestine, 60 years of carnage and invasion is still ongoing at the hands of some criminal and occupying Zionists. They have forged a regime through collecting people from various parts of the world and bringing them to other people's land by displacing, detaining, and killing the true owners of that land. With advance notice, they invade, assassinate, and maintain food and medicine blockades, while some hegemonic and bullying powers support them. The Security Council cannot do anything and sometimes, under pressure from a few bullying powers, even paves the way for supporting these Zionist murderers. It is natural that some UN resolutions that have addressed the plight of the Palestinian people have been relegated to the archives unnoticed.

In Afghanistan, production of narcotics has multiplied since the presence of NATO forces. Domestic conflicts continue. Terrorism is spreading. And innocent people are bombarded on a daily basis in streets, markets, schools and wedding ceremonies. The people of Afghanistan are the victims of the willingness of NATO member states to dominate the regions surrounding India, China, and South Asia. The Security Council cannot do anything about it because some of these NATO members also happen to be the major decision makers in the Security Council.

In Africa, efforts are made to reestablish the relationships of the colonial era. By starting civil wars in large countries including Sudan, disintegration of those countries is planned in order to serve the interests of some corrupt powers. In case there is a national resistance, the leaders of the resistance are put under pressure by legal mechanisms created by the very same powers.

In Latin America, people find their security, national interests and cultures to be seriously endangered by the menacing shadow of alien domineering governments, and even by the embassies of some empires.

The lives, properties and rights of the people of Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia are victims of the tendencies and provocations of NATO and certain western powers, and the underhanded actions of the Zionists.

The never-ending arms race and the proliferation and stockpiling of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and the threats to use them, and the establishment of missile defense systems, have made the situation unstable.

With regard to Iran's peaceful nuclear program, despite the inalienable right of all nations including the Iranian nation, in producing nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, and despite such facts as the transparency of all Iranian activities and our country's full cooperation with the inspectors of the IAEA and the Agency's repeated confirmation of the fact that Iran's activities are peaceful, a few bullying powers have sought to put hurdles in the way of the peaceful nuclear activities of the Iranian nation by exerting political and economic pressures against Iran, and also through threatening and pressuring the IAEA. These are the same powers that produce new generations of lethal nuclear arms and possess stockpiles of nuclear weapons that no international organization is monitoring; and, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perpetrated by one of them.

Indeed, they are not against weapons, but they oppose other nations' progress, and tend to monopolize technologies and to use those monopolies in order to impose their will on other nations. But it is very natural that the great Iranian people, with their trust in God, and with determination and steadfastness and with the support of its friends, will resist the bullying and has defended and will continue to defend its rights. The Iranian nation is for dialogue. But it has not accepted and will not accept illegal demands. The time has come for the IAEA to present a clear report to the international community on its monitoring of the disarmament of these nuclear powers and their nuclear activities, and for a disarmament committee to be established by independent states to monitor the disarmament of these nuclear powers.

The theories of development that are in line with the hegemonic system and not in accordance with the true needs of humankind and human societies, have turned into repetitive and bland tools for assimilation of economies, expanding hegemonic domination, destroying the environment and destroying the social solidarity of nations. There is no end in sight to this. Poverty, hunger and deprivation are hurting more than one billion of the world's population and have dashed their hopes for a decent life.

The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.

This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.

Friends and Colleagues,
All these are due to the manner in which the immoral and the powerful view the world, humankind, freedom, obeisance to God, and justice.

The thoughts and deeds of those who think they are superior to others and consider others as second-class and inferior; who intend to remain out of the divine circle, to be the absolute slaves of their materialistic and selfish desires, who intend to expand their aggressive and domineering natures, constitute the roots of today's problems in human societies. They are the great hindrances to the actualization of material and spiritual prosperity and to security, peace and brotherhood among nations. I explicitly state that the Iranian people and the overwhelming majority of peoples and governments are against those deeds and perspectives of the world- domineering powers. Establishment of justice requires people who have achieved moderation and justice inside themselves, and have restrained their domineering attitudes and actualized their attributes of self-sacrifice and are at the service of humanity. The complete and full-scale manifestation of such characteristics can happen only under the rule of the righteous and perfect human being who is obedient to God and who is promised by the divine Prophets.

Dear Colleagues,
Of course with the grace of God Almighty a hopeful trend is flourishing in the heart and soul of human societies. The universal eagerness for justice, purity, and love for others, monotheism and the quest for perfection is clearly and increasingly on the rise. A universal resistance against the acquisitiveness, aggression and selfishness of the bullying powers is being formed. Today, the bullying powers' thoughts, practices and strategies are rejected by nations and governments, and all are seeking to establish new human relations based on justice with a view to attain prosperity, perfection, security, and sustainable welfare. This is the very auspicious phenomenon that all the traditions of creation and the ruling laws of the universe emphasize and support.

Today, the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters. The Islamic Republic of Iran, while fully respecting the resistance of the oppressed people of Palestine and expressing its all-out support for it, submits its humane solution based on a free referendum in Palestine for determining and establishing the type of state in the entire Palestinian lands to the distinguished Secretary General of the UN.

American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders. Today, the thought of hegemony quickly becomes a demerit.

And now a few words with the expansionist governments ruling global relations:

Be aware that living with obedience to God and carrying out His orders, compassion for people and striving for the fulfillment of justice is to your advantage too. I invite you to return to the path of God, the Prophets and to the path of the people of the world and to the truth and justice.

The only route to salvation is a divine straight path. Otherwise, God's hand of power will emerge from the sleeve of oppressed nations and will make your life difficult, and will put an end to your hegemony.
Let's love the people of the world and respect their rights. Rectify past behavior. This will benefit you and the human community. The Iranian people are prepared, along with other nations, to help you be rescued from your current situation and to establish peace and prosperity.

My Friends,
Fortuitously, opportunities are accessible. With the grace of God Almighty, the existing pillars of the oppressive system are crumbling. Great developments in favor of humankind as well as its true and real rights are on the way. A golden and brilliant future is awaiting mankind.

A global community filled with justice, friendship, brotherhood and welfare is at hand, as I have elaborated. A community which will tread the path of beauty and love under the rule of the righteous and perfect human being, the One promised by all divine prophets and the One who is the true lover of humanity. A community that will be devoid of any fear, despair and privation. Such a community will soon be ours. The community promised by the great divine Prophets Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ and Mohammad (PBUH) is about to materialize.

Let us, hand in hand, expand the thought of resistance against evil and the minority of those who are ill-wishers. Let's support goodness and the majority of people who are good and the embodiment of absolute good that is the Imam of Time, The Promised One who will come accompanied by Jesus Christ, and accordingly design and implement the just and humanistic mechanisms for regulating the constructive relationships between nations and governments.

Oh great Almighty, deliver the savior of nations and put an end to the sufferings of mankind and bring forth justice, beauty, and love.

Friends;
Let's have a proper share in the establishment of that illuminated and promised divine age.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Islamist fundamentalism on the move in Yemen

Well, we can't be against protecting virtue and fighting vice, can't we?

Ami Isseroff

Cleric initiates an authority for "protecting virtue and fighting vice"

By: Almigdad Mojalli

Abdul Majid Al-Zindani, Sadiq Al-Ahmar, Hussein Al-Ahmar and company prepare to address the crowd of 6,000 who gathered to hear about the new "Authority for Protecting Virtue and Fighting Vice." YT photo by Almigdad Mojalli

SANA'A, July 15 — A meeting hosted by Sheikh Abdul Majid Al-Zindani announced on Tuesday that it intends to create a new para-governmental authority to comb the streets and root out anything in society that the committee deems to be a vice, including co-education in schools and universities and television series played during the month of Ramadan.

The newly-created Authority for Protecting Virtue and Fighting Vice said they will work side-by-side with the concerned governmental authorities. Members said they plan that the authority will be responsible for finding offenders who are promoting vice and report them to the police, who will then decide what to do with them. The group said that it would be the Yemeni police force who would decide whether or not to punish those caught by the authority.

However, the government released a statement the same day as Al-Zindani's meeting saying that only the government should concern itself with citizens' freedom, and no other institution can give or take away rights. Likewise, various political opposition parties launched an intense campaign against the authority since hearing of its plans in May.

"The authority was supposed to be composed of 25 clerics and five ministers," said Hamoud Al-Tharehi, the Supreme Committee member from the Islah Islamic Party. However, during the meeting, it was decided that the authority will instead consist of 42 clerics alone. "We reconsidered the issue and decided to restrict the authority to the Yemeni Clerics Association," added Al-Tharehi, pointing out that cooperation between clerics and governmental authorities might be difficult and lead to more problems.

Abdul Majid Al-Zindani, the head of Al-Iman University and a controversial figure in Islam as well as in Yemen, reaffirmed that the security forces would really be the ones protecting virtue and fighting vice. "Our only medium of change is the word, but the act is left for the state," said Al-Zindani.

Al-Zindani also said that the authority will ask the government to close any workplace spreading vices like serving alcohol and permitting prostitution. "We will never be silent towards any place, wherever it is," he added.

Al-Tharehi stated that the authority would specifically target private institutions frequented by the wealthy. He said that those are the institutions that smuggle children and promote prostitution.

Al-Tharehi denied that the authority had any hand in recent restaurant closures, but praised those who were responsible.

"The individuals who closed the restaurants don't belong to the authority, but they have good faith," said Al-Tharehi. "Also, there are individuals in Hodeidah who have good faith and individuals in Aden who have good faith," he mentioned in reference to the vigilante anti-vice squads in those cities that seemingly spontaneously cropped up in the last year.

The Yemeni clerics who will make up the new anti-vice authority released a statement of their own, expressing shock at the spread of vices in the country. They said these vices included bringing Arab and foreign female singers and dancers to Yemen for performances, opening nightclubs, broadcasting or holding fashion shows, mixed-sex dancing and pornographic channels in some hotels.

The statement also condemned broadcasting certain television series that play during Ramadan, which they said contradicts with morals during the holy month.

Yet another vice in the eyes of the authority, according to its published statement, is sending female students away to study in foreign countries without companions from their families. The authority said it also considered co-education in schools and universities to be a vice.

In another statement, members of the authority condemned what it called "the press campaign" against the Authority of Protecting Virtue and Fighting Vice, accusing the press of encouraging the building of churches and an overall increased "Christianization" in Yemen. The statement also accused the media of insulting and satirizing verses from the Holy Quran, the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and Islamic clerics in general. It added that the press was a herald for vice and pornography.

The meeting's attendees numbered around 6,000 people, consisting of tribal sheiks, clerics and Members of Parliament (MPs). However, the meeting didn't involve any academics, government representatives or women. Female journalists, including one from the Yemen Times, were turned away from the meeting and told leave. Al-Zindani claimed in the meeting that he had sent 100 invited to academics, but none responded.

Most of the attendees were wearing traditional Yemeni garments including the thobe and the jambiya and the overwhelming majority had long beards.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Did Hezbollah really lose?

This account of the Hezbollah victory in Lebanon, Armed and Dangerous, like many others, attempts to be optimistic about the final outcome: Hezbollah will be exposed as a group that is not really interested in fighting Israel so much as in taking over Lebanon. By using their arms against other Arabs, they forfeited their legitimacy and will eventually fail.

David Kenner writes in the New Republic article:

But by turning their weapons on their fellow countrymen earlier this month, Hezbollah has violated the "grand bargain" with the Lebanese public that has allowed them to remain militarized. And by targeting Sunni areas of Beirut and Druze villages in the Chouf, Hezbollah has revealed itself to be, at its heart, a sectarian militia after all, provoking new hostility among non-Shia Lebanese. "The street is very angry about what has happened," says Yehya Jaber, a journalist for The Future, a newspaper owned by Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri whose offices were ransacked and set aflame during the clashes. "No matter what the politicians do, this is a temporary peace."
....
If Hassan Nasrallah had kept his weapons aimed solely at Israel instead of involving them in Lebanon's sectarian struggle, he may still have won Rabih's grudging respect. But local threats weigh heavier on his mind than geopolitical concerns. "It's two different worlds," Rabih explains, gesturing towards Barbour, no more than a minute's stroll away. "There is a deep hatred between these neighborhoods now."

The resentment is even deeper among the few Sunnis who live in Barbour. "The army tried to come in [during the first day of clashes], but Amal humiliated them and told them to leave," says Sana, a Sunni shopkeeper whose son had to change his identifiably Sunni name to something more generic. "I used to have a picture of [assassinated former prime minister and Sunni leader] Rafik Hariri in my home," she continues, lamenting the need to adjust to life under Shia domination. "But I took it down when the fighting began, because I live next to one of the bodyguards of [Amal leader] Nabih Berri."

As the terror of last month's attacks subsides, the fear of Hezbollah among Lebanon's Sunni, Christian, and other minority communities is quickly turning to anger. By alienating the other sects, Hezbollah's short-term military victory seems to be turning into a long-term threat to its weapons and its autonomy. Their violation of the unspoken bargain of their militarization last month is a significant turning point in Lebanon's precarious sectarian balance--a move that has already started to undermine Hezbollah's special status among the Lebanese population.

Losing their weapons would be a major--and possibly fatal--blow to the group. Without its weapons, Hezbollah would probably lose the support of its Iranian sponsors (whose primary goal is to use the group as a front against Israel), making it difficult for the organization to maintain its patronage networks, and thus allowing space for new Shia leaders to emerge.


"It is difficult for me to imagine Hezbollah [surviving very long] as a toothless organization," Safa says. In light of this month's violence, that day may now be closer than ever before.

It might happen. The flaws in the above logic are legion however. Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah are not stupid and they understood exactly how far they could go. They have engineered the takeover in such a way that from now on they no longer need force. They have veto power over any government decision according to the terms of the agreement. Therefore, it is almost inconceivable that they will be induced to lay down their arms. Moreover, while their might be a lot of dissatisfaction with the Hezbollah in Lebanon, this is meaningless unless it can be translated into armed force. How many divisions has Future TV? None. It was shut down in fact by Hezbollah thugs. In the showdown, the army sided with Hezbollah, working out a near-bloodless capitulation to Hezbollah demands, that only required that they remove their troops from the streets. Saad Hariri had no say in the matter. He was a prisoner in his own house, and his Future TV was put off the air. As Hezbollah had won all their demands, there was no reason for them to keep their troops in the streets. The Qatar agreement simply put the seal of approval on the Hezbollah victory. Moreover, Kenner ignores the huge capacity of Lebanese and their politicians to delude themselves. One has only to read the Beirut Daily Star to understand that a significant element of Sunni Arabs and Christians are willing to make believe that the Hezbollah are really working for the unity of Lebanon and that the Qatar agreement is a "good thing." This is no doubt preferable to opposing the Hezbollah, which has often proven to be very bad for the health of journalists and politicians.

Hebollah has managed to take power by assassinating its most important enemies and then using just enough armed force to make clear who is boss. It is far more likely that if Hezbollah ever "surrenders its arms" it will be because its own troops have been absorbed in, and have come to dominate the Lebanese army. At that point, there will be nothing left of Lebanese sovereignty. The issue of popular support doesn't matter. Islamic Republics like Iran are not dependent on the support of a democratic electorate. They maintain their rule at gun point. The AK-47 and the explosive device, rather than the ballot and the public opinion polls, will decide the future of Lebanon, just as they have now decided the Qatar "agreement."

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Better in Baghdad?

I am not saying it's true. It is this man's opinion.

 

Perseverance Pays Off in Baghdad
By MELIK KAYLAN
April 12, 2008; Page A9

Baghdad

 

The recent violence in Sadrist areas of Baghdad should not distract us from the big picture. The capital city of Iraq is immensely more at peace than it was a year ago.

 

This time last year, there were deep booms and the rattle of extended firefights from virtually all around the compass throughout the day and night. Such incidents are now a rare occurrence in a week.

 

Some of the reasons for this progress are better known than others. The surge, the Awakening Councils and the neighborhood-based counterinsurgency program have received solid credit.

 

But the condign effects of the Iraqis' own Baghdad Services Committee and Popular Mobilization Committee have garnered little attention outside Iraq, perhaps because they are led by Ahmed Chalabi, the returned exile who is far more controversial abroad than at home. Yet these days the committees' weekly government-level meetings are attended by ministers and American and Iraqi generals from David Petraeus on down.

 

Whatever some Americans in the U.S. may think of Mr. Chalabi, this much is certain: He has stayed in Baghdad throughout the troubles, living in the Red Zone, touring the neighborhoods more than any Iraqi politician, and routinely incurring considerable risks. He could have lived safely abroad on his family wealth.

 

Mr. Chalabi has made no effort to advertise that he helped the surge succeed by implementing the civilian arm of the Baghdad Security Plan through the work of the two committees. Arguably, he has, more than anyone in the country, evolved a detailed sense of what ails Baghdadis and how to fix things.

 

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appointed Mr. Chalabi to launch the committees last year, no doubt because Mr. Chalabi's unusual habit of direct contact with the populace made him the only realistic choice.

 

The Popular Mobilization Committee (PMC) was launched in February 2007. It now supervises the activity of some 3,000 volunteers around Baghdad. They, in turn, operate a localized system of 120 neighborhood watch committees. They provide intelligence, report trouble, help settle returnees to their homes and the like. They have been crucial in stabilizing the city neighborhood by neighborhood.

 

Mr. Chalabi estimates that a total of perhaps one million (mostly Sunni middle-class) refugees left Baghdad after 2003. Many of them left Iraq, while some 350,000 were internally displaced. A quarter have now returned, and more are coming back, chiefly because their money has run out. They routinely find squatters in their homes.

 

According to Mr. Chalabi, the situation is often delicate, but not as bad as it might be. "Everyone knows who actually lives where," he says. "People work out reasonable solutions. Baghdadis are very clear about ownership." (According to a Chalabi aide, real estate values in the city have actually gone up in the last year.) Since many of the refugees were forcibly purged, a deal of suspicion and anxiety attends the process, which the local committees help smooth out.

 

Meanwhile, the PMC takes Shiite leaders into Sunni areas and vice-versa. "We just did two reconciliation meetings where hostile tribal chieftains invited each other just because they heard we were coming," Mr. Chalabi told me.

 

Through the PMC, Sunni mosques are returned to Sunnis. Intersectarian prayers are held. The PMC also monitors the prisons, and provides legal help to citizens, as requested by the local committees. To avoid favoritism and the appearance of patronage, "we decided that whoever does the most work gets to lead the committees," says Mr. Chalabi. As a result, even the most hostile sectarian areas welcome his efforts as practical rather than political, and above all as efficacious.

 

This is especially true of the Baghdad Services Committee, which concentrates on water, electricity, infrastructure repair and the like. The BSC was launched in November 2007, with the immediate goal of reclaiming the circle of power plants deliberately positioned by Saddam Hussein around Baghdad in Baathist areas.

 

Much of the city's post-Saddam power supply was either hijacked or deliberately sabotaged, until the BSC identified the problem. It demanded a military presence to protect substations, while arranging for the railways to transport diesel into the city. Electricity supply today is three hours on, three off, up from one hour a day last year.

 

Mr. Chalabi complains that the U.S. does not do enough to help the power supply. "In Mahmoudiya [a suburb], we are asking the Russians to come back and complete a power station which they half-finished in Saddam's time," he says. "Electricity is crucial also for pumping water. Baghdad needs three million cubic meters of water a day. The most reliable source north of Baghdad can provide almost a half of that, but it needs power. We got . . . [from the US military] a massive generator of 60 megahertz, whereas all our system is designed for 50 megahertz – it's just sitting there."

 

Some Baghdad neighborhoods are improvised shantytowns with no access to water and no sewage system. Says Mr. Chalabi: "We must provide 1,000 tanker trucks quickly by this summer. But I'm not confident we'll get them. The real, long-term solution is to build housing with proper infrastructure – we are in desperate need of new housing."

 

The BSC has gained a considerable reputation around Baghdad for taking government ministers into neglected areas, television cameras in tow, to shame the government into action. Mr. Chalabi's political party, the Iraqi National Congress, also recently launched a weekly newspaper entirely about services, in which citizens get to sound off and government officials are asked to respond.

 

The practical projects of these committees aside, one could argue that their greatest service has been psychological: to show that the problems of Baghdad, and by implication Iraq, are not some bottomless pit of chaos. They can be dealt with concretely and overcome with perseverance.

 

Mr. Kaylan is a writer based in New York.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Salah Choudhury: The Man Islamists Cannot Silence

The Man Islamists Cannot Silence

http://www.israelenews.com/view.asp?ID=1594

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - By: Benkin, Richard

---

He fired the first salvo in 2003 and has been sticking his thumb in Islamist eyes ever since.  Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury describes himself as a "Muslim Zionist."  He is unabashedly pro-US, pro-Israel, and anti-Islamist.  More importantly, he remains all of that from within the Muslim world, which he refuses to leave.  I have fielded any number of asylum requests for him, and he declined them all.  "Retreat is not in my vocabulary," he says, for he believes that if he were to leave his country, his credibility would be gone, and Islamists would claim victory; a satisfaction he refuses to give them.  "Bangladesh is my country," he says.  "Let the radicals leave!"

Since 2003, we have fought not only a battle of ideas but also a battle of wills with our adversaries; and the skirmishes never end.  Shoaib has been imprisoned and tortured.  He has been beaten, and Islamists bombed his newspaper before they and their cronies in the ruling party seized the premises.  All of this happened after Shoaib published articles that exposed the rising strength of Islamist radicals in Bangladesh, urged relations with Israel, and advocated genuine interfaith dialogue based on religious equality.

In November of that year, he was about to board a plane for Bangkok and then Israel (there are no direct flights between Dhaka and Tel Aviv), agents grabbed him.  Eventually, they charged him with sedition, treason, and blasphemy, which are capital offenses and could send Shoaib to the gallows. 

In 2005, however, after an intense seventeen month campaign for his freedom, Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) took on his case.  He summoned then Bangladeshi Ambassador Shamsher M. Chowdhury to his Washington office, and the three of us had a sometimes acrimonious, always difficult, hours-long meeting.  As Kirk (a member of the House Appropriations Committee) describes it, we had a "full and frank discussion," after which Dhaka agreed to free Shoaib Choudhury.

Our elation was short-lived, however, when Shamsher Chowdhury clarified that Shoaib would be freed on bail even though the ambassador had just admitted that there was no substance to the charges.  To be sure, we had won the most important point: Shoaib would be free.  Still, I looked up and said, "Not good enough.  It's an old and tired ruse used by tyrants," I continued.  "Free the dissident but keep the charges pending in order to silence him."  And so we argued some more until Chowdhury relented and agreed that Dhaka would drop the charges not long after Shoaib's release.

That was three years ago.  The charges remain, even though numerous Bangladeshi officials have made the same admission as the ambassador; that the charges are baseless and are maintained only to placate the country's radical Islamists.  Bangladesh's population is about 88 percent Muslim, a figure that is growing constantly, especially as Hindus are being ethnically cleansed from that country, falling from 18 to nine percent of the population.  Although radical Islamists affiliated with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations represent only a small proportion of the population, they have infiltrated and taken charge of almost every major institution in Bangladesh from education and banking to police and the judiciary.

For months, both sides had settled into a sort of stasis until this past fall when the Bangladeshis tried illegally to revoke Shoaib's bail and send him back to prison.  The fact that we continued to frustrate these attempts could have had something to do with what happened next.  On the evening of March 18, as Shoaib sat at his desk working on another edition of his newspaper, Weekly Blitz, a large contingent of armed goons from the government's paramilitary squad -- the hated and feared Rapid Action Battalion or RAB -- burst into his office.  They ordered all employees out, seized Shoaib's means of contacting the outside, and began "interrogating" him. 

Fortunately, his driver quickly alerted Shoaib's brother, Sohail, who telephoned me in the United States.  Shoaib's life was in very real danger, so we determined on an immediate course of action.  Sohail called Luke Zahner, Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Dhaka, and a long time supporter of Shoaib's.  Zahner, who had previously helped set up USAID's elections support program in Iraq, notified U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Geeta Pasi.

I telephoned Kirk's office and described the events unfolding in Dhaka and their life-and-death nature to Andria Hoffman, who is Kirk's point person on the Choudhury case.  "These [RAB] are bad people.  I know them, and you don't even want them as friends, let alone be on their bad side.  They're the kind of group where people sometimes go into their custody and 'disappear.'" 

Hoffman got to Kirk, and they set up an emergency command center in his Longworth Building office.  I then called three other legislators who have been especially supportive of Shoaib:  Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ), and Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA).  Their staffs -- who had frequently worked with me on Shoaib's case -- said they would take action and coordinate further with Kirk's office. 

That done, I telephoned Bangladesh's DC embassy and told them the following:  "If I don't receive a telephone call confirming that Shoaib has been released unharmed and soon, you're going to have a s**t storm like you've never even imagined." Within a short time, the embassy received calls from all four members of Congress mentioned above, as well as several others who they got involved.  Hoffman called the Embassy's political secretary, Sheikh Mohammed Belal on his personal cell phone, demanding action.

Cut to Bangladesh.  After holding Shoaib for about an hour an a half, an RAB officer said (and I am paraphrasing here), 'Oh look, it appears he has some illegal drugs in his desk drawer.'  Now, I have known Shoaib as a brother for years, and we have spent a lot of time together.  The man is simply not involved in any way with drugs.  Moreover, he and I have spoken on many occasions of the paramount importance of his remaining  "squeaky clean" in every way so as not to give his enemies an excuse to further persecute him.  According to Sohail Choudhury, the evidence had to be planted, a tactic that RAB has been known to use rather liberally.  No matter; they blindfolded Shoaib and took him to a "detention center" within RAB's office in the capital.  According to Shoaib, the officers continued the verbal assault non-stop.  They threatened him specifically and journalists in general for their criticism of the current military-backed government.  They repeatedly called Shoaib a "Zionist spy and agent of the Jews."

At one point, Shoaib reminded them that they were violating a US Congressional Resolution that calls for an end to this sort of harassment, something with which the government said it would comply.  House Resolution 64, authored by Kirk and co-sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) calls on the Bangladeshis to drop all charges against Shoaib and end all harassment of him and his family. It passed last year by an overwhelmingly 409-1 margin.  Their response was a string of expletives about the United States and the value of its resolutions. 

As they approached the three hour mark, things were turning even nastier.  RAB officers told Shoaib that he could expect a steady diet of this, or even worse, unless he began working for them; something that he called "ridiculous."  Then the phone rang.  The officers told Shoaib that the call came from "a high government official" ordering them to let him go.  He phoned Sohail and asked him to bring him home. 

Before they allowed them to go, however, Shoaib's captors forced the pair to sign an affidavit giving RAB the power to enter their home or business at any time and for any reason; although it should be added that it had no warrant or other sort of order when its men broke into his newspaper earlier.  As such, Shoaib remains in danger, especially as his legal status remains equivocal at best.

Although Shoaib was released unharmed, the action represents a serious escalation of the government's and its Islamist cronies' attempt to silence this courageous journalist who now counts supporters on every continent.  Equally important, we have learned over the years that they do these things periodically to probe us and test our resolve.  They want to know if we are going to react or note.  They want to know if we still are ready to defend Shoaib and other anti-Islamists or if we have lost interest. 

Unfortunately, they started this false persecution on the assumption that no one would care what happened to Shoaib, and many in the government still believe that we Americans have little resolve -- and actually have told me that.  And so they go after us.  Our enemies count on this and point to success when they hear proposals to make concessions in Israel or to pull up stakes in Iraq and elsewhere.  If we don't respond, and respond with strength, they'll continue persecuting Shoaib and others like him.

Because, in fact, the stakes go beyond even the fate of this hero.  Muslim editors from Pakistan to Indonesia (and even the United States) have told us that Muslims throughout Asia are watching this case.  They want to know if it is possible to stand against the radicals and prevail -- without running to the safety of the West, as they put it.  If Shoaib prevails, they will be emboldened to act similarly.  If we let him go down -- and that is exactly how they will see it -- they will remain silent.

When Shoaib was in prison, his brother told me that people all over the world who need a champion to save them from oppression look only one place, the United States; not to Europe; not to tyrants like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad or Fidel Castro who claim to be freedom fighters; and not to terrorist like Osama Bin Laden.  When we stand with Shoaib, we reinforce their belief in us.

In the meantime, Shoaib Choudhury refuses to be silent, especially he says given all the support he received.  Two days after his abuse at RAB's hands, he published another edition of Weekly Blitz.  Two of its headline articles were "RAB Cocoon of Terror" and "They want to Appease Islamists."  He is our ally; he is my brother; he is the bravest man I know.  He is the man whom Islamists cannot silence.

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Understanding Al-Qaeda - a battle between Muslims

The conclusion to be derived from thesis presented in The Two Faces of Al Qaeda is fairly straightforward. The war of Al-Qaida is at present primarily a war between Muslims, not a war of Muslims against the west. Bin-Laden wants power in Saudi Arabia and the Arab and Muslim world first and foremost. Perhaps at a later stage this power would be used against the West. The aim of the terror attacks is not to destroy the West, but to mobilize support for extremism in the Muslim world.

It follows that criticism of Jihadist extremism is not "islamophobia," and that well meaning people who try to ignore or euphemize Islamism are not helping moderate Muslims in any way: quite the contrary.

Ami Isseroff

Chronicle of Higher Education

September 21, 2007

The Two Faces of Al Qaeda

By RAYMOND IBRAHIM

When the September 11 attacks occurred, I was in Fresno, Calif., researching my M.A. thesis on the Battle of Yarmuk, one of the first yet little-known battles between Christendom and Islam, waged in 636 A.D. That battle, in which the Arab invaders were outmatched and yet still triumphed, would have immense historical repercussions. A mere four years later, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and all the land between, would become Islamic. A century later, all the land between southern France and India would be added to the House of Islam.

The next time I came across any reference to this pivotal battle was four years later, as I was translating the words of Osama bin Laden. Surprisingly, an event that seemed so distant, almost irrelevant, to the West was to bin Laden a source not only of pride but of instruction. For him it was not mere history but an inspiring example of outnumbered and underequipped mujahedin who, through faith-inspired courage, managed to defeat the Western empire of Byzantium. When the Arab and Afghan mujahedin, including bin Laden's nascent Al Qaeda - outnumbered and underequipped - defeated the Soviet invaders, history was repeating itself.

Yet why would this band, so reminiscent of their seventh-century forebears, attack the United States, its onetime ally against the Soviets, and in such a horrific manner? What was its motivation?

Finding answers seemed easy enough. From the start, the Internet -- unregulated, uncensored, unfettered -- has been Al Qaeda's primary mouthpiece. Then, as now, whenever Al Qaeda has wanted to communicate with the West, it has posted videotaped messages, some complete with English subtitles.

After the events of 9/11, my increased interest in Arabic language and history led me to enroll in Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Before and during my studies at Georgetown, I avidly read any and all posted Al Qaeda messages. The group's motivation seemed clear enough: retaliation. According to its widely disseminated statements, the West in general, and the United States in particular, had been -- overtly and covertly -- oppressing and exploiting the Islamic world. The accusations included: unqualified U.S. support for Israel at the expense of Palestinians; deaths of Iraqi children due to U.N. sanctions; U.S. support for dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world; and, most recently, Western occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Every single message directed to the West by Al Qaeda includes most of these core grievances, culminating with the statement that it is the Islamic world's duty to defend itself. "After all this, does the prey not have the right, when bound and dragged to its slaughter, to escape? Does it not have the right, while being slaughtered, to lash out with its paw?" bin Laden asks.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Even the 9/11 strikes are explained as acts of reprisal. After describing the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, where several high-rise apartment buildings were leveled, reportedly leaving some 18,000 Arabs dead, bin Laden, in a 2004 message directed at Americans, said: "As I looked upon those crumpling towers in Lebanon, I was struck by the idea of punishing the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America -- giving them a taste of their own medicine and deterring them from murdering our women and children."

Soon after relocating to Washington in order to attend Georgetown, I landed an internship, which later evolved into a full-time position, at the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, where thousands of new books, serials, and microfilms arrive yearly from the Arab world.

Numerous Arabic books dealing with Al Qaeda passed through my hands in this privileged position. A good number contained not only excerpts or quotes by Al Qaeda but entire treatises written by its members. Surprisingly, I came to discover that most of these had never been translated into English. Most significantly, however, the documents struck me as markedly different from the messages directed to the West, in both tone and (especially) content.

It soon became clear why these particular documents had not been directed to the West. They were theological treatises, revolving around what Islam commands Muslims to do vis-à-vis non-Muslims. The documents rarely made mention of all those things -- Zionism, Bush's "Crusade," malnourished Iraqi children -- that formed the core of Al Qaeda's messages to the West. Instead, they were filled with countless Koranic verses, hadiths (traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), and the consensus and verdicts of Islam's most authoritative voices. The temporal and emotive language directed at the West was exchanged for the eternal language of Islam when directed at Muslims. Or, put another way, the language of "reciprocity" was exchanged for that of intolerant religious fanaticism. There was, in fact, scant mention of the words "West," "U.S.," or "Israel." All of those were encompassed by that one Arabic-Islamic word, "kufr" -- "infidelity" -- the regrettable state of being non-Muslim that must always be fought through "tongue and teeth."

Consider the following excerpt -- one of many -- which renders Al Qaeda's reciprocal-treatment argument moot. Soon after 9/11, an influential group of Saudis wrote an open letter to the United States saying, "The heart of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is justice, kindness, and charity." Bin Laden wrote in response:

As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High's Word: "We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us -- till you believe in Allah alone." So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility -- that is, battle-- ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed, or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy! Allah Almighty's Word to his Prophet recounts in summation the true relationship: "O Prophet! Wage war against the infidels and hypocrites and be ruthless. Their abode is hell -- an evil fate!" Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred -- directed from the Muslim to the infidel - is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.

Bin Laden goes so far as to say that the West's purported hostility toward Islam is wholly predicated on Islam's innate hostility toward the rest of the world, contradicting his own propaganda: "The West is hostile to us on account of ... offensive jihad."

In an article titled "I was a fanatic ... I know their thinking" published by the Daily Mail soon after the London and Glasgow terrorist plots, Hassan Butt, a former jihadist, helps explain the Islamist dichotomy between the propaganda of reciprocity and the theology of eternal hostility toward the infidel: "When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network ... I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings, and 7/7 was Western foreign policy."

One is reminded of the captured video showing bin Laden laughing and gesticulating soon after the 9/11 strikes, boasting that many of the hijackers weren't even aware that they were on a suicide mission. Butt continues:

By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology. ... As with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy. For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today program, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."

Whatever position one takes as to why Al Qaeda has declared war on America, one thing is clear: We must begin to come to terms with all of Al Qaeda's rhetoric, not just what is aimed specifically at Western readers. We must particularly come to better appreciate the theological aspects that underpin radical Islam. As Butt puts it:

The main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology. They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever -- and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

When news of The Al Qaeda Reader leaked to the press in 2005, some on the left questioned whether the book would be a pseudoscholarly attempt to demonize Muslims. Others on the right worried that unfiltered exposure to the radical beliefs and propaganda of bin Laden and his cohorts might unintentionally lead to more converts or sympathizers.

My reply is simply this: Whatever one's position in regard to the "war on terror," understanding the ideas of our enemy is both a practical necessity in wartime and a fundamental liberal value. It is my hope that both sides in this bitter debate will profit from a deeper acquaintance with these works. In any case, it simply will not do to dismiss Al Qaeda as an irrational movement without ideas.

Raymond Ibrahim is editor and translator of The Al Qaeda Reader, recently published by Broadway Books. All translations in this article are from the book.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 54, Issue 4, Page B13

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian Christian 'activist' killed - by Palestinians

Headline:

 

Palestinian Christian activist found dead in Gaza City

An "activist" is generally someone who plants bombs in Middle East newsspeak, but this activist was director of the Teacher's Bookshop, Gaza's only Christian bookstore, which is run by the Bible Society of Gaza Baptist church. Health Ministry officials confirmed his death.

 

Ayyad had been missing since Saturday evening. Over the years he had received repeated death threats from unidentified people displeased with his missionary work. He was found stabbed to death in a street in Gaza City early Sunday.

 

The associated press article adds gratuitously and incorrectly, that Muslim-Christian relations have not deteriorated since the Hamas takeover in June. Apparently, this means that the Muslims burn churches and murder "activists," and the Christians smile and say "I can't complain."

 

Ami Isseroff 
 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Sabotaging moderate Muslims

Guess who wrote this?

"Islamist fundamentalist groups, which have concentrated virtually all their efforts on recruitment and consolidating forces, fear the open door from which the winds of independent thought might shake their unity of rank. Thus, their members have been left to create the contours of the fundamentalist dream on the basis of ancient works of jurisprudence. As a result, they have become even more rigid than their leaders and have come to form a powerful pressure group within the movement that not only hampers their leaderships' ability to proclaim fresh ideas but also restricts their leaderships' manoeuvrability, which is one of the essential prerequisites for any drive to attain a dream. What remains, then, is the vast ability to cause problems, bring down disaster on others and generally obstruct progress and development. "

Was it a Zionist Islamophobic Neocon? An advocate of war of civilizations? If we believe some Western whitewashers of Islamist fanaticism, only such people would write bad things about the nice Islamists like the Hezbollah, the Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood Group (see for example, Islamism: Perception versus Reality )

But in fact, it was written in Al Ahram newspaper, by Salah Eissa. In Muslim societies troubled by Islamist (or Jihadist) extremism, there is a growing movement of justifiable alarm and disillusionment with the extremist views and the narrow and reactionary concepts of society that these groups want to impose. Where "Islamist" or more properly "Islamic" political parties have succeeded democraticaly, in countries such as Turkey, they have abandoned, at least temporarily, the ambition of imposing Sha'aria law on all of society.

Paradoxically, in the West, the Islamist fanatics have recruited a coterie of apologists, who insist that any criticism of Islamism is "Islamophobia," and that Westerners had better learn to love restriction of intellectual life, persecution of homosexuals and repression of women in the interests of dialogue and multipluralistic liberal values. This paradoxical acceptance of an ultra-reactionary movement by "liberals" threatens to sabotage the efforts of moderate Muslims to return their societies to sanity, and to find a reasonable and progressive path between the corruption and failure pan-Arabist dictators and reactionary sheikhs on the one hand, and the threat of totalitarian religious societies posed by Islamists.

Ami Isseroff

Islamist inertia
In shutting the door to change, difference and reason, contemporary Islamist movements bind themselves to a mummified past, writes Salah Eissa*

Since 1979, when the Iranian revolution succeeded in toppling the peacock throne and founding an Islamic republic, "The Islamists are coming!" has been a cry that voiced the hopes of some and the fears of others.

For Islamist groups across the Arab- Islamic map, the Iranian revolution rekindled dreams of a victory of their own, even though these groups still suffered the after effects of successive waves of assault waged against them by Arab nationalist regimes from the early 1950s to the mid- 1970s. Not only did these campaigns throw Islamist groups into organisational disarray, and most of their leaders into prison, they also succeeded in turning the majority of the Arab public against them while luring it to the Arab nationalist model which seemed poised to realise their social and national aspirations.

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, the credibility of the Arab nationalist project waned and its popularity dwindled. By the time of the Iranian revolution, Islamist groups had just begun to emerge from their cocoons and present themselves as the alternative to all preceding national revival projects, as the untried path untainted by disaster and defeat.

Since then, all signs indicated that the Muslim fundamentalist movement was marching relentlessly forward. A military coup paved the way for their seizure of power in Sudan. They were steadily gaining ground in the parliaments in Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Algeria and, indeed, they won sizeable majorities in legislative elections in Palestine and Turkey. Their mounting popularity across the Arab world was also reflected in their growing, if not controlling, presence in many civil society organisations, notably in the occupational syndicates.

One factor that facilitated this progress was that some governments allied themselves with moderate Islamists in the hope of obstructing the danger of radical fundamentalists that espoused the use of violence. Some political parties and movements also pursued the same tactic, if for different ends, such as to combine forces against a common external enemy (the US and Israel) or against a domestic adversary (dictatorial regimes) or merely to hitch up with the Islamist trend in order to win more votes in the polls.

The West, spearheaded by the US, was alarmed at this development, in spite of the fact that it was instrumental in fostering it. The West had worked assiduously to destroy Arab nationalist governments that were once a bulwark against the fundamentalist tide. It also enlisted Muslim fundamentalists in its fight against communism. This alliance reached its zenith in the war to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet occupation and came to a reverberating close with the events of 11 September 2001.

But is the march of Muslim fundamentalists towards power in the Arab world, whether they succeed by coup or through democratic processes, irreversible? Has the civil state ended as a phase in political evolution and must we ready ourselves for a theocratic state?

The answer to these questions is affirmative if we judge solely by the balance of power between Muslim fundamentalists and other political forces. But it quickly moves to the negative once we take a closer look at the contradictions within the greater Islamist movement itself and unearth a number of weak points that could hamper its progress and perhaps thwart its goals entirely.

The problem with the Muslim fundamentalist project is that it is founded upon the utopian dream of reviving the Islamic state as it existed in its golden era. What is conspicuously lacking in the discourse of proponents of this project is a clear conception of the material means needed to resuscitate that past so many centuries after its death and to revive all the attendant circumstances that had enabled that state to flourish.

True, the ability of abstractions to tickle the deep religious grain of the Muslim people is a major reason for the widespread popularity of the fundamentalist project. However, when forced to come down to earth and deal with the difficulties that obstruct its path, or with the brass tacks of rule as dictated by balances of power and the various demands of reality, the project runs out of steam.

The fact is that the fundamentalist project has an Achilles heel. It posits a dream of reviving the glory of the Islamic empire but ignores the fact that what enabled that empire to flourish was its openness to other cultures and civilisations. This applies to Muslim jurists and theologians, as long as the doors to dialogue and the exercise of reason in light of the changes and challenges of contemporary reality remained open, furnishing a constant source of inspiration and renovation. Conversely, the decline of Islamic civilisation began when the door leading to the application of reason and independent thought was slammed shut. If their aim is to revive our ancient glory, proponents of the fundamentalist project should first strive to breach the gap between the 4th century in the Islamic calendar, when the door to ijtihad was closed, and the present, so as to be able to formulate a philosophy that suits the times in which we live.

But this seems unlikely. Islamist fundamentalist groups, which have concentrated virtually all their efforts on recruitment and consolidating forces, fear the open door from which the winds of independent thought might shake their unity of rank. Thus, their members have been left to create the contours of the fundamentalist dream on the basis of ancient works of jurisprudence. As a result, they have become even more rigid than their leaders and have come to form a powerful pressure group within the movement that not only hampers their leaderships' ability to proclaim fresh ideas but also restricts their leaderships' manoeuvrability, which is one of the essential prerequisites for any drive to attain a dream. What remains, then, is the vast ability to cause problems, bring down disaster on others and generally obstruct progress and development.

The danger, therefore, is not so much that "The Islamists are coming," but that they still have the power to obstruct progress towards democracy in Muslim countries.

* The writer is editor-in-chief of Al-Qahira weekly newspaper.

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

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The Jewish worriers - Open letter to Larry Derfner & Maurice Ostroff about God's Warriors and their correspondence

Dear Larry and Maurice,
I have followed your correspondence regarding the now notorious CNN film as best I could, and tried to make sense of all of it.

Larry Derfner wrote:

But on the subject of the Israeli-Arab conflict, you are, according to my definition, a hardline right-winger. I say that because your view, or at least your stated view, of the conflict is that in 100% of the disputes between Israel and the Arabs, Israel is 100% and the Arabs are 100% wrong.

This is a continuation of the sort of argument you used in your article, is it not? "It is right wing, and therefore it is wrong." Serious analysts don't base arguments on calling names. Leave that to Stalin in the sessions of the Politburo. It doesn't matter if Maurice is an agent of the reactionary kulaks, a right-deviationist, a wrecker of the five year plan or a left deviationist. It doesn't matter if CAMERA is composed of third-temple fanatics or A.N.S.W.E.R. advocates. What matters is the logic of their criticism.

If Maurice is a hardline right-winger, then what might Benjamin Netanyahu be? You don't seem to have much gradation in your scale. Such distinctions are usually the mark of superficial minds that want to substitute labeling for analysis, and to dismiss uncomfortable and inconvenient facts by painting them with the stigma of "wrong opinion" or "not PC." Churchill was a "hard line right winger" but he was right about Nazism, and his opponents were wrong. They got away with discrediting him for many years just by using labels like "war monger."

There are some simple propositions that are central to our problems: Settlements are wrong, terrorism is wrong, and Jihadist fanaticism is a danger to civilization of all types. It is hard to make all three statements without being labeled a leftist self-hating Jew and a traitor by one group, an Islamophobic neocon by the other side, and a Zionist war monger to boot. I happen to hold all three beliefs. I don't know where that puts me on the Larry Derfner political scale, and I don't care either. Until we get all those self-serving fools and fanatics out of the room, we cannot have a real discussion.

Propositions have to be considered independently of who is saying them, and independently of other ideological baggage they might bring with them. You need to learn to stick to the issues, and to teach your readers to think rather than to lob labels at each other like grenades. If Aumann or Haniyeh say that the Sun is shining, then the way to prove if they are right or wrong is to look out the window, rather than arguing about whether they are right-wingers or left-wingers. Forgive me for saying that it is an embarrassing and juvenile sort of argument. It may sell newspapers. You are in business to do that. But it makes heat, and not light.

The gab-fest benefits the film itself, because any publicity is good publicity, and it benefits the organizations who are dumping on the film, and who will get more donations from their loyal followers. It does nothing to advance either truth or the cause of Israel, regardless of whether these are the same or different. No neutral or anti-Israel person is going to be convinced by CAMERA or Honest Reporting, and there is no way to ascertain the facts without seen the film and doing the research. Reading these reviews adds nothing. I know who Osama Bin Laden is and I know what he wants. I don't need Honest Reporting or Christianne Anampour to tell me. By now I suspect that only about three dozen people care about that film. It was just another bit of vacuous entertainment with no more truth value (maybe less) than an episode of The Shield or House, and less entertainment value. Discussing it gives it publicity.

The last time there was a similar dustup it was about Spielberg's film, Munich. Reading the criticism of Jewish organizations, I thought that Spielberg must have joined the PLO or maybe the Hamas. Then I saw the film, which was largely sympathetic to Israel and the Zionist cause, and portrayed humanistic and humanitarian Zionists tortured by the necessity of killing, contrasted with fanatic and one-dimensional Arabs. I have learned not to trust the moral standards and aesthetic and professional judgements of these organizations and to form my own judgement.

That said, any film that shows, at the same time, and as part of the same problem, the Jihadist threat along with Zionist and Christian extremists, is showing a lie. Nobody disputes that Amanpour does that. There is a difference between a movement that is morally wrong and theoretically a problem, and a political movement that is an active problem and a clear and present danger. Anti-abortionist fanatics and third temple builders are not my favorite people, but they haven't yet the power or the announced intention to destroy Western civilization. They are not a danger of the same order of magnitude as Al-Qaeda and other Jihadist extremists. There is no way to make Baruch Goldstein into Osama Bin Laden, or to turn Mr. Hagee into the equivalent of Ahmadinejad. Hagee doesn't run a state. He isn't building an atom bomb, and he hasn't declared the intention to make a world without anyone. Goldstein and his friends and supporters represent a morally reprehensible cause. Fortunately there are not a lot of them, and they have no power. They are not a threat to the United States, Western Civilization or Israel. Not yet. The proposition that Bin Laden has something to do with Israeli settlements is intellectual rubbish. Bin Laden's last message didn't even mention Israel. Some people don't want to admit what the real problem is. There is no reason to assist them in their self-delusion.

Larry wrote:

But the question she raises is, if the settlements are a bad thing (a point of view she supports with factual material), and every U.S. government has spoken against them to some degree, why doesn't the U.S. back up its sentiments with action - by pressuring Israel monetarily and politically to stop building settlements? And her answer is: because of the Israel lobby.

But the question I raise, is what do settlements have to do with Islamist fundamentalism in Afghanistan or the price of hay in China? Just because Bin Laden may say it is an issue, doesn't mean it is so. Bin Laden and his followers are not against settlements in the West Bank. They are against the existence of Israel. Just because Jack Kelley wrote that settlements are due to the activities of religious fanatics, doesn't make it so either. The evil of Jim Crow in the United States did not justify, and was not equivalent to, the evil of Stalinism in the USSR. Some people did equate them. It is clear now that they were as wrong as those who equated Stalin and Hitler and insisted that the US and Britain should stay out of World War II.

In any case, a lot of very unreligious people support those settlements. So what is the point? What is the connection to God's Warriors?

Bin Laden and his friends are also against loose morals in women, such as allowing divorce and parading about without a Hijab. So what? Why should this issue even be raised? Who cares what these people claim they support? Their "issues" are all just excuses for taking power by violent means.

And the other question I raise is, if the Israel Lobby is so all-powerful as you and Mearsheimer and Walt and Amanpour pretend, then why hasn't the US taken an unequivocally pro-Israel stance on so many critical issues for Israel, even when Israel is clearly in the right (that happens too sometimes)? How do they screw us? Let us count the ways:

- Boycott - United States continues to do business with Gulf and other countries that maintain primary boycotts of Israel, and the US keeps making believe it doesn't happen.

- Israel's right to exist - US does business with, and supports, numerous regimes that deny and have denied the right of Israel to exist.

- Refugee problem - the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem and the entire mechanism of UNRWA is possible only because of the support of the United States and its allies. No other group of refugees is treated in the same way as Palestinian refugees. An entire mechanism, funded by generous contributions of US and European taxpayers, has been created solely to perpetuate the conflict and the misery of the refugees. The United States has never lifted a finger to change this reality, never threatened to cut off support to the UN, never tried to cajole allies into changing the status of UNRWA.

- Jerusalem - the United States, despite the efforts of the vaunted Israel lobby, does not recognize even West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Congressional resolutions, promises of Presidential candidates, all avail nothing.

It may not suit either AIPAC nor Mearsheimer and Walt and their friends to admit it, but the effectiveness of the Israel lobby is close to zero. The US government does what it sees fit to do, and then justifies it in terms of support for Israel, or not.

Concerning the legality or illegality of settlements, it is a red herring issue, Maurice. You have to decide whether you want to fight Islamism with clean hands or defend settlements. You cannot have both. By raising this issue, you are playing right into the hands of those who want to equate Israeli actions with those of Osama Bin Laden. The whole settlement issue simply didn't belong in a documentary of that type, and its presence there is bizarre. The Tal lawthat exempts Ultraorthodox Jews from the draft is also wrong, and it is religiously motivated, but that doesn't have much to do with Jihadism either.


Ami Isseroff
Posted at Israel News

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