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"Muslim" - "Islamic" Terrorism and Violence
Humanist and Secular Muslims
Responding to Hate against Muslims: Over 200 internal web pages of articles, resources, and insights
Terrorism in the world: Comparisons to Islam and Muslims
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" ... if you look at the sweep of history, Christian militancy has wreaked far greater destruction than anything managed by Islam. There are continents of people who were subjected to Christian soldiers marching onward and who are therefore not terribly sympathetic when we (the west) complain of Islamic militantism."
John Ralston Saul (Canadian philospher and author), from 'On Equilibrium', 2001, pages 87-88.
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REMINDER: HasM has no interest whatsoever, indeed it saddens it, and it's a burden upon it, to point out comparisons between religions or different groups - the west, Christianity, etc. - but it's hand is forced by those who relentlessly direct hate, vilification, and denigration at Muslims.
Unfortunately, in responding to hate attacks one is forced to make comparisons. However, wherever we can, we do our best to keep as closely as possible to refuting the attacks without pointing out or emphasizing the ills of the attackers' group. We hold the position that the haters are exceptions in the groups they belong to, not the norm. We do not, in the least manner, care to upset the good members of the groups that such haters belong to (at least nominally), whether they be "the West", white, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, or whatever.
Please keep that in mind in any arguments in which we have been forced to point out the ills of the attackers' or other groups.
And we wish to sincerely apologise ahead of time for any upset or chagrin we may cause the good decent people of the groups to which those haters belong. We ache as we find ourselves cornered into responding in a manner we would never have, had our hand not been forced.
Must read:
Various articles by wonderful non-Muslims who write in support of balance and fairness in the portrayal and treatment of Muslims.
An article exposing the reality of the geographical distribution of violence and terrorism in the world
Hate Against Muslims, Again, and Again, and Again.
The number of times we’ve heard from haters “look around you, all the terrorism is Islamic, the problem is in Islam and Muslims”. There are various hateful versions of that accusation, but in general, the point of the haters is that everyone else in the world is an angel except Muslims, and all other religions in the world are saintly except Islam.
Significantly, when the white Christian western nations were going through their own growing pains, each and every last one of them was engaging in violence, terror, and bloodshed beyond what many other peoples in the history of the world engaged in. America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and each and every last nation in Europe, set the whole world ablaze.
Centuries in, centuries out, the white "Christian" European nations were at war with each other, with other peoples, or within themselves. Pity the unfortunate peoples of the world who found themselves invaded out of the blue, massacred, enslaved, ethnically cleansed, Apartheided, Inquisitioned, exploited, plundered, expelled, forcefully converted in case, after case, after case of "Christian" European atrocity.
And it was almost always justified through Christian scripture - the Bible - which was also forced down the throat of most vanquished peoples. The white Christian Europeans were all over the globe, destroying other peoples, cultures, and belief systems, colonizing others, occupying and exploiting them, on, and on, and on, it went.
Feature unique to HaSM European Muslims & Racism in Europe and Muslims and racism in Australia -- and see also,
Other articles addressing hate against Muslims
Suicide Bombings and Terrorism
If killing civilians and bombing children is condemned in Islam – and of course it categorically is – no Muslims under whatever circumstances should view 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Istanbul, Kenya, Tanzania, Israel, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, or any other similar attacks on civilians as anything but inhuman and criminal, which translates clearly as "non-Islamic".
Iran: Salman Rushdie versus Osama bin Laden
(EXCERPTS)
...Mr. Rushdie may be a literary genius, but then geniuses are a dime a dozen. What makes a genius worthy of respect is not his literary, artistic, scientific, technological, or philosophical ingenuity, but moral and ethical values. One can easily cite some geniuses in history that no one would ever celebrate.
The celebration of Mr. Rushdie in the west is all a matter of double standards. If that book had targeted Moses and the Jews, it would have been off the shelves presto, and no book of Mr. Rushdie's would have ever seen the light of day again. Just another sad and shameful side of the story. Naturally, Mr. Rushdie would have never dared write such a book. It is easier denigrating the weak and the downtrodden, which doesn't say much about Mr. Rushdie's courage.
....Iran must be an example of what Allah and Mohammed truly preach and teach, and what Islam's great bright and shining history has been an example of.
Instead of uttering death sentences for meaningless insults in some trivial book that is neither here nor there, and which God needs no defense against, Iran should put a bounty on the heads of those who hurt Allah's name by doing great evil and then attributing it to Islamic teachings.
Calling God names reflects badly upon the insulting person, but killing innocents then saying Islam's God ordered it is treason, sabotage, and deliberate vilification of Islam and its teachings.
...How can Mr. Rushdie's book, no matter how inappropriate, compare with those who spill the blood of innocent men, women, and children and then say it is in the name of Allah, the Quran, and Mohammed?
...Bin Laden is a criminal, not a fighter, a coward who gave and gives Islam a bad name through indifferently killing children. Compare that to the petty stuff Mr. Rushdie wrote.
Iran and any Muslims who fail to see the wrong in that situation are letting Islam and Allah down. Rise, Iran, and do the right thing by Islam, condemn and hunt down the real villain, Osama bin Laden.
Difficult Act to Balance: Racial Profiling
(EXCERPTS)
...while official American policy is gracious, the conduct of some border security personnel verges on sadism, sadism based on racial profiling.
But even though racial profiling can be near-criminal conduct, it is also an indispensable tool in police work. It is the first clue in any investigation in a multicultural nation. The bank robber's a white Caucasian; no sense investigating Asians. Al Qaeda recruits Middle Eastern men, no sense watching Caucasians!
law-enforcement agencies have a difficult act to balance. Canada enjoys a level of racial harmony that surpasses any other nation in the world. Inappropriate racial profiling can easily destroy that. Yet allowing terrorist activity would lead to the same result. It's not an enviable responsibility, but indeed the only way to address it is through good investigative work, not indiscriminate persecution.
Gloating Over Saddam's Fall...and America's Blunder
(EXCERPTS)
...In modern warfare, an army without an air force might as well not exist, and Iraq had none, not to mention its flat, open terrain, and an already degraded army. That explains the low number of American forces actually sent to Iraq. The Americans knew beforehand it would be a piece of cake.
But unlike Afghanistan's invasion, which was an understandable and justifiable war, and therefore supported by the world, once the world sensed the hypocrisy and disinformation in the excuses made to invade Iraq, the largest ever international demonstrations to take place over a single political issue swept across the globe in opposition to the war.
After Iraq fell, America, in its usual bungling tradition, managed through the mistreatment of ordinary Iraqis to turn many into angry revenge-seekers. Add to them the formerly sitting ducks - the Iraqi army members who wanted to get their own revenge for the humiliating defeat and derision they had sustained, and the result was heavy coalition casualties, and devastating anarchy and chaos.
One could almost feel the gloating permeate the world.
...Worse yet, the much touted "American values" had been dealt a fatal blow in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which exposed similar atrocities by Americans in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the U.S. proper.
But the time for gloating over America's catastrophic blunder, which cost thousands of innocent lives, is past. Satisfaction should be gained instead from the fact that Hussein is behind bars, his two barbaric sons in hell, and the Iraqi people finally free of tyranny.
...America's sincerity in rebuilding Iraq and giving it its freedom is not in doubt. It is clear that it wants to get out of there as soon as matters settle down, and has no interest in a long-term occupation of Iraq. So there's a time to resist and a time to rebuild.
Britain Stands Defiant... Against What?
(EXCERPTS)
...British Minister of Defence, John Reid, was very clear about that: "..part of the intention of terrorists is to terrorize, but another part is to divide the community", he said.
That's the message that's been repeated by everyone including, David Reddaway, Britain's high commissioner to Canada, who emphasized that unity is the best answer to terrorism. And it's been the overall message from Muslims and non-Muslims alike in Britain.
...Sadly, the British government soon became more impressed and influenced by such overreaction than by its own statements of unity and solidarity.
As if in a cycle of mindlessness and ignorance that it's unable to break out of, it has embarked on an anti-terrorism legislative adventure in Britain, mainland Europe, and across the Atlantic that's well beyond the proportions of the crime committed, especially given what the crime told us of the pathetic capabilities of the perpetrators. They're obviously common, unsophisticated criminals with very limited numbers of supporters among the nearly two million Muslim Britons. They should be dealt with as such, not by targeting two million Muslims. All the talk of unity soon shed.
The only thing such a misguided, agenda-driven adventure will do is alienate more Muslims in Britain (and Europe) rather than bring them into the fold of British mainstream life from which they'd been virtually shut off in the past.
If The World Were All Christian
(EXCERPTS)
...If the world were all Christian, would the Christian on Christian genocide in Rwanda have been prevented; would there not have been two barbaric basically Christian world wars, would the terrorist bombings in Colombia stop; would the terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland or Spain disappear instantly? They wouldn't, because the problems would still be there.
Would (we) then write, "terrorism is all in Christian nations," or would (we) address the determinants and specifics of each case? That's how responsible, educated intellectuals would look at it, and that's how it should be addressed regardless of the religion of the perpetrators.
A balanced article looks at both the negative and the positive. When the imbalance goes beyond being selective -- a taboo in itself -- and crosses into twisting positive facts to make them appear negative, it is disgracefully unacademic and discredits the writer.
West vis-à-vis Hamas: Double Standards Galore
(EXCERPTS)
...In 2004, the United States condoned the annexation of occupied land, what President George W. Bush termed recognizing "realities on the ground.''
That kind of declaration in support of land theft and expansionism, makes the United States the last nation to ask the Palestinians to renounce illegal acts - violence - after it personally blessed other illegal acts - the annexation of occupied land - an act condemned as illegal by international law.
Similarly, the United States is the major supporter of Israel, yet it demands that the elected leaders of the people deprived of statehood recognize the statehood of the very state that's depriving them of that right, and which it supports unconditionally.
America's only authority over the Palestinians is its generous aid to them. Though gratefully appreciated, and admittedly giving it such authority, it certainly isn't a moral one.
The Horrors the West Needs to Acknowledge
(EXCERPTS)
...as long as people high up the socio-economic ladder - such as one of the most prominent Evangelical Christian leaders in America, Franklin Graham - utter words such as Islam is an evil and wicked religion, there never will be peace or reconciliation. Certainly not until people in such prominent positions, and the west as a whole, recognise their past and present wrongs toward other peoples in the world, toward the victims of colonialism, racism, subjugation, plunder; toward the victims of slavery, the victims of expansionism and empire-building, the victims of spreading Christianity by the sword, musket, gun, cannon and tank, and many more crimes, ills, and "sins" too numerous to cite here, in most every corner of the globe.
As long as that evil remains unacknowledged by the west, and the perpetrators unremorseful, people like Rev. Graham Jr. will continue to utter a lot of nonsense and make hateful statements such as he has made.
Mark Twain best describes the essence of that evil at the very time much of it was actually occurring. (I quote that passage repeatedly in my writings, since it brings it all down to earth):
In many countries, we have chained the savage and starved him to death. In more than one country, we have hunted the savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns, through the woods and swamps for an afternoon’s sport, and filled the region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and their wild supplications for mercy. In many countries we have taken the savage’s land from him and made him our slave and lashed him every day and broken his pride and made death his only friend and worked him till he’d drop in his tracks.
There are many humorous things in the world, among them is the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
From: "Following The Equator. A Journey Around The World" (1897), Chapter 21.
The western nations still live in near total denial of their brutal past, reluctant to admit that the prosperity they enjoy, and even the lands some of them are established on today, are the result of the elimination, exploitation, inhuman treatment, racial persecution, ethnic cleansing, forced conversion, uprooting, subjugation, segregation, enslavement of millions upon millions of non-white, non-Christian human beings around the globe.
And worse yet, the persecution and racism continued even after the "savages" were brutally coerced into converting to Christianity. Becoming Christian didn't help them elude "white man's" cruelty much then, and in some cases not even to this day.
Terror Threat Levels in the West: An Analysis
(Links updated September 2008
(EXCERPTS)
...the chances are 99.99% of us will never encounter or experience the form of terrorism the media and government are focussing on, while our lives will quite likely be traumatized and terrorised by other common and prevalent causes.
Leading causes that terrorise our lives:
I-The "need for drug money"-induced break and enters,
ditto car break-ins and carjackings,
ditto assaults and muggings,
II-legality and widespread availability of a major terrorist weapon: Alcohol,
loss or serious injury of loved ones to drunk-drivers,
drug or alcohol-induced sexual or physical assault,
child abductions, sexual assaults, and murders,
III-lax gun laws, and easy availability of high-powered weapons
... ... ...
Billy Graham And The Forgotten Natives
(EXCERPTS)
...But even as that great religious man of God, is full of insight, wisdom, and spiritual depth, he appears totally oblivious of that enormous standing crime he and everyone else who lives in North America is part of.
We - Europeans - won, we took it over, we massacred and ethnically cleansed the original people, it is all in the past, there is hardly any evidence of it now, we dominate, we inhabit the land, we prospered on it, we spread our religion on it, and so "out of sight, out of mind", it's as if the crime never took place, never happened.
Not so to the uprooted and dispossessed, the ones who suffered their own September 11 -- one trillion times over-- with the invasion of the white Christian Europeans.
But still we speak as though it didn't happen, as if our hands are clean and we can freely analyse and debate evil as if we don't commit it, never committed it, and evil is committed only by others.
We debate evil from a point of view that the only evil that ever took place on this continent was on September 11, 2001. "What do you make of September 11" indeed! Is it hypocrisy or dullness of the mind? Given the caliber of the host and guest, it can only be a dullness of mind, since both are gentle, decent people not likely to ignore the suffering of the native Americans if it were on their mind.
HaSM Articles Only
The following two original articles convincingly attest to the benign, peaceful, tolerant, accepting nature of Islam and Muslims through the evidence of indisputable, well-documented historical events, and even more powerful recent events and facts:
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What the Tragedy of September 11, 2001 Taught Me.
PART I: The Evidence of History
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(EXCERPTS)
...when it comes to which god to worship, how, and through whom, each person's religion is the one and only.
In religion and gods we are not all equal, "we" are the best, whoever "we" is.
Since that is the case with religion, then one of the most reliable ways to judge what any religion is truly like toward other human beings, is through its most difficult aspect, how it influences the way its followers treat those from other religions under diverse situations and circumstances.
But how do we assess a religion on that criterion, do we look at its teachings on that matter, do we look at what its holy books advise on it, do we look at the example of its prophets and their attitudes towards non-believers, or what? I guess the reader will already have formulated the obvious answer: we can realistically assess a religion on that matter only through the facts on the ground, the actual behaviour of the followers of a religion toward others.
... In looking for an answer to 9/11 in Islam, the focus of the western media was specifically on The Quran (aka The Koran) -- the Islamic holy book -- and particular "verses"in it, something I found trivial from the start. For one thing, I knew the answer lay in politics rather than religion. Second, I read the Old Testament in its entirety years ago and was horrified by what I read. But like most ancient books it did not surprise me, and it had no relation in my mind to what I expected of Jews, or how I viewed the Jews I knew or did not know. I had read little of the New Testament back then, but still there was enough in what I had read that was very unflattering. So religious texts were not where I believed the answer lay, if indeed we expected to find an answer in religion at all.
The debates I watched on American television, and analyses I read in the media after 9/11, rather than reasoned argument, were often full of hate and venom hurled at Islam. Every argument the haters made was easily refutable and served to open my eyes further as to how wrong they were. In fact, their arguments could be easily turned against them, and often applied to them alone rather than to Islam at all...
....The data that eventually interested me the most and were the most revealing dealt with Islam and Muslims post the 9/11 tragedy up to this day. But that begs first investigating the history of Islam across the some 1300 years that came before those last three years.
... One can simply begin by stating that across 1300 years of various Islamic empires, which at times stretched from one end of the Old World to the other, Christians and Jews lived under conditions that were rarely, if ever, enjoyed by minorities under the rule of others. Even the Ottoman Turks, known for their ruthlessness in war, did not try to eliminate Christianity in the Balkan nations they ruled for several centuries. The inhabitants of the region emerged from that extended period of Muslim rule as Christian as ever, their holy places, monasteries, churches, and shrines, intact and secure.
... we have to look at the overall trend across variables such as time, geographical regions, Islamic leaders, different Islamic empires, etc. as a whole, not generalise from the particular deeds of some deviant character here or there, or some very specific events that led to specific atrocities somewhere, sometime in 1300 years.
In 13 centuries, across such a large swath of the globe and so many empires and rulers, cultures, lands and peoples, the rarity of those exceptions, if anything, proves the rule.
Indeed, the only balanced method to assess how a religion treats those who are different is by looking at it longitudinally across time and space. We cannot look at one or two years, one or two rulers, one or two wars, or one or two regions selectively and in isolation, and then draw conclusions. We have to look at all the available evidence and data if we are to reach intellectually and academically acceptable general conclusions.
For Islam and Muslims -- across time, Islamic rulers, empires, situations, geographical regions and cultures-- the evidence of history unequivocally points to a compassionate, humane, gentle, charitable religion beyond what human rights conventions prescribed centuries later, a religion accepting of non-Muslims far beyond the simple tolerance much touted in our western societies nowadays.
Read full story
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What the Tragedy of September 11, 2001 Taught Me.
PART II: Reconciling Past with Present
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(EXCERPTS)
In Part I of this series we took a brief look at Islam and Muslims in history where we saw quite clearly that Islam does not in any way instruct Muslims to kill non-Muslims. We saw by means of indisputable, well-documented, overwhelming evidence the extent of the fallacy of that accusation. With a few very specific, well defined exceptions, non-Muslims across history have fared extremely well under Muslim rule. That reality is even more significant when viewed within the context of what was happening in other regions of the world.
So the question we're left with then is 'How do we reconcile such a remarkably praiseworthy history with the violence we see now committed by "Muslims", often, it is claimed, spurred on by their religion, Islam'?
... Though it was very clear that the 9/11 attack was political, it was immediately portrayed as a factor of the Islamic religion. The emphasis was on the perpetrators as Muslim men, and Islam as the source of their violent act. And so it seemed fit that one should take a deeper look into the people and the religion one had taken for granted for so long
... It was the largest ever random experimental test of hundreds of millions of subjects. On a global scale, it cut across variables such as peoples, nationalities, languages, cultures, customs, races, and ethnic groups under the most intense circumstances imaginable. Indeed, the only constant among them was "religion", Islam.
How many millions out of the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide would answer bin Laden's call? Or how many hundreds of thousands? How many average Muslim 'Joes' would misguidedly feel it their duty to attack the first American they met on the street in answer to bin Laden? How many of them didn't know enough of the teachings of their religion to believe the false claims of that man?
I feared it was only logical to expect that of 1200 million Muslims there would certainly be more than enough individuals who would ignorantly believe bin Laden's twisted interpretation of Islam and rush to answer his call. After all, they may feel that God was on bin Laden's side, given He had allowed him to deal the greatest power on Earth such a severe blow!
... Incredibly, against all odds and defying statistical probability, the days passed by and there wasn't one spontaneous attack on any American anywhere. Not one, let alone the millions or even the thousands I feared! That was quite astounding, so astounding it doesn't fail to deeply impress me to this day.
Ordinary Muslims did not pick up guns, clubs, knives or axes and shoot or hack the first American they came across. And we would have certainly heard if thousands, hundreds or even only tens of Americans were being hacked to death across the globe. There was none of that at all ...
... Far from answering bin Laden's calls, Muslims have felt ashamed of what bin Laden did. And though they themselves had not committed any crime to feel guilty about, they still felt shame that someone calling himself a Muslim had done it. Rather than get up and kill Americans, as bin Laden hoped they would, they were deeply embarrassed by the attack.. Their almost universal attitude, as seen by their actual response, was to reject bin Laden.
No matter how much the average Muslim may be angry at America (just as many non-Muslims, including Europeans and Canadians also are), Muslims do not condone random violence. The hundreds of millions of average Muslims of the world did not act out that anger by killing Americans, Jews, or anyone else. On the contrary, they - the average, law-abiding, peace-loving Muslims, became themselves the targets of vicious persecution, discrimination and hate crimes, which they still bear in silent pain.
... To this moment, tens of thousands of Americans, Canadians, Britons and other westerners live and work in Saudi Arabia, where for decades they have enjoyed traditional Arab hospitality. And that's Saudi Arabia, the bastion of so-called Islamic fundamentalism, where we are told the hate for America is supposedly strongest. Or in other words, the worst case scenario. Yet neither before nor after bin Laden's call were any of them attacked by Saudis.
There have been attacks, but on American military personnel and barracks.
... So the answer to our initial question - how does one reconcile the present perception of a violent Islam with its wonderful past - is simple. It's just that, a perception. A perception created primarily by a media focussed on sensationalising and amplifying the negative image of a few Muslims, while practically ignoring the overwhelming positive of their multitudes. The media rarely, if ever, show Americans, Britons, Canadians living peacefully among their Muslim hosts. Yet there are tens of thousands of them in the Muslim world this instant working, living, visiting and enjoying Muslim hospitality and friendship.
... All we need do is look for what is conspicuous by its absence in the media, not at what is made conspicuous by the media's sensationalism. What is absent in the media is precisely what we briefly reviewed above. The media's focus is on the negative few hundred while the positive hundreds of millions are practically ignored.
... In conclusion, there we have Muslims in their hundreds of millions, across geographical divides from Morocco to Indonesia, from Britain to China, across languages, cultures, races and ethnicities, rejecting the violence that their religion forbids. So diverse yet so united in their rejection of bin Laden.
In the midst of severely adverse conditions of injustice and suffering we find such a universal rejection of random violence by over one billion Muslim people. Statistically speaking alone it's mind-boggling, and that reality brings us to the moment of truth.
What do those 1200 million Muslims, who live all over the globe, have in common that prevented them, as if in concert, from doing any such wrong?
The obvious answer is their faith, Islam. The only thing shared by those otherwise vastly diverse peoples is in fact the very religion that was being investigated as violent. If anything, considering the widespread gross injustices they are suffering at the hands of non-Muslims, it appears that Islam actually has a moderating and tempering effect on Muslims rather than the reverse. What an absolutely fascinating revelation.
What was being looked upon as the common evil they shared was gradually revealing itself to be the common good they shared ...
Read full story
Christian Rage and Muslim Moderation
Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Mar 27, 2008
...the goal of Westerners who commit "aggressions against the Muslim world's sacred symbols" is to create a rift between Muslims and Western societies—and to isolate those Muslims who live in Western societies.
It's Arabs who are showing us how to tackle extremism
Ed Husain
The Observer,
Sunday March 9 2008
Doha is also home to a cleric who Britain, rightly, refused an entry visa. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an advocate of Palestinian suicide bombings, permits female genital mutilation and supports theocracy. Rarely are these issues discussed openly in the Arab world and the concept of extremism, as precursor to terrorism, is viewed as a Western concoction.
Veiled Intolerance
By Richard Wolin
The Nation
March 22, 2007
... As Olivier Roy comments in his foreword to Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse's Integrating Islam: "All serious studies of the formation of terrorism in Europe show that the process is more likely to be the result of alienation, isolation and generational crisis."
We must unite to face the next attack
By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
The Independent
July 25, 2005
... Muslims of all classes, even those who feel irrevocably British, are increasingly dismayed by the slimy words of British politicians eager to talk about the "ideology" of evil Islamicists and not at all about their own malevolent machinations and duplicitous politics..."
Britain Stands Defiant... Against What?
By Hesham M. Sabry
HaSM,
September 12th, 2005
Divided we Fall
"Britain stands defiant", one headline read soon after the July 7th London bombings. It stands defiant not against massive invading armies, the Nazi Blitz, or even against the puny, pathetic, criminal losers who committed the recent crimes.
What Would You Tell Suicide Bombers Who Invoke Islam to Justify Their Actions?
Chandra Muzaffar
Washington Post
July 21, 2007
It is a shame that some Muslims in the name of fighting oppression deliberately target civilians. It is in this context that some of the so-called 'suicide bombers' have brought disrepute to Islam. They have tarnished the moral integrity of their cause....
See also Thank God Someone Is Listening to Us - Terrorism Is Not Jihad
A Back-Page Muslim
By Irfan Yusuf
newmatilda.com
22 May 2008
...it doesn't contain any of the fighting radicals, extremists, fundamentalists and other nasty types who, if you believe what you read in the New York Post, are the only types of Muslims that exist.
See also False Prophecy
Do These Two Have Anything in Common?
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Washington Post
December 4, 2005;
President Bush has equated Islamic radicalism with communism. Is the comparison sound? Is it wise?
Underlying the president's analogy is the proposition that bin Laden's "jihad" has the potential for dominating the minds and hearts of hundreds of millions of people across national and even religious boundaries. That is quite a compliment to bin Laden, but it isn't justified. The "Islamic" jihad is, at best, a fragmented and limited movement that hardly resonates in most of the world.
MORE HaSM Original ARTICLES addressing the fallacy of so-called "Islamic terrorism"
In addition to the two part article above, the following HaSM articles all address comparative angles of "Christian" (the West's) and "Muslim" violence, wars, and other related issues, past and present. They unequivocally demonstrate that the accusations made against Islam and Muslims about violence are absolutely baseless, and that indeed, the opposite is true.
The Horrors the West Needs to Acknowledge
.... at this point in time the world is almost constantly bombarded with statements that elevate the west and tout everything about it and its history, while simultaneously denigrating and putting down other cultures and faiths. And even when it isn't as bad as denigration, it's replaced at best with tolerance coloured with condescension.
...as long as people high up the socio-economic ladder - such as one of the most prominent Evangelical Christian leaders in America, Franklin Graham - utter words such as Islam is an evil and wicked religion, there never will be peace or reconciliation. Certainly not until people in such prominent positions, and the west as a whole, recognise their past and present wrongs toward other peoples in the world, toward the victims of colonialism, racism, subjugation, plunder; toward the victims of slavery, the victims of expansionism and empire-building, the victims of spreading Christianity by the sword, musket, gun, cannon and tank, and many more crimes, ills, and "sins" too numerous to cite here, in most every corner of the globe.
Racism is also a problem, not only integration
...What ensued was even worse. Muslim concerns were attacked, vandalized, or torched. That should have shown the Dutch that, like everyone else, they too have their extremists, and to judge all Muslims by the actions of one man who killed van Gogh was therefore wrong. But they didn't heed the lesson. Every Muslim of the 15 million in Europe was held responsible for van Gogh's murder. Hordes of innocent Muslims were fired from their jobs, discriminated against in various ways, and variously abused in public...
...Racists will have us believe that once Muslims are fully integrated, they'll be "tolerated" and made to feel welcome. Not so fast.
The majority of European Jews looked, dressed, spoke, and were fully involved in the nations they lived in. They were even white skinned. But when the time came for tolerance, their integration, their great contributions to Europe's arts, science, and industry, did little for them. They were shipped -- with the willing cooperation of many locals across the nations of Europe -- to be massacred in their millions...
"Civilized" democracies and the savages in veils
....What has the head scarf been indicted of, and what does it have to do with national security so that laws need to be specifically created to control its wearing by Muslim women? “You can wear this, but not that, only in this location but not the other” etc.. What a testimonial to European democracy - meaning, what a great disgrace.
That same old, same old European intolerance that has not changed much since the old days of anti-Semitism.
Viewpoint: European tolerance only a veneer
...."What foreigners have failed to recognize is that we Danes have grown increasingly xenophobic over the years. To my mind, the publication of the cartoons had little to do with generating a debate about self-censorship and freedom of expression. It can be seen only in the context of a climate of pervasive hostility toward anything Muslim in Denmark."
....It was, after all, the "barbaric" Muslim world that massacred 6 million Jews! Six million people - a mind-boggling figure - deliberately rounded up for elimination. Not in some remote "barbaric" jungle, or by some terrorist group, but in the heart of "civilized" Europe by a "cultured" government right next door to where the present offensive cartoons originated. And that was barely 60 years ago, not 2000 - unbelievable as that is, and with the collaboration of numerous Europeans....
What the Reports on European Racism Indicate
....There’s a widespread belief that racism and discrimination against visible minorities whose appearance is ‘Muslim’ started and is related to terrorist attacks, in particular those of September 11, 2001 on the USA.
In fact, some of the reports on racism in Europe expose the problem as long-standing, wide-ranging and deeply ingrained, and unrelated to terrorism, except as an excuse offering the extra opportunity that facilitates increasing the magnitude and intensity of racism toward Muslims.
For example such reports on racism show that black Africans, unassociated with Islam or Muslims, are treated and viewed in an extremely racist manner, despite the fact they have nothing to do with terrorism. Indeed, that applies identically to all visible minorities. In other words, it has been there long before and irrespective of Muslim terrorism coming to America or Europe. Ancient, yet ongoing, racism against Jews and Gypsies in Europe also confirms that view.
Terror Threat Levels in the West: No, not "Muslim" terrorism
....People, day to day, are more anxious of becoming the victims of a drunk driver (16700 deaths in 2002); returning home after work to find their home had been broken into and robbed and ransacked; finishing shopping to find their car had been stolen or broken into, or walking in a park or down the street at night, or on some inner city street in daylight and being mugged, assaulted, or raped.
....Sure, there's no question we need to guard against terrorist attacks, but in truth even if we didn't do a good job of it the chances are 99.99% of us will never encounter or experience the form of terrorism the media and government are focussing on, while our lives will quite likely be traumatized and terrorised by other common and prevalent causes...
Hard-working minorities, tenth generation criminals
....Clearly, being 10th-generation "integrated" Canadians hasn't prevented criminals from regularly robbing Muslim and other immigrant convenience store owners or cab drivers trying to make an honest buck. If anything, it's those hard-working, law-abiding new immigrants and minorities who truly live up to western ideals and values, not the 10th-generation mainstream "integrated" criminals who target them.
...If we blame crimes by new immigrants, or insufficiently integrated minorities, such as Muslims, on multiculturalism, we might as well then blame the crimes of fully integrated minorities on integration and cancel it. Good people are good people, and bad are bad, whether they are 100-per-cent integrated 10th generation Canadians, or new arrivals fully immersed in their own cultures....
America's Muslims Bear their Pain with Dignity
....American Muslims guilty of nothing other than being Muslim, rather than attack anyone, have themselves been physically assaulted, mistreated, discriminated against, fired from their jobs, racially profiled, their mosques and businesses vandalized, their veiled women assaulted, spat on, insulted, with no end in sight. Moreover, their religion and prophet have been viciously vilified, not by skinheads, but by prominent conservative Christian leaders,....
....All that was, and continues to be, committed against innocent Muslims in the name of guilt by shared physical, religious, or other attributes. So what is significant here is that despite facing enough mistreatment to create tens of Columbine School-like angry killers, not one of those supposedly "violent Muslims" picked up a gun and took revenge for what he or his loved ones suffered. They all bore the abuses with dignity and peace, and continue to do so.
Where, then, is all the violence we should have been witnessing if the haters' propaganda about Islam's and Muslims' evil were true? ...
Facts Haters Hate Hearing
....There are over one billion Muslims worldwide. If any Muslim was ever bent on answering a call for "jihad," what better time than the hours, days, and weeks following the "successful" Sept. 11 attacks when bin Laden's call for killing Americans was loudest? Yet across the globe, across the one billion Muslims, not one Muslim moved a finger to harm Americans. The weeks passed and still none.
We could have expected millions of such attacks if the talk about bin Laden's influence on Muslims were true. Or even tens of thousands, or in the least, hundreds. In reality there were less than a handful of attacks; that's it. Many more innocent Muslims and Muslim look-alikes than that were attacked across civilized America.
So how infatuated are Muslims with bin Laden? Evidently not at all. Far from attacking Americans in answer to bin Laden, Muslims felt deep shame and guilt over Sept. 11, even though it wasn't their fault and they had no say at all in its commission, any more than the Oklahoma bombing was the white American population's fault....
Yet not once were the above facts brought to the public's attention, let alone emphasized. They're the kind of facts hate-mongers hate hearing.
Which Immigrants are We Talking about?
....Are "white" dominated offices, positions, or communities crime or corruption free?
From the political assignment of friends to high-paying useless jobs as farewell gifts, up to the clergy's abuse of children, many crimes are dominated by whites. And we are not speaking of street kids here, of whom crime may be expected, we are speaking of most highly regarded positions of trust held by those who are supposedly high up along the intellectual, religious, and/or social ladder. Are those two categories even comparable?
....Only a few weeks ago a Briton conceived of a devilish plot, invited an innocent Canadian family to the U.K. under false pretences, and took them hostage to force Canada to give him custody of his children. Was he Jamaican, was he East Indian, was he Jewish, was he Moslem, was he Chinese? NO. All that is not meant to denigrate anybody - and we'll return to that shortly, what is meant here is to point out that there are the good and the bad in every culture, country, society, people, religion, faith or whatever.
That every abusive clergyman was a white Christian and that they were caught in large numbers will still not justify in any way condemning or steroetyping white Christian clergymen in general. We still cannot declare: 'priests are child sexual abusers'...
....When the Montreal riots broke out recently after the cancelled rock concerts, and later after a sports event (which was won by the home team!), every hoodlum I could see on the T.V. screen wreaking havoc on the streets was white. The only person, on the screen, who was indignant, frustrated and as angry as I was at the senseless, ignorant destruction that was taking place, was an admirable teenaged girl of East Indian heritage who expressed one's own rage at what was going on. ..
Muslims Can't Understand the Hatred
....One of the recent accusations that demonstrates such profound ignorance of Islam is that it is intolerant of Christianity and Judaism. In truth, Islam not only "tolerates" Christianity and Judaism, a Muslim must actually believe in and respect both.
It is hard for Muslims in the West to understand the hatred in many such letters. While they have lived with Christians and Jews in considerable long-lasting harmony for centuries in the Muslim world, it is a novel, and apparently difficult thing for some Christians in predominantly Western Christian states, to live harmoniously side by side with Muslims. But that isn't a new phenomenon. Another minority group, Jews, who did live alongside Christians in western nations - in Europe - suffered hate, persecution, expulsion, pogroms, and the Holocaust.
If The World Were All Christian
....If the world were all Christian, would the Christian on Christian genocide in Rwanda have been prevented; would there not have been two barbaric basically Christian world wars, would the terrorist bombings in Colombia stop; would the terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland or Spain disappear instantly? They wouldn't, because the problems would still be there.
Would the venerable professor then write, "terrorism is all in Christian nations," or would he address the determinants and specifics of each case? That's how responsible, educated intellectuals would look at it, and that's how it should be addressed regardless of the religion of the perpetrators...
'King and Country', or the Promise of Paradise
....As for the reason there's more "Muslim" than other violence in the world, it's simply that there are more Muslim peoples undergoing growing pains and struggles for rights and freedom at this time.
Yet it seems like only yesterday Europe's growing pains cost the world hundreds of millions of human lives. Christians fought and killed fellow Christians, almost exterminated European Jews, and colonized or destroyed numerous hapless peoples and cultures around the world.
The stages of European growing pains lasted centuries of upheaval, death and destruction. But was it the teachings of the Bible that led them to all that horrific violence? Certainly not.
That's why we don't call those bloody centuries of European savagery, militarism, and colonialism "Christian" violence; we see that period for what it is, the West's growing pains.
Interestingly, some of those growing pains continue to this day, as in Spain,the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Eastern Europe.
So there, we are witnessing how growing pains of Europeans - Christians - again, at the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, are still manifesting themselves in violence, bloodshed, and even genocide. Yes genocide in midst of Europe....
Yes, Only Two Religions: Love and Hate
...hate, bigotry, and divisiveness have followers who exist in every faith, race, and nation,... They don't need to be terrorists who actually physically harm others. Their words, arising from hate, are enough to cause pain or instigate violence. And they're not ogres working underground, either.
.....In fact, we read, listen, or watch a sample of them everyday in our own media here in Canada. They're the ones who constantly try to generate hate where there isn't any. They pounce on every opportunity they get to drive wedges between faiths and peoples. Some of them even speak to us from the platform of religion, telling us that they speak in the name of Jesus....
Are They The Same People?
...When we came to Canada I was appalled to discover that descendants of my favourite people were in fact continuing a crime of the sorts I had read about and which I buried my head in the sand about for so long. There was no escape from facing the fact that those people, that I adored since childhood, were the very same ones who had committed all those atrocities across the world. Here I was witnessing a sample of those crimes in action. What a shame, what a disappointment. But to whom could I direct the big question..
Forced to uncover: French Muslim Girls.
...There are laws in France (as most everywhere else) governing how much people are allowed to bare in public, but the notion, let alone the actual application, of a law that forces people to bare parts of their body to meet “nudity” levels acceptable to those who make the laws is preposterous.
For a girl used to covering up her body, her head, or her hair, being forced by law to "bare” any part of her body -- a person's most private belonging - that she doesn't wish to uncover, is inexcusable. It's as inexcusable to force a girl to uncover her hair as it is to force a girl to go bare breasted against her will. It's an abuse of authority and a person's human rights, if anything ever was.
The injustice of such laws is even more apparent when we factor in the "common decency" laws that prohibit anyone from going totally nude in public. By having such laws we concede there are acceptable and unacceptable levels of nudity. So, if we take it for granted in our laws that total nudity has something wrong about it, then we should respect the fact different people will hold different views of the levels of nudity that are either acceptable or unacceptable to them. It's not an absolute. How we cover or uncover our bodies is an extremely personal and individual matter. To force some people to bare parts of their body so as to conform to a level of nudity that others find acceptable is beyond reproach!
There is no place for 'hate speech' in Canada
...Terrorists can never destroy a nation if it remains united against them.
But since hate corrodes the very fabric that holds a nation together, mainstream haters who exploit terrorism to polarize society do more harm than any terrorists will ever achieve.
The 9/11 tragedy and similar events resulted from hate by fringe groups. Yet, instead of being role models for something better, those in the mainstream who have become supporters of hate speech, reinforce that hate is the way to go. Canada didn't fight a horrific war against the Nazis' hatred only to nurture that same hatred here.
Today Canada is able to call itself "civilized" because enlightened Canadians repeatedly challenged wrongs that the rest of the population took for granted. Canada has moved forward and left hate against Chinese behind, left hate against blacks behind, against Jews, Ukrainians, Sikhs, Japanese, and others.
It's unimaginable to ever return to writing or speaking of them in the hateful manner of the past. But Muslims have been left behind. It's time that gratuitous hate against Muslims was replaced with objective debate, free of hate.
And see also various wonderful non-Muslims write in support of balance and fairness in the portrayal and treatment of Muslims and Islam.
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Don't miss reading about the Islamo-opportunists:Self-serving former Muslims, or self-described "progressive" and "moderate" "Muslims" who will say anything to advance their careers or get their fifteen minutes of fame.
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