Islam’s Non-Believers

Islam’s Non-Believers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new film by Deeyah Khan, above – Islam’s Non-Believers –  follows the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, which supports ex-Muslims, often referred to as apostates or unbelievers, both in the UK and abroad.

The documentary – which can be seen here – provides an important insight into the hidden plight of young people in Britain, many of whom are leading double lives – pretending to still be Muslims including by wearing the veil or attending mosque – in order to avoid ostracisation, abuse and even violence.

Depression, self-harm, and suicide are some of the effects.

According to Sadia, one of the ex-Muslims featured in the film said:

I remember saying to my mum, ‘I don’t think I believe in God anymore,’ And her saying, ‘You can’t tell anybody else because they’ll kill you, we are obliged to kill ex-Muslims,’ and that it would put me at extreme risk if anybody else was to find out, so that conversation ended there.

Given the stigma and risks, it’s hard to know how many ex-Muslims there are in Britain, and internationally, but it’s a growing phenomenon.

The Internet is doing to Islam what the printing press did in the past to Christianity. Social media has not only given countless young people access to “forbidden” ideas and allowed them a space to express themselves where none existed – but it has also helped them find each other, share their stories and see that they are not alone.

This has brought with it courage and hope for the right to live as they choose. It’s become a global resistance movement.

There are literally millions of us – in every home and “Muslim” family, on every street corner, in every city, town and village across Britain and the globe.

Atheism is ‘breaking like a tsunami’, says a worried official of the Islamic regime of Iran.

The “threat” of atheism explains why the Saudi government has equated atheism with terrorism and Egypt’s youth ministry has joined with the highest Sunni authority, Al-Azhar, to combat “extremism and atheism”.

Atheism is punishable with the death penalty in 13 countries and a prosecutable offence in many more, including via fines, imprisonment, flogging, and exclusion from civil rights, such as losing child custody.

And it is not just “over there” that apostates face persecution but right here in Britain with Imams and respected mainstream “community leaders” legitimising discrimination and/or inciting violence.

In the film, Omer El-Hamdoon, President of the Muslim Association of Britain, justifies ostracisation by saying that Islam’s non-believers are “outside the human norms”:

How we treat people is the same; we don’t discriminate but our love cannot be the same, it’s just human behaviour. Islam is a pragmatic religion, it doesn’t expect people to behave outside the human norms.

[When asked on his position with regards the death penalty for apostasy in an ideal Islamic state, he refused to respond in usual double-speak.]

Shah Sadruddin, another “community leader”, is shown calling for the death of a Bangladeshi atheist blogger:

This son of a bastard is challenging us.
 
O Bangla’s Scholars, O Bangla’s Muslims, wake up! No son of a bastard will remain alive after swearing at my Prophet!

Sadruddin is a teacher/rector at an Islamic academy and madrasah and ran as a Conservative councillor and lost. In a clip for the Conservatives, he says:

I believe in equality, I believe in fairness, I believe in loving the human race and I hate to hate anybody.

Rayhana Sultan, above left, a young ex-Muslim from Bangladesh, says this form of hate speech can further intimidate ex-Muslims, forcing them back into the closet:

These kind of lectures create an environment that subconsciously teaches devout Muslims to see ex-Muslims or anyone who thinks out of the box as a threat, further ostracising them, de-humanising them, bullying them, so it further creates so much dangers for people to come out as an ex-Muslim.

Whilst apostasy is not criminalised here in Britain, many imams and self-appointed “community leaders” have created a climate where vilification and incitement to violence are permissible, particularly since there is no political will to recognise it as incitement.

Add to this, links to the transnational Islamist movement, British government appeasement of the Islamist movement, multiculturalism as a social policy which homogenises the “Muslim community” and fails to recognise dissent as well as accusations of “Islamophobia” to silence critics and you have a situation where young people born and raised in this country have neither the right nor the choice to think or live as they want.

Identity politics is literally killing us.

Deeyah Khan’s film is often hard to watch – parts of it are heart-breaking – but it also inspires and brings hope by highlighting those challenging apostasy laws and stigma and calling for equality – much like the gay liberation movement has done in decades past.

Clearly, the ex-Muslim movement deserves the support and solidarity of all those more interested in defending human rights and lives rather than religion and the religious-Right.

#IslamsNonBelievers
#NotAlone

Sign a petition calling for an end to apostasy laws.

For more information, visit the website of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.

Editor’s note: Islam’s Non-Believers was broadcast by ITV on October 13. In an analysis of the documentary, Luqmaan Al Hakeem wrote:

I came to realise that the majority of their reasons for leaving the faith were emotional and cultural as opposed to being intellectual reasons.

 

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ISLAM: the Christian Heresy

ISLAM: the Christian Heresy

Depiction of Muhammad in hell for the sin of heresy.

“It was the great Catholic world on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel which inspired his [Mohammed’s] convictions.”

Today the West often views Islam as a civilisation very different from and indeed innately hostile to Christianity. Only when you travel in Christianity’s Eastern homelands do you realise how closely the two are really connected, the former growing directly out of the latter and still, to this day, embodying many aspects and practices of the early Christian world now lost in Christianity’s modern Western-based incarnation. When the early Byzantines were first confronted by the Prophet’s armies, they assumed that Islam was merely an heretical form of Christianity, and in many ways they were not so far wrong: Islam accepts much of the Old and New Testaments and venerates both Jesus and the ancient Jewish prophets.

Significantly, the greatest and most subtle theologian of the early church, St. John Damascene, was convinced that Islam was at root not a separate religion, but instead a form of Christianity. St. John had grown up in the Ummayad Arab court of Damascus, where his father was chancellor, and he was an intimate boyhood friend of the future Caliph al-Yazid; the two boys’ drinking bouts in the streets of Damascus were the subject of much horrified gossip in the streets of the new Islamic capital. Later, in his old age, John took the habit at the desert monastery of Mar Saba where he began work on his great masterpiece, a refutation of heresies entitled the Fount of Knowledge. The book contains an extremely precise and detailed critique of Islam, the first ever written by a Christian, which, intriguingly, John regarded as a form of Christian heresy related to Arianism: after all Arianism, like Islam, denied the divinity of Christ. Although he lived at the very hub of the early Islamic world, it never seems to have occurred to him that Islam might be a separate religion. If a theologian of the stature of John Damascene was able to regard Islam as a new- if heretical- form of Christianity, it helps to explain how Islam was able to convert so much of the Middle Eastern population in so short a time, even though Christianity remained the majority religion until the time of the Crusades.

 

The longer you spend in the Christian communities of the Middle East, the more you become aware of the extent to which Eastern Christian practice formed the template for what were to become the basic conventions of Islam. The Muslim form of prayer with its bowings and prostrations appears to derive from the older Syrian Orthodox tradition that is still practised in pewless churches across the Levant. The architecture of the earliest minarets, which are square rather than round, unmistakably derive from the church towers of Byzantine Syria. The Sufi Muslim tradition carried on directly from the point that the Christian Desert Fathers left off while Ramadan, at first sight one of the most foreign and alienating of Islamic practices, is in fact nothing more than an Islamicisation of Lent, which in the Eastern Christian churches still involves a gruelling all-day fast.

— Taken from The Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East, by William Dalrymple

 

As shown by the artwork above, the Middle Ages also viewed Islam has a heresy. In Dante’s Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Muhammad is depicted as “twixt the legs, Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay Open to view…” Muhammad suffers the punishment of the schismatics: having his body rent from chin to anus for how he rent the Body of Christ.

 

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Is it the Left that fails to oppose Islamism, or Rightwing Imperialists?

Is it the Left that fails to oppose Islamism, or Rightwing Imperialists?

It is commonly asserted that Leftists· refuse to criticise Islam (or theocratic Islam).[1] There are variations on this trope: some claim that Leftists refuse to criticise Islam due to a gratuitous sense of political-correctness;[2] some claim that Leftists are blind to the problems inherent within Islam;[3] and some claim that Leftists are actively supporting theocratic or militant Islam through some kind of insidious political collaboration.[4]

An examination of the relationship between the Right, the Left, and Islamism over the last half-century renders this narrative trivial at best, and deceitful at worst.

The Left and Islamism

It could be granted that due to the post-911 wave of hysterical anti-Muslim bigotry from Social-Conservatives throughout the West, many Leftists have found it difficult to navigate the line between valid criticism of Muslims and anti-Muslim bigotry; in consequence, arguably, many Leftists have been hesitant to condemn the views and behaviour of conservative and theocratic Muslims, for fear of also validating this xenophobia and bigotry.[5]

Ostensibly, however, this situation is extremely recent; over the course of the preceding half-century, the Left (and Left-influenced groups and regimes) actually consistently opposed and battled with militant and theocratic Islamic movements; here are some examples:
· The ʿArab-Socialist regime of Nasser (r. 1956-1970)—despite appealing to Egypt’s Islamic heritage on occasion—outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood movement in 1954 and suppressed the organisation henceforth.[6]
· Following the 1964 Revolution in Sudan, the popularity of the Communist Party—a progressive organisation which had promoted women’s rights over the prior decades,[7] etc.—prompted their Islamist opponents to launch a campaign of violence against the Sudanese Left.[8] Several years later (in 1969), another Leftist coup d’état attempted to reverse the conservative-Islamisation of Sudan and return the country towards socially-progressive socialism.[9]
· The Islamic-Socialist regime of Gaddafi in Libya (r. 1969-2011)—despite appealing to Islamic Tradition in their syncretic Socialist ideology—repressed and imprisoned Islamists.[10]
· The Socialist government of Afghanistan—which gained power in a bloody 1978 coup d’état and continued the modernisation attempts of the prior regime, including the introduction of women’s rights—repressed Islamists and fought against the theocratic Muslim ‘strugglers’ (mujāhidūn) of the region during the 1980s.[11]
· Following the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the emerging Islamist regime of Khumaini was threatened by the secular and progressive Left, which was brutally repressed through mass-executions;[12] in 1983, the Communist Party of Iran was officially outlawed.[13]
· In Lebanon, the Communist Party was perceived as a serious threat by Islamists, who perpetrated numerous mass-killings against their leftwing foes during the 1980s; in 1987, Twelver-Shiʿi clerics in Nabatiye issued fatāwā ordering their followers to kill all Communists in the region.[14]
· At present, one of the most notable groups militarily-resisting I.S.I.S in the Middle East is the socialist Kurdistan Workers’ Party.[15]
A pattern seems to emerge from this history – over the last half-century, the progressive Left (including syncretic quasi-leftwing regimes) has consistently opposed and fought theocratic and militant Islamic movements throughout the Muslim world.

The Right and Islamism
In stark juxtaposition to this recurring Leftist legacy of struggle, the imperialistic Right—particularly the U.S.A and the U.K—consistently supported militant and theocratic Islamic movements and regimes (diplomatically, logistically, and financially) throughout the last half-century, usually against the Left and secular-nationalism; here are some examples:
· 1953 – The C.I.A of the Republican Eisenhower administration attempted to collaborate with the theocratic ayatollah Kashani (an inspiration to Khumaini[16]) to overthrow the irreligious, secular-nationalist Prime Minister of Iran, Muhammad Musaddiq.[17][18]
· 1957 – In order to counter and undermine secular-nationalism and socialism in the Middle East, the Republican Eisenhower administration attempted to style King Saud as the ‘Islamic Pope’.[19] Saudi Arabia is one of the most theocratic Islamic states in history, and despite some occasional disagreements and tension, the U.S.A strongly supported Saudi Arabia from WW2 onwards.[20]
· 1965-1966 – The Democratic Johnson administration of the U.S.A—as well as the Liberal Menzies administration of Australia and the Labour Harold administration of the U.K—supported the coup d’état of Suharto and his conservative-Islamist alliance in Indonesia, which entailed the mass-killing of up to a million leftists, workers, peasants, students, and others by the Indonesian military and their militant Islamist allies;[21][22] the C.I.A. even advised these Muslim executioners to identify atheists and Communists as ‘unbelievers’ (kāfirūn), whose deaths were necessary to religiously purify Indonesia.[23]
· 1970 – The Conservative Heath administration of the U.K attempted to undermine the Marxist rebellion ongoing in Oman by spreading religious Islamic propaganda and air-dropping leaflets with slogans such as: “The Hand of God Destroys Communism.”[24]
· 1970-1981 – Successive Republican and Democratic administrations of the U.S.A (from Nixon to Reagan) heavily supported the Islamist regime of Sadat in Egypt, which introduced Islamic Law (s̠arīʿah) into Egyptian state law and the national constitution[25] and encouraged Islamist groups (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) vis-à-vis the secular-nationalism and socialism predominating in the country.[26]
· 1977-1988 – The Pakistani general Muhammad Ziyaʾ al-Haqq—an emphatically pious Muslim—seized power in a coups d’état and undertook a policy of conservative-Islamisation in Pakistan, including the implementation of Islamic Law (s̠arīʿah);[27] he was extensively and enthusiastically supported by U.S-Republican Reagan[28] and British-Conservative Thatcher.[29]
· 1980s – The Republican Reagan administration of the U.S.A and the Conservative Thatcher administration of the U.K both heavily-supported the mujāhidūn (including proto-Qaʿidah) in Afghanistan against the secular, progressive, socialist government. [30] [31] [32]
· 1988-1992 – The Likud administration of Israel enabled and supported the rise of Hamas vis-à-vis the hitherto-dominant secular and leftwing Palestinian groups.[33][34][35]
From all of this history, an inverse pattern seems to emerge vis-à-vis the leftwing legacy described previously – over the course of the last half-century, the Right—and especially, socially-conservative governments in the U.S.A and the U.K—has consistently supported and collaborated with theocratic and militant Islamic movements and regimes throughout the Muslim world, usually against the progressive and secular Left.

Analysis: Imperialism & Media
This set of facts raises two obvious questions. Firstly: why does the Right consistently support theocratic Islamism, and the Left consistently fight it? No simple answer will suffice to account for either, but the following quote from Chomsky provides some insight:
“The U.S. has always supported the most extreme fundamentalist Islamic movements and still does. The oldest and most valued ally of the U.S. in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia, which is also the most extremist fundamentalist state. By comparison, Iran looks like a free democratic society – but Saudi Arabia was doing its job. The enemy for most of this period has been secular nationalism. U.S.-Israeli relations, for example, really firmed up in 1967 when Israel performed a real service for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Namely, it smashed the main center of secular nationalism, (Gamal Abdul) Nasser’s Egypt, which was considered a threat and more or less at war with Saudi Arabia at the time. It was threatening to use the huge resources of the region for the benefit of the population of the countries of the region, and not to fill the pockets of some rich tyrant while vast profits flowed to Western corporations.”[36]
Secondly: why isn’t this reality reflected within the popular media discourse? Once again, a quotation from Chomsky sheds some light on the subject:
“In short, major media—particularly, the elite media that set the agenda that others generally follow—are corporations “selling” privileged audiences to other businesses. It would hardly come as a surprise if the picture of the world they present were to reflect the perspectives and interests of the sellers, the buyers, and the product. Concentration of ownership of the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values; it is not easy to say one thing and believe another, and those who fail to conform will tend to be weeded out by familiar mechanisms.”[37]
For an institutional analysis of the media and the various pressures which distort information, see: Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York, U.S.A: Pantheon Books, 1988).

Conclusion
The popular narrative that Leftists shy away from criticising Islam or Islamism, or that the Left actively conspires with ‘Islamism’, is superficial – since WW2, leftwing movements and governments—including quasi-leftist regimes—have consistently opposed militant and theocratic Islamism. By contrast, imperialistic rightwing governments in the West—particularly the U.S.A and the U.K—have a long and sordid history of supporting some of the worst theocratic and militant Islamic movements and regimes in recent history.
· Meaning: Marxists, Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, etc. ‘Liberalism’ is a pro-capitalist ideology, and therefore on the ‘right wing’ of the economic spectrum; the ‘left wing’, by contrast, is anti-capitalism. Consequently, the common conflation of ‘Liberals’ and ‘Leftists’ (as if the two terms were synonyms) demonstrates a confusion in the claims of those articulating the narrative under consideration; this is exemplified in the following article: Nick Cohen, ‘The Great Betrayal: How Liberals Appease Islam’, Standpoint (January/February, 2015): http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/5886/full

[1] For example: Rick Santorum—in a 2007 speech at the University of Oklahoma—claimed: “I will tell you, I am absolutely perplexed that the radical Left in this country—or even the mainstream Left in this country—does not join in opposing the ideology that we confront: radical Islamists.”

[2] Thus, for example, Harris claims that “the political correctness of the Left has made it taboo to even notice the menace of political Islam, leaving only right-wing fanatics to do the job.”

[3] For example: George Jochnowitz, The Blessed Human Race: Essays on Reconsideration (Lanham, U.S.A: Hamilton Books, 2007), p.35: “Leftist writers now feel free to attack Stalin and Mao, and maybe even Castro, but they remain blind to the excesses of Islamic regimes.”

[4] Notably suggested in Unholy Alliance (2004) by Horowitz and The Grand Jihad (2010) by McCarthy; this is also approximately the thesis of John Miller, Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left (London, U.K: One Law for All, 2013), which purports to identity a concerted efforts amongst some British-Leftists to support or defend militant and theocratic Islamism, which is allegedly viewed by some as a legitimate “anti-imperialist force”; these same Leftists also allegedly defend Islam in general—which they hold to be “an oppressed religion”—by means of vilification and false accusations of “racism” and “Islamophobia” (Miller, p.6). Although Miller sometimes relies upon insinuation and inference (e.g., the insinuation of perfidy on the part of German for saying “not condone” instead of “condemn”, and their not explicitly citing Washington and Pennsylvania; Miller, p.7), there are three passable examples of this approximate phenomenon chronicled within his report. Firstly: according to an article written by Tina Becker at Weekly Worker, the leadership of the ‘Stop the War Coalition’—whilst condemning Western imperialism and terrorism—declined to condemn ‘the terrorist attacks on the USA, opposition to the Taliban, for democracy and secularism everywhere’, to maximise their support-base. (Miller, pp.7-8; Miller incorrectly attributes the view of Hoskisson to the StWC at large, however; cf. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/406/building-for-november-18/) The StWC also collaborated with the Muslim Association of Britain, an organisation with some dubious affiliations such as Qaraḍāwī (Miller, pp.8-24.) Secondly: the largely StWC-derived ‘Respect Party’—co-founded in 2004 by George Galloway—has connections to Islamist individuals, groups, and governments (Miller, pp.25-46). Thirdly: the leadership of the ‘Unite against Fascism’ coalition—founded in 2003 and dominated by the Socialist Workers’ Party—has collaborated with Islamist individuals, groups, and governments (Miller, pp.46-56). Vis-à-vis the grand narrative of Leftist betrayal, however, these three examples seem meagre and sporadic.

[5] Thus, Miller’s claim (p.6) that some Leftists consider Islam to be “an oppressed religion.”

[6] Ray Takeyh & Nikolas K. Gvosdev—The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Radical Political Islam (Westport, U.S.A: Praeger Publishers, 2004), pp.60-61—note that despite their participation in the 1952 Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed by Nasser in 1954, given the conflict of their Islamic ideology with Nasser’s ʿArab-Socialism (Nasser also conflicted with proper Communists). In 1965, a mass wave of arrests saw the imprisonment of many seminal Islamist theoreticians, and in 1966 the state executed Saʿīd Quṭb, Muḥammad Yūsuf Awas̠, and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Ismāʿīl. Despite this, Nasser still drew upon Egypt’s Islamic heritage in order to appeal to conservative Muslims. However, Islam was only really referenced as a facilitating-factor for ʿArab history and civilisation.

[7] Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, ‘Human Rights: Sudan’, in E.W.I.C, V.2, p.278: “Historically, the struggle for Sudanese women’s rights was part of the larger nationalist movement. The first organized group of women, the Sudanese Women’s Union, was formed in 1946 as part of the Sudanese Communist Party. After independence, through the 1950s and 1960s, the Women’s Union published its Ṣawt al-marʾa (Woman’s voice) in which numerous issues relating to the political and social status of women were raised, such as polygamy, divorce reform, and female circumcision. Suffrage was extended to women, not at the time of independence, but after the 1964 popular revolution against the Abboud military government, when women openly and enthusiastically demonstrated for popular democracy. Fāṭima Aḥmad Ibrāhīm, a founder of the Women’s Union, was the first woman elected to parliament in 1965. The Women’s Union was also influential in agitating for the reforms in the Sharīʿa law of marriage and divorce that took place in the 1960s and early 1970s.”

[8] Abdullahi A. Gallab—The First Islamist Republic: Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan (Aldershot, U.K: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008), pp.63-64—notes the career of the Islamist politician Al-Ḥasan ʿAbd Allāh at-Turābī, which started in 1964: “Under the leadership of al-Turabi, the Islamists gradually became a mainstay of political activism and agitation, sometimes instigating violent campaigns against the Communist Party both on and off the campuses of universities and other institutes of higher education.” According to Abdel Salam Sidahmed—‘Islamism and the State’, in John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo, & Jok Madut Jok (eds.), The Sudan Handbook (Woodbridge, U.K: James Currey, 2011), p.94—the the Communist Party of Sudan was dissolved in 1965 due to the efforts of Islamists, on the charge of ‘atheism’:

[9] Diaa Rashwan (ed.) (Translated by Mandy McClure), The Spectrum of Islamist Movements, Volume 1 (Berlin, Germany: Verlag Hans Schiler, 2007), p.379: “…following the approval of the first draft of the constitution, the May coup took place, let by the Sudanese communist party in alliance with the Free Officers and the Sudanese left. The first statement issued by the coup leaders announced that they had come to burn the “yellow papers”—a reference to the draft Islamic constitution—and to restore the October 1964 revolution’s original progressive and socialist nature.”

[10] Clinton Bennet—‘Chapter 7: States, Politics, and Political Groups’, in Felicity Crowe, Jolyon Goddard, Ben Hollingum, Sally MacEachern & Henry Russell (eds.), Modern Muslim Societies (Tarrytown, U.S.A: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2011), p.163—notes the syncretic Islamic-Socialism of Gaddafi, and also the fact that “Gaddafi has imprisoned many members of Islamist movements.”

[11] For a brief overview of the 20th Century history of Afghanistan and its societal progression (from the Barakzai Kingdom to the Republic of Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, the Civil War, and the rise of the Taliban), see: Christian Parenti, ‘Ideology and Electricity: The Soviet Experience in Afghanistan’, The Nation (7th/May/2012): http://www.thenation.com/article/167440/ideology-and-electricity-soviet-experience-afghanistan

[12] Jerald A. Combs, The History of American Foreign Policy, Volume 2: From 1895, Third Edition (Armonk, U.S.A: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2008), p.269: “The ayatollah arrested, purged, and executed moderates, Communists, and religious and ethnic dissidents.” Marsh E. Burfeindt, ‘Rapprochement in Iran’, in Thomas A. Johnson (ed.), Power, National Security, and Transformational Global Events: Challenges Confronting America, China, and Iran (Boca Raton, U.S.A: C.R.C Press, 2012), p.190: “The resulting purge led to the firing squad deaths of tens of thousands of middle-class professionals and secularists, often within hours of being taken into custody.”

[13] Ihsan A. Hijazi (‘Communist Party in Lebanon Hurt’, The New York Times (4th/March/1987): http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/04/world/communist-party-in-lebanon-hurt.html) noted: “Shiite enmity for the Communists heightened after the Iranian Government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini outlawed Iran’s Communist Party four years ago and arrested 75 of its leaders on charges of spying for Moscow.”

[14] Hijazi (‘Communist Party in Lebanon Hurt’) noted the mass-killing of Communists by Islamists, the fatāwā of the clerics to purge all Communists, the persecution of Communist due to their alleged ‘atheism’ by Islamists, and the Iranian involvement.

[15] ‘PKK joins battle against Isil’, Gulf News (15th/July/2014): http://gulfnews.com/news/region/syria/pkk-joins-battle-against-isil-1.1360183

[16] Edward Willett—Ayatollah Khomeini (New York, U.S.A: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2004), p.37—notes that “Khomeini greatly admired Ayatollah Seyyed Abolqasem Kashani” (who opposed British imperialism): “After the Allied invasion, Kashani was arrested for his anti-British opinions. That made him a hero to the younger members of the clergy. When he was released in 1945, he became closely associated with the Feda’iyan-e Islam. Khomeini paid frequent visits to Kashani’s home.” Elsewhere, Willett (p.34) notes: “Khomeini’s friend Kashani supported Mosaddeq for a time. However, Mosaddeq would not support the Feda’iyan’s demand to apply shari’a law. Kashani withdrew his support and went on to help General Fazollah Zahedi—with the help of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British—overthrow Mossadeq in August 1953.”

[17] Algar, ‘Kās̲h̲ānī’, in E.I.2, V.4, p.696: “With the beginning of the campaign for the nationalization of the oil industry, Kās̲h̲ānī’s importance grew as he came to be one of the chief organizers of mass support for Dr. Muḥammad Muṣaddiḳ’s National Front. He had, too, a number of representatives in the Mad̲j̲lis, a group known as the Mud̲j̲āhidīn-i Islām. Personal differences arose between Kās̲h̲ānī and Musaddik, and Kās̲h̲ānī became alarmed, moreover, at the militant irreligiosity that showed itself in the last days of Musaddiḳ’s rule. He therefore supported the royalist coup d’état of 19 August 1953 that overthrew Muṣaddiḳ.”

[18] According to C.I.A records, the C.I.A attempted to collaborate with religious leaders such as Kās̠ānī: Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, U.S.A: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008), p.178: “The indispensable Assadollah Rashidian, however, was worried that the mob would not be big enough. He urged Roosevelt to strengthen his hand by making a last-minute deal with Muslim religious leaders, many of whom had large followings and could produce crowds on short notice. The most important of them, Ayatollah Kashani, had already turned against Mossadegh and would certainly be sympathetic. To encourage him, Rashidian suggested a quick application of cash. Roosevelt agreed. Early Wednesday morning he sent $10,000 to Ahmad Aramash, a confidant of Kashani’s, with instructions that it be passed along to the holy man.”

[19] Rachel Bronson—Thicker than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press, 2006), p.27—notes a letter from Eisenhower to King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz mentioning “a shared interest in fighting “godless communism.”” Saudi Arabia was also held to be a counter to the revolutionary secular-nationalism of the Middle East during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Thus, “Eisenhower encouraged Saudi Arabia’s King Saud (reigned 1953-64) to become a political and religious counter to the charismatic Nasser, and the White House began referring to King Saud somewhat optimistically as “an Islamic pope.””

[20] Wynbrandt (A Brief History of Saudi Arabia, pp.195-197) notes the replacement of the U.K by the U.S.A as Saudi Arabia’s key backer during WW2, despite the Saudi opposition towards Zionism (which Roosevelt supported); Wynbrandt (pp.213) further notes the straining of U.S-Saudi relations under the pro-Israeli Truman and later during the 1973 War (Wynbrandt, p.231), but these differences were overcome: the 1979 U.S.S.R intervention in Afghanistan brought “Saudi Arabia and the United States together in creating an army of Islamic fighters, the mujahideen, to battle the Soviets” (Wynbrandt, p.233).

[21] Robert W. Hefner, ‘Chapter 7: Religion: Evolving Pluralism’, in Donald K. Emmerson (ed.), Indonesia beyond Suharto: Polity, Economy, Society, Transition (Armonk, U.S.A: Asia Society, 1999), p.223: “With covert military support, several Muslim youth groups organized violent attacks on PKI headquarters—opening actions in a fiercely anticommunist campaign that would consume the country. By the middle of 1966, hundreds of thousands of real or suspected communists had been slaughtered and the party leadership had been liquidated. Although associations representing Indonesia’s minority religions took part in the killings in some locations, Muslim youth groups working in cooperation with the armed forces were often at the forefront of the campaign.”

[22] Mike Head, ‘Interviews and documents show… US orchestrated Suharto’s 1965-66 slaughter in Indonesia’, World Socialist Website (19th/July/1999): http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/07/indo1-j19.html

[23] Olaf Schumann—‘Multifaith Dialogue in Diverse Settings’, in Viggo Mortensen (ed.), Theology and the Religions: A Dialogue (Grand Rapids, U.S.A: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), pp.202-203—notes that when Suharto and his Islamist allies took power, they were influenced by the C.I.A: “Communists and atheists and those accused of sympathizing with them were now, according to the advice of the CIA and Western economic “experts,” treated as “infidels” (kâfirûn) and therefore killed or confined to prison camps, and thus the Indonesian nation had become a truly religious one, a “nation of believers,” in accordance with the Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa.”

[24] Ian F. W. Beckett—‘The British Counterinsurgency Campaign in Dhofar 1965-75’, in Daniel Marston & Carter Malkasian (eds.), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Oxford, U.K: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2010), pp.182-183—notes that the British military realised “that Islam could be used against PFLOAG at the very moment that the government information service was being established by Captain Tim Landon. Constantly re-iterated themes were “The Hand of God Destroys Communism” and “Islam is Our Way, Freedom is our Aim.” Leaflets were air-dropped on the jebel. Notices were also predominantly displayed in towns and markets, notably where inhabitants queued at perimeter gates for the customary searches looking for weapons and excessive amounts of food or medical supplies. There was a new government weekly, Al Watan, and, even more importantly, Radio Dhofar began to broadcast throughout the province.”

[25] Anthony McDermott, Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak: A Flawed Revolution (Abington, U.K: Routledge, 2013), p.192: “In 1971, Sadat had the second article of the constitution amended, making sharia a major source of law. In 1977, in the face of the mounting extremism, the government announced legislative proposals such as the death penalty for apostasy and adultery, and whipping for drunkenness.” Some of these laws were not actually implemented, but in 1980 “the People’s Assembly approved an amendment in the second article of the Constitution, taking the whole issue an important stage beyond Sadat’s 1971 amendment – for the change made sharia the rather than a main source of legislation.”

[26] Joel Beinin & Joe Stork, ‘On the Modernity, Historical Specificity, and International Context of Political Islam’, in Joel Beinin & Joe Stork (eds.), Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report (New York, U.S.A: I. B. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 1997), p.11: “Similarly, there was no hint of any US reproach in the 1970s when the Egyptian government of Anwar al-Sadat, then on its way to becoming the second largest recipient (after Israel) of US economic and military aid, encouraged the Muslim Brothers and its radical offshoots to organize against nationalists and leftists.”

[27] Michel Boivin—‘Ziyāʾ al-Ḥaḳḳ’, in E.I.2, V.11, p.518—relates the political rise of Muḥammad and his overt religiosity, before noting the following: “From 1979 onwards, Zia promulgated a series of Islamic laws hailed by Mawdūdī as the first steps towards the installation of an Islamic state. The first series, known as the “Hudood Ordinances”, created a category of “Islamic crimes”, such as adultery, rape, theft, fornication, etc. These crimes were to be dealt with by special courts with the task of applying the Ḳurʾānic penalties. These courts were themselves placed under the authority of the Federal S̲h̲aria Court, made up of judges and ʿulamāʾ. In 1980, the second series of measures envisaged the Islamisation of the economic sector. Two Islamic taxes, the zakāt and the ʿus̲h̲r, were created. Bank loans were regulated on a basis of the Ḳurʾānic prohibition of usury, ribā. The law envisaged a division of the risks run by the borrower and the lender. Interest was fixed on the basis of a common agreement, and indexed according to the financial performance of the banks.”

[28] Samina Ahmed—‘Reviving State Legitimacy in Pakistan’, in Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, & Ramesh C. Thakur (eds.), Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance (Tokyo, Japan: United Nations University Press, 2005), pp.157-158—notes the strong U.S support for the Ziyāʾ al-Ḥaqq regime, despite its brutality: “Benefiting from billions of US military and economic assistance, as well as US diplomatic support, the Zia regime successfully warded off its civilian contenders for 11 long years.”

In a 1982 speech to Muḥammad, Reagan proclaimed: “President Zia, Begum Zia, distinguished guests, it’s an honor for me to welcome you to the White House this evening.

Mr. President, our talks this morning underlined again the strong links between our countries. We find ourselves even more frequently in agreement on our goals and objectives. And we, for example, applaud your deep commitment to peaceful progress in the Middle East and South Asia, a resolve which bolsters our hopes and the hopes of millions.

In the last few years, in particular, your country has come to the forefront of the struggle to construct a framework for peace in your region, an undertaking which includes your strenuous efforts to bring peaceful resolution to the crisis in Afghanistan — a resolution which will enable the millions of refugees currently seeking shelter in Pakistan to go home in peace and honor. Further, you’ve worked to ensure that progress continues toward improving the relationship between Pakistan and India. And in all these efforts the United States has supported your objectives and will applaud your success.”

Reagan went on to claim: “Our relationship is deep and longstanding.” Finally, Reagan concluded: “And, Mr. President, I propose a toast to you, to the people of Pakistan, and to the friendship that binds our nations together.”

[29] In a 1981 speech to Muḥammad, Thatcher (cited in: Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech at banquet given by Pakistan President (Zia Ul Haq)’, Margaret Thatcher Foundation (8th/October/1981): http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104716) proclaimed that due to the threat of Socialism and other reasons, “Pakistan deserves the support of Britain and of all the nations of the world who are genuinely interested in bringing about the withdrawal of Soviet troops. On behalf of Britain, let me confirm to you—Pakistan has our support in the great problems you are facing. As Prime Minister of the country which at present holds the Presidency of the European Community, I can say too that the ten member states of that Community support you. We admire deeply the courage and skill you have shown in handling the crisis.”

[30] William Blum (‘The Historical US Support for al-Qaeda’, Foreign Policy Journal (10th/January/2014): http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/01/10/the-historical-us-support-for-al-qaeda/) notes the U.S support for the mujāhidūn in Afghanistan during the 1980s, along with other brutal groups around the world.

[31] Owen Bowcott (‘UK discussed plans to help mujahideen weeks after Soviet invasion of Afghanistan’, The Guardian (30th/December/2010): http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/dec/30/uk-mujahideen-afghanistan-soviet-invasion) notes: “Within three weeks of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, was negotiating how to channel covert military aid towards the “Islamic resistance” that was fighting the Russians. Details of how swiftly clandestine weapons routes were opened up to aid the mujahideen emerge from secret cabinet documents released to the National Archives today under the 30-year rule.” Bowcott also records: “Armstrong said intervention “would make more difficult the process of Soviet pacification of Afghanistan and [ensure] that process takes much longer than it would otherwise do; and the existence of a guerrilla movement in Afghanistan would be a focus of Islamic resistance which we should be wanting to continue to stimulate”.” Finally, Bowcott also notes: “The west’s arming of the mujahideen in Afghanistan has been seen as one of the contributing factors in the rise of al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden was a prominent Saudi financier of the mujahideen.”

[32] Martin Beckford (‘National Archives: Britain agreed secret deal to back Mujahideen’, The Telegraph (30th/December/2010): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8215187/National-Archives-Britain-agreed-secret-deal-to-back-Mujahideen.html) notes the Western support for the mujāhidūn in Afghanistan during the 1980s, including proto-Qāʿidah: “Newly published papers show that one of the country’s top civil servants held a private summit with senior American, French and German politicians at which they decided to provide “discreet support for Afghan guerrilla resistance”. One faction of the Mujahideen fighters, who were also covertly funded by the CIA, went on to become founding members of the al-Qa’eda terrorist network.”

[33] Yael Klein (‘WikiLeaks: “Israel actively supported Hamas”’, Jerusalem Online (4th/August/2014): http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news/middle-east/israeli-palestinian-relations/wikileaks-israel-actively-supported-hamas-6980) notes: “During Operation “Protective Edge”, news leaks website WikiLeaks exposes secret documents which were passed between American diplomats in the 1980’s. These documents allegedly show that Israel was interested in enabling Hamas activity in its beginning, intending to weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization and ending the first Intifada.

Did Israel take part in enabling Hamas to reach its current dimensions and abilities? Documents from the 1980’s belonging to the leaking website WikiLeaks show that Israel enabled Hamas to act in the first Intifada in order to enable it to strengthen, thus to cause a splitting of the Palestinian nation – in order to weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which was responsible for the Intifada.”

[34] Andrew Higgins (‘How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas’, The Wall Street Journal (24th/January/2009): http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847) notes: “”Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with “Yassins,” primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.”

[35] Robert Dreyfuss (‘How Israel and the United States Helped to Bolster Hamas’, Democracy Now! (26th/January/2006): http://www.democracynow.org/2006/1/26/how_israel_and_the_united_states) chronicles the rise of Hamas, noting: “And starting in 1967, the Israelis began to encourage or allow the Islamists in the Gaza and West Bank areas, among the Palestinian exiled population, to flourish. The statistics are really quite staggering. In Gaza, for instance, between 1967 and 1987, when Hamas was founded, the number of mosques tripled in Gaza from 200 to 600. And a lot of that came with money flowing from outside Gaza, from wealthy conservative Islamists in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. But, of course, none of this could have happened without the Israelis casting an approving eye upon it.” Dreyfuss further notes: “So there’s plenty of evidence that the Israeli intelligence services, especially Shin Bet and the military occupation authorities, encouraged the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and the founding of Hamas. There are many examples and incidents of that. But there were armed clashes, of course, on Palestinian university campuses in the ’70s and ’80s, where Hamas would attack P.L.O., PFLP, PDFLP and other groups, with clubs and chains. This was before guns became prominent in the Occupied Territories.

Even that, however — there’s a very interesting and unexplained incident. Yassin was arrested in 1983 by the Israelis. On search of his home, they found a large cache of weapons. This would have been a fairly explosive event, but for unexplained reasons, a year later Yassin was quietly released from prison. He said at the time that the guns were being stockpiled not to fight the Israeli occupation authorities, but to fight other Palestinian factions.”

[36] Cited in: Amina Chaudary & Noam Chomsky, ‘On Religion and Politics: Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amina Chaudary’, Islamica Magazine, Issue 19, (2007): http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200704–.htm

[37] Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (London, U.K: Pluto Press, 1989), p.8.

by Klingschor

No, Islam is not a race. Yes, you are still a racist

No, Islam is not a race. Yes, you are still a racist

by Daniel Lopez

Anti-Islamic bigotry is racism. How can that be when, as is frequently pointed out, Islam isn’t a race?

Biological race doesn’t exist. But the concept of biological race is an invention with a long history. Its transformations help answer the question.

One of the earliest and most detailed systems of biological racial classification existed in the French colony of St Dominguez. According to the historian C.L.R. James, the system of classification contained more than 150 gradations of “blackness”.

Only people who could prove that they were “purely white” were granted full rights. This system was overthrown by a slave rebellion and revolution. The “aristocracy of skin”, a term used by the Parisian masses to describe racism, was temporarily defeated. Those 150 gradations of blackness, which were regarded as a natural fact, have long been forgotten.

Roughly 80 years later, biological racism enjoyed a renaissance, as all sorts of new so-called races were discovered. This was the advent of pseudo-scientific Darwinian racism. For example, the Irish were considered a separate race to the English, and closer to apes. Skulls were measured, intellects compared and, lo and behold, the Irish were found inferior. This conveniently explained the Irish famine, in which between 800,000 and 1.5 million people starved to death while the British exported their food.

Nowhere did social Darwinism go further than in Germany. Prior to the late 1880s, Jewishness had been regarded purely as a religion. Of course, Jews had suffered religious discrimination, but they could escape this through conversion, as many did. Yet, from the late 1800s onward, with the aid of “science”, Jewishness was transformed into a race, which was then associated with a series of visual and cultural markers, involving facial hair, big noses, dishonesty and suspicious customs such as kosher food.

These examples highlight how racism was never really about “natural” differences. It was a manufactured ideology of oppression. Racism is really about power.

Biologically linked racism started to go out of fashion with the fall of the Third Reich. But this didn’t mean that racism disappeared. It just changed form.

Take the example of the USA. Since the Declaration of Independence, the USA has concealed real inequality under a constitution and political system premised on formal equality.

In the past, the contradiction between real and formal inequality was justified by the alleged inferiority of non-white races. But the struggles and achievements of those non-whites increasingly made such claims untenable.

Today, no one credible argues that inequality and poverty stem from innate racial differences. Rather, we are told that “cultural problems” are to blame. The new rationalisation is not biologically based, yet it is the politically acceptable code for the same old racism.

Anti-Muslim racism, which exploded following 9/11 and the “war on terror”, fits into this mould. Small-l liberals have played a special role in promoting it. The polite arguments that Islam is more repressive than other religions, that Muslims lack respect for women or democracy, or are particularly violent, are all coded signals which, like a dog whistle, prick the ears of rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth racists.

This is what happened at the Cronulla riot in 2005, where men of Arab appearance were bashed by a white mob trying to defend “their” beach and “their” women. It was referred to by participants as “Leb and wog bashing day”.

Racism always relies on stereotypes and visual or cultural markers. So, the racists portray Muslims as big-nosed, fat, fanatical, bearded misogynists who want to slaughter animals and non-believers alike, impose sharia law, prohibit tasty food and beverages, destroy liberty and reason and generally fuck things up for the “enlightened” West.

Why do they want to do this? Well, who knows, but one thing is for sure – they aren’t as civilised as us.

All of these tropes are based on racial stereotypes of Arab people, which are as old as they are repulsive. Edward Said’s magnificent book Orientalism traces this tradition of representation through Western art and literature. It turns out that “good Muslim” vs. “bad Muslim” is just an updated version of the colonial era “good savage” vs. “bad savage” trope.

Christopher Hitchens took war-mongering atheism to new depths when he endorsed cluster bombs and said that the death toll in the Iraq war wasn’t high enough. But the tradition of atheism and Enlightenment values being used as the spear tip for colonial-style racism goes at least as far back as the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt.

Racism has changed with the times, but it is still a system of oppression that commits violence towards whole swaths of humanity, who are depicted through a few crude stereotypes.

So sure, Islam is a religion. But the statement “Islam is a religion, not a race” remains the most transparent of covers for real racism.

Meet America’s first openly gay imam

Meet America’s first openly gay imam

by Azmat Khan

America Tonight

He’s been condemned by other Muslim leaders, and some local imams have even refused to greet him. But Imam Daayiee Abdullah – believed to be the only openly gay imam in the Americas – is proud of his story. He was born and raised in Detroit, where his parents were Southern Baptists. At age 15, he came out to them. At 33, while studying in China, Abdullah converted to Islam, and went on to study the religion in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. But as a gay man in America, he saw that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Muslims had unmet spiritual needs and he became an imam to provide community support. “Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. And because of the necessity in our community, that’s why I came into this particular role,” he told America Tonight about his journey. His first act as an imam? Performing funeral rites for a gay Muslim who died of AIDS. “They had contacted a number of imams, and no one would go and provide him his janazah services,” he said, referring to the Muslim body cleaning ritual. That pained him. “I believe every person, no matter if I disagree with you or not, you have the right as a Muslim to have the proper spiritual [rites] and rituals provided for you. And whoever judges you, that will be Allah’s decision, not me.” It’s one of the mantras he lives by in his work, even as others condemn him.

A place for everyone

“The beautiful thing about God is that when you change your attitude, and say, ‘God, I need some help,’ and mean it sincerely, God is always there for you,” Abdullah told congregants one night during a regular sermon, known as a khutbah, at the Light of Reform Mosque in Washington, D.C. He serves as the imam and educational director of the mosque, which he helped form more than two years ago to be a safe space for values and practices that other mosques may eschew. During his service, women and men kneel side-by-side and women are allowed to lead prayers – actions that have sparked controversy even among American Muslims. “We do not limit people by their gender or their sexual orientation, or their particular aspect of being Muslim or non-Muslim,” he told America Tonight. “They’re there to worship.” The mosque’s congregants are diverse and represent a wide range of cultures, religious upbringings and sexual orientations.

‘The first time I talked to Imam Daayiee on the phone, I started bawling. I was like, I didn’t know there could be a place like this.’

Laila Ali was raised Muslim, but didn’t feel accepted by Islam, because her beliefs fell outside traditional schools of thought. Then, she heard about Abdullah. “A lot of us started feeling like we only had the choice to either be Muslim in name only and do whatever we want, or leave the religion altogether because there was no place for us,” Ali said. “And the first time I talked to Imam Daayiee on the phone, I started bawling … I was like, I didn’t know there could be a place like this.” Sixty-three percent of the 2.75 million Muslims living in the U.S. are first-generation immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center, many of them coming from countries where same-sex relationships are punishable by law, and in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan, even by death. For its LGBT congregants, the Light of Reform Mosque is a rare safe space. But not all of them are gay. Many are just Muslims looking for a mosque that accepts all kinds. Hanaa Rifaey and her husband Rolly grew up going to local mosques with their families, but they say they didn’t really experience the kind of acceptance the way they do at the Light of Reform. “I think that’s exactly why we’ve wanted to come here,” Rifaey said. “I think it was even more important once we realized that we were starting to have our own family, was that we wanted to have a mosque where our child would feel included and welcome regardless of who he or she had turned out to be.” Imam Daayiee provides other services that are unique for an imam of a Muslim community, like marrying same-sex couples. So far in his 13 years as imam, he has performed more than 50 weddings. “We’re actually out there doing something, making a difference in people’s lives,” he said.

A raging debate

Not everyone is happy with the mosque. “Being an openly gay imam and having been identified as such, I do get a lot of feedback and also kickback, but that’s OK,” he said. “I think that when people are unfamiliar with things, they tend to have an emotional knee-jerk reaction to it.” But Abdullah is firm in his belief that there has never been “one monolithic, isolated” formulation of Islam. “It’s not something that’s new. It’s just like reform and revival within Islam, about every 100, 150 years there have been these discussions and there have been people who have opposed the status quo on these issues,” he said. “So it’s not something that I’m just coming up with as a modern Islamic scholar, but something that has been in existence since time immortal.” Some local imams have refused to greet him, and many others across the country argue his work performing same-sex marriage is not legitimate, and that he should control his “urges.” “Anyone who has an inclination that is not acceptable, they have to control themselves,” Muzammil Siddiqi, a well-known imam at California’s Islamic Society of Orange County said earlier this year when asked about Abdullah. “If someone has an inclination to commit adultery or an inclination to drink alcohol or a great desire to eat pork, I would say the same thing: control yourselves.”

At the heart of the disagreement is the interpretation of Islam. “If you go to most Muslim scholars, they’re going to tell you that homosexual acts are a sin in Islam; that there’s no way around it,” said Dr. Hussein Rashid, an adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University and contributor to a report on homosexuality in U.S. Muslim communities called the Muslim LGBT Inclusion Project. “I think what we’re seeing now not only in the United States, but worldwide really, is a question of going back to sources and rereading these sources,” Rashid added. “But the tradition was and remains that homosexuality is a sin in Muslim tradition.” The various scholars who contributed to the project’s report emphasized that there is no singular interpretation of homosexuality in Islam. By examining historical approaches in different Muslim cultures, the report challenged the idea that LGBT people are not accepted in Islam. “I think Daayiee is trying to say, ‘Yes, I can be gay and I can be a Muslim, and I can tend to people who are also gay and Muslim,’ that this is part of their identity as a human being and that the religion of Islam teaches people to embrace all aspects of their humanity,” he said.

A growing movement

Though it is unknown how many American Muslims or Muslims around the world are gay, a growing number are vying to be heard. Several recent films have helped to shed light on LGBT Muslims and their everyday realities. The most well-known, “A Jihad for Love,” spans 12 countries in nine languages to share the stories of LGBT Muslims. The film “I Am Gay and Muslim” tracks several gay Moroccan men as they explore their religious and sexual identities. And the coming independent film “Naz + Maalik” follows two closeted American Muslim teens as they grapple with FBI surveillance.

Around the world, new spaces are being carved out.  Last year, a gay-friendly mosque opened in Paris – Europe’s first. Muhsin Hendricks, an openly gay imam in Capetown, South Africa, has for years been leading congregants and preaching that homosexuality and Islam are not incompatible. And in America, LGBT Muslims have some strong support. The only Muslims in the House of Representatives, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., have both advocated for gay rights. The group Muslims for Progressive Values, which helped found the Light of Reform Mosque, also has strong presence in Philadelphia and Atlanta, and is growing. And Abdullah has hope that the message he is working to spread will continue to resonate: “It is our relationship with God and our relationship with each other that really establishes our faith.”

American atheist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

American atheist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

Avijit Roy, whose Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog championed liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation, attacked along with his wife in Dhaka

Avijit Roy’s wife Rafida Ahmed Banna is carried on a stretcher after she was seriously injured by unidentified assailants. Roy, founded a blog site which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim majority nation. Photograph: Rajib Dhar/AFP/Getty Images

 

A prominent American blogger of Bangladeshi origin was hacked to death with machetes by unidentified assailants in Dhaka, police said, with the atheist writer’s family claiming he had received numerous threats from Islamists.

The body of Avijit Roy, founder of Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation, was found covered in blood after the attack which also left his wife critically wounded.

“He died as he was brought to the hospital. His wife was also seriously wounded. She has lost a finger,” local police chief Sirajul Islam said.

The couple were on a bicycle rickshaw, returning from a book fair, when two assailants stopped and dragged them onto a sidewalk before striking them with machetes, local media reported citing witnesses.

Roy, said to be around 40, is the second Bangladeshi blogger to have been murdered in two years and the fourth writer to have been attacked since 2004.

Hardline Islamist groups have long demanded the public execution of atheist bloggers and sought new laws to combat writing critical of Islam.

“Roy suffered fatal wounds in the head and died from bleeding… after being brought to the hospital,” doctor Sohel Ahmed told reporters.

Police have launched a probe and recovered the machetes used in the attack but could not confirm whether Islamists were behind the incident.

But Roy’s father said the writer, a US citizen, had received a number of “threatening” emails and messages on social media from hardliners unhappy with his writing.

“He was a secular humanist and has written about ten books” including his most famous “Biswasher Virus” (Virus of Faith), his father Ajoy Roy told AFP.

The Center for Inquiry, a US-based charity promoting free thought, said it was “shocked and heartbroken” by the brutal murder of Roy.

“Dr Roy was a true ally, a courageous and eloquent defender of reason, science, and free expression, in a country where those values have been under heavy attack,” it said in a statement.

Roy’s killing also triggered strong condemnation from his fellow writers and publishers, who lamented the growing religious conservatism and intolerance in Bangladesh.

“The attack on Roy and his wife Rafida Ahmed is outrageous. We strongly protest this attack and are deeply concerned about the safety of writers,” Imran H. Sarker, head of an association for bloggers in Bangladesh, told AFP.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, a fellow blogger and friend of Roy, claimed one of the country’s largest online book retailers was being openly threatened for selling Roy’s books.

“In Bangladesh the easiest target is an atheist. An atheist can be attacked and murdered,” he wrote on Facebook.

Atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was hacked to death in 2013 by members of a little known Islamist militant group, triggering nationwide protests by tens of thousands of secular activists.

After Haider’s death, Bangladesh’s hardline Islamist groups started to protest against other campaigning bloggers, calling a series of nationwide strikes to demand their execution, accusing them of blasphemy.

The secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reacted by arresting some atheist bloggers.

The government also blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the furore over blasphemy, as well as stepping up security for the bloggers.

Bangladesh is the world’s fourth-largest Muslim majority nation with Muslims making up some 90 per cent of the country’s 160 million people.

A tribunal has recently handed down a series of verdicts against leading Islamists and others for crimes committed during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Saving democracy from the extremists

Saving democracy from the extremists

By Junaid Cheema

We are a nation built on immigration, a nation of second chances. Our history is decorated by contributions of the brave who left their homelands to make Australia home. We are a people of community, of equal rights and believers in a fair go. We honour the rule of law, and honour any security statement promising to protect our democracy.

The Prime Ministers’s security statement promised to clamp down on those “who incite religious or racial hatred” and those who participate in “blatantly spreading discord and division”. Such hate speech disrupts the community, spreads Xenophobia, and is no doubt a threat to our democracy. No true Australian should feel targeted by this, after all we believe in a fair go and trust the rule of law will be applied with equity, but will it?

Hours before the security statement The Australian published an article titled “Its absurd to deny Jihadist act in the name of Islam” concluding extremism is inherent to Islam. The publication had a very un-Australian affect on the readers – comments flooded the paper’s social media site vilifying Muslims, promoting hate and creating divisions amongst Australians.

A few days earlier another major news outlet published an article titled “Face reality the west is at war with Islam”. Vilification, hate and polarisation followed – an en vogue trend which seems to associate everything Islamic with everything anti-western and thereby everything un-Australian. This is a recurring theme in which the popular narrative is starting to promote hate, disenfranchising people and sowing the seeds of discord in society.

Some now pose proudly as bigots, is the day far off when we will pose proudly as hypocrites? What does this mean for our values our democracy? Is hate speech free-speech when the targets are a particular group?

Inconvenient facts have very little appetite in this ‘West vs Islam’ narrative. Respected sources such as Spielberg International cite, self proclaimed Islamists kill 8 times more Muslims than non muslims, making muslims the greatest ‘victims’ of terror.

Nonetheless Muslims remain convicted of ‘playing the victim’. Perhaps raw figures from Europol and the FBI database,concluding well over 90% of terror attacks on western soil have nothing to do with Islam, also seem irrelevant. Nonetheless there is an extremist reality and even one Australian death from terrorism is one too many and we cannot pretend there isn’t a problem. Non-violent extremism, leads to violent extremism and there is no place for that in Australia.

Associating ISIS with Islam and making Islam the anti-thesis of the West and Australia, is also non-violent extremism.

Terrorism expert Max Abrahams from Northeastern University will tell you those who join groups like ISIS “would fail the most basic test on Islam”. By associating ISIS with Islam, we play into the hands of the terrorists, doing their marketing for them and pushing the uninformed to their cause. Perhaps ISIS adherents cry ‘God is great’ before they murder, but didn’t Nazis engrave ‘God is with us’ on their belts before they murdered? Did this make the Nazis Christians? Then why would invoking God make ISIS Muslims?

Its well known that homegrown terrorists are the most disenfranchised of society. John Horgan, a psychologist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Centrefor Terrorism, said fighters are driven to ISIS by the “need to belong to something special.. they want to find something meaningful in their life”.

Doesn’t associating ISIS with Islam and labelling Islam as the antithesis of the West devoid young Muslims of meaning in Australia and push the disenfranchised to the terrorist cause? Can preachers of hate only be Muslim? As believers in a fair go, we must apply the law with equity.

The war on terror has raged for well over a decade, with no end in sight. Millions of lives have been destroyed, and our way of life has changed. The freedoms we fought so bravely to protect are freedoms we are handing over to fear. Xenophobia is uncharacteristic of a nation forged by brave immigrants, it is uncharacteristic of the true Australian.

Demagogues for centuries have known that appealing to the passions and prejudices of the masses secures a following, but history tells us it doesn’t secure a nation. The first democracy was destroyed by those who exploited the fears of the masses, locking the Athenians into an un winnable conflict.

As citizens sworn to protect our democracy, its time to realise our democracy is too precious too follow that path of destruction.

— Junaid Cheema is an IT Executive, writer and community worker. He has written a number of articles for political journals introducing new paradigms provoking thought and passion. Junaid also volunteers his time on the board of a Victorian based not for profit, promoting foster care for disadvantaged children.

The missing Charlie Hebdo cartoons

The missing Charlie Hebdo cartoons

Telling the full story of a massacre, and striking a blow for free speech, should trump major news outlets’ concern about offending Muslims

By Christopher Massie

Wednesday was not the first time the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo was punished for making fun of Islam and Islamic extremists. In 2006, amid a famous cartoon controversy that sparked riots around the world, Charlie Hebdo reprinted the original Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed and added a cover depicting him in tears and complaining about the incorrigibility of his supporters.

Muslim groups subsequently sued the newspaper for its blasphemy but Charlie Hebdo won and relentlessly forged ahead. In 2011, it published an issue “guest-edited” by Mohammed, with an image of the prophet claiming that any readers who failed to laugh would receive 100 lashes. In retaliation, the office was destroyed by a Molotov cocktail. Yesterday, a group of (reportedly three) people who appear to be Islamic extremists opened fire inside Charlie Hebdo’s offices, killing 10, including the editorial director, Stéphane Charbonnier. Two police officers were also killed in a shootout with the gunmen outside the offices.

The incident left editors of media outlets covering the story trying to decide whether to publish cartoons from the magazine’s extensive history of provocation. The outlets that did publish an array of pertinent cartoons provided reminders of how good journalism depends on the liberal exercise of the right to free expression. The decisions of those who published no cartoons or who were highly selective in which cartoons they published showed how fear of being seen as insensitive, particularly by Muslims, can stand in the way of telling thorough, contextual stories that benefit the broader public.

This cover, published in 2011, after the attack on its offices, depicts a Charlie Hebdo staff member passionately kissing a Muslim man. The headline says, “Love is stronger than hate.”

With few exceptions, it has been digital outlets like The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, Vox, and Slate that have exercised their constitutional right by republishing the cartoons that are thought to be the basis for the attacks. In contrast, many “legacy” organizations, from CNN, to The Washington Post, to The New York Times, largely withheld the images. In explaining its decision not to distribute any of the images, the AP’s spokesman, Paul Colford, was quoted as saying, “It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images.” Bloomberg, meanwhile, published a slideshow that included many of the incendiary covers.

Whether the decision to show the photos was a pure display of solidarity for fallen comrades, a play for page views, a reflection of persistent differences in editorial culture between “legacy” and digital-native outlets, or a combination of the above, is impossible to know. But one way or another, the outcome is praiseworthy.

As Daily Beast editor Noah Shachtman sees it, the decision not to publish, on the other hand, is deplorable. “For the media organizations that decide to cut these pictures or blur them out, I just find that to be reprehensible,” Shachtman said. “It’s hard to interpret that as anything but giving in to the monsters that just massacred a bunch of people.” The Daily Beast re-posted an updated gallery of cartoons originally published in 2011, under the headline “16 Most ‘Shocking’ Charlie Hebdo Covers.”

Washington Post media columnist Erik Wemple seemed to agree with Shachtman, in criticizing CNN for saying that it was continuing to consider whether or not to publish the cartoons hours after the event (for the moment, it appears to have decided not to). “Those conversations shouldn’t take so long,” Wemple wrote. “Show it all, whatever the consequences.”

Yet, conspicuously missing from Wemple’s column were any images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons he was calling for CNN to broadcast. Indeed, on Wednesday, the only Charlie Hebdo cartoon on any Post story about the crisis was one featuring Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that the French paper tweeted hours before the attack. In explaining the Post’s decision, executive editor Marty Baron told me by email, “We have a practice of avoiding the publication of material that is pointedly, deliberately, or needlessly offensive to religious groups.”

Fred Hiatt, the paper’s editorial page editor, disagrees, saying he felt that “reprinting one of the covers was warranted to give context to the columns and help readers get a deeper understanding of the nature of the magazine and the controversy.” The Post’s print editorial page ran the cartoon of Mohammed prescribing “100 lashes” for the humorless and, while the image does not appear in the same column on the website, Erik Wemple’s blog published a PDF of the print publication.

In 2011, this special issue, entitled “Charia (read: Sharia) Hebdo,” precipitated the hacking of the newspaper’s website and the combustion of a Molotov cocktail inside its offices.

Meanwhile, The New York Times said in a vague statement that it determined that “describing the cartoons” was enough, but in 2006 its editorial board justified its decision not to publish the Danish cartoons of Mohammed on the same grounds as the Post’s Baron. At the time, they called the decision “a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols…” This year, the Times published only an image of Charlie Hebdo’s latest cover, a caricature of Michel Houllebecq, whose latest novel imagines a future France overtaken by Sharia law.

Where the policies of the Post and the Times purport to grant symbols of all religions equal protection from mockery, an internal CNN memo, reported by Politico’s Dylan Byers, appeared to grant special consideration to one religious faith. The memo specifically cited the network’s refusal to show “cartoons of the Prophet considered offensive by many Muslims.”

Time magazine seems to be in the same camp. In a list inviting readers to “See 18 Controversial Covers published by Charlie Hebdo” (now with a revised title and only containing 17 covers), Time published none of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons portraying Mohammed or other Muslims which its own summary of the massacre mentioned as notably controversial. The list (which does include a cartoon of Osama bin Laden in a disco suit) contains pictures of Pope Benedict XVI coming out as gay and of a conference of “pedophile bishops” (one of whom appears to be a conniving, green-skinned Joseph Ratzinger).

The editorial reluctance of these organizations and others, including the New York Daily News (a publication not exactly known for its restraint), implies either fear of offending Muslims in particular or a flawed hierarchy of priorities. While editors are regularly forced to make difficult calls about publishing sensitive material, and while yesterday’s murders show that worries about angering jihadists are not without basis, in this case, the obvious news value of the cartoons ought to have outweighed any trepidation.

The absence of a confirmed storyline as to whether a specific cartoon ignited the attack means that a wide array of context, including the images, is potentially relevant. Furthermore, if readers want to understand the tragic affront to free speech, there is no replacement for seeing the cartoons, in their unabashed irreverence. “What kind of magazine is Charlie Hebdo? What kind of work does it publish? What are the controversies it’s been embroiled in in the past?” Slate editor-in-chief Julia Turner wrote to me in an email. “To help our readers begin to understand the answers to these questions and grasp what happened this morning in Paris, we wanted to show them the work.”

In 2006, this cover of Mohammed crying, lamenting the hardships of being beloved by fundamentalist jerks, sparked a lawsuit, which Charlie Hebdo eventually won. The headline essentially states Mohammed is overwhelmed by extremists.

Where The Daily Beast published more cartoons, earlier in the day, leaving some without captions, Slate posted fewer, but offered more detailed context. “Especially since the cartoons often include French language captions and references, we felt offering interpretations and descriptions would be the best way to help our readers understand the spirit and sensibility of the magazine, and the range of its targets,” Turner said.That Slate, The Daily Beast and a handful of other outlets published images that formed part of the backdrop to yesterday’s murders, while so many major newsrooms were withholding so many of the cartoons, is commendable no matter the rationale. It was a stand on behalf of freedom of expression, without which there can neither be a free press, nor a press that is effective at conveying the news of the day. As Slate’s Turner put it, “In this case, standing up in some way for freedom of expression was also the path of clearer expression, which is no coincidence, and part of why these attacks are so troubling.”

That connection between “free expression” and “clear expression” encapsulates why what happened to Charlie Hebdo should devastate and motivate all journalists: When a society’s tolerance for all forms of expression is in question, a writer’s ability to clearly express herself invariably suffers.

Fatwa Fear | Islamic Fanatics Attack All-Girl Rock Band

Kashmir all-girl rock band gives up singing after fatwa

by FP Staff

ALSO SEE

• Kashmiri all-girls band faces threats online, CM orders probe

Pragash Band, an all girls rock band from Kashmir have decided to stop singing, after receiving a string of death and rape threats on their social media pages, as well as on their mobile phones.

The all-girls band, which came to limelight in late December last year after their performance at the annual ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition, had defied the convention by stepping into the male-dominated field of music.

They since received abusive and hate messages on their Facebook page, including from extremists who said the teenage girls should be raped and then drowned. The message read, “Post this status in advance. The three band girls raped in Jammu and thrown in river.”‘

Screengrab from CNN-IBN

The Times of India quoted Adnan Mattoo, owner of Band Inn, a musical academy where the girls trained, as saying that their talent is ‘astonishing’.

‘They are just 15 and too young to face such abuse.  They are hurt. They cried, but I tried to convince them to continue”, he told the newspaper.

The girls troubles were only compounded after the Grandmufti of Jammu and Kashmir Bashiruddin Ahmad termed singing as “un-Islamic” and asked them to abandon it.

The Grandmufti issued a decree, terming singing as un-Islamic.

“I have said that singing is not in accordance with Islamic teachings,” Ahmad told PTI.

The cleric said he advised the members of Pragash Band to “abandon” singing as it is against Islamic teachings and will not help them in playing any constructive role in the society.

“Society cannot be built or developed by doing un-Islamic acts like singing. I have advised these girls, and other Muslims as well, to stay within the limits of modesty as prescribed for them,” he added.

However, support has been pouring in from all corners on social networking sites for the band and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has also backed them.

Omar came out in support of the girls yesterday saying police will probe the threats.

“I hope these talented young girls will not let a handful of morons silence them,” he said.

Related articles

• Kashmir girl band quits after fatwa (straitstimes.com)
• Kashmir girl band breaks up after threats (miamiherald.com)
• Kashmir girl band quits after fatwa (arabtimesonline.com)
• Fatwa issued against Kashmiri all-girl band #WTFnews #Vaw #Moralpolicing (kashmirsolidaritymumbai.wordpress.com)
• Kashmir’s all-girl group gives up (bbc.co.uk)
• Curtains down for Kashmir’s all-girl band (thehindu.com)
• Kashmir’s all-girl band gets support from chief minister Omar Abdullah: Who said what (ndtv.com)
• Case against online abusers of Kashmir girl band (thehindu.com)

ISLAMIC SUNNIS AGAINST EXTREMISM | “The extremist fanatics are doomed”

SUNNIS AGAINST EXTREMISM

About the author Darulfatwa is an endeavour of a group of committed and highly educated Muslims who collaborated with diverse community officials to establish what is the final frontier to bridge the gap between the needs of Muslims and their productive co-existence in the wider Australian community. Darulfatwa is a non-partisan and independent institution, lobbying for the right of all Muslims to a better living standard without prejudice and discrimination and defending the civil liberties and privileges of those at risk. It set forth in its endeavor to produce this text to empower the reader with knowledge to discriminate between moderation and extremism and expel the latter. Preface Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said: “The extremist fanatics are doomed.” Although extremism is not a new phenomenon, the rebel exacerbations witnessed today requires prompt action and a strong resolve. The global extremist movement driving this form of anarchy is manifested in groups known by a multitude of names hiding behind Islam to roam among the Islamic communities without drawing suspicion. Extremism does exist. Admitting this and recognising it as a dangerous force we can better plan to weed it from society. Islamic practice is a true following of the rules of Islam and extremism is a perverted view that deviates from the meanings of the merciful and moderate Islamic shari`ah. This elucidation is presented along this backdrop.   Abstract This elucidation explores the type of extremism and terrorism practiced under the pretext of Islam. It draws on the Quran, the sayings of Prophet Muhammad and the sayings of Muslim scholars to expose the roots of extremism and assert the just position of Islam. It also discloses revealing statements of deviant men/groups to add to the case against them. First the historical place of Islam in society is explored, then how deviations from orthodox Islam occurred and lead to the emergence of extremist ideologies manifesting historically in groups like the khawarij (dissenters) and in modern times in groups including the named al-Jama`ah al-Islamiyyah, the Wahhabis and Hizbut-Tahrir. Their actions and methodology are identified. Today, extremist movements have killed many people in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Saudi, Iraq and other places. Based on misleading reasoning, they have killed innocents. Daring to masquerade as Muslims, these extremists have attempted to destroy the reputation of Islam and Muslims. To refute them we quote a series of statements from moderate Sunni scholars; clarifying the Sunni stand against terrorism and extremism. Finally, this paper delivers solutions and warnings including, a need for Islamic scholars, Sheikhs and Islamic religious workers to remain at the forefront of the line of defence against extremists and prevent access to the extremist books. It is recognised that this work requires qualified and diligent individuals trained in deflating the calls of the named terrorist groups and activists of today. The Beginnings of Extremism Historically, many people embraced Islam freeing their hearts from the odious practices of ignorance and tribalism. Those true Muslims whose hearts pacified to the call of the Prophet were a people of middle ground, fairness and justice. Others, whose hearts did not pacify with peace of mind, had ulterior motives and emerged to spread envious gossip by attempting to split the line. They constitute the fringe sects of destruction and diseased ideologies who had to conceal themselves with the cloak of Islam to spread their evil, disrupting the harmony of Islam. The khawarij (dissenters) are among those who appeared in the first century on the Islamic calendar and whom the Prophet peace be upon him warned against in his hadith: “There will be those that come after me who will read the Qur’an but it does not go past their throats. They leave Islam like a spear leaves a prey, and they never return to it. They are the worst of the creations.” Extremism in Modern Times The majority of Muslims do not subscribe to extremist ideologies and theological perversions, which is why extremists find themselves constantly challenged, striving in every era to increase their small number and expand on their fringe positioning. Consequently, extremists have always tended to overtly gather to protect and pass their distorted views to the next generation built on youth. Today the khawarij still exist despite appearing under different names. Like their elders, they pass group-blasphemy to all those outside their sects. They continue to assault, to shed blood and to extort the properties of all those who defy them, the same way their elders did with the sons of the companions of the Prophet. Except today their threat is greater especially when they are not being faced with a unified and prompt ideological counter-offensive. The khawarij of today follow the same concepts of their elders resulting in copycat acts of terror shedding the blood of the rulers; peoples of states; Imams; contractors; journalists; ambassadors; engineers; doctors; farmers; craftsman, and old and young males and females. They call upon peoples to dissent against the leaders by way of revolutionary coup d’états and armed revolts, to hit at the infrastructure of governments and to kill its soldiers and police officers. If people refuse their calls, they apostatize them and shed their blood and extort their properties; leading to the bombing of civilian buses and to planting explosives at airports, trains, public roads. Previously they have even destroyed mosque minarets with the praise of some locals. One of their speakers here in Sydney said on a local radio station about such killing that includes the likes of people in the police force: “It’s as permissible to us as drinking water”. Let us not forget the killing and slaughtering of the kids in East Jordan on the hands of these extremists. Their activist was caught saying: “Do not prevent us from its blessing”, implying he too wanted to contribute to the cowardice slaughtering. Clearly, these and the killing of the innocent are attempts to destroy the reputation of Islam and Muslims. The extremists have killed many people in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Saudi, Iraq and other places thinking that their killing of those who oppose them is a means of seeking reward from God. Amongst those they’ve killed are: • Sheikh Muhammad ash-Shami:  the Mufti of a village near Aleppo called `Ifrin, • Sheikh Dr. Hussayn adh-Dhahabi: the Minister for Islamic Endowments and an academic at an Islamic College in Egypt. • Sheikh Nizar al-Halabi: the chairman of the Islamic Charity Projects Association in Lebanon. To plainly discover their deviant ideology and unjust reasoning underpinning their acts of terror, one needs only to observe extremists’ books.   Quotes from extremists’ books: • In their book fi dhilal al-Qur’an (In the Shades of the Qur’an) [vol. 3/G8/p.1198] they say: “He who obeys a human in a secular law even if it were partial obedience then this person is a mushrik (idolater) and a blasphemer no matter how emphatically he utters the testifications of faith”. • In the same book [vol. 2/G7/p.1057]: “All humankind in the East and the West inclusive of those who repeat the testifications of faith on the minarets with no indicator or factual happening are deeper in sin and worse in punishment on the Day of Judgment because they have blasphemed for the worship of creations”. • In the same book [vol 3/p.1449] is written: “It is required upon those who are called the Jama`ah al-Islamiyya or the brotherhood group to snatch the reigns of power from the rulers and to destroy their systems and to revolt against them by way of coups throughout the states”. However, historic and contemporary Islamic literature abounds with refutations against deviant sects. Islamic scholars fought and debated them including the great Prophetic companion `Abdullah Ibn `Abbas and the fourth Khalif (successor) Master `Aliy Ibn Abi Talib, followed by the four Sunni schools of thought and their orthodox followers. The four Sunni schools of thought are the highest authority for the Sunnis in refuting this global extremist movement and its aligned groups who falsely claim to be part of the Sunni populace.   Quotes from the four Sunni schools: • The Mufti of the Hanbalis in Mecca Sheikh Muhammad bin `Abdullah bin Hamid (d. 1295 H.) said in his book as-suhub al-wabilah (The Downpouring Clouds) page 276 about the leader of the extremist Wahhabi movement: “If he was contested and refuted and could not overtly kill his contester, he sends a hit man to murder him on his bed or at night in the market place, because he believed in the blasphemy of those who opposed him and the shedding of their blood”. • The Mufti of the Shafi`is in Mecca Sheikh Ahmad Zayni Dahlan (d. 1304 H.) wrote in his book ad-durar as-sunniyyah (The Sunni Gems) about the leader of the extremist Wahhabi movement that he used to say: “And all that is under the seven skies is a mushrik (idolater) fully, and he who kills a mushrik is rewarded with Paradise”. • He (Mufti) also relayed about the Wahhabi leader his statement: “He who enters our way shares our rights and obligations, and he who doesn’t is a blasphemer whose blood is shed and wealth is squandered”. • He also mentioned in his book ‘umara’ al-balad al-haram (The Princes of the Holy Land) that when the Wahhabis entered at-Ta’if they killed the people en mass including the elderly and the children, the honourables, the princes and the layman. They even slaughtered the suckling infants by their mothers’ breasts. They also assaulted the pilgrims to Mecca through extortion and murder. • The Maliki Sheikh Ahmad as-Sawi (d. 1241 H.) mentioned in his commentary on al-Jalalayn [vol.3 p.307-308] about the khawarij who misinterpret the true meanings of the Qur’an and the Prophetic traditions shedding in that the blood of the Muslims as is witnessed today in their localities. They are a sect in the Hijaz region (East Arabia) who are called the Wahhabis, they think they have a legitimate authority but in deed they are the liars who have been deceived by the devil who has made them forget the remembrance of their Lord. Those are the evil satanic sect; in fact the sect of Satan is defeated.”. • Dr Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1996) and who was a disciple of Sheikh Hasan al-Banna may Allah have mercy on him mentioned in his book min ma`alim al-haqq (From the Characteristics of Truth) [p.264]: “Those underground youth were later on a major threat to the group, as they started turning against each other in assassinations until they became a destructive tool for terror in the hands of those who had no true knowledge of Islam and could not be relied upon for the common interest of society”. Hasan al-Banna also said about them before he died that they were not brothers and they were not Muslims. Today, the threat of extremists is escalating and reaching new fronts beyond New York, Madrid, Bali, London and Sharm El-sheikh. They kill unjustly on one hand and call themselves ‘the Salafy Group’ on the other hand. But, no two concepts can be more polarised. They hide behind the banner of Jihad and martyrdom and under the veil of Islam. The fact of the matter remains that Islam is against them and against their evil acts. Refuting them is an Islamic obligation and diffusing them should be a way of life for the true Muslim.   Remedies and Solutions The war against extremism is a systematic war which has to be accompanied with preventative measures which include: • Satisfying the need for Islamic scholars, Sheikhs and Islamic religious workers who remain at the forefront of the line of defence against them. • To continue training new religious workers and Sheikhs with the know hows and the rebuttal documents enabling them to expose extremism and its proponents. • To expose those in the public arena so that they cannot continue to find access to the general public. • To maintain a media, broadcast and print, that supports rebutting and curtailing extremist acts and undressing their disguise and motives • To encourage Islamic leaders of today to speak out against the modern version of the khawarij in order to prevent them from teaching their ideology through pulpits, mosques, radio stations, satellite channels, schools, public lectures. • To protect the Muslim youth from their danger by preventing access to the extremist books Curtailing extremism should not be limited to security measures, which sometimes defeats the aim. Security measures may sometimes bloat the motives of extremists who act upon a recursive chain of actions and reactions in order to expand their sphere of conflict from one generation to another. Alone it could also attract the attention of some oblivious youth who might grant their sympathy to these extremist groups. Some people have even put a spin on hypocrisy, disguising it as public relation and promotion; thus luring the passive. Such deviant people compete for air time and coverage, while concealing their true identity and motives behind void utterances of peace and moderation. Their private sessions contain the same rants that they distribute in their bookstores claiming to advise the youth towards the right path for salvation. It is also behind doors that they accuse those calling against extremism to be mere agents or informers. It was only recently, when one of them was extolling extremists by saying that if it weren’t for them “Allah would have sunk the Earth from underneath us” and he called those carrying out suicidal attacks “martyrs”. Consequently, continued learning about Islam and application becomes a necessity for differentiation.   The conclusion is framed in what the trustworthy Prophet peace be upon him said: “Allah rewards for gentleness what He does not reward for violence” [related by Muslim and others]. Clearly, the onus is upon all Muslims to resolve this phenomenon, each through his informed area of expertise and with as much capacity as one could bear. Muslims in Australia and abroad following the orthodox teachings of Islam condemn all forms of terrorism, extremism and social destruction. Thus, it is essential to conquer terrorism and its kin, that governments, nations and the media differentiate between Muslims and terrorists and to further promote that there is no relation between Islam, terrorism and extremism. To execute this objective Muslims throughout the world and particularly in Australia should assert their moderate stand loudly, empowered by textual and logical proofs. They must restate that they are not the ones who exchange conviction for positions, and are not those who disregard the true Islamic fatwa for any agenda or program. Counselling against extremists cannot be achieved only by statements and words, but has to be accompanied with a continuous effort in order to eradicate this social dilemma and save nations and its peoples from its danger. This work requires qualified and diligent individuals trained in deflating the calls of the named al-Jama`ah al-Islamiyyah, the Wahhabis and Hizbut-Tahrir.

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• Saudis say No to the Prophet Muhammad, Yes to Paris Hilton – Blog: What Would Muhammad Do? (religionnews.com)
• Innocence of Muslims participants sentenced to death in Egypt (guardian.co.uk)
• Op-ed | Ignorance breeds hatred: I am not a terrorist (tuftsdaily.com)
• Top 10 Misconceptions in Islam (islamolife.wordpress.com)

Facebook Atheist Charged for “Insulting” Islam | Islamo-Fascism Attacks Free Speech

Alex Aan’s trial begins Thursday

Via:- Maryam Namazie

Alex Aan‘s trial begins tomorrow, Thursday, with the first prosecution witnesses being called, according to Rafiq Mahmood. Alex is the 30 year old Indonesian civil servant who has been charged with ‘insulting’ Islam in an atheist group in Facebook.

Rafiq says:

This isn’t just for Alex but for all of us. There have been far too many “blasphemy” cases which have just slipped by. We have to stop it if we have a chance and Indonesia is a very good place to make a stand.

And a stand we must make.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and the Atheist Alliance International are collecting money towards Alex’s case. If you want to support his case financially, you can send a donation to the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. Just make sure to earmark it for Alex Aan.

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• Calls to Behead Indonesian Atheist Alexander Aan – Presi Mandari – Jakarta Globe (richarddawkins.net)
• But you cannot shut us up – Maryam Namazie/Author of Jesus & Mo – MaryamNamazie.blogspot.com (richarddawkins.net)
• Alexander Aan, Under Attack for Blasphemy, Suddenly Converts to Islam (patheos.com)
• The Rally for Free Expression (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• Indonesian man faces jail after Facebook atheist remark (theamotimes.com)
• Naked ladies calendar sends an ‘up yours’ message to religious fundies (freethinker.co.uk)
• Free Speech Crushed by Islamic Power (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
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Islamist prisoners spread radicalization in UK jails, report finds

Islamist prisoners spread radicalization in UK jails, report finds

Ministers of parliament visited Belmarch prison in south-east London, which detains some of the most dangerous extremists in the country, including radical cleric Abu Hamza. (Reuters)

By AL ARABIYA

Islamist prisoners in the United Kingdom are preaching radical Islam to new inmates, recent findings in a nine-month inquiry by the home affairs select committee have revealed on Monday.

The report states that despite extreme security in UK jails, in some cases inmates were being persuaded to carry out suicide missions within days of entering prison, The Telegraph reported, citing the findings.

Ministers of parliament had visited Belmarch prison in south-east London, which detains some of the most dangerous extremists in the country and where 20 percent of inmates are Muslims, housing more than 30 terrorist prisoners.

Among the detainees, MPs spoke to radical cleric Abu Hamza, serving a seven-year sentence in Belmarch for inciting murder and racial hatred while fighting an extradition to the United States on terror charges.

According to the report, titled “Roots of Radicalization,” Hamza claimed: “Grievances [for Islamists in UK prisons] were driven by British foreign policy, relating to Palestine and Afghanistan, and a sense that the Prophet [Mohammed] was being mocked,” The Telegraph reported.

But Hamza denied that his sermons contributed to radicalization, telling the MPs he believed “it was enough for people to watch the news to be radicalized.”

Hamza also claimed that prisoners turned to extremism because of a combination of “grievance, guilt and capability.”

The findings come as four radical Islamists are due to be sentenced for plotting a major terror attack before Christmas on the London Stock Exchange, the London Eye and other important landmarks in the city.

It is believed that one of the terrorists, Abdul Miah, 25, was radicalized in prison after being sentenced for drugs and weapons offences, the newspaper reported.

A former neighbor of his in Cardiff told The Telegraph that Miah had “gone into prison as a petty criminal and came out spouting extremist views.”

But Michael Spurr, of the National Offender Management Service, told the committee they had “some evidence of individual prisoners who may have attempted to say things or have indicated views that could attract people to a radical cause” but no evidence that incited radicalization in jails was on the rise.

The report, however, suggested that “good aftercare [would ensure] prisoners who may have been vulnerable to violent extremist ideology in prison can make the transition safely into the community.”
(Written by Eman El-shenawi)

Related articles

• Radical Muslims ‘target young inmates in prison’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Radical Muslims ‘target young inmates in prison’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• It took years to jail him, but now MPs visit Abu Hamza at Belmarsh to canvass his views (dailymail.co.uk)
• Christina Patterson: Abu Qatada’s freedom is the price we must pay for ours (independent.co.uk)
• Hate preacher Hamza could be set free after bail ruling on fanatic Abu Qatada (dailymail.co.uk)
• Terror gang members to walk after six years following plea discount – Telegraph.co.uk (telegraph.co.uk)
• Terror group members who planned to bomb London Stock Exchange jailed (guardian.co.uk)
• London bomb plot terrorists jailed (thesun.co.uk)

Whilst Israel Lurches To Fundamentalism, Signs of Progess in Saudi Arabia?

Saudi king gives women right to vote

By AFP

Published: September 25, 2011

“Women will be able to run as candidates in the municipal election,” King Abdullah said. PHOTO: AFP

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia will allow women to stand for election and vote, the king announced on Sunday, in a significant policy shift in the conservative Islamic kingdom.

In a five-minute speech, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud said women will also take part in the next session of the unelected, advisory Shura Council, which vets legislation but has no binding powers.

“Because we refuse to marginalise women in society in all roles that comply with sharia, we have decided, after deliberation with our senior ulama (clerics) and others to involve women in the Shura Council as members, starting from the next term,” he said in a speech delivered to the advisory body.

“Women will be able to run as candidates in the municipal election and will even have a right to vote.”

Women’s rights are regarded as a litmus test for the government’s appetite for social and political reform. Saudi Arabia adheres to a strict version of Islamic law that enforces the segregation of the sexes.

“This is great news,” said Wajeha al-Huwaider, a Saudi writer and women’s rights activist. “Women’s voices will finally be heard.

“Now it is time to remove other barriers like not allowing women to drive cars and not being able to function, to live a normal life without male guardians.”

The king did not address the issue of women being allowed to drive. Although there is no written law against women driving, they are not issued licences, effectively banning the practice.

Women in Saudi Arabia must also have written approval from a male guardian, a father, husband, brother or son to leave the country, work or even undergo certain medical operations.

After entering the Shura Council chamber leaning heavily on a cane, King Abdullah, who is thought to be 87 or 88, read only a section of a longer prepared statement that was later released in full by the authorities.

The part he did not read included reference to Saudi foreign policy including the kingdom’s continued support for a Gulf-brokered plan for a power transition in Yemen.

Seeking change 

King Abdullah has long been pushing cautious political reforms, but in a country where conservative clerics and senior members of the ruling family oppose even minor changes, liberalisation has been very gradual.

He built a new university for students of both sexes and encouraged women to participate more in the labour market.

Despite calls on social media for widespread protests in Saudi Arabia during the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests in the Middle East and North Africa, the only noteworthy demonstrations were confined to the country’s Eastern Province, which is home to the country’s Shia minority.

Activists in the country have long called for greater rights for women. Ruled by an absolute monarchy supported by conservative Wahabi clerics, Saudi Arabia is a conservative country where religious police patrol the streets to ensure public segregation between men and women.

A campaign this summer by women who broke Saudi law by driving on the kingdom’s city streets prompted some arrests.

(Read: “Saudi women defy drive ban”)

Saudi Arabia will hold only its second nationwide elections in recent memory on Thursday for seats on municipal councils, but critics of the ruling al Saud family say the poll, in which voting is limited to men, is a charade.

Supporters of the absolute monarchy say the elections are designed to give Saudis a greater say in politics, but critics point out that the elections are for only half the seats on councils that have few powers.

The Shura Council, which vets legislation but cannot veto it or enforce changes, is fully appointed by the king.

“Despite the issue of the effectiveness of these councils, women’s involvement in them was necessary. Maybe after women join there will be other changes,” said Naila Attar, who organized a campaign Baladi (Arabic for My Country) calling for women’s involvement in the municipal council elections.

“I believe this is a step to involve women in the public sphere. It is the top of the pyramid and a step in the direction for more decisions regarding women.”

Iran Detains 6 Documentary Filmmakers, Activists Say

Iran detains 6 documentary filmmakers, activists say

September 19, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pictured on August 26, is being urged to free filmmakers and journalists.

Iran has detained six documentary filmmakers on accusations that they worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Persian service, activists said on Monday.The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran urged authorities to end the “ongoing intimidation and arrest of filmmakers and journalists” and called on diplomats and journalists in New York to press President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his country’s rights record during his reported visit to New York this week.”These arrests prove yet again that President Ahmadinejad and his intelligence apparatus have no tolerance for independent filmmakers and journalists,” Aaron Rhodes, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement.

“If the president expects the international community to respect his right to speak in New York, then he should be forced to explain why filmmakers and media are subject to repression in Iran,” he added.

Citing sources, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said the six documentary filmmakers were detained over the weekend and taken to prison.

It said a pro-government news agency accused the filmmakers of working for BBC Persian and spying for the service.

The BBC said Monday that no one works for the Persian service inside Iran and noted that the arrests came one day after the service broadcast a documentary on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

The documentary was an in-house production and none of the detained filmmakers worked on it, the BBC reported.

In a news story posted on its website, the BBC quoted its language service chief, Liliane Landor, as saying the arrests are part of the “ongoing efforts by the Iranian government to put pressure on the BBC.”

Also Monday, the Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance told the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency that the intelligence ministry is responsible for providing details on the filmmakers’ case.

“BBC Farsi was a major actor in the disturbances during and after the elections,” Seyed Mohammad Hosseini told the agency, referring to the 2009 presidential elections.

“It agitated and guided the people in the hopes to create problems for the country. This is why the representative office of the BBC was shut down in Tehran. Those who are working legally in Iran must now pay close attention and be very careful. We do not plan on supporting a network that engages in anti-Iran activities and works against the interests of the country,” he said.

Related articles

• Iran detains 6 documentary filmmakers, activists say (cnn.com)
• BBC says 6 indie filmmakers detained in Iran (cbc.ca)
• Iran Arrests Filmmakers Accused of Working for BBC (nytimes.com)
• 6 Filmmakers Arrested In Iran, BBC Says (huffingtonpost.com)
• Iran arrests six filmmakers over TV coverage, BBC says (theglobeandmail.com)
• Iran arrests six filmmakers for links to BBC (msnbc.msn.com)

Perilous Times for Atheists in Pakistan

Being Pakistani and atheist a dangerous combo, but some ready to brave it

Bilal Farooqi   3 days ago |

• Members of Pakistani Atheists and Agnostics trying to make their presence known and reach out to others sharing similar beliefs

       KARACHI – They realise that they belong to a country where apostasy means inviting the risk of death – even if spared by government authorities and courts, a fanatic mob would certainly not.

But they have still chosen to tread a perilous path in their attempt to reach out to other Pakistanis sharing similar beliefs and more importantly, to let the world know they exist. They are a group of Pakistani atheists called the Pakistani Atheists and Agnostics (PAA). They first tried to make their presence known two years back by making a page about their group on Facebook.

On August 14 this year, they launched their website http://www.e-paa.org that was literally an instant hit. It received more than 17,000 hits in just 48 hours after its launch from 95 countries, including Saudi Arabia.

How did the idea to bring together Pakistani atheists on a single platform come up? “When I became an atheist, I honestly thought there were no others like me in Pakistan. Through discussions on various social networking groups and forums, I found a few others like me. So we decided to make this group to find out how many more were out there,” says Hazrat NaKhuda, one of the founding members of the group. For obvious reasons, the PAA members go by pseudonyms to protect their identity.
When the PAA first appeared on the Internet, the Indian media ran a misconstrued story about the group, giving the impression that Pakistani youth were turning away from Islam due to the rising extremism and militancy. However, the PAA rebuts that story and says that its members are not only former Muslims, but people who have left Christianity, Hinduism and other faiths as well.
“Extremism is not the primary reason why people leave Islam. But looking at recent converts, I can say that it has become one of the reasons why people start questioning the religion of their forefathers,” explains Hazrat NaKhuda, who personally believes that religion does not make sense in this age. “Most people are following the beliefs of their parents and have no reason to proclaim that what they have is the truth. Once one realises that, it is fairly simple,” he adds.

Bela, another member of the group, says that extremism or militancy cannot force people to leave Islam, but it can definitely force them to find out the truth. “There can be many reasons why a person starts questioning, including rising militancy, extremism, lack of logical answers or patriarchy,” she adds. Bela believes that religion is dominated by patriarchy and is nothing more than a tool for men in power to control.

“There were always questions on my mind about religious divisions, sectarian differences and treatment of women. After much research, I found that the inequality sanctioned in religion against women is appalling and the same across all religions.” Another member Maliha thinks that apart from extremism, which is “repugnant to anyone who has not been brainwashed into accepting it,” disillusionment is also one of the reasons people turn away from their faith.

“We live in a troubled society. Often enough, we are taught that if only we turn to god, to religion, we will find answers and peace. When people, especially young ones, do that, and find that there is merely rhetoric, they feel rather disillusioned with religion, and that consequently pushes them away,” she says. “Another reason is that we are living in a progressing society. The whole world is undergoing a slow change in which it is leaving behind old religions and turning towards fixing a world, the problems of which are solely ours, not to be solved by a divine hand.

The rapid progress of science has helped this process. We Pakistanis resist globalisation and the introduction of ‘Western’ ideas and concepts, and cling dearly to our Islamic values and Arabised culture, but we are still susceptible to the zeitgeist. Some members of our society have picked it up faster than others. That’s all.” But for Zaeem Kalm, it is the “injustice we see everywhere (inclusive of that due to religious extremism but not exclusive to it) that leads us to believe that there cannot possibly be a just omnipotent being”.

“The cogs also start spinning when Muslims are exposed to people of other beliefs (directly or indirectly) and they realise that they have been falsely demonised by their society and no one deserves to be tortured for all eternity no matter what. Anyone with even a smidgen of empathy would realise how utterly vile and repugnant just the mere idea is… this makes one question the character of their deity. All one needs to do then is to think of their god like one would think of a person. If all of the personality traits were found in somebody you knew, it would be very hard to tolerate, let alone worship that person,” he says.

For most atheists living in a largely conservative society such as ours, the hardest part is putting up with the response of those close to their heart – family and friends. “If I had a buck for every time my family and friends tried to bring me back to the ‘right path’, then I would be extremely rich. The responses are varied. My family was shocked and thinks that I am just confused right now and would eventually come back. However, they are okay with it now. My friends are okay with it as well. They debate with me on different issues but that’s about it,” says Hazrat NaKhuda.

Zaeem Kalm recalls that he gradually broke the news to his family with “a subtle hint here and a brow-raising joke there”. He finally told his mother how the universe made the most sense to him and that, no matter how hard he tried, he simply could not accommodate any magical beings in it without the entire perception of reality being polarised, contorted or even shattered. His parents thought that “being a good human being is the most important thing and everything else is secondary”.

“There were times when they would call it a ‘phase’ or give me a nudge back towards religion but they seem to have given up on that now and have even learnt to deal with my occasional dose of heathen-humour,” he says. Even his close friends had no issues and they mostly said that religion is personal and no one should be forced to believe anything.

However, not all PAA members are prepared to go as far as Hazrat NaKhuda and Zaeem Kalm. “I am still a closet atheist. To my friends I am a secular Muslim. They have all liked my transition from a very religious person to a secular one and today I am much more socially accepted as compared to when I was religious. I am away from my family and I am sure they will give me a tough time when they will discover that I have quit religion,” says Aek.

Maliha thinks that a confession of all-out atheism would cause an upheaval and says that she is not ready to face that yet. “My parents are moderately religious and get upset enough at what they see as my growing heresy,” she says. “My best friend, however, is deeply religious, and, she has tried several times to bring me back to the ‘right path’, using a varied approach, including emotional and rhetorical arguments. I try my best to avoid the topic altogether with her, as I do with other religious friends – or else I listen to them, even while firmly, but gently resisting conversion. It is tough, not resisting the arguments themselves, but the emotional trauma and the sense of being so thoroughly alone is one’s perception of the world.”

Are there any chances of PAA members coming out in the open and freely expressing their beliefs without the help of pseudonyms, Hazrat NaKhuda believes in the short-term no, but in the longer run yes. “I do foresee a rise of atheists and freethinkers in Pakistan…. if not in my life time, then definitely in my children’s.” Zaeem Kalm says that when people have the courtesy to tolerate others’ beliefs, Pakistani atheists would probably be quite close to the day when they are able to freely express themselves. “That said, this would be a step forward for this country that has become exceedingly counter-intuitive for us over the past few decades.”

For its members, the PAA not only allows them to express themselves but also gives them comfort that there are others like them out there as well. “That has been one of the greatest benefits of this group. Pakistani atheists knowing that they are not alone,” says Hazrat NaKhuda. Another member Atheoi Clerk says that the PAA is a platform that lets Pakistani atheists discuss among themselves, ponder over what role they should be playing and figure out how to make things happen for the betterment of humanity.

“It comforts me now to think that surely the day isn’t far when the word atheism will sound more familiar than words like ‘fate’ or ‘angels’ even in this part of the world!” Under traditional Islamic laws, apostasy is punishable by death unless the ‘guilty’ repents and reverts back to Islam in three days, however, various Islamic schools of thought hold different views over the issue.

In 2007, the Islamist political parties of Pakistan tabled a bill in the parliament called the Apostasy Act 2006 that proposed death sentence and life imprisonment for male and female apostates, respectively. It was sent to the parliament’s standing committee concerned for review.

“The apostasy bill was not passed. Otherwise, it would have been a crime in Pakistan to change your faith. Having said that, if the prosecution can prove that one had committed blasphemy in the act of committing apostasy, then the accused could be charged under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code. But then again, all you need to charge anyone under 295-C are a few people willing to lie for you in court,” points out Hazrat NaKhuda.

He says that it is also a matter of concern for Pakistani atheists that they are left with no choice but to declare their religion when applying for a passport. The PAA wants a non-theist box to be added there. The PAA also wants it to be easier for Pakistanis to change their religion legally if they want,” he adds.

“The common population in Pakistan doesn’t care what you believe in until you get into debate with them or ridicule their values. Therefore, just being an atheist would never get me into trouble,” believes Aek.

Related articles

• A Group for Atheists in Pakistan (patheos.com)
• What Anti-Faith Commercials Could Look Like (freethoughtblogs.com)
• 7 Reasons Why I Label Myself An Atheist Rather Than An Agnostic (freethoughtblogs.com)
• Belief matters, and bad beliefs hurt us all (freethoughtblogs.com)

Vatican Islam Alliance – The Crusade Against Atheism and Secularism

Vatican Islam Alliance – The Crusade Against Atheism and Secularism

Secular News Daily reports:-

The enemy of my enemy

Last week the Vatican published an extraordinary letter, of the man-bites-dog genre. The letter was from Cardinal Tauran, head of the Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and addressed simply to his “Dear Muslim friends.” Putting aside 1300 years of bitter rivalry, Cardinal Tauran called on his Muslim friends to unite with the Church to combat a common foe: you, me, and everyone else who objects to Godexpert domination of society.Cardinal Tauran warned Muslims to face up to “ a reality which Christians and Muslims consider to be of prime importance … the challenges of materialism and secularisation.” Then he got down to brass tacks:

[T]he transmission of such human and moral values to the younger generations constitutes a common concern. It is our duty to help them discover that there is both good and evil, that conscience is a sanctuary to be respected, and that cultivating the spiritual dimension makes us more responsible, more supportive, more available for the common good.

Christians and Muslims are too often witnesses to the violation of the sacred, of the mistrust of which those who call themselves believers are the target. We cannot but denounce all forms of fanaticism and intimidation, the prejudices and the polemics, as well as the discrimination of which, at times, believers are the object both in the social and political life as well as in the mass media.

There are more code words here than you can shake a stick at. “Conscience is a sanctuary to be respected” is a code word for placing God experts above the law, so they can ignore rules that apply to the rest of us because God’s commandments (as communicated by them) are superior to the common sense solutions devised by mere mortals. Thus, for example, religious organizations must be free to discriminate against Jews and same-sex married couples, whether or not the law allows anyone else to do so. “Transmission of such human and moral values to the younger generations” is a code word for taxpayer financial support for the religious brainwashing of children, teaching them that people like you and me deserve to be tortured in hell forever. “Discrimination in the mass media” is a code word for the free expression of views like those you are reading now, views which I would have a hard time publishing in, say, Iran – a state of affairs leaving Cardinal Tauran green with envy.

Protestants rebelled against a Church grown decadent and secularized

This is not the first time Christians have reached out to Islam for cooperation against a common foe. To appreciate the magnitude of the irony, it is necessary to remember that Islam burst out of Arabia in the 7^th century largely as a rebellion against a decrepit Roman empire of the east. The Arab barbarians who swept north as far as Hungary and west as far as Spain destroyed the institutions of Christian civilization as they went, replacing them with a desert offshoot of Jewish monotheism. Not until the end of the 11^thcentury did Christendom strike back, with its ultimately unsuccessful Crusades to recapture Palestine. By the time the Protestant Reformationbroke out, a neutral observer might have predicted that Islam, not Christianity, would ultimately dominate Europe. Indeed, one of the principal reasons why the Habsburg emperor Charles V failed to crush the upstart Martin Luther like a bug was that he was too busy defending Vienna itself from an Ottoman Muslim siege.The Reformation itself was in many ways a rebellion of those motivated by Godliness against a Catholic Church that had grown rich, decadent, and (worst of all) secularized. Protestant reformers sought to purify Christianity against the influence of the “Whore of Babylon.” There was low-level violence between Protestants and Catholics throughout the 16^th century, but the carnage commenced in earnest in 1618, with a dispute over whether a Catholic or a Protestant would rule Bohemia.

The resulting Thirty Years War, as it became known, was the greatest man-made disaster ever visited upon Europe, far worse than World War II. Things went poorly for the Protestant side from the outset. Not only was their man displaced from Bohemia, but the Jesuit-dominated Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II decided that this would be a great opportunity to wipe out Protestantism once and for all. Ferdinand’s generals piled up victory after victory, and it looked like he was going to succeed.

Then Protestant diplomacy kicked into gear. The 17^th century version of Cardinal Tauran persuaded the Ottoman Muslim Sultan, Murad IV, that if Ferdinand prevailed against the Protestants, the balance of power might be disrupted, and perhaps he might then turn to the east. The ploy worked, at least initially. Next thing you know, Muslim armies were drawn up alongside Protestant armies to face down a common enemy, just like the coalition the Vatican is trying to array against humanism today. In fact, the Protestant-Muslim alliance was not as farfetched as one might think; theologically, both believed in predestination of the elect, as opposed to the Catholic doctrine of free will.

People who speculate on the “what-ifs” of history have a hard time with what would have happened if the Muslim-Protestant coalition had destroyed the Habsburgs. My guess is that we’d all be praying to Allah today, since the Habsburgs were the only force that ever prevented the Muslims from overrunning the rest of Europe. What actually happened back in 1626, though, was that over on the other side of his empire Murad suffered an embarrassing defeat against the Persians, and thus hastily withdrew his armies from the Protestant camp. The abandoned Protestants then surrendered without a fight, signing a treaty at Bratislava giving Ferdinand nearly everything he wanted.

Are Catholics getting ready to say ‘Yes’?

Ferdinand proceeded to squander his success, largely because the Jesuits persuaded him that his brilliant military commander wasn’t religious enough, but that’s another story. Today’s story is the travesty of Christians once again trying to ally with Muslims against a common enemy. When Cardinal Tauran gushes about the common “human and moral values” of Islam and Christianity, is he talking about polygamy? The Church prattles on until it’s blue in the face about marriage being between one man and one woman, yet is now delighted to ally with those who say no, it’s between one man and four women. Is he talking about genital mutilation? Al-Azhar, the Muslim equivalent of the Vatican, says it’s a critical part of Islam; when the Cardinal urges the rights of conscience to defy laws of the state, does he mean the anti-mutilation laws as well?Is he talking about evolution? The Catholic Church, unlike many Protestants, today acknowledges the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution. Islam most emphatically does not. Since this is all about cynical politics rather than moral principles, would the Church be willing to throw evolution over the side in order to cement a more perfect union against humanism with its Muslim allies?

For your sake and mine, let’s hope this latest Christian-Muslim joint venture turns out as poorly as the one back in 1626.

Related articles:

1. Fischer: Only Difference Between Liberals and Terrorists Is That “So Far [Liberals] Haven’t Taken to Killing People”
2. At Ralph Reed Confab, Obama Portrayed as Enemy of Faith and Freedom
3. Confused critics: Are you ‘an enemy of what is good about America’?
4. Religious Right Makes Michael Bloomberg Enemy Number One For His “Insult To God”
5. Boykin: There Can Be No Interfaith Dialogue Between Muslims and Christians

Luis Granados is a Washington, DC attorney and a student of the scandals of religious history. His weekly God Experts blog relates a current headline or anniversary to a curious episode from the past. Someday, he will publish a book called Damned Good Company, a collection of stories of humanist heroes through the ages who bucked the prevailing God experts.

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Pamela Geller “America’s Most Deranged Blogger”

Pamela Geller Rages at the Independent’s Accurate Article

Shrieking Harpy says, ‘I love Muslims!’

She’s looking more and more like SKELETOR!

“I ♥ me some Muslims!”

The Independent’s Robert Chalmers has a very balanced and fair look at Pamela Geller: American patriot or extremist firebrand?And of course, any balanced and fair examination of the Shrieking Harpy can only come to one conclusion: she’s desperately unhinged.

What’s striking about this article, though, is that Geller completely lacks the courage of her convictions. When confronted about her bizarre, hate-filled posts, she invariably attempts to pretend she didn’t really say what she did really say. It’s a “joke,” or it’s somebody else’s writing that she just happened to put on her blog for no particular reason, or it’s “taken out of context.” Like many extremists and bigots, underneath the bluster and the hateful statements Geller is a coward.

For example:

Among the many new things I have learnt from the work of Pamela Geller is that President Obama reputedly used to knock around with a crack whore.

“That,” the author, blogger and broadcaster insists, “is not what I said. You are taking this out of context. The post [on her website atlasshrugs.com] was pointing out how people were reporting lie after lie about Sarah Palin. I said to myself, there is so much about Obama we don’t print. In his youth,” she continues, repeating a story for which there exists absolutely no foundation, “he supposedly liked a girl who was a crack whore. I never reported it as fact. They say all these vile things about Palin but do we ever talk about Obama and the crack whore?”

The incredibly libellous post, entitled: “IT’S TIME TO EXPOSE THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA” appeared on 1 August 2009. “Why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections?” Geller wrote. “It is well known that he allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff … Find the ho, give her a show! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices.”

Pretty hard to take that out of context, wouldn’t you say?

Chalmers emailed me to ask for my reaction to Geller’s insults:

She began blogging on littlegreenfootballs.com, run by the professional musician and software expert Charles Johnson. Between 2004 and 2007, she posted thousands of entries. “She was always as reactionary,” he tells me, “as you see her now.”

Johnson, who, as that remark would suggest, does not share Geller’s opinions, is described as a “mental patient” on Atlas Shrugs.

“I know Pamela Geller often calls me crazy,” he told me. “But I’m not the one who talks about the president’s birth certificate being faked or says that he’s the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, and I’m not the one who defends a war criminal and makes alliances with white supremacist groups. That would be Ms Geller. She has a very long record of absolute lunacy, mixed with bigotry and racism and I am far from the only person to point this out.”

Please note: the article says Geller posted “entries” at LGF, but that’s not accurate. She posted comments only; even when LGF focused heavily on Islamic extremism, there was no way I’d ever let someone this crazed and illiterate post front page entries here.

The overall picture you get from the Independent’s article is of a pathetic, intellectually challenged bigot who thrives on the attention, and the Shrieking Harpy has responded to Chalmers’ article with her customary insults and incoherent rage: Independent Sunday Magazine Cover Story: Pamela Geller ‘The most dangerous woman in America???????’

Robert Chalmers could not disappoint his judgemental peers and risk losing his cache with the lemmings; hence he commiserated with intellectual frauds like Charles Johnson and an unnamed journalist who actually attempted amateur Geller psychoanalysis (as if), but Chalmers chose not to speak to the people I actually work with, like Robert Spencer, Pamela Hall, James Lafferty etc.,

Geller seems to believe that Chalmers was actually sympathetic to her, but too afraid to say so. Good grief.

Pamela Geller is definitely not the “most dangerous woman in America,” but she just might take the title of “most deranged blogger in America.”

Read the whole thing…

14-Year-Old Girl Lashed to Death for Islam

The BBC reports the utterly barbaric death of a 14 year old girl in Bangladesh.

Can you possibly guess why? Yep, no surprise or shock, its what we expect. Just one single word sums it all up … “islam”. (Yes, I’ve not used upper-case, I refuse to do so)

She was accused of having an affair, so a village court consisting of elders and clerics passed the sentence. When challenged, they claim that the punishment was given under Islamic Sharia law. She was sentenced and then given 80 lashes. She was then later admitted to a hospital after the incident and died there six days later.

The authorities have (quite rightly) stepped in, so far four people have been arrested and another 14 are still wanted.

“What sort of justice is this? My daughter has been beaten to death in the name of justice,” Mosammet’s father, Dorbesh Khan, 60, told the BBC.

Here are a couple of links that give you a lot more information about all this. First we have the BBC report on it here, then we also have the Newspaper report in the UK’s Guardian here.

Check out the Guardian page, some of the folks writing comments there have been removed, some of the others still in place are more or less dancing on her grave. These are (as you might expect), the islamic believers doing the, “Oh thats not ‘real’ islam dance that they always do when faced with such incidents. It becomes a “them” and “us” song about how islam is really all about peace and that true muslims would never do this … er no, sorry but you don’t get to play that card … period.

Choosing to believe in a made up supernatural entity and claiming that it has given you a book of bizarre rules for you to impose on others is at the root of all this. The truth is that lots of smart folks do truly believe many weird things, and I’m OK with that. However, the moment you start to impose anything on others you have crossed a line. islam (as do many other beliefs) crosses that line and must be robustly challenged and told, “believe whatever bullshit you like, but you don’t get to dictate to others”. If not, then this is where it will lead you.

When faced with the claim that religion is a forced for good in the world, be skeptical. The evidence does not support that claim.