All Entries in the "Commentary" Category

EGYPT: AHMED SHAFIK, THE CIA’S MAN FOR PRESIDENT!

The Egyptians had a Arab Spring that turned into a Revolution!

Political contract’ required to enter Israel?

A Swedish tourist trying to enter Israel was made to sign a “contract” promising she won’t get in touch

FBI information gathering on Muslims decried

Newly disclosed intelligence-gathering on Bay Area Muslims by FBI agents

Meet An Islamophobia Network ‘Expert’: Steven Emerson

Steven Emerson directs the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

Singling Out Islam: Newt Gingrich’s Pandering Attacks

It’s interesting to observe what qualifies as beyond the pale in American politics

USA vs Al-Arian now vailable on the web Free‏

In 2007, Norwegian filmmakers released a documentary film entitled  USA vs. Al-Arian.

Does Jewish Law Justify Killing Civilians?

Editorial Note:

This article is not against Judaism as a Religion! As Muslims We believe in Moses as a prophet of God, and in Judaism as a divine religion. What we want to prove here, is the fact that the Islamophobes like Robert Spencer and Pam Geller by saying that Islam is “Violent” Religion, are just deceiving their readers!
Islam is like any other religion, can be interpreted in several ways, and Judaism as a religion can be interpreted in a very extreme and violent ways!
Israel -for example- is the real manifestation of interpreting Torah in a very violent and racist way, So, What we are trying to prove here, that if Islamophobes see some logic in criticizing Islam because of ‘being violent’, They need to revise their thoughts about their own scriptures and holy books!
The real obstacle is not in religions, it’s in the racist, extremist and violent followers!

Source

Islamophobes like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller claim that Islam is more violent than other religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity.  To prove this, they argue that the Islamic holy book, the Islamic prophet, and the Islamic God are all uniquely violent–certainly more so than their Judeo-Christian counterparts.

We proved these claims completely bunk by showing the Bible to be far more violent than the Quran, the Biblical prophets to be far more violent than the Prophet Muhammad, and Yahweh of the Bible to be far more violent than Allah of the Quran.  (See parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-i, 6-ii, 6-iii, 6-iv, 7, 8, 9-i, and 9-ii of LoonWatch’s Understanding Jihad Series.)

Instead of defending their initial claim (which they simply cannot), the Islamophobes quickly shift gears and rely on a fallback argument: they argue that “the Bible doesn’t actively exhort its believers to commit acts of violence, unlike the Quran.”  I refuted this argument in part 6 (see 6-i, 6-ii, 6-iii, 6-iv) in an article entitled The Bible’s Prescriptive, Open-Ended, and Universal Commandments to Wage Holy War and Enslave Infidels.

Once that argument goes to the wayside the Islamophobes then jump to their next fall back argument: “most Jews and Christians don’t take the Bible literally like Muslims do the Quran!”  I refuted this argument in part 7, showing that they do in fact understand the Bible very, very literally.

In a very predictable pattern, once this argument fails, the Islamophobes rely on yet another fall back argument, the famous cop-out “But That’s Just the Old Testament!”.  I’ve refuted this argument in part 8.

Once this fall back argument is refuted, Islamophobes once again do not defend it.  Instead, they move on to the next fall back argument:  they argue that “Jews and Christians simply don’t interpret their holy book in a violent manner, unlike Muslims.”  Writes Robert Spencer on p.31 of his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades):

When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don’t interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent action against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretive traditions that have moved away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretive tradition. The jihad passages in the Qur’an are anything but a dead letter.

This is Spencer’s preemptive parry to any counterattack whenever anyone (like myself) responds to his cherry-picking of Quranic verses by reciprocating and finding similar (and even worse) passages in the Bible. We are told that modern-day Jews and Christians simply don’t take those passages seriously any more, that they are merely symbolic or that they are dead letters.

Spencer et al. will then take a break from copying-and-pasting Quranic passages, and instead focus on “classical opinions” in the Islamic tradition, which they claim continue to be to this day the “orthodox, mainstream opinions according to the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence [madhaib].” By contrast, argues Spencer, classical and modern-day orthodox, mainstream interpretations of Judaism and Christianity have moved away from literal understandings of the Bible and opted for non-violent, peaceful understandings.

However, I will prove that this is not the case at all. The violent verses in the Bible helped formulate the “classical opinions” of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and continue to be held by “mainstream, orthodox” groups today.  In this article, we will examine the Jewish rabbinical tradition (both the “classical” and modern day situation); in a later article, we will grapple with the Christian side of things.

Rabbi Eliyahu Stern published an article in the New York Times entitled “Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America.”  Stern’s balanced article noted that the anti-Muslim demonization of Islam (and Islamic law) “is disturbingly reminiscent” of “19th-century Europe” Anti-Semitism.  Pamela Geller, an extremist Zionist Islamophobe, published an irate letter from David Yerushalmi (who she describes as the “leading legal mind on sharia in America and my lawfare attorney”), who huffed (emphasis added):

[T]he historical comparison between the response to sharia in this country and Europe’s objection to Jewish law centuries earlier is a result of poor scholarship and faulty logic.  Jewish law, certainly since the destruction of the Jewish Commonwealth almost two thousand years ago, has had nothing to do with political power or the desire to effect dominion over another people. 

To the contrary, the opposition to sharia is the fact that throughout the Muslim world, sharia is the call to an exclusive Islamic political power with hegemonic designs (see the two most prominent surveys cited here: http://mappingsharia.com/?page_id=425).  The war doctrine of jihad is part and parcel of sharia.  It is alive and well as such throughout the Muslim world.

This is the same argument raised by Robert Spencer: Jewish law is peaceful and certainly does not call to violence or war like Islamic law does.

I will absolutely nuke this argument into oblivion.  (In the words of one of our readers: “Danios doesn’t make the mistake of bringing a knife to a gun fight–he brings a nuclear bomb.”)

*  *  *  *  *

One of the fundamental differences between the Islamic canon (Quran and hadiths) and the Bible is with regard to discrimination: the Islamic texts explicitly, categorically, and emphatically command soldiers to fight combatants on the battlefield only, and totally forbid targeting and killing innocent civilians (women, children, the elderly, the decrepit, etc.). On the other hand, the Bible is replete with verses in which God Himself commands the believers to target and kill innocent civilians. In fact, the God of the Bible becomes very upset with those of his followers who fail to complete acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

It is perhaps no big surprise then that one of the main ways in which the “classical” and so-called “orthodox, mainstream views” of the Islamic tradition differ from those in the Jewish tradition is with regard to discrimination: the Islamic tradition forbids its followers from targeting and killing civilians, whereas the Jewish counterpart permits it.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, convenor of the Orthodox Forum

Every year leading Orthodox Jewish luminaries from around the world–including “rashei yeshivah [deans of Talmudical academies], rabbis, educators and academicians from America and Israel”–flock to The Orthodox Forum to discuss “a single topic affecting the Jewish world.”  In 2004, the topic of choice was “War and Peace,” which was chosen due to “the United States’ involvement in Iraq” and “Israel’s ongoing war with terrorism” (quotes from p.xiii of War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition).

After these influential experts discussed the issues surrounding “war and peace,” they published their discussion in the fourteenth volume of “the Orthodox Forum Series” in a book entitled War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition.  As such, this book does not merely reflect the views of one or two Jewish authors.  Instead, it “brings together the thinking of a wide range of distinguished American and Israeli academicians and religious leaders from various disciplines, to shed light on the historical, philosophical, theological, legal and moral issues raised by military conflict and the search for peaceful resolution” (p.xi) with the goal of appreciating “the relevance of Jewish sources in approaching contemporary challenges” (p.xii).

[Note: Throughout this article series, readers should assume all emphasis is mine, unless otherwise indicated.  Also note that Rabbi is abbreviated to R., as is the accepted convention.]

Reading this very authoritative book, written by the brightest minds of Orthodox Judaism, I came to appreciate at least five major ways in which Halakha (Jewish law) permits shedding the blood of innocents–at least five major exceptions to the law of discrimination.

The reader should keep in mind that these five different exceptions have nothing to do with “collateral damage,” the incidental or unintended killing of civilians, which is generally accepted by international law (with some important caveats).  Instead, these five exceptions have to do with targeting and killing civilians.

I purposefully say “at least five different exceptions,” since there are most certainly more, which I shall discuss in future articles.  However, those other exceptions are debatable or held as minority opinions, such as the concept of targeted assassinations (debatable, I guess) and the idea that Palestinians should be exterminated because they are the modern-day Amalekites (a valid but minority “halakhic opinion”).  Instead, I will focus on views held by the majority of mainstream Orthodox Jewish rabbinical leadership.

*  *  *  *  *

In the United States, Judaism is split into three main sects: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox.  In Israel, however, Reform and Conservative Judaism do not exist in large numbers.  Instead, the battle lines are drawn between secular and Orthodox Jews.  According to The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 20% of Israeli Jews are secular, 25% are Orthodox (17% are Religious Zionists [Modern Orthodox Judaism] and 8% are Ultra-Orthodox [Haredi]), with the largest group of Israeli Jews (55%) falling under the rubric of “traditional.”

The views of “traditional Jews” towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem to fall in between the two major ideological groups: secular and Orthodox Jews.  For example, whereas “only” 36% of secular Israelis support “price tag” terrorism against Palestinians and a whopping majority of Orthodox Jews support such tactics (70% of Religious Zionists and 71% of Ultra-Orthodox Jews), just over half of traditional Jews (55%) condone terrorism against the Palestinians.

Orthodox Judaism is split between Modern Orthodox Judaism and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism).  In Israel, Modern Orthodox Judaism is dominated by Religious Zionism (alternatively called “national-religious”).  This sect is widely considered to be the “mainstream” of Orthodox Judaism in Israel.  It is this sect, therefore, that I will focus on in my article series.

One should not, however, be led to believe that Ultra-Orthodox Judaism is much better in this regard.  Although Agudat Yisrael (the original major political party that represented Ultra-Orthodox Jews) initially opposed the Zionist enterprise, this changed after the creation of the state of Israel.  These Ultra-Orthodox Jews saw the Israeli state as a means for “state enforcement of religious laws” and wanted “increased state financial support for their schools and for religious institutions” (quotes taken from the Zionism & Israel Center‘s official website).

Today, “though still non-Zionist, [these Ultra-Orthodox Jews] tend to favor perpetuation of the occupation and vote with the right against peace moves or negotiations.”  Their right-wing attitudes towards Palestinians are reflected in the earlier statistic I cited, which showed that an overwhelming majority (71%) of Ultra-Orthodox Jews support price tag terrorism against Palestinians, which is almost exactly the same percentage of Religious Zionists (70%) who do.  Ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israel has been heavily influenced by Zionism and Religious Zionism, especially in their hostile views towards the indigenous Palestinians.

However, because many Israelis feel that Ultra-Orthodox Jews are “extreme,” I will focus my discussion here on the more “mainstream” sect, Modern Orthodox Judaism.  (In a follow-up article, I will outline the Ultra-Orthodox view on such subjects in order to prove that there is an emerging “bipartisan” consensus on these issues within Orthodox Judaism in Israel.) For now, however, I will largely stick to the generally accepted views within Religious Zionism.

Therefore, in my article The Top Five Ways Jewish Law Justifies Killing Civilians–the title that will be used for the remaining article series–I will not focus on Yizhak Shapira’s book the King’s Torah.  Despite the fact that Modern Orthodox Judaism’s rabbis seemed to accept Shapira’s views “governing the killing of a non-Jew’ outlined in the book [as] a legitimate stance” and a valid “halachic opinion,” I will bypass all such discussion by focusing on majority views held by Religious Zionism and Modern Orthodox Judaism, not the more extreme Kahanist sect of Religious Zionism.

In so doing, I will show that these majority views are hardly less worrisome than Rabbi Shapira’s opinions expressed in the King’s Torah.  I will show that one need not look to settler rabbis, Kahanists, or Ultra-Orthodox Jews to find extremely warlike views.  The mainstream Modern Orthodox rabbinical leadership will suffice.  Worse yet, Israeli Jews–deeply religious Jews–are leading the fight against the concept of distinction, the fundamental aspect of the just war theory.  They are applying pressure to change international law and to abrogate the regulations of the Geneva Conventions, which they believe are “archaic” and inapplicable today.  Could it be said, using the emotive language of our opponents, that Judaism is waging war against the principle of distinction?

The purpose of this is to prove that if there are problems within the house of Islam (which there certainly are), let it be known that the house of Judaism is no different in this regard.  It would behoove us to remind ourselves of this before we point the accusatory finger at The Other.  Extremist Zionist Islamophobes like Pamela Geller–and their Christian comrades-in-arms like Robert Spencer–should take note.

Disclaimer:  Before we get into it, please read my disclaimer, Why Religious Zionism, Not Judaism, is the Problem. (This is in addition to my earlier disclaimer, which you should also read):

Commentary: The real threat in Egypt: Delayed democracy

Jackson Diehl wrote for the Washington post an op-ed on the “real threat in Egypt: Delayed democracy“:

A lot of people in Washington seem to think so, though they are talking about it quietly so far. Their fears are specific: that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic fundamentalist parties will take power when Egypt’s first democratic elections are held later this year; and that peace with Israel — the foundation of a 30-year, American-backed order in the Middle East — is “hanging by a thread,” as Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy put it.

No one in Egypt is talking about demolishing the peace treaty with Israel, even the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is standing against the Israeli violations against humanity, despite of their complete understanding for the Egyptian foreign policy and its international complications.
So The Muslim Brotherhood cannot seek a new war with Israel, at the same time, they will express -in case of being in power- the real pulse of the Egyptian street.
So fearing the Muslim Brotherhood and thinking of them as the new threat in the region is unrealistic talk based on arbitrary speculations.

True, Islamist parties may win a plurality in the parliamentary elections. Estimates of their potential vote range from 10 to 40 percent. But that still means they would hold a minority of seats; and the Islamists themselves are divided into several factions. The strongest of them recognize that they will not be able to force a fundamentalist agenda on Egypt’s secular middle class or its large Christian minority, at least in the short and medium terms.

This paragraph is full of deceptions. First of all, The Muslim Brotherhood or the other moderate Islamists in Egypt don’t aim to impose or to force Sharia on the Egyptian people.
On the other hand, the Christian minority are believing in the Islamic component of the Egyptian civilisation! So being ruled by moderate Islamists is not representing a real fear for a very large section of the Egyptian Copts.

Those who worry about an Egyptian implosion sometimes hint that the elections should be further postponed or even canceled. In fact, the opposite is needed. The United States and other Western governments ought to adopt the demand put forward in a letter last week by Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who was one of the leaders of the revolution: that the military “quickly announce specific dates for the process of transferring complete power . . . to an elected civilian authority that would control everything in the nation.” Egypt’s problem is neither its revolution nor its prospective democracy: It’s what is happening — and may yet happen — between the two.

In Egypt, We believe that the best thing to do right now is to transfer the power to an elected civilian government, and the Muslim Brotherhood just like the other civilian political forces will not save any efforts to save Egypt and the whole region.

Top Ten Right-Wing Responses To CAP’s Islamophobia Report: ‘Cowards,’ ‘Straight Out of Mein Kampf,’ ‘A Pile Of Dung’

Source | By Eli Clifton

The Center for American Progress’s new report, “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” is receiving a positive welcome from neutral observers as journalists and pundits pore over the 139-page exposé on the U.S. Islamophobia network.

The report’s authors have appeared on CNN.com, Al Jazeera English, Current TV, Guardian.co.uk and numerous radio interviews. Print media outlet such as The Jewish Daily Forward, The Atlantic, Salon.com, The Washington Post and The Nation have all run articles discussing the report’s findings.

Unfortunately, that accuracy and thorougness has proven a challenge for many of the Islamophobes mentioned in the report. With no serious factual errors with which to attack the authors, they’ve fallen back on attacking straw men and offering vitriolic, if at times colorful, ad hominem attacks.

Here’s the top ten list of right-wing responses to “Fear, Inc.”

10.) Townhall.com columnist Karen Lugo concludes that the report’s authors are “the real cowards” and claims “it was the authors of this 138-page report that demonstrated a real phobia when they evaded the urgent question: Does America have a reason to fear Muslims?” (Actually, that was a major part of the report.)

9.) Writing on David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag, Daniel Greenfield runs with the new meme that the report blames Jews for Islamophobia. He writes, “Any report on Islamophobia that scapegoats Jews is not a report on bigotry, it is an act of bigotry.”

8.) Ed Lasky, writing on The American Thinker, inaccurately claims that the report pins blame on Jews, arguing, “…this ‘report’ relies on the conspiracy and age-old anti-Semitic trope that Jews fan prejudice towards others and promotes divisions for their own nefarious purposes (to support Israel in this case). This mindset is straight out of Mein Kampf.”

7.) Adrian Morgan, editor of Family Security Matters, takes issue with report author Wajahat Ali, writing, “Ali is said to be a ‘humorist’ but there is pitiably little that appears in his blog ‘Goatmilk’ that displays this purported sense of humor.” Morgan also identifies a typo in the report and ponders “Was there no money left for a proof-reader, to here strike out the superfluous word, ‘he’?”

6.) Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes told The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein that, “I am not against the religion of Islam but am very much against the political ideology of Islamism, which I see as the third great totalitarian movement after fascism and communism. This lack of distinction points to the intellectually shoddy premise of the report.”

5.) Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer wrote on Human Events that the report’s authors are assisting jihadists because “Fear, Inc.”, “ignores jihad activity altogether, portraying Muslims as victims and demonizing all who stand in the way of the misogynistic and unjust agenda of the Islamic jihad, whether advanced by violent or nonviolent means. It thus reveals itself to be just another tool of those same jihadists.”

4.) Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney bizarrely, and we might add inaccurately, describes the report as CAP’s “…latest ‘copy and paste’ effort [duplicating] large sections of five nearly identical ‘investigations’ just this year, complaining that millions of concerned Americans are Islamophobes.” Gaffney, in what might be an editorial misstep, proceeds to interview himself, writing, “Frank J. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, noted that ‘The ‘Shariah Defense Lobby’ is in a race against time to hide the grim reality of Shariah law as it is actually enforced…’”

3.) Daniel Pipes’ PipeLineNews.org observed that the report “neatly falls into lockstep with the efforts being exerted by Muslim Brotherhood front groups to incrementally Islamize the West.”

2.) Blogger Pamela Geller calls the report “a predictable misfired missile by Islamic supremacists and leftist useful idiots” and “a pile of dung masquerading as research” that “reads more like a Mein Kampf treatise.” She encourages her readers to “watch [the authors] choke on their own vomit” and concludes “they will never defeat me.”

1.) Fox Business Network’s Eric Bolling, inaccurately attributed an outlandishly anti-Semitic quote to the report, saying, “I’m reading directly from this report: ‘The Obama-allied Center for American Progress has released a report that blames Islamophobia in America on a small group of Jews and Israel supporters in America, whose views are being backed by millions of dollars.’

To be clear, neither that quote nor anything resembling it, appears in our report. Please email Brian Lewis, VP for Corporate Communications at Fox Business (brian.lewis@foxnews.com), and tell him that Bolling’s wildly inaccurate reporting on “Fear Inc.” requires an on-air correction.

Germany’s Unhealthy Obsession with Islam

A Commentary by Rolf Schieder

German Islamophobes hold that their more liberal opponents are do-gooder Islamophiles and cultural relativists. German critics of Islamophobia claim their more conservative opponents are scare-mongers and slanderers. What both groups have in common is an obsession with Islam that doesn’t do Muslims, Christians or secularists any good.

The way the
politically motivated murders of 77 Norwegian children, adolescents and adults by a right-wing extremist were interpreted by the media as an attack on Islam was downright eerie. There were hardly any Muslims among the victims, nor was a mosque in Oslo blown up. It was not the beginning of a crusade against Islam. The victims were overwhelmingly young social democrats, who, if they could be assigned to a religious category at all, were mainly members of the Lutheran state church.

The killer, Anders Breivik, believes that the “Islamization” of Europe is a threat. But what he finds even more threatening is the “cultural Marxism” practiced by his fellow Norwegians. For him, their liberalism is a sign of cowardice and weakness. The term “cultural Marxism” is a reference to “cultural Bolshevism,” a concept from the 1920s, when lamentations about a general cultural decline were part of the standard repertoire of conservative political parties. Members of Germany’s so-called Conservative Revolution (ed’s note: mainly active in the period between World War I and World War II) saw the reasons for that decline in capitalism and consumerism, Westernization and individualization. In this sense, it is entirely correct to identify this mental climate as Breivik’s inspiration, as the historian Volker Weiss did in a recent opinion piece for SPIEGEL ONLINE.

But what does one gain from calling the killer a “right-wing brother of the jihadists,” as Weiss does, and characterizing the events in Norway as “the Talibanization of the Christian right”? This reinforces the old prejudice of the European left, namely, that religion in itself is always and exclusively dangerous. Yet this overlooks the fact that it was political, non-religious worldviews that inflicted endless suffering on humanity in the 20th century. It also suggests that there is a worldwide ecumenical movement of religions that are prepared to use violence and that have become a threat to the non-religious. In Weiss’s mind, the events in Norway represent a “fatal embrace” between “crusaders and jihadists.”

But if one is to establish a commonality between right-wing extremists like Breivik and jihadists, it lies not in a violent ecumenical movement, but in the shared psychosocial circumstances of the perpetrators. Terrorism is a problem among culturally uprooted, politically radical angry young men who are often educated but unsuccessful. They are men who rebel against a world in which they no longer feel at home. They have higher expectations of the world than it could ever fulfill.

In his influential book “Männerphantasien” (“Male Fantasies”), the German sociologist Klaus Theweleit offers a plausible explanation for the relationship between fascism and delusions of masculinity. If we consider the narcissistic outpourings of the mass murderer behind the Oslo and Utøya attacks, it is not difficult to recognize that he too dreamed the dream of the masculine knight — depicted as courageous, tough, white, potentially brutal but ultimately irresistible — who acts as the savior of a society portrayed as corruptible, soft, permissive, comfortable, feminine and in urgent need of purification. For Breivik, the sympathy that society expresses for the victims is presumably additional proof of its decadence. His goal was not to combat the Muslims, but to rescue his own society from disintegration.

A Sign of What Is Lacking

What, then, is the source of this obsession with Islam? Fifteen years ago, there were about 2 million Turkish immigrants in Germany. Today, Germany’s immigrants from Turkey are often lumped into a single category of “Muslims.” Their critics say that it is not Turkish parents’ own lack of education that prevents their children from doing well in school, but their religious affiliation. Muslim “headscarf girls” (ed’s note: a phrase coined by the controversial German author Thilo Sarrazin) are characterized as both a threat to feminism and dangerous baby-making machines obsessed with “demographic jihad.” Some cite the supposed threat of Muslim parallel societies, apparently ignoring the fact that for centuries Germans have lived in parallel societies consisting of Catholics and Protestants.

“Islam” has become a social phantasm. According to the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the term “phantasm” refers to a negated and repressed lack. As well as individual phantasms, which point to a repressed deficiency and to unattainable objects of desire, there are also societal obsessions, which relate to socially repressed deficiencies and unattained desires. The phantasm does not describe a real object. Instead, it indicates what is lacking.

What are these deficiencies? What is lacking? It isn’t the same for everyone.
Thilo Sarrazin decries what he sees as a lack of German children. The German politician Klaus von Dohnanyi believes immigrants are more devout than Germans. Others admire their family values. Turks who celebrate loudly and raucously after their team has won a football match are praised for their national pride. We even grudgingly acknowledge the willingness of suicide bombers to sacrifice their lives. Our own population seems lazy, indecisive, fearful, spoiled and endlessly demanding in comparison.

The only possible conclusion seems to be that — to quote the title of Sarrazin’s best-selling book — Germany is doing itself in. But despite the commercial success of Sarrazin’s apocalyptic tome, it did not trigger any tangible change within German society. Thus, the faction of Islam’s critics continues to suffer in the midst of a population that supposedly lacks the collective will to defend itself.

We Are Actually Discussing Ourselves

Opposing this culturally pessimistic faction are the secularists who do not subscribe to the phantasm of Islam as the more aggressive and more powerful religion, but instead regard Islam as an anachronistic and — given their own belief in a secular society — ultimately illegitimate phenomenon. To these German intellectuals, the fact that an ailing Christian Church tries to help Muslims gain public recognition — for example, by advocating chairs in Islamic studies at universities — in a bid to save itself from demise, is doubly vexing.

For German secularists, what is lacking is a secular society. But Germany is still a long way from that. Almost two-thirds of Germans are members of a church, a number that, when compared with the 2 percent of Germans who are members of a political party, speaks to the still robust state of organized religion. Although we live in a secular state, it is not a secular society that the state seeks to protect, but a society that has a vibrant diversity of religious beliefs and worldviews and is therefore pluralistic.

There is a range of other deficiencies, wishes, fears and desires that motivate the phantasm of “Islam,” from the yearning for a homogeneous German population to a highly individualized social model that deconstructs all things institutional. The real problem is that we are not actually discussing Islam at all. Instead, we are — in the sense that we are talking about what we are not — actually discussing ourselves. For this reason, I would give the following piece of Kant-inspired advice: “Have the courage to use your own religio-political reason without referring to the Other of Islam.” It is not the dispute over the phantasm of “Islam” that is productive, but the impartial analysis of the goals of the religio-political parties that are at odds in our country.

This would remove an enormous burden from the everyday lives of Muslims. They could simply view themselves as a religious minority among others, like the Jews for example, a minority that seeks to practice its religion within the framework of what is legally permissible — nothing more and nothing less. Problems relating to education, integration and equality could then be addressed as such in a nuanced and appropriate manner without being immediately framed within the context of a culture war. German Muslims would be relieved of the need to justify themselves every time an Islamist suicide bomber commits an attack somewhere in the world. They would be seen primarily as German citizens and only secondarily as members of a world religion.

This would make it easier to differentiate between the idea of “Islam” and the many ways to be a Muslim man or woman in Germany, a country that guarantees religious freedom. Finally, the various Muslim organizations could calmly coordinate among themselves, without having to confront external pressures, regarding how they want to jointly interact with mainstream society.

Civilizing Religion

Without a fantastical view of “Islam,” the German debate over religious policy would then become both tougher and clearer. Secularists, who seek to make religion an entirely private affair, and so-called culturalists, who seek to give priority to Christianity, could no longer sustain their joint campaign against Islam. They would be forced to recognize that the respective social models they envision are completely contradictory. Constitutional liberals, on the one hand, would have to join forces with the secularists in demanding equal rights for all religions, thereby opposing the culturalists. On the other hand, they would have to support the culturalists in preventing what the secularists seek, namely, making religious matters private and eliminating religion from the public sphere.

Within such a framework, groups such as the “ex-Muslims” would also lose their unique credibility. When, for example, the German-Egyptian political scientist and Islam critic Hamed Abdel-Samad advocates limiting the influence of organized religion in Germany “to detoxify this society,” one could argue that the established religions in Germany promote anti-totalitarian and individual freedom and that they can look back on a tradition of keeping civil society alive. Germany’s religious policy is not based on the elimination of religions from the public sphere, but the civilization of religions through public religious education.

Commentary: MB and Democracy, Mutually Exclusive?

Ikhwanweb.com

Latest events in the Middle East, particularly Egypt following the January 25 revolution, have proven that the conservative Muslim Brotherhood is the true pro-democracy advocate, compared to liberal groups which ironically behaved so undemocratically after the fall of the regime. The MB is a staunch supporter of free choice, freedom of expression, peaceful rotation of power, respect to the rule of law, and protecting the rights of electoral minority.

The Muslim Brotherhood declared from the beginning of the transition period in Egypt that free elections are the only way to express the peoples’ choice, achieve democratic society and replace military council with civilian elected government, at a time where so-called liberal or secular groups attempted to circumvent the will of people following an overwhelmingly transparent referendum, extend military rule for years until new constitution is drafted by a select group that meets their narrow political interests, regardless of the interests of the entire nation.

Therefore, putting the MB on one side, and pro-democracy opposition on the other as this article is suggesting, implies that MB and democracy are mutually exclusive, which indeed defies realty on the ground in many Middle East countries revolting against their oppressive secular regimes. This belief is not just hollow promises, but translated into actions which have been felt across the world and earned the MB international respect and recognition, and led governments such as the US, which was untill few months ago wary about even the notion of MB winning elections, into accepting MB as fully credentialed democractic parter potentially in power.

Tariq Alhomayed: Do the Egyptians trust the Muslim Brotherhood?

By TARIQ ALHOMAYED | Al-Arabiya.net

What is happening in Egypt today is a state of bickering, not all bad and indeed in some parts good, carried out by Egyptians in general and political groups in particular, especially with regards to calls for a civil state, or at least a state of law, following the Egyptian revolution.

The simplest example of this is the controversy about the declaration of constitutional principles, which the Muslim Brotherhood alongside other Islamic groups oppose, whilst they have been accepted by civil political forces. The declaration of principles does not mean depriving the Muslim Brotherhood, or Islamic groups in general, of access to power, but rather it means ensuring the future of Egypt and its democracy, just as it means that the country will be heading in the right direction towards becoming a state of law, whether it is ruled by the Brotherhood or any other political force. This matter deserves the acceptance of all Egyptians, just as it deserves tremendous political and media effort on the part of civil forces to explain the idea to ordinary Egyptians, to educate the Egyptian public about the importance of declaring the principles of the constitution now, and before the entire political process is completed.

Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rejection of the constitutional principles means that they have fallen into the trap they had set for the young people and other civil political forces. The Brotherhood has been extensively preoccupied with minor issues after the fall of Mubarak, rather than the issue of ensuring the future of Egypt, which is the most important. The Brotherhood’s mere rejection of the declaration of principles makes Egyptians skeptical of the sincerity of the organization. Is the group, for example, sincere in its talk about democracy, and the transfer of power, or does the Brotherhood intend to secure power, and then change the rules of the game? Declaring the constitutional principles now is like declaring the rules of football, before all Egyptian political forces, of all kinds, take to the political playing field, with elections and so on, according to the rules of the game which are known and agreed in advance, instead of the rules of the game being developed inside the political arena.

The fear of all fears for today and tomorrow – if the constitutional principles are not declared – is that the Muslim Brotherhood will play the game of the “Maghreb goal” after the elections in Egypt. This, for those who do not know, is the way football was often played in the neighborhoods of Saudi Arabia. Usually children would play in the afternoon, and usually before Salaat al-Maghreb the losing team would begin to exert pressure to score one more goal in order to nullify the result. Here, the two teams are playing for the “Maghreb goal”, meaning that whoever scores the final goal before the Salaat al-Maghreb is the winner, even if the other team had scored more goals previously. Often, if the losing team’s players are physically stronger or more experienced, thus intimidating for the opposition, they would wait until just before Salaat al-Maghreb and then exert all their effort to score. This is a form of trickery, or Taqiyya [Shiite principle whereby true intentions or beliefs may be concealed when an individual is under threat].

Therefore, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rejection of the declaration of principles today can be considered a political version of the “Maghreb goal”. Following the overthrow of Mubarak, the Brotherhood wants to exclusively rule Egypt, and this is a danger to Egypt as a whole. The Brotherhood’s lack of acceptance for the declaration of constitutional principles is an opportunity for all Egyptian civil political forces to explain to the Egyptians the seriousness of their country becoming an extremist state like Iran. Those who want to rule Egypt must offer a political project to serve the people, not Islamic slogans and promises, otherwise the post-Mubarak era will become more dangerous than the reign of Mubarak itself.

(Published in the London-based Asharq Alawsat on August 16, 2011.)

Editorial Comment:

It seems that the writer doesn’t know “any”thing about the Egyptian circumstances since the revolution. To be clear, the Supra-Constitutional principles had been rejected -in advance- through the referendum over constitutional amendments in March. On the other hand, we can’t neglect the fact that not only the Muslim Brotherhood are rejecting these principles.

The majority of political parties, political activists and non-politicized citizens are standing against the proposed principles. In Egypt, The MB sees that there is no need for any extra constitutional amendments or declarations. Therefor, The Muslim Brotherhood is rejecting the imposing of any declarations on the Egyptian people, and if these principles put on a referendum before the Egyptian voters, No one -including the Muslim Brotherhood- will refuse its results.

The dangers of secularism in the Middle East

CS Monitor | By Daniel Philpott, Timothy Samuel Shah, and Monica Duffy Toft

Since the Arab Spring began last December, Western analysts have voiced a recurrent fear: that a long era of Arab stability will be replaced not by secular democrats but by Islamic theocrats.

In Egypt, they warn, the Muslim Brotherhood will overtake the young secular activists who bravely brought down dictator Hosni Mubarak. In Syria, they have claimed, Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship may be brutal, but it is a lesser evil than a Sunni majority that will oppress Christians, Shiites, and women. Such anxiety plays perfectly into the ruling rationale of the region’s secular sultans, who have resisted popular governance with the argument that it spells theocracy.

But such fear and false choices should be resisted. A stable Middle East will be achieved not through the suppression of religion but through its robust inclusion in politics.

The choice facing Arab Spring nations at this point isn’t one between religion and secular government. It’s a choice between democracy that includes all parties – religious and secular – and a regime that imposes a rigid and exclusive secularism.

By allowing religious parties to have political participation, is there a risk that such groups will win some votes and acquire some political power? Yes. The question, though, is not whether such groups oppose liberal democracy and threaten stability – some surely do – but which kind of political environment mitigates their extremist tendencies. And which kind intensifies them.

America’s policy of negative secularism

The reflexive fear of politically active religious groups is rooted in an ideology of secularism that persists among elite American foreign policy makers. Now, if secularism means a healthy distinction between religious and political authority, it is essential to democracy. Pope Benedict XVI called this “positive secularism.”

Negative secularism, by contrast, presumes that religion is irrational, premodern, violent, and headed for extinction – and has no place in democratic politics. Negative secularism mistakenly equates religious political participation with religious takeover and the subversion of democracy. Its answer to theocracy is “seculocracy:” the absolute supremacy of nonreligious principles in politics.

Pro-government forces in Syria illustrated the attitude of seculocracy last week in Hama after they crushed protests there. They scrawled on the walls of the city such slogans as: “No God but al-Assad” and “God falls down and Assad lives.”

During the cold war, negative secularism undergirded America’s policy in the Middle East. America’s overriding concern was finding reliable allies against the Soviets. In a few cases these allies were highly religious, as were Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Far more often, though, they were regimes built on nationalism, economic and social modernization – and the secular containment of grassroots Islam.

From Tangiers to Tehran, such regimes sought to control Islam by marginalizing, privatizing, and sharply regulating it. They gave legal and financial support to approved moderate Muslims; they jailed and tortured traditional dissident Muslims.

When Western liberals questioned why Mr. Mubarak imprisoned 20,000 of his Egyptian citizens, Mubarak replied: It’s either me or the Muslim Brotherhood. The US bought the argument. Such thinking partly explains why the Obama administration was slow to abandon Mubarak. Only days before the dictator’s downfall, according to The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, a White House official summarized Mubarak’s message to the US as “Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brotherhood.”

Repressive secular regimes foster religious extremism

In the end, however, America’s policy of promoting secular dictatorships has simultaneously undermined democracy and stability and bolstered religious radicals. Instead, the United States will best advance its long term interests by encouraging the Middle East’s transitioning regimes to invite all nonviolent religious groups into the political arena.

To be sure, the region contains many unsavory religious groups. Some advocate a harsh form of sharia that denies the rights of women and minorities, calls for the destruction of Israel, and declares America an enemy. Factions within Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood think along these lines, as do even more extreme Salafists.

But the growth of extremist religious groups is less likely within a political structure that includes, rather than excludes, them. In our recently published book, “God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics,” we present evidence that religious groups are most likely to become radicalized and violent when they live under regimes that deny them autonomy and political participation.

America’s longtime friend, the shah of Iran, epitomized the dangerous relationship between repressive secularism and Islamic radicalism. The shah’s harsh repression and manipulation of Iran’s ayatollahs helped turn many of them from quiet political indifference to violent militancy, generating the revolution of 1979 and all of the continuing challenges the Islamic Republic poses to American interests.

The dynamic is similar for religious terrorist groups that have arisen in the ensuing years. Overwhelmingly Islamic, these groups were incubated largely by the repressive policies of America’s Arab and South Asian allies, most of which were secular.

Inclusion sets the ground for peace, partnership

Conversely, we find that religious groups are most likely to be peaceful and supportive of democracy when they live under regimes that respect their autonomy. Islamic countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Senegal, and Turkey demonstrate that when Islamic parties participate in politics they not only operate by the rules of the democratic game but also, in time, become more moderate.

Moderate Islam also exists in today’s Middle East. While some Egyptian Muslims have attacked Coptic Christians, others have formed protective prayer chains around Coptic churches. Today, a popular Muslim Brother is running for Egypt’s presidency on an independent platform of liberal democratic principles – even to the point of provoking his formal expulsion from the Brotherhood.

Earlier this summer, the US government resumed formal contact with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This, in our view, suggests a positive turn toward a policy of religious engagement. If the United States wishes to advance democracy, stability, and the defeat of terrorism in the upheaval in the Middle East, it must continue to abjure the brand of secularism that views religion only as a threat. It must realize not only that religion is here to stay but also that, in the right kind of setting and through the right kind of policies, religion can become an ally, not an enemy, of American interests and ideals.

Daniel Philpott is an associate professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. Timothy Shah is associate director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. Monica Duffy Toft is associate professor of public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and director of the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.

Editorial Note:

We want to stress that we don’t agree on some terms and information written in the above article. Some Information such as “The Sunni Majority in Syria” or “The Stances of the Muslim Brotherhood in comparison with the Salafis”.
But we at Ikhwanophobia.com are sure that such well-done analysis should be respected and publicized through our website.

Commentary: Senator Lindsey Graham On the Muslim Brotherhood

Ikhwanophobia

After watching the response of Senator Lindsey Graham on a question tickling the Middle East affairs, where the Senator talked about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and how much he is: ” suspicious of their agenda. ”
What we really need to say that the Senator Graham should listen from the Muslim Brotherhood, He seems to be very ignorant towards the political life in Egypt. In his small comment, Senator Graham addressed the young people of Egypt and said that: ““I don’t believe the young people, who went into the squares throughout Egypt and risked their lives, want to replace the current government with something more oppressive”
For me, I don’t believe the Senator Graham knew about the combination of the young people who went into squares in Egypt, those young people who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, the liberal parties, the leftist parties, without being that “suspicious” of the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda.
I’m also so suspicious about Mr Graham’s response if the young people of Egypt, chose the Muslim Brotherhood in the coming elections, how will Mr Graham’s act against that? and will he support Obama’s foreign policy then?
Muslim Brotherhood proved through their long history that they don’t have any hidden agendas, and the role of the Mubarak’s regime and the other authoritarian regimes in the Middle East was to intimidate the west and the international public opinion from the Muslim Brotherhood.
My advice to Mr Graham is to listen to the Muslim Brotherhood, not to listen about the Muslim Brotherhood, and to set with them at the same table to discuss the “agendas” of the Muslim Brotherhood. These discussions will -for sure- change Mr Graham’s attitude against the Muslim Brotherhood, or at least, will make him think twice before being so suspicious about the MB agenda.

Spencer’s Radicalized Mosque Claim Gets Debunked

LoonWatch

Robert Spencer is still trying to peddle the myth that 80% of American mosques are radicalized. In a heated post on JihadWatch on March 19, Spencer said the following in reply to Reza Aslan’s claim that all of the studies Spencer cited to support the claim that 80% of American mosques are radicalized have been debunked:

In any case, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani’s 1998 study was not based on his personal opinion, as Aslan claims. Kabbani actually visited 114 mosques in this country before giving testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999 that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.” Has Reza Aslan investigated 114 mosques in the U.S.? Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.

Let’s break this down one by one. Kabbani said in 1999 that extremists “took over more than 80% of the mosques that have been established in the US.” How did he come up with this number? He didn’t say in his testimony. After the testimony Kabbani began to feel heat from many who were curious as to how he arrived at this “figure” and that is when he finally decided to offer up some “evidence” for his claim.

An under-fire Kabbani explained in 1999 exactly what he meant when he told the State Department that 80 percent of American mosques had been taken over by extremists. His point, he said, was that a “few extremists” were taking over leadership posts, despite a “majority of moderate Muslims,” thus “influencing 80 percent of the mosques.”
Today, he sticks even closer to his guns and adds embellishing data: Kabbani visited 114 mosques in the United States. “Ninety of them were mostly exposed, and I say exposed, to extreme or radical ideology,” he said.

Kabbani bases his exposure conclusion on speeches, board members and materials published. One telltale sign of an extremist mosque, said Kabbani, was an unhealthy focus on the Palestinian struggle.

Alright – let’s be real here. This is not a “study” as Spencer claims. It’s an insult to actual studies out there to call what Kabbani did a “study,” it doesn’t even reach the basic standard of research, documentation or analysis. He conducted a subjective investigation of American mosques, plain and simple. Mosques he went to and where he found or heard things he didn’t agree with were labeled “extremist.” Just because there was a “focus on the Palestinian struggle” at a mosque doesn’t mean it’s “extremist.” What type of absurd methodology is that? It’s remarkable that Spencer would try to pass this off as a “study.” I know, it’s hard to prove that Muslims in America are bloodthirsty jihadists, but even Spencer should be ashamed of himself for trying to pass off Kabbani’s flawed investigation as a “study” to bolster his claim that 80% of mosques are run by extremists.
The next study that Spencer claims proves that 80% of American mosques are radicalized is from the Center for Religious Freedom. What is the methodology and scope of this study?

In undertaking this study, we did not attempt a general survey of American mosques.  In order to document Saudi influence, the material for this report was gathered from a selection of more than a dozen mosques and Islamic centers in American cities, including Los Angeles, Oakland, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Washington, and New York. In most cases, these sources are the most prominent and well-established mosques in their areas. They have libraries and publication racks for mosque-goers. Some have full-or part-time schools and, as the 9/11 Commission Report observed, such “Saudi-funded Wahhabi schools are often the only Islamic schools.”

From their own words, the Center for Religious Freedom says that it “did not attempt a general survey of American mosques.” The study itself was designed “to document Saudi influence.” They went to fifteen mosques to complete this “study.” Fifteen mosques! According to the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, there are at least 1,600 mosques and Islamic centers in the United States. This, too, is not much of a study,
Further eroding Spencer’s point, this study does not even claim that 80% or even a high percentage of American mosques are radicalized in any way. Let me repeat that – the study makes NO claim that 80% or some other percent of American mosques are radicalized. It simply does not say what Spencer claims it says. Spencer is making it up. He is lying. But LoonWatchers shouldn’t be surprised by that.
Spencer’s deception and lack of intellectual integrity in this instance is blatant, he not only cites the Center’s “study” as proof of the 80%-percent-of-mosques-are-extremists-conspiracy-theory, but he also fails to mention that the only semblance of what he claims in the study is a regurgitation of Kabbani’s (false and discredited) assertion,

Sheikh Kabbani, perhaps the U.S.’s leading moderate Muslim leader, says that a substantial percentage of American mosques have Wahhabi-funded Imams

Isn’t this interesting? What sort of credible “study” perfunctorily sites the non-evidentiary based assertions of a lone individual without questioning his methodology? The language in the above sentence is also cause for alarm, anytime a claim such as “the U.S.’s leading moderate Muslim leader” is made we should view it not only with caution but skepticism. This sort of heavily biased and subjective language is employed now by Right-Wingers and Republicans to describe “Zuhdi Jasser” the Islamophobes favorite Muslim.
Spencer’s last piece of evidence to back up his bogus claim comes from the Mapping Sharia Project led by the loony racist anti-Muslim lawyer David Yerushalmi, David Gaubatz and conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney. The only thing I could find on this “study” was a Jihad Watch link reporting the findings of the Mapping Sharia Project. The Jihad Watch article reports that “An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism…”

Spencer relying on “undercover survey’s” by radical Islamophobes with pseudo-racist beliefs? Just par for the course.
Firstly, there is no web page allowing us access to examine the methodology employed by this study. When I went to the link to the Mapping Sharia Project, I was taken to the web site for David Yerushalmi’s organization, SANE (Society for American National Existence). To gain access, I had to become a member. I did not want to join this loony web site’s membership list, as I am spammed enough as it is. So Spencer’s third study does not even exist, at least out in the public. Even the link he places for the Mapping Sharia Project just takes you to another JihadWatch web page reporting the findings of the study. Guess we’ll just have to take Yerushalmi, Gaubatz, Gaffney and Spencer’s word for it that 80%… err, three out of four American mosques are radicalized.
Actually, we won’t. Spencer tried his best it seems to pass off these “studies” as evidence to support Rep. Peter King’s claim that 80% of American mosques are radicalized. None of these “studies” does that.
Kabbani’s “study” is based simply on his own opinions of the mosques and their leadership, not any objective metric gauging radicalism. If he did not agree with the viewpoints of the mosque, then he deemed them radical. That’s not a study. Spencer, someone who went to graduate school, should know better than that.

The Center for Religious Freedom study says itself that it “did not attempt a general survey of American mosques.” So how does Spencer cite this study as evidence that 80% of American mosques are radicalized? Because he’s not interested in the truth – he just needs something to cite to so he can bamboozle those who won’t actually check his sources. Sorry, Robert, but we did. And this so-called “study” does not even say what you claim it does.
The final piece of evidence Spencer clings to is the Mapping Sharia Project’s “study,” which apparently does not exist in the public domain. But considering its authors – David Yerushalmi, David Gaubatz and Frank Gaffney – I would venture to say that this “study” will not only not be very academic but thoroughly bigoted and prejudiced. Just consider some of the proposals Yerushalmi and his friends at (in)SANE have come up with:

WHEREAS Islam requires all Muslims to actively and passively support the replacement of America’s constitutional republic with a political system based upon Shari’a.
Whereas, adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari’a on the American People.
HEREFORE, IT IS RESOLVED THAT: It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Shari’a.
The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation.

If these “studies” and individuals are the evidence that Spencer claims back up the myth that 80% of American mosques are radicalized, then Spencer has no evidence. For a great source on the history of this myth, see Media Matters’ Zombie Lie: Right Still Clinging To Decade-Old Fabrication About Radicalized Mosques.

PBS FRONTLINE: Revolution In Cairo, The Brotherhood

Source: PBS

As the protest movement in Egypt sent shock waves throughout the country — and the world — FRONTLINE dispatched teams to Cairo for this special report.

“This is a story that no one could have predicted, and everyone now wants to know more about,” says FRONTLINE executive producer David Fanning. “We’re using our new monthly magazine to be able to respond quickly to timely events and help fill the need for added depth and insight on these important breaking stories.”

In this hour’s lead story, Revolution in Cairo, FRONTLINE gains unique access to the April 6 Youth Movement as they plot strategy, then head out into Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hoping to bring down President Hosni Mubarak. The film traces these young Egyptian activists’ long road to revolution, as they made increasingly bold use of the Internet in their underground resistance over the last few years. Through sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the members of April 6 and related groups helped organize a political movement that the secret police did not understand and could not stop, despite the arrest and torture of some of the movement’s key members.

For the second story, The Brothers, veteran Middle East correspondent Charles Sennott of GlobalPost is on the ground in Cairo for FRONTLINE to investigate the Muslim Brotherhood, the controversial but poorly understood Islamist political movement that’s poised to play a key role in Egypt’s future. While the group was absent in Tahrir Square when young demonstrators first ignited Egypt’s revolt, the Brotherhood assumed a larger role over the course of the protests, taking frontline positions in rock-throwing battles with regime supporters and helping to run emergency medical clinics. Now that the Muslim Brotherhood stands to take a prominent place at the negotiating table, we examine what the group believes and how it may influence politics in the country and the region.

Ikhwanophobia Note:

For the readers in the United States, you can watch the full documentary from the source: Here

For the readers allover the world, you can watch the second part of this interesting documentary, it’s available worldwide:

Sharron Angle warns that Muslims have taken over American cities

Source | By Alex Pareene

The Nevada Tea Partier claims sharia law has taken hold in Michigan and Texas towns

Sharron Angle said another stupid thing. This time, though, it wasn’t just incoherent and incorrect — it was also a blatantly bigoted if inept attempt at fear-mongering about American Muslims. Angle seemed to say that the sharia law had already taken hold in two American cities.

Asked by a voter whether or not Muslims were trying to take over the United States, Angle thought this was a reasonable response:

We’re talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe isn’t a widespread thing. But it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it. My thoughts are these. First of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under Constitutional law. Not sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States.
It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.

So, terrorism isn’t that widespread, but the Muslims have installed their foreign laws in two American cities.

Dearborn has a large Muslim community — the Muslim community there dates back more than a hundred years, so they really took their time installing sharia — but, as the AP amusingly puts it, it “was not immediately clear why Angle singled out Frankford, Texas, a former town that was annexed into Dallas around 1975.”

It’s hard to argue against a jumble of half-remembered anti-Islam talking points and conspiracy theories, but, for the record, Muslims are not going to take over America and install sharia law.

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

Ikhwanophobia Comment

We don’t have a lot of words to say, But Now, it’s the role of people of Nevada to act against this bigotry and racism. Islam -like any other religion- is pushing life to peace and justice, and those who try to stereotype Muslims and ‘enemize’ Islam, are standing against the states, should be stopped.

Emerson’s Paranoiac Approach Toward the Muslim Brotherhood

By Omar Mazin | Ikhwanophobia

Steven Emerson, One of the prominent members of the Islamophobic dirty dozen, The founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), wrote a new phobic article to show the world how dangerous is the Muslim Brotherhood (!!).
Emerson, and as usual, alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood has produced Osama Bin Laden to the world, who is created originally by the CIA during the Afghan-Soviet war.

The Brotherhood’s affiliates include the terrorist organization Hamas. Its alumni include 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist mentor. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaida’s second in command, is said to have been heavily influenced by the ideology of the Brotherhood’s Egyptian chapter.

In this quote, Steve Emerson alleges that “it’s said” that Ayman Al Zawahri” had been heavily influenced by the MB’s ideology.

In the coming quote, Emerson is imagining the relations between MB and Islamic Centers and Organizations working in the US:

Some of the most prominent Muslim organizations in the United States have close, longstanding relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was founded by Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. And the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was linked in court papers to a Brotherhood-organized Hamas support effort.

Now, Emerson, with a very innocent article, he linked directly between the American Islamic organizations such as CAIR and ISNA, to the Muslim Brotherhood, which created Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist Group!

Now we should announce these critical facts !!

1- Muslim Brotherhood is not a violent organization, and MB doesn’t have any anti-western agenda!

3- Muslim Brotherhood has no organizational relations with any of the American Islamic organizations working in the United States, and the Moderate form of Islam is the only thing common between the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic organizations active in the US.

Emerson, by these allegations, doesn’t want Obama’s administration to take any aggressive actions against MB, But actually he is pushing the American Administration to suppress the Islamic activities in the United States, which is serving millions of Americans on the American soil.

This who so called ‘expert’ is trying his best to fight the Muslim minority in the US, and this won’t lead to the good of the United States in the near future.

It’s the duty of the moderate Americans to stop these waves of hatred and racism, to return America to its glorious principles, to Justice, to Equality and to Tolerance.

My name is Dr. Terry Jones.. Help me to Fight Islam!

Terry Jones, The crazy pastor which decided once to burn holy Quran send a new message to his church’s mailing list to encourage them to fund his hate-war on Islam and Muslims.
The Racist pastor, said in his message:

We need your financial assistance in order to continue the fight that we have started against Islam.

Now, his war is against Islam! When this bigot first announced his mad plan to burn Qurans, he said to the world that he is not fighting against moderate Muslims! Now, he is talking about his war On Islam!

To bring to their awareness, that we must wake up, we must look at this radical element of Islam, and we must stop them.

Now, it’s obligatory for the American people to stop this bigot racist from continuing threatening the civil peace of the United States of America!

Here are the message he sent!

Source
My name is Dr. Terry Jones.

We need your financial assistance in order to continue the fight that we have started against Islam. As we know, Islam is a very dangerous and violent religion. We must take this message to Washington D.C. We must take this message around to the major cities in America. We have plans to contact Senators and Representatives and knock on doors to talk to them in Washington D.C. To bring to their awareness, that we must wake up, we must look at this radical element of Islam, and we must stop them. We must, around America call for rallies in order to wake up our churches, in order to wake up our local governments, that they might be able to see that it is time for us to stand up. It is time for the Church, it is time for people to speak out. In order to do this, we need your financial help. If you would like for us to come to your area, then please contact us by e-mail at, info@doveworld.org, or by phone at 352-371-2487 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 352-371-2487 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

Please send your donations to Dove World Outreach Center, 5805 NW 37 Street, here in Gainesville, Florida 32653. Or, go to our web site, www.doveworld.org, and donate using Paypal. Please be as generous as you can with a one time donation and with a monthly donation.

It is very important that we go through this door that God has given us and that we begin to spread this message. God has given us a divine opportunity. We cannot miss that! Please help us as generously as you can.

We have also written a book called, Islam is of the Devil. You can obtain that by going to our web site again, www.doveworld.org. Everything that you can do, through your prayers, your financial support, buying of the book, goes to the efforts of stopping Islam.

Thank you.

God bless,
Dr. Terry Jones

Spencer, Anti-America again!

Ikhwanophobia Comment

Robert Spencer, one of the most racist bigots in the United States. Spencer is arguing that Rep. Keith Ellison, is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood Ideology.
Spencer is trying to deceive the truth and to link between Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist attacks in NY, London and through the world.
It’s also very weird that Spencer argued that the hate crimes against Muslims are very rare, I think that we can say that hate crimes against J. F. Kennedy were very rare, actually there was one ‘hate crime’ !! it seems that the human life is very cheap in Spencer’s eyes to say some thing like that!
Spencer by his continuing lying and bigotry against Islam, Muslims and even the American representatives will be main reason to ‘eliminate’ the civil peace in the US, which is threatened by a lot of other bigots around the world.

By Robert Spencer | Source

Rep. Keith Ellison (D.-Minn.), the first Muslim in the House of Representatives, has weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy, and in the process defamed the 70% of Americans who oppose the mosque.

After the November elections, Ellison predicted, the controversy will “die down” but not “go away,” because “the people who are struck by fear and who are creating a climate of fear with the thought of this Islamic center are not going away.”

He compared this “climate of fear” to “people scapegoating Catholics” in the early 1960s, and added: “We have a long history of racial discrimination and scapegoating,” naming Jews, welfare queens, black men and Latinos as victims of this scapegoating.

This is the same dishonest narrative we have seen recently from Nicholas Kristof and many others: that Muslims in America today are facing a resurgence of the nativism that earlier targeted Catholics and others.

In the first place, there is no such scapegoating: Hate crimes against Muslims are actually quite rare. But also, the comparison is entirely fallacious because none of the groups Ellison names as previous “scapegoats” were carrying out terror attacks against Americans and others worldwide.

They weren’t justifying violence and hatred by reference to Catholic or Jewish teaching. The people who were worried about the pope running the country could point to no action by the pope to try to achieve such power. The Muslim Brotherhood, in contrast, is dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” so that Islam “is victorious over other religions.”

The idea that non-Muslims are suspicious of Muslims out of bigotry, rather than out of a legitimate concern for both jihad terror and the utterly supine and often disingenuous response to it from peaceful and ostensibly moderate Muslims is nonsense of such an outstanding character that I wonder if Ellison himself even believes it, rather than simply seeing it as a useful line he can use to bamboozle the besotted leftists who elected him to Congress.

It is rich for Ellison to complain about scapegoating when so many mass murderers and would-be mass murderers point to Islamic teaching as the motivation and justification for their actions.

Think of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihadist; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas underwear jihadist; Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square jihadist; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden on 9/11; the London jihad bombers of July 7, 2005; and so many, many others. How long will non-Muslims continue to swallow the increasingly less convincing line that none of this violence has anything to do with Islam?

Of course, many will continue to do so, and they will continue to do so because of the attempts by Ellison and so many other Muslim spokesmen to claim victim status for Muslims and divert attention away from jihadist crimes. Ellison does mention a few of these jihad attacks, but says nothing about the belief-system that motivated them, or what can and should be done within the Muslim community in the U.S. to help ensure that there will be no such attacks in the future—that is, if preventing such attacks is on the Muslim community in America’s to-do list at all.

Ellison also praised President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler for contributing to the “marginalization of people who make their living on this stuff, like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer.”

He would certainly like to see us marginalized, since I have been the one calling attention to his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Ellison’s pilgrimage to Mecca was paid for with $13,350 from the Muslim American Society, which is the Brotherhood’s chief operating arm in the U.S. The Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Imagine if a conservative congressman had taken a trip that had been paid for by a Christian group that was, according to one of its own documents, dedicated to “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within” so that Christian law would replace the U.S. Constitution. I expect we would hear more of an outcry than we ever heard about Ellison’s Brotherhood-funded hajj.

But I’m going to keep talking about it. No wonder he wishes we were marginalized.

Commentary: Building Mosque Vs Burning Quran!!

Ikhwanophobia

“Pastor Terry Jones’ call for ‘International Quran Burning Day’ “, which hit headlines in breaking news has succeeded in grabbing worldwide attention. According to the Qatari Aljazeera satellite channel ‘Pastor Jones seems to be “happy” with the media coverage’ and this may explain why Pastor Jones’ is talking about making deals with Muslim Imams.

However the man behind the mosque building initiative Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf maintained that he has not spoken to the Florida Pastor whom he described as fanatical

In a statement Rauf expressed much surprise to the Pastor’s allegations who alleged that he had struck deals with the Muslims to build the mosque elsewhere stressing;

“I am surprised by their announcement; we are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony.”

In all reality there is no logic in linking the Quran Burning which is a clear violation of the religious sanctities affecting 1.4 Billion Muslims around the world, and the building of a religious centre in lower Manhattan which in fact is a human right for any religious sect.

By burning the Quran Jones is advocating hatred and racism with his insinuations comparing Islam to Nazism as opposed to Imam Faisal’s call which is promoting Peace and international tolerance

The Quran Burning must be prevented without negotiations and mediation since there is no parallel where one instance illustrates the burning of a holy book while the other urges the building of bridges between different civilizations and peoples.

Pastor Jones must end his prejudice actions and begin to culture himself and read up on Islam. Muslims in turn, must not make any compromising deals, and any concessions with such racist bigots will surely indicate that Muslims are not worthy enough of what they defend.

‘Anti-Islamic’ bus ads appear in major cities

Source
Ikhwanophobia Comment

Here are the start of hate crimes and bigotry aggressive actions. Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller with their new SIOA organization are trying to have the American people beside them in their hatred and racism.
Unfortunately, They succeeded with 10/10 !

The appeal now is for moderate Americans to stop this bigotry and racism. For the sake of freedom! for the sake of Democracy.. Stop this anti-American actions!

The growing debate over Islam’s place in America, which is escalating in light of plans to build a mosque near ground zero, is increasingly playing out on city streets across the country. On the sides of buses, to be precise.
Several groups are engaging in something of a religious ad war over the merits and misconceptions of Islam, a religion that remains a mystery to many Americans.

Ads by a group calling itself Stop Islamization of America, which aims to provide refuge for former Muslims, read: “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers!”

Those ads, appearing on dozens of buses in the San Francisco Bay Area, Miami, and New York, are a response to ones from a Muslim group that say, “The way of life of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Islam. Got questions? Get answers.”

In New York, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community sponsored this campaign: “Muslims for Peace. Love for All – Hatred for None.”

The ads are part of a larger conversation over Islam’s image, which Muslim organizations say has been hurt by extremists both at home and abroad. But many conservative groups say that concern about the spread of Islam isn’t alarmist, pointing to evidence of imams in this country inciting militancy and a growing number of American Muslims arrested for plotting terror attacks.

A self-described “anti-jihadist,” Pamela Geller is the conservative blogger and executive director of Stop Islamization of America who conceived of the “Leaving Islam” ad campaign. Her bus posters, she says, were partly inspired by the ongoing Florida case involving a teenage girl who ran away from her Muslim parents after converting to Christianity. The girl, Rifqa Bary, made headlines last year when she claimed her father threatened to kill her for becoming a Christian.

Ms. Geller described her campaign as “a defense of religious freedom,” in an e-mail response to questions. The goal, she says, is mainly “to help ex-Muslims who are in trouble” and also “to raise awareness of the threat that apostates live under even in the West.”

But some religious rights organizations contend that the real intent is to incite fear about a faith that, according to recent studies, remains misunderstood. A 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 38 percent believe Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions.

“In this post-9/11 world … it’s almost like there’s some political and spiritual currency to be gained by being anti-Islamic,” says Steve Spreitzer, programs director for the Detroit-based interfaith group Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion.

RefugeFromIslam.com, the website promoted on Geller’s ads, contends that Muslim Americans who “long to be free” of their religion are in danger of being killed, and offers protection, including “safe houses,” for those who want out. Muslim rights groups and religious leaders say there is no penalty for leaving Islam and that the Koran condemns killing as a sin.

The campaign has whipped up controversy in several cities. In Detroit, which has one of the highest Muslim populations in the country, Geller sued the SMART transit agency in federal district court after it rejected the ads.

In the Bay Area, more than 125 religious leaders of various faiths signed a statement in July denouncing the ads as “Islamophobic” and saying they “promote fear of Muslim Americans.”

Geller says calling the ads anti-Islam is “a tactic to divert attention” away from the “plight” of ex-Muslims.

In Florida, the Miami-Dade Transit agency initially pulled the ads but then reinstated them days later after Geller and her group threatened to sue. Miami-Dade Transit spokeswoman Karla Damian says the county attorney had reviewed the ad campaign and determined that “although considered offensive by some, it did not constitute removal.”

And in the Bay Area, where both tolerance and free speech are regarded as sacred, the 30 bus ads that recently began rolling through San Mateo County have been met with surprise and bewilderment.

Omar Ahmad, a Muslim city council member in San Mateo who also sits on the board of directors for SamTrans, the bus agency running the ads, says he found the campaign “bizarre” but didn’t think it would have much effect. “I have a great deal of faith in folks in the Bay Area to take a critical eye to what they see and read,” he says.

Geller and her supporters point out that transit agencies in Detroit and elsewhere had no problem with a controversial campaign sponsored by a group of atheists last year. Those ads, also on buses and billboards in many cities, read: “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone.” Although the ads offended some, they were deemed free speech.

The ads in New York City sponsored by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community recently began appearing on 100 New York City buses and promote the website MuslimsForPeace.org, which condemns terrorism and advocates for a separation of church and state.

Waseem Sayed, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community spokesperson, says the campaign is not a response to Geller’s ads but an ongoing effort to reclaim the public image of Islam, which he says has been “hijacked by extremists.”

“It’s an effort to have the Muslims, the silent majority, snatch the flag of Islam away from these extremists and hoist it above ourselves,” he says.