Church plans Qur'an burning

[Castout]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Do you even realise what you have said when you said it is like this, that it is not the ideology, but the people? You by that implied that people get not edcuated to be in rage or apathy, but that they are in rage by probably some defective genes, must supect, that they are like this because they are what they are and already got born like this, for "it is the people, not the religion". And that, different to a critical argument and view of Islam that is intellectually founded, is pure racism indeed. I never, nowhere, ever said something liked that all Arabs or Persians are dumb or untypically aggressive by nature and race. I said that their damn Islamic ideology teaches them how to be dumb and aggressive, and that the long stagnation of their countries has somethign to do with that way of edcuation, or better: indoctrination as well.

And that are two very different ways to view things.

I never said anything about bad genes. I'm disgusted with eugenics the practice and the belief.

I've known some nice smart well educated Muslims who are very tolerable towards non Muslims . . . . . .and I've known some Christians who are racist or like to utter racist remark among themselves.

People get misguided and mis-educated all the time. When you don't have much to look forward to, no money, and little prospect of getting a decent job, when your environment is full of crime, criminals and abuses then you would be likely to fall into the pattern and becoming one of those problem yourself. Radicalism or extremism is one of those

I've known Muslims who tolerated their children to seek more about other religions even allowing their children to convert to other religion or even becoming a priest of another religion altogether. I've known idealistic Muslim who are NOT afraid to open another religion holy text to seek the truth and they did this by themselves. Some converted to Christianity in the process while others gained respect of the other religion/belief in the process.

On the contrary I've known NOT even a single Christian who's unafraid to open the Quran to seek the truth.

I hope more people would let go of their psychological defenses that is fear that sometimes surfaces as hatred and see people as the people they are. Life is too short to be spent on hating people especially with little real reason. We're all pitiful and we're all mortal but at least we could make this life to be more beautiful and meaningful by helping each other however we could and however little we could afford.

Sons of Adam today I'm telling you as a fellow son of Adam that we're pitiful even for the most privileged of us. Our life is too short and our death is too long. Our awareness is like a feeble grass, green and fresh in the morning but brown and dried up in the evening and to die the next morning. Do you know not that we are all brethren in this life and time that we happen to share?! Since we are so pitiful and since we are so much alike than most of us could ever realize try to help one another so that we could lighten the burden and share the joy of this short life that we're now enjoying but not for much longer.

[tater]

Without going so far as to fall into a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, people who hold certain beliefs cannot really belong to certain groups, regardless of self-identification. I'd posit that Christians are not those who claim to be Christian, but those that meet some basic standard of at least trying to behave as a Christian. Ditto for Muslims, a good faith effort to follow the koran as written is required. Obviously, if the definition is "being born to Muslim parents" then we run into the logical fallacy. Since religions are nothing more than a voluntarily held set of beliefs, I think that membership should in fact be defined as holding those beliefs true.

I, for example, am technically a Catholic. I'm Confirmed in the church, etc. I'm an atheist(even anti-theist)/agnostic(have to be agnostic on deism, can't know one way or another).

If I lived someplace so intolerant that I had to hide my atheism, I'd claim to be a Catholic, but not follow all the rules (not follow any I could get away with not following). I in fact did this as a kid (I became an atheist in maybe 5th-6th grade or so).

So yeah, there are Muslims who don't follow it closely, and they're great. The less they follow their doctrine, in fact, the better they are.

It's interesting that the most tolerant muslims (meaning populations in general) are in places where they don't understand Arabic. The more people are taught Arabic (to be able to read the koran), the less tolerant they become (which is the point of teaching Arabic to Muslims outside the ME). Remember, only ~200 million understand Arabic worldwide, and there are 1.2 BILLION Muslims. That means the vast majority cannot even read their own holy book.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by tater

It's interesting that the most tolerant muslims (meaning populations in general) are in places where they don't understand Arabic. The more people are taught Arabic (to be able to read the koran), the less tolerant they become (which is the point of teaching Arabic to Muslims outside the ME). Remember, only ~200 million understand Arabic worldwide, and there are 1.2 BILLION Muslims. That means the vast majority cannot even read their own holy book.

Quran has been printed and published in local languages and in English as far as I know. So it's available to anyone who would read them. And those who have the boldness to read another religion holy text by themselves usually have read through their own.

[Skybird]

whatever, Castout, I must admit I see what you said as a sentimenta self-deception about the content of Isalmic ideology. And whether you have met some muslims and christians or not, what I have too, btw, does not chnage that. I stuns me time and again when I focus on the content of a teaching or ideology, anbd people reply to me with leaving the content totally unreflected uand instea dlisting a handlful of peope they have met and liost them as exceptions that should illustrate that the ideology's content is not what it is.

BTW, I have read the Quran, and plenty more of academic background literarture on the issue of islamic scripture (Hadith, Sira), philosophy and history. I do not hold such a bad opinion of Islam because I do not know anything about it. I think this bad about Islam becasue I know quite a bit about it - and I have met muslims in Mulsim people who may have been avble to recitate the Quran by mind, but still knew less about Islam than I do, becasue their education systemtically denied them to learn the ability to reflect about what one is memorising. That is the difference between a tape recorder, and a free mind. Throughout the nineties I travelled quite a lot in Muslim countries, some was private, some was professional, I was with a team of foreign correspondents. when I had my fist such trip, I had the same confused illusions about Islam on my mind, like you and so many here. I had read some mixed books about it, wanted to see it as something humane and good, ignored the warnings in some of the books, arrived on planet Islam - and was cojmpletely stunned by the obvious discrepancy between the wellmeaning descriptions in the books, and the harsh reality. Which left me confused for years to come.

It took several years, and not before my travelling years had come to an end I was able to find the time and peace to sit down and reflect upon all these contradictory experiences. But once the process started, I more and more realsied that the contradiction wa sonly between the nicetalking books and reality, whereas when the more academical, analytical got compared against reality, it all fell into place.

For me, it is about both academical input AND experiences from reality. and that is a basis that makes me feel quite strong and confident that my assessement of Islam both in ideologic theory and the real world, is a more correct one than the description of those islamophile Westerners who panically try to gloss over it and nice-talk about it and ignore everything in it that does distorub their illusion of that there ever has been or could be a mutually tolerating peaceful coexistence with it. All the talking baout Allah and God's will and divine revelation means nothing to me, all that I immediately put into the wastebin. What matters to me is that Islam is about not allah, but muhammad (thus: Muhammadanism), and that Muhammad used his sermons to establish himself as a completely earthly ruler and dictator and conqueror. and muzh of the superstitious stuff and inner contradictions in the Quran not only can oinly be understod but actually even make sense - if oyu see them against a perspective thorugh muhammad's eyes and political intentions. It is not by random chance that in islam politics and rlegion are not separated, but are just one monolithic block. And for wetsern constitutions separating between both, this monolitihic nature denying such a separation is a big problem: islam claims the constitutions' guarantees for free practice of relgion, and then abuses this protection to push political goals that ultimately aim at turning wetsern nations into Muslim nations - while at the same time preventing any opposition to this political goal of Islamisation by claiming that it is it's relgious right to do so and the constitution allows it to practice religion freely.

Pah. The biggest cultural disaster in the history of mankind claiming to be the big solution for mankind's problems: totalitarianism, superstition, female slavery, supremacism, sexual inhibition in psychoneurotic dimensions. Great remedies, these.

Since probbaly nobody took the link on page 1 or 2 as something to care for, here is the text, to bring all this back on topic:

Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center Rubble
Meet the Ground Zero Mosque imam’s Muslim Brotherhood friends.

Feisal Abdul Rauf is the imam behind the “Cordoba Initiative” that is spearheading plans to build a $100 million Islamic center at Ground Zero, the site where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by jihadists on 9/11. He is also the author of a book called What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America.But the book hasn’t always been called that. It was called quite something else for non-English-speaking audiences. In Malaysia, it was published as A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11.

Now it emerges that a “special, non-commercial edition” of this book was later produced, with Feisal’s cooperation, by two American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. The book’s copyright page tells the tale:



Both ISNA and IIIT have been up to their necks in the promotion of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthless Palestinian branch, which is pledged by charter to the destruction of Israel. In fact, both ISNA and IIIT were cited by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators in a crucial terrorism-financing case involving the channeling of tens of millions of dollars to Hamas through an outfit called the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. For the last 15 years, Hamas has been a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law.

Dawa, whether done from the rubble of the World Trade Center or elsewhere, is the missionary work by which Islam is spread. As explained in my recent book, The Grand Jihad, dawa is proselytism, but not involving only spiritual elements — for Islam is not merely a religion, and spiritual elements are just a small part of its doctrine. In truth, Islam is a comprehensive political, social, and economic system with its own authoritarian legal framework, sharia, which aspires to govern all aspects of life.

This framework rejects core tenets of American constitutional republicanism: for example, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom to govern ourselves irrespective of any theocratic code, equality of men and women, equality of Muslims and non-Muslims, and economic liberty, including the uses of private property (in Islam, owners hold property only as a custodians for the umma, the universal Muslim nation, and are beholden to the Islamic state regarding its use). Sharia prohibits the preaching of creeds other than Islam, the renunciation of Islam, any actions that divide the umma, and homosexuality. Its penalties are draconian, including savagely executed death sentences for apostates, homosexuals, and adulterers.

The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad, is to implement, spread, and defend sharia. Scholar Robert Spencer incisively refers to dawa practices as “stealth jihad,” the advancement of the sharia agenda through means other than violence and agents other than terrorists. These include extortion, cultivation of sympathizers in the media and the universities, exploitation of our legal system and tradition of religious liberty, infiltration of our political system, and fundraising. This is why Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the world’s most influential Islamic cleric, boldly promises that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe” through dawa.

In considering Imam Rauf and his Ground Zero project, Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood are extremely important. Like most Muslims, Rauf regards Qaradawi as a guide, and referred to him in 2001 as “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.” And indeed he is: a prominent, Qatar-based scholar whose weekly Al Jazeera program on the subject of sharia is viewed by millions and whose cyber-venture, Islam Online, is accessed by millions more, including Muslims in the United States. Not surprisingly, his rabble-rousing was a prime cause of the deadly global rioting by Muslims when an obscure Danish newspaper published cartoon depictions of Mohammed.

Qaradawi regards the United States as the enemy of Islam. He has urged that Muslims “fight the American military if we can, and if we cannot, we should fight the U.S. economically and politically.” In 2004, he issued a fatwa (an edict based on sharia) calling for Muslims to kill Americans in Iraq. A leading champion of Hamas, he has issued similar approvals of suicide bombings in Israel. Moreover, as recounted in Matthew Levitt’s history of Hamas, Qaradawi has decreed that Muslims must donate money to “support Palestinians fighting occupation. . . . If we can’t carry out acts of jihad ourselves, we at least should support and prop up the mujahideen [i.e., Islamic raiders or warriors] financially and morally.”

Qaradawi’s support for Hamas is only natural. Since that organization’s 1987 founding, it has been the top Muslim Brotherhood priority to underwrite Hamas’s jihadist onslaught against the Jewish state. Toward that end, the Muslim Brotherhood mobilized the Islamist infrastructure in the United States.

The original building block of that infrastructure was the Muslim Students Association (MSA), established in the early Sixties to groom young Muslims in the Brotherhood’s ideology — promoting sharia, Islamic supremacism, and a worldwide caliphate. As Andrew Bostom elaborated in a New York Post op-ed on Friday, Imam Rauf, too, is steeped in this ideology.

In 1981, after two decades of churning out activists from its North American chapters (which now number over 600), the Brotherhood merged the MSA into ISNA. In its own words, ISNA was conceived as an umbrella organization “to advance the cause of Islam and service Muslims in North America so as to enable them to adopt Islam as a complete way of life.” That same year, the Brotherhood created IIIT as a Washington-area Islamic think tank dedicated to what it describes as “the Islamicization of knowledge.”

After Hamas was created, the top Brotherhood operative in the United States, Mousa Abu Marzook — who actually ran Hamas from his Virginia home for several years in the early Nineties — founded the Islamic Association for Palestine to boost Hamas’s support. One of his co-founders was Sami al-Arian, then a student and Muslim Brotherhood member, later a top U.S. operative of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which he helped guide from his perch as a professor at the University of South Florida. In 2006, al-Arian was convicted on terrorism charges.

Marzook and other Brotherhood figures established the Occupied Land Fund, eventually renamed the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), to be Hamas’s American fundraising arm. The HLF was headquartered in ISNA’s Indiana office. As the Justice Department explained in a memorandum submitted in the HLF case:

During the early years of HLF’s operation, HLF raised money and supported Hamas through a bank account it held with ISNA. . . . Indeed, HLF (under its former name, OLF) operated from within ISNA, in Plainfield, Illinois. . . . ISNA checks deposited into the ISNA/[North American Islamic Trust] account for the HLF were often made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahideen,” the original name for the Hamas military wing. . . . From the ISNA/NAIT account, the HLF sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook . . . and a number of other individuals associated with Hamas.

Ultimately, the HLF raised over $36 million for Hamas. At the height of the intifada, this was not about the social-welfare activities Hamas touts to camouflage its barbarism. As the journalist Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism has observed, “Ordinary Americans should be shocked and outraged to learn that Hamas was running its terror campaign from a sanctuary in the U.S.” In addition, prosecutors showed that ISNA was central to a 1993 meeting of top Brotherhood operatives, who were wiretapped “discussing using ISNA as an official cover for their activities.”

Meantime, in 1992, the IIIT contributed $50,000 to underwrite an al-Arian venture, the World & Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a front for Palestinian Islamic Jihad that ostensibly employed several members of the PIJ governing board. IIIT has been under federal investigation since 2002 — and after his terrorism conviction, al-Arian went into contempt of court rather than honor a grand-jury subpoena in the probe.

In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood’s American leadership prepared an internal memorandum for the organization’s global leadership in Egypt. It was written principally by Mohamed Akram, a close associate of Sheikh Qaradawi. As Akram put it, the Brotherhood

must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in 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.

The memorandum included a list described by Akram as “our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” working together to implement this sabotage strategy. Prominently included in that list were ISNA and IIIT.

The Ground Zero project to erect a monument to sharia overlooking the crater where the World Trade Center once stood, and where thousands were slaughtered, is not a test of America’s commitment to religious liberty. America already has thousands of mosques and Islamic centers, including scores in the New York area — though Islam does not allow non-Muslims even to enter its crown-jewel cities of Mecca and Medina, much less to build churches or synagogues.

The Ground Zero project is a test of America’s resolve to face down a civilizational jihad that aims, in the words of its leaders, to destroy us from within.

"Moderate muhammeddans"? Islam is fanatism and fundamentalism by defintion. There is nothing like "moderate extremists" - there is only people tolerating extremism 8which is the same like practciing it, in my book), or standing up against it and sending it to hell. In 1939, a vast majorityof Germans did not wish neither an attack on Poland, nor a WWII. But since this majoity of war-refusing Germans did not stand up against the Nazis in the time before, they nevertheless got what they claim they did not want: an attack on Poland and a WWII. There were active perpetrators (some). There were "Mitläufer" (most). And there was the smallest group of all, those actively resisting by fighting and sabotaging, by poratcicing civil disobedience and hiding or smuggling Jews out of Germany although risking their own life by that. Of these three groups, the first share the greatest guilt. The second, the "Mitläufer", may not have done something active, but right this is why theyx also have to accept thgeir share of guilt, for withiut their passivity, things wpould not have been able to happen the way they did. rightfully claiming to have resisted the Nazis and refusing to be held responsible for what happened, can only the third group. -

[tater]

Originally Posted by Castout

Quran has been printed and published in local languages and in English as far as I know. So it's available to anyone who would read them. And those who have the boldness to read another religion holy text by themselves usually have read through their own.

Translated editions are not the same. It's sort of like listening to what "moderate" muslims (meaning pundits or others in the global, public eye, not people at large) say on TV in the US, then reading translations of what they say on arabic language media... the difference is striking.

The bottom line is the more devout the muslims are, the more fundamentalist they are. This is unsurprising since in the sense of Christian sects, all major muslim sects are "fundamentalist." Are individuals variable? Sure. Again, it's like going back far enough into Western history. There was a time when anyone who was an unbeliever pretty much kept his mouth shut, or couched his writing in sort of religious language to make it look like he was not a heretic. The deists fall into this category. They say "god," but with a wink.

The more people are taught Arabic (to be able to read the koran), the less tolerant they become (which is the point of teaching Arabic to Muslims outside the ME).

You miss entirely the core issue there Tater.
The people doing that teaching mainly come from the two fundy schools and they teach because its their new interpretation of texts that they want to spread.

all major muslim sects are "fundamentalist."

That is because you use a rather unique interpretation of the word "fundamentalist".

I stuns me time and again when I focus on the content of a teaching or ideology,

It used to stun me that you only accepted fundamentalist ideologies, but I am used to it now.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

That is because you use a rather unique interpretation of the word "fundamentalist".

You know, in my mind, the muslim world PROVED they're all fundamentalist when they rioted the world over because some guy draw a freaking cartoon of mohammad. In one fell stroke, they proved the cartoonists point. I honestly do not beleive there is such a thing as a "moderate" muslim. As much as i disagree with judeo christian evangical's, at least they don't resort to violence over stupid caricatures.

You know, in my mind, the muslim world PROVED they're all fundamentalist when they rioted the world over because some guy draw a freaking cartoon of mohammad.

So you are rewriting history to get your point "PROVED" in your mind.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

You know, in my mind, the muslim world PROVED they're all fundamentalist when they rioted the world over because some guy draw a freaking cartoon of mohammad. In one fell stroke, they proved the cartoonists point. I honestly do not beleive there is such a thing as a "moderate" muslim. As much as i disagree with judeo christian evangical's, at least they don't resort to violence over stupid caricatures.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

So you are rewriting history to get your point "PROVED" in your mind.

I didn't rewrite anything. It was all over the news of every persuasion (left or right) at the time.

[TheSatyr]

I have to admit that Skybird's views scare me. He seems to view Muslims the same way his ancesters viewed Jews in the 30s. And we all know how that turned out.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by TheSatyr

I have to admit that Skybird's views scare me. He seems to view Muslims the same way his ancesters viewed Jews in the 30s. And we all know how that turned out.

The Jews were victims of racist crimes. they did nothing to provoke them.

islam is an ideology that educates people to behave in this and not in that ways. This ideology is no victim, it is a perpatrator, due to its aggressive, intolerant, inhumane content.

It makes absolutely no sense to compare the Jews' fate back then with islam's parade today. But it is standard tactic by islamophiles to cloaim that Muslims are victims int he same way Jews had been back then. Jews were sitting at the receiving end of aggression. Islam is the origin of aggression. "Jews" refer to individuals, to people. "Islam" refers to an totalitarian ideology that combines claims of religious supremacism with political claims for dominance and an education for gagging the free mind and preventing intellectualism, critical thinking, and objective analysis.

But that is not as scaring - becasue it can be resisted, if only one wants that - as people like you are, allowing all that. Or better: it is a very depressing sight to see people giving up freedom because they are too afraid to stand up in defence of freedom, for they think freedom is negotiable if only that allows to avoid fighting for it. You find me scaring? You should edcuate yourself a bit more about Islam by using non-pro-Islamic sources - and then understand why to be scared of it. I - am just warning of the darkness to come - but I am not the cause of it. So do not be scared of me, but of your own fearfulness.

I have to admit that Skybird's views scare me. He seems to view Muslims the same way his ancesters viewed Jews in the 30s. And we all know how that turned out.

It is funny that many of his posts can come straight from "my struggle" and he himself says he can't join protests or start protests without it being full of neo nazis saying what he wants to say.....yet because he is convinced of his intellect he cannot make the connection between his views and uncle adolfs.

I didn't rewrite anything. It was all over the news of every persuasion (left or right) at the time.

Would you like to run through the news again of any persuasion from at the time?
Since you are saying .....
"You know, in my mind, the muslim world PROVED they're all fundamentalist when they rioted the world over because some guy draw a freaking cartoon of mohammad. " when the truth is far from that.
You are talking about a few idiots in a couple of countries rioting months after the event after some pillocks had spent ages trying to make them angry. Even then the pillocks had to make up there own versions of the cartoons to try and get a mob going.
Remember that Dutch idiot Wilders trying to get a reaction? Making a film to provoke try and offend.
All he really got was piles of comments about how crap hias film was and complaints from the Danish cartoonist.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Would you like to run through the news again of any persuasion from at the

Nope, because I don't give a rats ass if you or anyone else agrees with me or not. I don't expect you to. I do not need to have someone else agree with me in order to validate what i feel is right or correct. I stated what i thought, and why i thought it. If you don't like or agree with it, well tough. People say lots of things i don't like or agree with too. That's life.

Nope, because I don't give a rats ass if you or anyone else agrees with me or not.

Interesting, so you are happy to go through life with your opinions based on false "proof" just because your memory is faulty and you are scared of the truth.

I stated what i thought, and why i thought it.

Indeed, yet your thoughts don't add up do they.