Former terrorist pleas for Muslims to fight terrorism

Hassan Butt speaks out against Islamic terrorism
Finally, an voice amongst Muslims decrying terrorism and radical Islam.

Hassan Butt, a British citizen and former terrorist speaks out against terrorism and the extremist mindset that is being preached by many Muslim leaders.

Parts of the article:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
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How did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting this (flawed) utopian goal? How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion? There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a dualistic model of the world. Many Muslims may or may not agree with secularism but at the moment, formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion. There is no 'rendering unto Caesar' in Islamic theology because state and religion are considered to be one and the same. The centuries-old reasoning of Islamic jurists also extends to the world stage where the rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) have been set down to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

What radicals and extremists do is to take these premises two steps further. Their first step has been to reason that since there is no Islamic state in existence, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr. Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world. Many of my former peers, myself included, were taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief. In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.
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But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Islamic institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology. They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex topic of violence within Islam and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace, focus on Islam as personal, and hope that all of this debate will go away. [RS comment: that last line sounds like many protestants when it comes to faith and reason.]

The article is a must read. You can view the whole article here:

My plea to fellow Muslims: you must renounce terror.

RS

Media Hurting Muslims

I found an interesting, quick little Q & A in the Dallas Morning News today.

from: Point of Contact

10:02 AM CDT on Sunday, September 24, 2006

Our Q&A with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, formerly a radical Muslim, now a Washington, D.C.-based counterterrorism consultant

When you were a Muslim, you were converted from progressive Islam to Wahhabism, also called Salafism, by the logic of the Salafists' arguments. What does that tell us about the prospects for Islamic reform?

The logical force of the radicals' interpretation of the Islamic faith cannot be denied; anybody who brushes off Islamic radicals' interpretation of jihad as clearly and simply distorting Islam is either dissembling or speaking from sincere ignorance.

I don't think, though, that the radicals are inevitably right, and I thus haven't yet given up the hope that Islam can save itself. ... One of the Muslim moderates with whom I've been dialoguing for that project tells me that the Salafi interpretation seems insurmountable at first, but as a Muslim gains greater mastery of Arabic and is able to interpret Islamic history on his own, less radical alternative interpretations may seem more compelling.

At this point, it's too early for me to assess whether this statement is accurate. But the fact that I don't think the radicals are inevitably right makes the current controversy over Pope Benedict's remarks all the more distressing.

Why?

It seems that the media would rather condemn the pope and thus place criticism of Islam off-limits rather than focus on the pathologies in contemporary Islam. This Western response serves to undermine Muslim moderates and strengthen radicals. It undermines moderates because one of the strongest big-picture arguments the moderates have is that Muslims need to act like adults. Yet the signal we're sending is that we're willing to look the other way and create a ridiculous double standard: that we're unwilling to hold Muslims accountable for unacceptable behavior and unacceptable actions.

The extremists are helped not only by the missed opportunity to examine the crisis in contemporary Islam, but also because it increasingly appears to them that if they want to use threats of violence to stifle speech, they will be helped in their cause by hordes of guilt-ridden Westerners who will side with them.

We live in cowardly times, and it's sad to see that so many Westerners pick the wrong side in what is a stark choice between free speech and intimidation.

This does bring up a question I have had for awhile and it is regarding the different "sects" of Islam. How are they related to each other and what do they think of each other? Is there a huge, silent majority of moderate Muslims like the media tells us there is, or is anti-Semitism and anti-United States sentiment becoming more intrinsic to Islamic belief? I really don't know, so I ask. It's just that I always hear the media say that the extremists are a small fringe minority of Islam, but they are the only ones I hear. I have yet to hear anything from the "majority" of Islam. Of course, the media often only lets us hear what they want us to hear, so it is hard to tell what is the truth.

The Church Shall Triumph

While surfing the other day I came across an entry at The Brussels Journal which suprised me.

It shows a late 17th century pulpit in the Church of Our Lady in Dendermonde, Flanders (Belgium).

The pulpit shows two Angels trampling a man who appears to be Mohammed.



It reminds me of one of the statues in "Il Gesu" in Rome, the church where Saint Ignatius of Loyola is buried. The statue shows the Holy Mother Church throwing down who I believe are Luther and Calvin. Even a cherub is tearing the pages out of one of Luther's writings.


(click picuture for bigger version)
I've never had problems with a little triumphalism now and then. Fr. John Hardon defines it in his "Modern Catholic Dictionary" as, "A term of reproach leveled at the Catholic Church for the claim that she has the fullness of divine revelation and the right ot pass judgement on the personal and social obligations of humankind."

Certainly a triumphalistic approach is not going to work in certain situations of evangelization, but I often find that many Catholics are anti-triumphalistic to the point that they really don't believe that the Catholic Church contains the fullness of revelation. I find many Catholics who think that being Catholic is just one religion among equals. Other religious certainly participate in the Truth to some degree, ie the Orthodox have many of the same principles of faith and have valid Sacraments, many Protestants believe Jesus is Lord, Jews believe in God, etc. But none of these contain the fullness of God's revelation as the Catholic Church does.

I like to use a quote from Fr. Bill Casey, who is a Father of Mercy, when he was speaking about the struggle of the Church against the Devil. "I have read the Bible. I read the end ... and we win!"
Sounds triumphalistic, but if you believe in Christ and His Church, then you have to believe it is true. "The gates of Hell shall not prevail."