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.
...
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.
...
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

Scary statistics.

I saw this video over at youtube.com and on another blog that tracks trends. I find it rather naive.



It seems all neat and stuff. It's just like some scatterbrained, MTV, visual "can't we all just get along? ... Power to the people ... big government stinks ..."-fest.

Can't we all just get along?
Well, to put it bluntly, no. Many can get along, but there are also many who just can't. This video even proves it.

Go back and watch it again, this time pay attention to the statistics. Yes, technically, a majority of people want peace. But, those statistics should be rather alarming.

Commentary:

"Are we that different?"
Well, we're human, so we obviously care about those whom we love and are sad when they are hurt or killed. But, yes, there are vastly different cultures and very different perspectives on things.

Ok, check out these statistics, straight from the video:
"65% of Egyptians want democracy" (that's a majority, right?)
"74% of Jordanians want democracy" (that's a majority, right?)
"81% of Europeans want Middle East Peace"
"87% of Americans want Middle East Peace"
"67% of Israelis want real Middle East peace talks now."
"62% of Palistinians want real Middle East peace talks now."

Let's look at the other side of the coin.

According to the video:
35% of Egyptians don't want democracy ... 1 out of every 3 people don't want it.
26% of Jordanians don't want democracy ... 1 out of every 4 people don't want it.
19% of Europeans don't want Middle East Peace ... 1 out of every 5 people don't want it.
13% of Americans don't want Middle East Peace ... just over 1 out of every 10 people don't want it.
33% of Israelis don't want peace talks ... 1 out of every 3 people don't want it.
38% of Palistinians don't want peace talks ... 1 out of every 3 people don't want it.

That's alot of people who don't want these things.

"Global Public Opinion is the New Super Power."
Oh great, when did opinion decide reality? Mob rule? No thanks. I thought reason was used to observe and understand reality.

The problem is that over in the Middle East there are still many who don't want peace. Well, they want peace, but that will only happen in their minds when the other side is dead or overthrown. And those people don't give a damn about who is in office or your personal opinion. Do you really think you can just get everyone to just stop fighting? Sheesh.
I'm sure a vast majority of Iraqis want peace if not democracy. But, I really don't see the extreme Muslim rebels listening to them ... in fact they are terrorizing them.

RS

An Inside Story on Sudan and Darfur

As most readers of this blog know, I am very interested in the media and the information or misinformation it can provide. I have recently come across a "news agency" called Vice Broadcasting System or VBS.tv (I won't directly link to their site as contains some "more-than-just-PG-13" articles or topics).

While VBS does seem to be made up of many who would probably have a more liberal bent on their worldviews, one thing that does interest me is their desire to get more of an inside story than what the major news networks get (ie NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, BBC, etc.), and yet I don't think VBS is sensationalistic jounalism.

What impressed me with this story on Sudan and Darfur was that it was not limited by the usual politically correct bias that most mainstream news networks have. This story is based on them going into Sudan and looking at the history of war there and what the causes were, the state of each the areas of Sudan, and quite possibly what the lies are.

I think these videos would be appropriate for this blog, although they are more PG in nature. Anyway, this is not quite the "average news outlet" story on Sudan.

Here is "Inside Sudan" in five parts.

Pt 1

Pt 2

Pt 3

Pt 4

Pt 5


RS

Iran and the bomb ... dirty.

I don't usually get into politics but having seen these headlines, I had to make a brief comment.

Last month, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, made the statement: "The bottom line is we do not need a bomb," [Ahmedinejad] said at a news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

My first thought was, "Of course they don't, that would be too complicated."

Given the fact that Iran is one of the biggest supporters of radical Islamic terrorism, why get all complicated with a bomb? Even with peaceful nuclear power you always have a rather "endless" supply of ... what else ... radioactive waste.

This headline just makes the thought of Iran having nuclear power a bit more scary:
Al Qaeda seeking nuclear kit for attacks: UK official

I really can't trust Ahmedinejad when he says "We love everyone in the world — Jews, Christians, Muslims, non-Muslims, non-Jews, non-Christians. We are against ugly acts. We are against occupation, aggression, killings and displacing people — otherwise we have no problem with ordinary people," and then he gets on his own Iranian TV and says stuff about America and England being enemies of Iran.

Western media is so flawed.

Pallywood

Following up on the theme of media and how it can either present or distort the thruth:

I originally thought this was actually from the TV show 60 Minutes. I can't verify that, it seems to be more of an independant documentary criticizing the way the media shows Palistine, which often just takes Palistinian media footage and assumes what they think they are seeing is exactly what is happening. The analysis in this film seems to be rather reasonable. The "dead" body getting back upon the funeral beir is amusing. So, what do you think? Certainly there are problems in the Middle East, but is "Pallywood" giving us a false perception of who is instigating the conflicts? More recently Hezbolla in Lebanon was being accused of the same thing. This is certainly worth viewing:



Sometimes it's all how you present something. Isn't that what marketing is anyway?
Take this "trailer" for "The Shining" for example (contains no gore or scaryness):

Joee Blogs On BBC Radio

You may remember my post asking you to encourage "Joee Blogs" to use the possible opportunity to be on BBC Radio regarding his blog post with photos from a Muslim protest outside of Westminster Cathedral. Well, our friend did actually make it onto BBC radio.

You can visit his post to get the link to his interview.

It appeared to go well. It didn't get that deep, since the show is more about the internet and blogosphere in general, but his message was "spot on."

So, go check it out. Overall, the rest of his blog is worth looking at too.
(when you go to the BBC Radio link on his blog, it will probably start out with an American Football report in American English, don't worry, just go foward a few minutes and you'll get to the show, I believe he is the second interview).

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.

Give Some Catholic Encouragement

"Joee Blogs" a Catholic in London had some incredible pictures he took last Sunday of some Muslims protesting at Westminster Cathedral.

He may have the opportunity to be on a BBC Radio program on the blogosphere and internet happenings to talk about his experience and his Catholic perspective on the Pope and Islam. Please encourage him by posting a comment on his blog at this entry.

I know you are but what am I?

"I know you are but what am I?"

That old schoolyard line just about seems to sum up one of the latest articles over at Al-Jazeera Magazine's website.

We're not being intolerant, you are!

From the article:

So next time you Catholics drop money into that collection plate, you should wonder where your money is going. It seems it is filling the same coffers and feeding the same ideologies of an intransigent Bush administration. If this is the case, maybe people should be asking the Pope for tolerance, rather than the Muslim world.

and from the comments:

Muslims ask the West to show tolerance, while being unbelievably intolerant themselves of other religions. The only reason the Muslim world hates Israel so much is because Israelis are not Muslim. How about Muslims leading by example, and showing tolerance towards Israel, not to mention the US and the West in general. And it goes without saying that tolerance means NO TERRORISM.-Andrew From UK

Andrew from UK you are too prejudice, you speak thru your emotion, check your history book, who is the first terrorist in the world, bene is more like an emperor than a pope, have you heard john paul giving this kind of remark..if somebody said your mother is a , would you get angry? because you owe your mother a lot right thats why u wud be angry rite. that goes the same to the muslim, prophet Mohammed pbuh had sacrified his life to educate the humanbeing, it is inhumne to condamn a man who had brought knowledge to the world and to accused him of something that is against his affort. the bottom line is bene shoulg be a politician rather than a religious leader.-Stephan from Germany

(There aren't a lot of quotes from the Middle East, I'm guessing it's because those in the Middle East would be looking at the Arabic website of Al-Jazeera.)

Read the Al-Jazeera article here.

And in a note related to the latter commetn above, Carl Olson has an interesting post regarding the tunnel vision of the protesters. John Paul II really went much further in his criticism of Islam than Pope Benedict did.

An Atheist Defends the Pope

I am very grateful to Fr. Stephanos for pointing this out to me, I wish I had read it earlier. It is a few days old, but definitely worth posting on the main page here. You can take the author's political views with a grain of salt, but his analysis is very reasoned.

I especially find interesting his "correcting" the Pope on the context of the "controversial" quote.

Emperor Manuel II Paleologus

Let's stop here, and note one error. The dialogues set down by Manuel did not occur during the siege of Constantinople, but much earlier, during the emperor's youth, when he was held as a hostage at the court of the Turkish sultan; his father, John V, was a Turkish vassal, who paid yearly tribute to the sultan. At the Turkish court, young Manuel passed the time by engaging in a series of dialogues with a scholarly Persian, and later recorded them from his notes. This historical context is important, in view of the controversy that has arisen – and arise it did, when the pope got around to his point

Hmmm, nobody in the media or Muslim world has bothered to let us know that little detail.

Like I said, this is definitely an article worth reading.

Read the whole article here.

Is This Using Reason?

Well, the hot topic remains to be the Pope and RADICAL Islam. I really wasn't sure what to post, but given that it is close to the end of the day, I'll go ahead and post something, although I was wondering about posting it. I can't even post a picture because I got a bit too freaked out when I did an image search on Google for "suicide bomber." (Let's just say that they are not just vaporized like you think).

It is along the lines of the previous post of watching what the Arab world says. I found an interesting section on Al-Jazeera Magazine's web site which is a question and answer column. From the few articles I read, it looks more like a way for those who oppose RADICAL Islam to write in with questions and for Al-Jazeera to give a very biased answer.

Someone wrote in with a question asking how the suicide bombers in Iraq and Palistine can be considered Muslims if they are committing suicide, since this is forbidden in the Qur'an. The answer was rather disturbing, and avoided some realities, like: rarely if ever have suicide bombers attacked only soldiers.

There’s no way to compare a Palestinian who blows up himself to kill a few Israeli soldiers, baring in mind that Palestinians do not have weapons or ammunition like those sent to the Israelis by the U.S. every year, to a person who carries out a bomb attack that results in the death of dozens and hundreds of civilians in Iraq.

What’s taking place in Palestine is anti-occupation resistance, but what’s happening in Iraq should be split into anti-occupation resistance, like carrying out attacks that kill occupation troops, who are actually a legitimate target, and rebel or insurgent attacks that claim civilian lives.

When a man blows up himself and looses his life in executing his/her operation, called by worldwide media as “suicide bombing”, to save other people’s lives, his nation, those civilians who’re killed every day at the hands of the occupation troops, like what we see in Israel, this does not count as suicide but as a sacrifice in holy war and, therefore, as martyrdom.

Let me quote the prominent Muslim cleric Sheikh Youssuf Al Qaradawi speaking on this issue during a visit to UK in 2004, were he was asked in an exclusive interview with Newsnight to comment on what most of the Western media refers to as suicide bombing in the Occupied Palestinian territories.

“It's not suicide, it is martyrdom in the name of God, Islamic theologians and jurisprudents have debated this issue. Referring to it as a form of Jihad, under the title of jeopardizing the life of the Mujahadeen. It is allowed to jeopardize your soul and cross the path of the enemy and be killed."

Frightening. These people are being taught how to die for Allah, but they are not being taught how to live for Allah.

Read the whole question with its answer here.

RADICAL Islam breeding ignorance?

Of course we often go to media which reflects our own views. In wanting to see the bigger picture, I have been cruising around some of the Middle Eastern media. I am utterly astounded and some of the things I see. Forget NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox. If you want to know about Radical Islam, go to the source.

I found the following article and especially it's comments to be just completely irrational. Radical Muslims might be pissed off over the Pope's comments, but given his theme of faith with reason, they are only serving to prove not only the Pope's point, but also the emperor's quote.

From Al-Jazeera Magazine:

Meaningless Apology:

Fury continues over radical remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI last Tuesday in a speech during a pilgrimage to his native Germany in which he linked the noble faith of Islam to violence and terrorism, quoting a 14th-century Christian emperor who said that Prophet Mohammed's command to spread Islam by the sword had produced "evil and inhumane" results ...

read the rest

The comments are the disturbing part (and they are from all over the world):

"I am not surprised by pop's comment. Zionist are trying very hard to push their agenda, the only obstacle today against Zionist is Islam. Otherwise how pop can ignore the history when Christian crusaders were heading to Jerusalem to slaughter innocent Muslims. Nice one pop for you selective case of amnesia!"

or

"HEY POP, WE DONT NEED YOUR CRUSADE WARS IN THE 21ST CENTERY, AS FAR AS I CARE, YOUR REPRESENT NOTHING TO ME, SO I SAY THAT TO YOU AND YOUR A LIKE, GO TO HELL AND SHUT UR MOUTH, IGNORANT POPPY, FACTS ARE IN THE BOOKS OF HISTORY AND FOR THE PRESENT ARE BLOODIED BY YOUR BARBARIC CRUSADES WARS, YR JOB AS POP POPPY, IS TO BRING HUMANITY TOGETHER, NOT TO BRING HELL ON EARTH, DOOMED SHALL BE YOU AND ALL OTHERS WHO ARE LIKE YOU HATRED, RACISTS, EVIL SOULS. GO TO HELL, HYPOCRATES LISTEN U ARE LUCKY MUSLIMS ARE PATIENTS. OS, SINNERS, OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SPEW POISON, U WANT CRUSADE HOLY WAR, HOLY WAR U SHALL GET, DONT BLAME MUSLIMS AFTER THAT FOR TURNING THE SEA FROM BLUE TO RED, BLAME ONLY YOURSELF WESTERM RACIST IDEOLOGY FOR NOT STANDING UP AND PUTTING END TO THIS PLAY, BARBARIC WEST AGAINST INNOCENT MUSLIMS RELIGION, U DISGUST ME POP, AS BUSH DISGUST ME AS ALL THOSE BLOOD THIRSTY BEASTS SUCH BUSH AND PUPPIES AND U ARE ONE OF THEM POP.PLAYING GOD POP, WHILE U ARE BORN A SINNER, GO AWAY."

or

"One should not forget that Pope is nothing but the stooge of the big christian power.Overtly he talks and preach peace but racist introvertly against the muslims.All the Popes except for John Paul II could not acquire love from all the religions.The christian world was always against the rise of the muslim influence and power in todays world order and Vatican gave direct moral and Papal support.The Vatican talked about violation of HR in China/L.America/Africa(as like their masters USA/UK connivers but never uttered a single word or censured the most atrocious,brutal and marauder nation Israel.It appears that Vatican is happy at the destruction of Muslim heritage,death in millions and unimaginable sufferings of billion muslims throughout.The Vatican is enjoying the undeclared crusade perpretrated on the muslims by the Jews/Hindus and Christian world in the name"war against terror".The muslims are treated like criminals.Respected "Pope Benedict" poured fuel in the already burning fire."

Thankfully there are a few reasoned comments, but you can tell an ideology is at war with reason.
EDIT: - Interesting to note, if you try to comment there is a note which says: "Racism and reference to religion is banned." Nice to see AlJazeera follow their own policies. I rest my case.

Christianity and RADICAL Islam

Although the topic of Christianity and Islam has been a hot topic for the past five years, recently it has been further escalated by the media frenzy over Pope Benedict XVI's talk given Regensburg, on September 12th. I also was able to watch "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," an eye opening film which I am looking into. It's hard to watch a film about propaganda and not vaguely feel like you might be getting propaganda yourself. However, since so much of it is actual footage from Arab TV, like Al-Jazeera and Iranian TV, there is much of it that is "coming straight from the horse's mouth."

Also, today, I have just seen that "Citing the words of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim religious leaders in the Gaza Strip on Sunday warned Pope Benedict XVI that he must "accept" Islam if he wanted to live in peace."

Whenever I read about radical Islam, I often get the feeling we are using the same words, but these words have vastly different meanings. For us in the West, "peace" means living together without major conflict and being able to respect one another's beliefs. Yet from much of what I have heard quoted from Muslim leaders, they seem to define "peace" as "not being killed." As in, "we are a peaceful religion as long as you submit to Islam." And by their thinking, not submitting to Islam makes YOU the instigator, not Islam.
"Freedom" is another word. Radical Islam will say they encourage freedom, and everyone will be free ... but only when everyone submits to Islam.

This is something that should concern, not only Christians and Jews, but seculars as well. In Radical Islamic thinking, there is no separation of Church and State. Our post-modern mentality seems to think that if you aren't religious you are therefore "neutral." This doesn't work when dealing with Islam. Even if you don't believe in anything, you still have no rights under Islam. Only those who are Islamic will have rights. In their eyes, you either submit to Allah, or you don't. If you don't, at best you have no rights, at worse you die.

I found a very good book is "Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics, 100 Questions and Answers."
This is written by a former Muslim who converted to Catholicsm and by an expert on Middle Eastern affairs. It has a forward by Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. so you can tell it understands Islam, and is is orthodox regarding Catholicism. It is very easy to read and extremely interesting.

Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West
1 hour 20 minutes, does have a few graphic scenes.
I'll let you form your own opinions on it.

UPDATE: Google has apparently pulled the movie from their site therefore the link no longer works. The movie is still available at youtube.com but it is split up into 8 parts. You can do a search on youtube for it.

Well, enough for now, maybe more thoughts later.

I Support The Pope

Just a quick blog for the evening.

Just saw a couple of banners which were made to show your support of Pope Benedict XVI on your blog or website.

The Curt Jester has a nice one.

And he also mentioned another over at Kenneth Kully's blog. I snagged his sidebar banner, but he also has a nicer topic banner too.

(I can't believe I figured out how to format it into the sidebar. w00t!)

UPDATE - You can click the "I Support The Pope" button to see what the Pope really said.