Family Security Matters

The Right to Offend: Putting the Muhammad Cartoons in Context

By Nicholas Guariglia

Pity Sofia Karlberg, the spokeswoman of the Swedish foreign ministry, who was tasked with the highly weasel-like chore of expressing regret for something she was not responsible for; for something that need not be regretted. It seems that Lars Vilks, a cartoonist for the Swedish paper Nerikes Allenhanda, drew unflattering depictions of the Islamic prophet and seventh-century general Muhammad. Karlberg eulogized to the BBC that the Swedish government “expressed regret that the publication of the cartoons had hurt the feelings of Muslims,” but continued that the government “can’t apologize for the cartoons because (the government) did not publish them.” .....

 

Nor should we forget the visceral reaction to previous doodlings. The publisher of the first Muhammad cartoons in 2005, Jyllands-Posten of Denmark, had also published satirical cartoons of Jesus and (what were Iran-sponsored) Holocaust-denying cartoons. Nobody killed anyone. But once the Danish newspaper violated the “sanctity” of Islamic aniconism, embassies went aflame, civilians were butchered across the world, diplomats cowered and then were attacked for their perceived passivity, countless death warrants ordered by old men in robes were issued, and suicide bombs were discovered all over Europe.

The charade was entirely manufactured and stoked by the Iranian theocracy and various loose-end clerical theocrats jockeying for power. Boycotts on the small pacifistic European democracy were intended to destroy its economy. The majority of Western papers whimpered away from reprinting the drawings in solidarity with free expression (and one that did, Free Inquiry out of New York, was banned from Borders bookstores).

Apologies, mea culpas, and soft-spoken confessions continued for months, underscoring the necessity for a bit more stoicism and a lot less sentimentality in our society. “Perhaps the cartoons were tasteless? Maybe they were a tad too insulting? Was their publication really prudent?” The sniveling, self-loathing masochism entirely missed the point.

Family Security Matters

"Reform Conference Reaches Out to Muslims, Evangelicals - Forward.com"

 

Reform Conference Reaches Out to Muslims, Evangelicals

By Anthony Weiss
Thu. Dec 06, 2007

The head of the largest Muslim organization in the country is expected to address the national gathering of North America’s largest Jewish denomination at its annual conference next week. The speech is part of a broader push at the conference to elevate interfaith dialogue with Muslims and Christians.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, will appear at the Union for Reform Judaism’s biennial, which is being held in San Diego. The event comes three months after the URJ’s president, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, addressed ISNA at its annual convention. Building on Mattson’s appearance, Yoffie is planning to announce a national dialogue and education program that Jewish and Muslim scholars have been developing together.

“We feel that American Jews and American Muslims need to sit down together and get to know each other, so you need a congregational component to that,” Yoffie told the Forward. “It’s not just a matter of bringing together a few rabbis and a few imams.”

In the past, Muslim-Jewish interfaith efforts have taken place on a small scale or within individual communities. Last month, a meeting of imams and rabbis from across the country billed itself as the first national interfaith effort. The Reform movement’s push is an attempt to encourage interaction nationwide, not only between clergy but also between rank-and-file members.

The appearance of Mattson at the convention is a triumph for Yoffie, who had insisted, in the face of criticism from within the Reform movement and from outside it, that ISNA was not a viable, moderate partner. But by attempting to push the dialogue from the leadership level down to the grassroots, the URJ and ISNA are entering difficult territory, testing the notion that congregants are as eager to work together as their leaders.

ISNA has been criticized in the past for its positions on terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the national umbrella organization has recently been moving toward more moderate positions — a shift symbolized by the leadership of Mattson, who is both a woman and a convert to Islam.

Mattson could not be reached for comment.

Reform movement leaders said that the response in the Reform movement to Yoffie’s ISNA speech was generally positive. Pre-registration levels for a panel discussion on Islam are among the highest of any session at the conference. Other Reform leaders caution, however, that Jews might not find the same level of interest in dialogue from the less-established American Muslim community.

“The American Muslim community is just not there yet. They’re still busy dealing with things that feel like survival issues to them,” said Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center, the Washington office of the Reform movement. “So much of that community is still first generation, second generation, and still feeling its way through the organizational structure.”

Jewish and Muslim scholars have put together academic materials for congregations interested in pursuing a dialogue, or for those who, lacking a dialogue partner, wanted to educate themselves. But Rabbi Laura Geller, of Temple Emmanuel in Los Angeles, stressed that dialogue, by itself, wasn’t a sufficient basis for a connection.

“It used to be there was a Jewish-Catholic dialogue, there was a Muslim-Jewish dialogue, and the point was dialogue,” she said. “It’s important, but isn’t sufficient. I think what is really the goal of all of these connections is working together.”

The Reform movement’s interest in reaching out to religious groups with which the Jewish community has sometimes had contentious relations will also extend to evangelical Christians. Pastor Rick Warren, founder of the evangelical Saddleback mega-church in Orange County, Calif., and author of the mega-bestseller “The Purpose-Driven Life,” will be speaking at a workshop about community building, drawing on the enormous success of his own church.

The Rev. Jim Wallis, author of his own bestseller, “God’s Politics,” will be appearing on a panel about progressive religion and social action. Wallis has risen to prominence by arguing that evangelical values such as concern for poverty dictate a break with the religious right. More recently, Warren, too, has begun to speak about the importance of combating AIDS and global poverty.

"Reform Conference Reaches Out to Muslims, Evangelicals - Forward.com"

Muslim community growing in Connecticut -- Newsday.com

 

"This is a national effort to establish some understanding of Islam, to start an interfaith dialogue"

 

HARTFORD, Conn. - The Muslim community in Connecticut is growing, drawing more faithful to a mosque that provides room to expand and prompting efforts to reach out to others.
For example, a billboard on Interstate 84 west near Cheshire invites motorists to turn east, or toward Mecca.
The Connecticut chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America that paid for the billboard has sponsored similar highway messages nationwide to inform non-Muslims about Islam and counter negative images that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"This is a national effort to establish some understanding of Islam, to start an interfaith dialogue," said Naveed Khan, a member of the United Muslim Masjid, a Waterbury mosque under construction. "There is a great need to educate people about Islam after 9/11. As a community we need to address this issue."
Islamic Circle's national convention in July at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford was attended by about 15,000 people.
"What we see in the news media and television is a picture of Muslims that is far from reality," said Muhammad Ahmad, a member of the Islamic Circle of North America and a doctor who practices internal medicine in Chicago. "Unless we go out and tell our neighbors who we are, there is no one who will correct the image."
Ahmad, who answers phone lines that inform callers about Islam, said he's received calls from curious priests, students, Muslims, non-Muslims and news reporters. Some callers have even tried to convert him to their faith.
"We are giving out information. What people want to do with that information is their problem," he said.
Construction of the United Muslim Masjid in Waterbury is more evidence of the growing Muslim community in Connecticut. Khan said the group is building a 24,000-square-foot building because its current mosque can no longer fit the growing number of Muslims in the Waterbury area who pray there five times a day and gather for Islamic holidays.
Attendance at the mosque has grown in the last decade as a rising number of Muslims have arrived in the Waterbury area from Albania, Ghana and elsewhere.
The new mosque will have a community hall, library, gymnasium, learning center and a minaret tall enough to be seen from I-84. The new mosque also will allow its members to hold more outreach activities to educate the public about Islam and Muslims.
___
Information from: The Hartford Courant, http://www.courant.com

Muslim community growing in Connecticut -- Newsday.com

Be the moderate you're looking for | Indian Muslims

 

"O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, though it may be against yourselves"

By Kareem Elbayar

"O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, though it may be against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be against rich or poor: for God can best protect both. Follow not the lusts of your hearts, lest ye swerve, and if ye distort justice or decline to do justice, verily God is well-acquainted with all that ye do." (Qur'an 4:135)

Washington, DC - In a 7 December op-ed in The New York Times, Ayaan Hirsi Ali asked where the moderate Muslims were, and concluded that the very notion of a moderate Muslim majority was "wishful thinking". Ali's claims are echoed by many prominent commentators on the American right, and judging by the comments left on The New York Times website, by many average Americans as well. But the popular idea that mainstream Muslims either do nothing to condemn (or worse, secretly applaud) the outrages perpetrated in the name of our religion is not only reductive and misinformed – it is dangerously wrong as well.

The vast majority of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims are indeed moderate, peace-loving people who reject violent extremism and terror. Moderate Muslims are all around us, from the attorney and husband of the rape victim from Saudi Arabia, both of whom expressed revulsion and shame at the decision made by Saudi Arabian courts; to the delegation of British Muslims who travelled to Sudan and worked with Sudanese MP Ghazi Suleiman to secure the "teddy bear" teacher's release (and prove that the entire controversy was more about distracting international attention from Darfur than it was about Islam); to the literally hundreds of thousands of Muslim individuals and organisations in the United States and around the world that expressed shock and disgust at the events which Ali cites.

Ali conveniently omits these facts from her narrative – just as she plucks a single verse from the Qur'an, devoid of any context – in order to create a black-and-white fantasy world of Muslim radicals versus civilised Westerners. Yes Ms. Ali, verse 24:2 of the Qur'an sets out a harsh punishment for adultery – but verse 24:4 requires four eyewitnesses (an almost impossible standard to meet) and, more importantly, verse 24:5 states that the punishment should not be applied to those who sincerely repent. (So much for your argument that the Qur'an orders believers to show no compassion).

Ali may make headlines by writing polemics condemning Islam as a "backward religion" and "the new fascism", but in the meantime Muslim organisations like the one I am a member of, Muslims for Progressive Values, will continue to quietly but effectively do what we can to counteract the hateful nonsense that regretfully is being taught as Islam in far too many places. Moderate and even progressive Muslim organisations can be found all over the world, but we are too busy working within our communities to promote a message of reform and tolerance to do as Ali asks and "rise up in horror" every time some lunatic commits a crime in the name of our faith. Nor should we be expected to do so. It seems that Ali would like me and my co-religionists to go about our lives constantly marching around the streets apologizing for the acts of zealots – but I will not do so, for I bear no more responsibility for these acts than she does.

Moderate and progressive Muslims are everywhere, but we are ignored and marginalised by the media and by commentators like Ali. It seems that in our modern age of sound bites and one-liners, strident if uninformed criticism will always outperform calm and reasoned debate. If Ali is serious about supporting tolerance among Muslims, perhaps she should spend less time penning distracting and misleading screeds against Islam and more time reaching out to groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Muslims for Progressive Values, Al-Fatiha, and Sisters in Islam. The only way to prevent the "clash of civilisations" from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy is to build bridges between our communities. Promoting a black-and-white caricature of reality serves no one – least of all the tolerant Muslims Ali can't seem to find anywhere she looks.

------------------
Kareem Elbayar is the vice-chair of Muslims for Progressive Values. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.

Source: Common Ground News Service, 18 December 2007, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication

Be the moderate you're looking for | Indian Muslims

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The battle over mosque reform

 

British Muslim leaders are to tell mosques to reform - but do young Muslims even care?

This week began as just another for Britain's mosques. But by the end of it, things could be very different.

The four largest Islamic organisations in the UK have, against expectations, agreed professional standards for mosques. It may sound like management speak - but these standards on a mosque's obligations to society are part of a battle for hearts and minds in the face of violent extremism.

The unwieldily-named Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (Minab) is seeking signatures on the dotted line. The question is whether any of it will make a difference.

The great era of mosque building was in the 1970s and 1980s, led by the first generation immigrants. They copied what they knew and mosques were built as prayer halls largely run on ethnic, cultural or tribal lines.

• PROPOSED MOSQUE STANDARDS
• Democratic and accountable
• Transparent finances
• Open to women and youth
• Counter-extremism programmes
• Inter-faith schemes
• Work against forced marriage

Mosques body targets extremism

Today there are at least 1,500 institutions which are broadly independent of one and other. But while they may be about to get a dose of 21st Century management consultancy, tens of thousands of young British Muslims have already drifted away.

Many British-born Muslims believe mosques offer them nothing - and so they are looking elsewhere for answers. Navid Akhtar is a commentator and a producer of muslimcafe.tv. It's a polished internet broadcast with guests debating big issues of the day in a media-savvy way.

When some Muslim leaders condemned a recent groundbreaking Channel 4 drama about a British Muslim joining MI5 while his sister became a terrorist, muslimcafe.tv was one of the places where British Muslims debated the issues.

Complex identities

"The communities have changed and the mosques have not kept in touch because they are still run by the first generation," says Akhtar.

"Today we have got very complex identities as Muslims living in the West - but the mosque as an institution has not tuned in to that."

"People go, they learn the Koran, they do their communal prayers and that's about it. It's the bits that are missing that concern us - people going through divorce, social problems, alienation - people born here but feeling marginalised or betrayed as Muslims.

Prayers: But many mosques have little space for women

"They look to the mosque for support - but they are desperately inadequate in delivering it."

Akhtar tells a story that can be heard time and again among British Muslims who say Mosques have unwittingly played a part in extremism.

"If I go to my local imam who is Pakistani, whose identity is Pakistani, to talk this stuff, he will just give a flick of my ear - he is not really concerned about me being British or not.

"This is what gave birth to radical organisations - kids came to the mosque and battled with the first generation over cultural issues, like arranged marriages or being forced to learn Urdu. They went elsewhere for answers and found people like the radical preacher Omar Bakri.

"Some of the birth of radical Islam in this country came out of these cultural issues that the first generation didn't want to address."

Sensitivities

It's this accusation that has caused the most tension between the generations in Muslim Britain - and what will make the attempts to modernise mosques so they appeal to the young so difficult. Government is pushing hard for the work to be done because it needs results on extremism. But the communities are scared of becoming being political stooges.

Leicester-based imam Ibrahim Mogra is involved in the reform agenda and a leading figure in the Muslim Council of Britain - but he warns against creating a body that does government's bidding.

"This won't be a body with any legislative powers where we can police mosques and tell them what to do or dictate what not to do," says Sheikh Mogra.

Janmohamed says change must come from within

"We're going to be promoting good practice and highlighting where the formulas are extremely successful and encouraging others to buy into that model. The creation of this body is not in response to our so-called 'war on terror' and is not part of the agenda of preventing extremism. It will be a useful tool - but it's not the primary purpose."

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the voice behind Spirit21, an influential blog with readers across the cultural and religious spectrum. Her commentary on Muslim Britain has a following among key government figures. She is typical of growing numbers of Muslim women debating critical issues because they very often find no welcome at the steps of the mosque.

"You've got to realise that there are some that are small and run by 'uncles' who, to be frank, would not let a woman within three feet of the mosque. There are others which have large spaces for women. Some mosques sometimes seem to be a bit of a working man's club. And the problem is that many young people leave the mosque behind because there is no social element or relevance for them."

Pro-reform Muslims

Janmohamed argues that the new mosques body needs to encourage rather than force change and avoid the taint of government interference. The trick, she say, is to get changes like representations for women to happen from within. Only then will mosques start to look like progressive institutions playing an active role in building community ties.

And it is community that pro-reform Muslims see as essential to success. If Minab is a success, they believe it will bring Muslims closer to the mainstream because it will help build a sense of what it is to both a British citizen and a Muslim.

Hardline islamists see the two as incompatible. In the shadows of the real world and the internet exist extremists ready to identify confused young and women who can be sold a simple story that ends with a bomb being strapped to the body.

The fact is that these recruiters will be there for a long time to come. Janmohamed says government needs to change its language so the debate around mosques and improving the lot of Muslims is not automatically and always linked to terrorism.

"The really serious individuals intent on violence don't go to the mosques - but if mosques step up to the plate then some may not go down that route. But it's only one part of the answer."

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The battle over mosque reform

Where is the Muslim outrage?

By: - Mike Ghouse

As a Muslim I am outraged at this nonsense going on in Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
When Prophet Muhammad's cartoons were published, the few Muslims around the world were outraged to the point of becoming destructive. They burned the embassy in Syria. Their contention was that the Prophet cannot be contained in an image, they were right but they were dead wrong on destroying any property, it went against the very principles taught by the Prophet "to forgive the wrong doers". Not enough of us were outraged against those criminals to make a difference.
Ms. Gibbons affectionately calls the Teddy bear "Muhammad" and the fanatics cry foul. The good for nothing silent majority needs to step up and condemn the individuals and the government of Sudan for treating a lady for her benevolence in such an ugly manner. She probably would not have named, had she known about it.
Prophet Muhammad would be saddened with these guys behavior.
When the Buddha Statue, a world heritage monument was destroyed in Pakistan last month, Where was the Muslim outrage?
When the Buddhist Monks were locked up in Burma, where was the Muslim outrage?
What is good for the goose has got to be good for the gander. The third Caliph Omar punished his own son against a complaint from a Jewish businessman; such was the sense of Justice. Where is that sense of justice and fairness now?
Mirza A. Beg writes, "…a woman in Saudi Arabia was gang-raped. She was seen in a car with a person not of her family. She was also found guilty along with the rapists and recommended punishment under the Saudi Law."

Where is the Muslim outrage?

On Faith: Guest Voices: The Real Teddy Bear Tragedy

The Real Teddy Bear Tragedy

By Hamza Yusuf

In all the heat generated by the teddy bear controversy in Sudan, we are missing a deeper reality: As irrational and backward as the reaction in Khartoum might seem, it is yet another example of some Muslims attempting to assert themselves and exercise a little authority in the face of the immense onslaught of Western hegemony in the region.

The facts are that Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher at a private school in Khartoum, had her 7-year-old students name a teddy bear and they overwhelmingly chose "Muhammad." The students took turns taking the bear home and wrote a diary about what they did with it, which was compiled into a book with a picture of the bear and the title "My Name is Muhammad." Some parents were offended and the Sudanese government responded by arresting and charging Gibbons with insulting the Prophet of Islam.

The charge is without merit, of course. But it is worth noting that for Muslims, the idea of calling any object other than a human being "Muhammad" is sacrilegious. With Jews, Muslims share a prohibition of making physical images of any living things. An exception is made for children's toys. Calling the image of any animal Muhammad, a name that Muslims won't utter without a benediction is, for them, beyond the pale. Turks even prefer the contraction Mehmet to avoid using the name in common circumstances. Westerners have a hard time understanding such reverence in a markedly irreverent age.

In the West, teddy bears are objects of devotion for little children and for most adults fond memories of a cuddly teddy bear endure. A child calling a teddy bear Jesus, for instance, may seem inappropriate, but would likely elicit a response of "How cute!" Westerners are dumbfounded at what appears to be an absolutely insane response to an unfortunate lack of cultural sensitivity. But so, I would venture, are most Muslims.

I was appalled by the response of the Sudanese authorities and denounce their arrest of Ms. Gibbons. I am glad she has been released. The danger here is that despite most Sudanese being beautiful and proudly hospitable people, too many Westerners will nonetheless see them as barbarians unworthy of respect. Hence, it fuels the current attacks on them due to their government's failure to address Darfur's serious problems. Far from being xenophobic or genocidal, I know the Sudanese to be a serene and irenic desert people. Even Ms. Gibbons now says that she has been treated well by the Sudanese. "I have encountered nothing but kindness and generosity from the Sudanese people. I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone and I am sorry if I caused any distress," she said.

Unfortunately, millions of Muslims all over the globe are humiliated and betrayed by the ignorance and lack of basic humanity that a small minority of Muslims too often exhibits. Should I, however, bring this up with many of my Muslim brothers and sisters a common response is: "It's true, but look at what the West is doing to Muslims; 800,000 thousand dead in Iraq. And what about Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya and the rest? Why don't Western people denounce these atrocities against us and only harp about how backward we are?" A famous Iraqi poet once wrote, "If one person is harmed it is an unpardonable sin, but a whole people's destruction is something to debate." Unfortunately, these Western horrors against the Muslims demand responses, but Muslims must also recognize and denounce these wrongs too often associated with our Prophet and our faith without always pointing fingers elsewhere.

Our current world can go one of two ways at this crossroad. We can go down the path of more violence, more hatred and more alienation, or we can attempt to understand each other, recognize our real differences, and display mutual respect. True religion -- as well as the highest secular values -- demands we take the latter road.

Indeed, the situation in Sudan is a medieval misunderstanding and overreaction. So are the myriad cases of torture, rape and pillaging that are now part of our daily patch of foreign, and increasingly, domestic news. Indeed, our dark medieval past seems to be having an ironic renaissance in the West and the Muslim world.

So when we see an irrational or misguided reaction of some Muslims, as we now see in Sudan, it behooves us to reflect on the deeper reality causing it.

On Faith: Guest Voices: The Real Teddy Bear Tragedy

Al-Ahram Weekly | Profile | Hans Kèng: Moral moorings

For him, one opportunity for Muslims to indulge in reform came during the era of the French Revolution, when Muslims were obliged to face modern realities and to examine the fundamentals of their religion

Hans Kèng: Moral moorings

Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kèng was ordained a priest in 1954, and in 1962 he was appointed peritus, or special theological advisor, by Pope John XXIII. However, in December 1979, he was stripped of his licence to teach, largely because of his opposition to the doctrine of papal infallibility, expressed in his book Infallible? An Inquiry, published in 1971. Nevertheless, Kèng has not given up his quest to reform the Catholic Church, and he is both a respected Christian theologian and a widely recognised authority on world religions, especially on the "Abrahamic" religions -- Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Until his retirement in 1996, Kèng was professor of ecumenical theology and director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research at the University of Tèbingen in Germany, where he worked with his friend Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Today, he heads the Global Ethic Foundation. Following the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan appointed Kèng a member of an international group of eminent persons brought together to promote dialogue among civilisations. Kèng was a natural choice for the position, since he was familiar with the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita, the discourses of the Buddha and Confucius, and the Quran. Kèng's works include Does God Exist? An Answer for Today (1980); Eternal Life? (1984); Christianity and Chinese Religions (1988 with Julia Ching); Paradigm Change in Theology (1989); The Catholic Church (2002); and My Struggle for Freedom (2003). He was recently named one of the world's top 100 intellectuals by the British magazine Prospect.

Interview by Gamal Nkrumah

---

'The history of Islam is about a third shorter than Christianity, it is no less complex. The more Islam spread, the less monolithic it became'

---

It is mid-morning, and the calm of the corner of the Cairo hotel in which Hans Kèng explains his views on Islam and inter-religious dialogue is disturbed by the infuriating ring-tones of mobile phones.

Misreading the Muslim world has had grave ramifications, he says, and he infuses his understanding of the history of Islam with a wealth of detail and a kind of unanticipated solemnity. "There will be no peace among nations without peace among religions," he states, matter-of- factly, and his deepest desire is precisely to help bring about an atmosphere of greater understanding between Muslims and Christians.

Kèng is unhappy with the current state of affairs and particularly about growing tensions between Muslims and Christians in the West. What he advocates above all is a common ethical framework for humanity as a whole, which must "demolish the walls of prejudice stone by stone and build bridges of dialogue, rather than erect new barriers of hatred, hostility and vengeance." In particular, for this Swiss-born Christian theologian, Westerners must build bridges of dialogue with Muslims.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Profile | Hans Kèng: Moral moorings

The Canadian Press: Calgary imam says Islam, family violence don't mix; goes on hunger strike

 

CALGARY - An imam from Alberta was planning to go on a weekend hunger strike to bring attention to domestic violence and how it is completely against the teachings of Islam.

Any violence involving families is "absolutely un-Islamic," Syed Soharwardy of the Calgary Islamic Centre said Friday.

"We should not be using religion as a scapegoat to justify what we need. We should resolve our disputes based on reasoning, logic (and) cool-mindedness."

The imam's comments came after the death earlier this month of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez of Mississauga, Ont., who reportedly had a long-standing dispute with her family over her apparent reluctance to wear the traditional Muslim headscarf, the hijab.

Her father, who has not yet entered a plea, has been charged with her murder.

Soharwardy, who is also national president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, said family violence plagues every group in society, but it seems that faith is only used as an excuse when it comes to Muslims.

He also said it is against his religion to force Islamic will upon others. "Islam wants people to have a righteous and a pious life, but Islam leaves that decision up to that person."

Other Canadian Islamic leaders have also publicly come out this week to emphasize that their religion condemns violence and teaches its followers not to force their beliefs upon others.

The Canadian Press: Calgary imam says Islam, family violence don't mix; goes on hunger strike

Islam’s Silent Moderates - New York Times

Islam’s Silent Moderates

By AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Published: December 7, 2007

The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. (Koran 24:2)

She very conveniently leaves out the rest of the verses;

[24:5] If they repent afterwards and reform, then GOD is Forgiver, Merciful.
[24:6] As for those who accuse their own spouses, without any other witnesses, then the testimony may be accepted if he swears by GOD four times that he is telling the truth.
[24:7] The fifth oath shall be to incur GOD's condemnation upon him, if he was lying.
[24:8] She shall be considered innocent if she swears by GOD four times that he is a liar.
[24:9] The fifth oath shall incur GOD's wrath upon her if he was telling the truth.

And finally

[4:15] Those who commit Adultery among your women, you must have four witnesses against them, from among you. If they do bear witness, then you shall keep such women in their homes until they die, or until GOD creates an exit for them.*
[4:16] The couple who commits Adultery shall be punished.* If they repent and reform, you shall leave them alone. GOD is Redeemer, Most Merciful.

Sungyoon Choi

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Readers' Comments

"The key to ending this tyranny of interpretation of the Koran is within the Koran itself, if the people have the courage to use it. "

IN the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise up in horror.

A 20-year-old woman from Qatif, Saudi Arabia, reported that she had been abducted by several men and repeatedly raped. But judges found the victim herself to be guilty. Her crime is called “mingling”: when she was abducted, she was in a car with a man not related to her by blood or marriage, and in Saudi Arabia, that is illegal. Last month, she was sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes with a bamboo cane.

Two hundred lashes are enough to kill a strong man. Women usually receive no more than 30 lashes at a time, which means that for seven weeks the “girl from Qatif,” as she’s usually described in news articles, will dread her next session with Islamic justice. When she is released, her life will certainly never return to normal: already there have been reports that her brother has tried to kill her because her “crime” has tarnished her family’s honor

Islam’s Silent Moderates - New York Times

Comment is free: Everything in moderation

Everything in moderation by Ali Eteraz

Ayaan Hirsi Ali should note that when addressing injustice in Islam, there is a need for reconciliation between secular humanists and Muslims

Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently published an op-ed in the New York Times entitled Islam's silent moderates, wondering where were the Muslims speaking out against the Saudi rape tragedy, the Sudanese teddy bear fiasco, and the persecution of feminist writer Taslima Nasreen in India. Her article makes me think two things.

First, she clearly doesn't read leftwing magazines. Four days before her piece, Mahir Ali wrote in at Znet discussing Saudi Arabia, Sudan and India, and called the Muslim demagogues in each place "dimwits". He is just one example of a "moderate" Muslim speaking out, but it makes one wonder how many other condemnations Hirsi Ali ignored.

Second, her article is about more than condemnation. Her argument is that when Islamic dictates collide with a person's sense of "compassion and conscience", a Muslim should opt for the compassionate solution. She wants a compassionate interpretation of Islam spread "more widely".

Putting aside Hirsi Ali's questionable political affiliation and history of appalling statements - Islam must be defeated - hers is a hopeful piece. It makes me wonder whether she has finally realised that not all people who adhere to Islam are prone to cruelty and violence. If the future Ms Ali is more like this, she might resonate in a community that matters most: Muslims. However, in order to do so, she will need to have a better grasp of how Muslims respond to injustice in the name of Islam.

When, in the name of Islam, something horrifying occurs - say a raped woman is punished, or a bombing occurs - there are, in fact, a vast number of average Muslims who find the situation unconscionable. Their usual reaction, as Ms Ali points out, is to say something like, "But Islam means peace!" or that "this is a hijacking by extremists!"

Now, Ms Ali thinks that such slogans are platitudes, and do not reflect actual opposition. Thus: her pessimism about the unlikelihood of a moderate Islam.

Yet, the fact that Muslims around the world insist "Islam means peace" is evidence that a vast number of Muslims do not think that Islam means violence. Given that Islamically sanctioned violence is the actual threat we are dealing with, this is a good thing. Further, when a Muslim does commit something nasty against fellow human beings, and other Muslims decry this person as an "extremist", this is evidence that a vast number of Muslims find brutish behaviour worth distancing themselves from. This too is a good thing. At the least, it shows that most Muslims share in the universal definitions of good and bad.

Comment is free: Everything in moderation

The Cincinnati Post - Young Muslims hearing a gentler voice on TV

Young Muslims hearing a gentler voice on TV
Focus on religion

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post

In her home in northern Egypt, Muna el-Leboudy, a 22-year-old medical student, talks about Moez Masoud, who preaches a modern brand of Islam.

CAIRO, Egypt - Muna el-Leboudy, a 22-year-old medical student, had a terrible secret: She wanted to be a filmmaker. The way she understood her Muslim faith, it was haram - forbidden - to dabble in movies, music or any art that might pique sexual desires.

Then one day in September, she flipped on her satellite TV and saw Moez Masoud.

A Muslim televangelist not much older than herself, in a stylish goatee and Western clothes, Masoud, 29, was preaching about Islam in youthful Arabic slang.

He said imams who outlawed art and music were misinterpreting their faith.

He talked about love and relationships, the need to be compassionate toward homosexuals and tolerant of non-Muslims.

Leboudy had never heard a Muslim preacher speak that way.

"Moez helps us understand everything about our religion - not from 1,400 years ago, but the way we live now," said Leboudy, wearing a scarlet hijab over her hair. She said she still plans a career in medicine, but she's also starting classes in film directing.

"After I heard Moez," she said, "I decided to be the one who tries to change things."

Masoud is one of a growing number of young Muslim preachers who are using satellite television to promote an upbeat and tolerant brand of Islam.

Television preaching in the Middle East was once largely limited to elderly scholars in white robes reading holy texts from behind a desk, emphasizing the afterlife over this life, and sometimes inciting violence against nonbelievers.

The Cincinnati Post - Young Muslims hearing a gentler voice on TV

The deadly face of Muslim extremism

The deadly face of Muslim extremism

Tarek Fatah and farzana Hassan, National Post Published: Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The tragic death of a Mississauga, Ont., teenage girl -- allegedly at the hands of her own traditionally minded Muslim father -- has sent shock waves across the world. Canadians are justified in raising concerns as to whether this is a sign of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in their own backyard.

Aqsa Parvez, a sprightly 16-year-old, beloved of her friends and peers at Applewood Heights Secondary School, was only trying to be herself, was only wishing for a normal adolescence amid Canada's rich cultural mosaic. Her father has now been charged with murder, and his son with obstruction, while a young life has been snuffed out -- likely in the name of honour and Islam.

Radical Muslim men consider themselves ultimately responsible for the conduct of the womenfolk. This outlook is rooted in a medieval ethos that treats women as nonpersons, unable to decide for themselves what they should wear, where they must go and what they must accomplish in life. If their conduct is seen as contravening this austere religious outlook, they are invariably subjected to abuse.

The hijab in particular has become a thorny issue among Muslim families. It has been elevated as a sort of "sixth pillar of Islam" among militant sects. Young teenage girls are often lectured over the virtues of the hijab by their family members. Once they hit puberty, compliance is deemed a non-negotiable religious requirement.

Yet none of this is actually mandated by the Koran. The Koran, while speaking generally of modesty in dress and demeanour, falls short of specifying the details of that modesty. Scripture also makes allowances for non-compliance of religious edicts if the environment is not conducive to their observance.

The Koran exhorts compassion upon parents, caretakers and guardians of young girls. Yet some families instead exhibit a strict conformity to doctrine and dogma, which in turn leads to violence, bigotry and intolerance of alternative understandings of faith.

The deadly face of Muslim extremism

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Peer criticises Muslim 'hotheads'

Peer criticises Muslim 'hotheads'

Lady Warsi helped win the release of UK teacher Gillian Gibbons

Muslim peer Baroness Warsi has hit out at Muslim "hardliners and hotheads" who use Islam to argue against voting and equal rights for women.

The Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion said it was crucial to distinguish between social demands and genuine religious requirements.

She urged Muslims not to allow such confusion to cut them off from society.

Lady Warsi, speaking at a conference in London, also said Muslims had a special responsibility to defeat extremism.

'Wrong, wrong, wrong'

BBC NEWS UK UK Politics Peer criticises Muslim 'hotheads'

Anne Applebaum - Teddy Bear Tyranny - washingtonpost.com

A protest against teacher Gillian Gibbons in Khartoum, Sudan, on Friday. (By Abd Raouf -- Associated Press)

Partly, this is because we still don't understand them. In fact, the Great Sudanese Teddy Bear Controversy, like its Dutch, Danish and papal precedents, was not actually a religious or cultural affair: It was purely political. Nobody -- not the other teachers, the parents or the children -- was offended by Mohammed the teddy bear (who received his name in September) until the matter was taken up by a totalitarian government, handed over to what appears to have been a carefully orchestrated mob, and briefly turned into yet another tool of domestic terror and international defiance. The Sudanese government, which pursues genocidal policies in Darfur when it is not persecuting British teachers, is under pressure to accept peacekeeping troops from the West. At least some of the Sudanese authorities thus have an interest in building anti-Western sentiments among the population and intimidating those who disagree.

Anne Applebaum - Teddy Bear Tyranny - washingtonpost.com

Controversy over Islam stirs useful conversation | ajc.com

Controversy over Islam stirs useful conversation
By KELLY WENTWORTH
Published on: 12/04/07

When the British teacher Gillian Gibbons was arrested for crimes against Islam in Sudan following a creative writing assignment in which her students named a teddy bear Muhammad, my mother called.

As she related the details to me, I was as stunned as she was. While I had spent some time teaching in Yemen, which is in close proximity in geography, and in many ways, in culture, to Sudan, I had never heard of such an issue. Being a Muslim myself, I finally understood my mother was calling to find out why naming a bear Muhammad was a crime against Islam. I had no answers for her and assured her the incident was not indicative of what Muslims believe.

(ENLARGE)

Kelly Wentworth of Smyrna is the co-director for the American Islamic Fellowship whose values include encouraging inter-faith dialogue and cooperation.

That same night, I playfully related the story to my husband. The idea that a teddy bear's name could be an insult to our religion was a completely ridiculous concept to me. As I spoke, my normally conversational husband suddenly said he did not understand how I could be so ignorant of the situation. I tried to understand what he meant, but he dismissed me. I was very shocked at this behavior. My husband and I often have very different ideas about our beliefs, but he had never interrupted me, no matter how much he disagreed. I pressed the issue, and he finally explained that it is insulting to name inanimate objects and animals after prophets and other respected people in Islam. Confused, I reminded him that I had named my cat after the prophet, King Solomon, in honor of the man. In my family, naming inanimate objects and animals after respected people is a tribute to them rather than an insult. We suddenly realized that we had stumbled upon a cultural issue and were able to continue the discussion without hurt feelings or interruption.

The teddy bear situation reminded me of my own experience as an English teacher in my husband's native country of Yemen. I had two things that should have been to my advantage when teaching: a husband very familiar with the nuances of the culture and a shared religious background with a majority of the citizens. Yet, I encountered a similar, though not as explosive, issue while teaching.

My students were learning the concept of "If ... then." As an assignment, I asked them to write an essay entitled, "If I were the president, then I would ..."

I believed it to be a very creative assignment and looked forward to the answers. My students did not share my beliefs. The students did not say anything at first out of respect, but did not turn in the assignment. I asked what the issue was and was told that the students were not allowed to lie. I did not understand. The students finally explained to me that they could not complete the assignment because it required them to "lie" and say they were president and then make pronouncements for him.

In Yemen, perspective writing, even on an "innocent" school assignment, if put in the wrong hands, could land a person in jail. As an American citizen who enjoys freedom of expression, the concept was very difficult for me to grasp. I had to change the assignment. Thinking back, I was lucky to be teaching in a secular classroom, because I could have easily substituted Muhammad or God for the president.

Gibbons has now been given a presidential pardon and was on her way to Britain. I am both very relieved and very worried for the educator. I hope she arrives home safely. The situation is unfortunate because the woman, from what I have read, truly respected the culture and religion of those she was teaching. I believe many similarly talented and adventurous teachers will now hesitate even more to venture into places such as Sudan where teacher shortages have been a constant problem, even for the most affluent schools. Perhaps Gibbons will be able to pen a memoir to share both her positive and negative experiences in the Sudan.

Cultural perceptions are a large bump on a long road as the world opens up and grows ever smaller in the information age. Respect is important when dealing with each others' cultures, but questioning and understanding is far more significant.

As Americans, we must use the power of our freedoms inside our country to open dialogue between cultural, religious and ethnic groups. Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America, addressed this very issue in her speech at the Islamic Speakers' Bureau awards dinner here in Atlanta only a few weeks ago. She reminded us of the imperative of open discussion. She posed the theological question, "Why has God chosen for us to be here, now, in this time?" Painful questions inside our own beliefs will have to be addressed, but I believe we have an amazing gift in our freedoms to start our awareness here. Rumi, a world-renowned Islamic thinker, once said, "God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one."

I hope Americans continually strive for two wings.

Controversy over Islam stirs useful conversation ajc.com

Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam

Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam
By Spengler

Few public figures have done more to earn our sympathy than the Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fugitive from her native Somalia, and now a virtual exile from her adopted country, the Netherlands. Under constant threat since the 2004 murder by an Islamist of her collaborator, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, Hirsi Ali warns the West that Islam presents a mortal threat to its freedoms.

America took her in last year when the Dutch government connived to remove her refugee status, but she remains



something of an embarrassment to the George W Bush administration. This autumn the Dutch government removed her security detail, and the Americans have taken no steps to protect her. That is a stain on the honor of both countries.

Although she has the credibility of a witness as well as the moral standing of a victim, Hirsi Ali remains a bystander civilian in the great war of our times, whose broadest front is in the global South. That is, she proclaims herself to be an atheist. Millions of Muslims reportedly convert to Christianity each year, mainly in Africa. Islam is stagnant in Asia while tens of millions become Christian. Yet all the Muslim apostates whose voices we hear are atheists - not only Hirsi Ali, but also Salman Rushdie, the celebrated author of The Satanic Verses, the Syrian poet Adonis, and the pseudonymous Ibn Warraq, author of Why I am not a Muslim and several compendia of Koranic criticism.

Why do Muslim apostates gravitate towards atheism? That is not true of other religions. Many Jewish converts achieved prominence in 20th-century Christianity - for example, the recently deceased Cardinal Danielou of Paris, the martyred Carmelite nun Edith Stein (now canonized), and the great Protestant theologian Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy. But the name of no prominent Muslim convert to Christianity (much less to Judaism) comes to mind.

It is easy to change what we think, but very hard to change how we think. Contrary to superficial impressions, Islam is much closer in character to atheism than to Christianity or Judaism. Although the "what" of Muslim and atheistic thinking of course are very different, I shall endeavor below to prove that the "how" is very similar.

Hirsi Ali states that the West is at war with Islam, not with "terrorism", "Islamism", "radical Islam", or "Islamo-fascism". Here is a snippet from her November exchange with Reason [1]:
Reason: The Polish Catholic Church helped defeat the [Wojciech] Jaruzelski puppet regime [1990]. Do you think Islam could bring about similar social and political changes?

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don't you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it's defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It's very difficult to even talk about peace now. They're not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world's 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, "defeat Islam"?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars.
Nonetheless Hirsi Ali has no clear idea how a war with Islam might proceed. Again, from the Reason interview:
Hirsi Ali: Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they're the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, "This is a warning. We won't accept this anymore." There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don't do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.
The implication that the West will crush Islam by force borders on the absurd. Western armies, to be sure, could make short work of the military forces of any Muslim country, but what would they do then? Would they order Muslims to abandon their spiritual life in favor of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, the heroes of Hirsi Ali? The West cannot stop Muslims from burning in effigy the editors of a Danish newspaper in their own countries.

Can Democracy be imposed in Muslim Countries?

By Alamgir Hussain

Those who argue that democracy and rule of law cannot be imposed by outside interventions are obviously wrong, as demonstrated by the interventions in Japan, Italy and Germany in post-WW II era. All indications from the more recent but unfinished interventions in the Balkan, in Liberia and Haiti also prove them wrong. However the critics are right when considering the intervention in Somalia in 1993 and more recent ones in Afghanistan and Iraq. In order to understand this intriguing disparity in success of outside interventions in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, one must grasp the fundamental precepts of Islam, which is the common ideological denominator that binds them together. Islamic scholars over the centuries have divided the world into two domains.

The first being the Dar-al-Islam (house of peace), which constitute the domains dominated and ruled by the Muslims according to the Islamic laws. The other is the Dar al-Harb (house of war), which is dominated and ruled by the non-Muslims and Muslims must wage a ceaseless war (so it called 'house of war') against it in order to bring it into the domain of Dar al-Islam, thereby fulfilling the wishes of the almighty creator.

Pope Stresses Muslim-Christian Dialogue

The Associated Press: Pope Stresses Muslim-Christian Dialogue: "Pope Stresses Muslim-Christian Dialogue 16 hours ago VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has replied to a letter from Muslim scholars, stressing the need for dialogue between Islam and Christianity and saying he would be willing to meet Muslim representatives, the Vatican said Thursday. The pope expressed 'deep appreciation for this gesture, for the positive spirit which inspired the text (of the letter) and for the call for a common commitment to promoting peace in the world.' The October letter by 138 Muslim scholars urges Christian and Muslims to develop their common ground of belief in one God. Among those signing were Muslim leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Europe and the United States. 'Without ignoring or downplaying our differences as Christians and Muslims, we can and therefore should look to what unites us, namely, belief in the one God,' the pope said in his reply, which was sent via the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. 'Such common ground allows us to base dialogue on effective respect for the dignity of every human person, on objective knowledge of the religion of the other, on the sharing of religious experience and, finally, on common commitment to promoting mutual respect and acceptance among the younger generation,' Benedict said. The message said the pope was confident that cooperation would then become possible in such areas as culture and the promotion of justice and peace."

Know your enemy

Know your enemy
Arnaud de Borchgrave

Radical Islam — or Islamofascism, as conservatives are prone to call it — conveys the impression of a political movement. It is no such animal. Al Qaeda's suicide bombers and assorted gunslingers are not individual al Qaeda terrorists, inspired by Osama bin Laden, that have hijacked a religion. Like it or not, the West is fighting a religion "that arose in enraged reaction to the West," writes Fergus Kerr in "20th Century Catholic Theologians."
The only leader who has called it by its real name, according to Mr. Kerr, "is a man wholly averse to war, a pope who took his name from the Benedict who interceded for peace in World War I." Benedict XVI, alone among the leaders of the Christian world, "challenges Islam as a religion, as he did in his September 2006 Regensburg University address," which touched off noisy protests throughout the Muslim world. The pope repeated a question posed by Manuel II Paleologos, an obscure 14th-century Byzantine emperor to a Persian guest at his winter quarters near Ankara. "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Debunking the Myth of Islamist Intransigence

By Mohammed Herzallah, Amr Hamzawy
The Daily Star, November 2, 2007

Nonetheless, the controversy obscures the fact that the Brotherhood's positions are not born out of animosity toward non-Muslims, women, or democracy, but stem from cultural and religious norms that are continuously debated and modified by the Brotherhood's leading members. To be sure, internal disputes over comprehensive equality, like many other disagreements over Shariah law, have yet to be settled, and the Brotherhood's leading members do not pretend otherwise in public. An example that bears special emphasis is the new platform's endorsement of the right of the people, irrespective of their race, gender, religious or ideological affiliations, to form political parties and associations. Given that the founders of the movement were firmly opposed to factionalism and the political party system, the move illustrates the growing capacity of progressives within the Islamists' ranks to shape the movement's intellectual trajectory.

Islamofascism Week

"Islamofascism nutbasket?" Love it! David Horowitz, are you there? Here is a YouTube moment on Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week."

Ignoring 'Islamofascism' hype

Last week, Islamofascism Awareness Week came to town. Yet, contrary to the campaign's promise that "the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever," our lives went on much as before. The week was a bigoted joke, an insult to the intelligence of college students, and we're proud most of our peers didn't take the bait.The purpose of "Islamofascism Awareness Week" is not awareness, but provocation. It's a stalking horse set up by David Horowitz, whose target is not Islamic fundamentalists or terrorists, but American liberals. The Web site of the "Terrorism Awareness Project," which sponsored the week, is filled with the language of confrontation. "The left is up in arms," the site notes, while colleges nationwide are "bracing for campus showdowns" as Horowitz's paladins seek to confront and expose liberals' support of the terrorists.

Islamofascism Awareness Week is WWIV Propaganda

Unfortunately, our College Republicans (CRs) recently participated in Islamofascism Awareness Week (IFAW), and unknowingly became associated with far-right extremist neoconservatives who directly desire Iran war. In anti-partisan fairness, I agree with CRs calling Hillary Clinton a b**** because she recently approved movement toward Iran war. I also powerfully believe in unrestrained free speech. If they can’t say b****, I couldn’t say Bush’s policies are antithetical to Christ’s Love philosophy, and thus anti-Christ.

Dennis Prager Stuns Them at UCSB

I made the drive up the coast tonight to see Dennis Prager speak at the University of California Santa Barbara. He was invited by the College Republicans, and he did not disappoint. This week is an emotional one for the college left - the bubble they live in has been punctured by an army of eloquent conservatives fanning out throughout the country to unveil a sensitive topic - Islamofascism. The crowd that packed Girvetz Theatre was amazingly behaved, and much of the credit for that has to go to Prager - he charmed the crowd into submission, and a wry smile came to his face when the last questioner of the night complained that she “didn’t like being manipulated.”

When consciousness is counterproductive

I’m really disappointed. Last week was Islamofacism Awareness Week, and nobody sent me a greeting card marking the observance.Surely someone behind this concept could have printed up some cards with a still photo from Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” on the outside, with desert headdresses Photoshopped onto all the Nazis’ heads.And then you open the card and it says, “They’re coming to get you. Happy Islamofacism Awareness Week.”Or, given the proximity of the observance to Halloween, just some pictures of jack-o’-lanterns with the Arabic head coverings would do.

The Problem With 'Islamofascism'

The Muslim World is not so homogeneous as to have its various fanatics and morally bankrupt governments lumped together with a single, clumsy word. This argument manages to both simultaneously split hairs in a shamelessly tendentious manner that would be immediately rebuked in any other context and miss the point entirely.
What is the common bond between Saudi Arabia and Iran? Why are the rights of the individual repressed in such similar ways? You cannot execute a female virgin in Iran. In order to be killed, she must be raped first by the Revolutionary Guard and then executed. Why does that not provoke outrage in Saudi Arabia? Why do both societies stone women to death for the crime of adultery? (Iran officially stopped this in 2002, but the practice continues unabated.)

Islamofascism speaker misses the point

There was an elephant in the room during Robert Spencer's provocative speech last Thursday night. Spencer, the director of the website Jihad Watch, spoke as part of "Islamofascism Awareness Week" and presented a simple but highly controversial argument: that Islam is a religion of violence and oppression. Citing passages in the Quran, Spencer suggested that the Islamic faith inherently condones misogyny, abuse of homosexuals, authoritarianism and the killing of non-believers. "I do not believe that Islam at its core is a peaceful religion," he said.But while there is little debate that segments of the Quran could be read as a justification for bigotry or abuse, what Spencer left unsaid - a glaring omission that many in the audience later commented on - is that the overwhelming majority of Muslims don't actually follow the passages that he cited. Throughout the Islamic world, there is little support for the notion that apostates should be killed, that non-Muslims should be taxed separately or that women should be mistreated. As with all religions, most adherents of Islam view the Quran as flexible and open to interpretation. While certain passages are embraced and followed carefully, others are tacitly rejected and ignored.In fact, there are numerous ways of reading and interpreting the Quran in its historical context. As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, suggested in a recent phone conversation that there is a "very broad interpretation of Islam across many different countries and cultures."

Spencer (And Other Critics) Respond

Robert Spencer, following the publication of my Brown Daily Herald article that criticized his comments during Islamofascism Week, has responded in a post over at his blog. Interestingly, a lot of the criticisms that I’ve gotten at Jihad Watch have to do with my alleged ‘misreading’ of the Quran. The Muslim holy book is much more violent than the Bible, many are suggesting, and therefore Islam is inherently based on violence and oppression.

If Not Islamofascism, What Name to Give?

The term, Islamofascism, is not acceptable. Fair enough! But how about a Stop Islamization of Europe rally, which one transnational European group, wanted to bring about in Brussels to commemorate 9/11 this year? The secular-liberal fabric of western societies ― from New Zealand to Australia to Canada to Europe ― are being aggressively Islamized by Muslim immigrants. To give a few examples: airports must have a mosque; canteens in jails must have separate quarters, cutlery and menu for Muslim inmates; school and university canteens must remove pork and even alcohol from their premises; and they must have separate public swimming pools or specific days of the week exclusively for them. A A poll in 2006 found some 40% British Muslims would prefer an Islamic Sharia law based governance to replace the secular-democracy, while another poll in 2004 found 61% Muslims want the Sharia court system in the U.K..

“Islamofascism”: The Failure of a Concept

The real (Americo-)fascists staged an early Halloween event last week, all dressed up as anti-fascists, made up as compassionate conservatives deeply disturbed by Muslim misogyny. They went door to door—or rather campus to campus—trick-or-treating, trying to scare. Their so-called “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” undertaken by well-funded, extreme-right ideologues, featuring such cartoon characters as Ann Coulter and Rick Santorum and deploying student brown shirts to lead their way, was amusing in its childishness but like most Halloween events rather spooky. They want to scare. That’s the whole point.

The truth stirrer

The media storm broke a month ago, when Eagleton accused Amis of inheriting his father's racism, homophobia and hatred of women. It rumbled on for a further fortnight, when Amis admitted to occasionally feeling odd racist impulses, and then argued that some Muslim societies had not evolved as fully as countries in the West.
Nor should anyone expect Amis to disappear from the headlines anytime soon. His next book, The Second Plane, a collection of his writing about Islamofascism, will be published early next year. For his next novel, The Pregnant Widow, he promises "a couple of bombshells about what feminism has wrought". And no, he's not going to tell me what they are.

Viewpoint: Responding to Schazner

The best part of Schanzer's speech was his three-pronged list of solutions. His first piece of advice was starting dialogue about the nature of the issue, saying that a good starting point would be to identify the "enemy." This would have been great advice to hear before we invaded Iraq. Not only was Saddam Hussein not the enemy -- he was indubitably a harsh dictator, but ran a secular government that had nothing to do with 9/11 or al-Qaeda -- but his removal and more importantly the reconstruction of Iraq, is draining our military resources and taxpayers' money. In a serious irony, a 2006 National Intelligence Estimate said that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has been a "cause célèbre" for "jihadists" around the world. By dismantling the Hussein regime, we have also eliminated Iran's biggest rival in the region and replaced it with a fragile government that is Shia-dominated and, by extension, ally with Iran, a theocracy -- what some say is the center of "Islamofascism" -- and a significant financial supporter of terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Islamofascism and 9/11, Bush's Neo-McCarthy Brainwash Tools

Islamofascism is the object perpetually attacked, with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden mentioned over and over. What is never mentioned is how bin Laden was the CIA's man in Afghanistan under neocon idol Ronald Reagan back when we were fighting Russia's "evil empire". Last week Bush turned up the heat when he spoke about Iran and evoked the names of Hitler and Lenin at one point, stating that if the Democrats do not give him all he wants, in this case presto confirmation of attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey, that we may suffer the same tragedies as a nation that Germany and Russia did when those leaders were not stopped in time. All roads lead back to 9/11 and the specter of Islamofascism as represented by Osama bin Laden and 9/11.

A lazy, simplistic analogy

Recently, the former leftist turned rightist David Horowitz promoted something called "Islamofascism Awareness Week" on college campuses. The implication was that the academic left has so lost its bearings that it can no longer recognize its historic enemy, the old fascist wolf, under that beast's new disguise. Another apparent aim was to discredit scholars who insist on making careful distinctions among the various movements and ideologies that are grouped under the rubric of political Islam


On "Islamofascism"
Jamie Kirchick, October 29, 2007

Carlson and Dreier also take issue with the fact that "the term Islamofascism is offensive to Muslim Americans." Boo-hoo. There's nothing remotely offensive in the use of this phrase unless one is an intended target of its wrath, in which case, you're already offended by America's lascivious culture. Simply put, Muslims who are not themselves fascists -- who do not believe in the imposition of Sharia law, the stoning of women, the beheading of gays, the abolition of secularism -- have a duty to distinguish their peaceful Islam with that of the type that's trying to destroy Iraq and acquire nuclear weapons.

The Warped Mirror: The Islamofascism debate
Petra Marquardt-Bigman

For Israel, this is of course an important debate, because whenever Israel is criticized most severely, the threats posed to the country by Islamists are usually downplayed. Indeed, Israel is often blamed for giving the Muslim world much reason to turn to extremism, and the “blame-Israel”-brigade tends to subscribe to the simplistic notion that once Israel could be forced to address all Muslims grievances against the Jewish state, Islamist extremism would wither away. The fact that documents like the Hamas charter make it plain enough that one of the Islamists’ “grievances” is the very existence of Israel is often dismissed as inconsequential.

All this talk of Islamofascism, what is Zionism then?

This observer has pointed out time and again that the Zionists are out to ensure that the world remains polarized with two major sides of conflict of their very own choosing! With the Cold War out of the way and Israel losing its reliance on its “policeman role” of the West in the region, the best way to maintain the flow of American support for the renegade and mutant state is to ensure that there is a common enemy between the “civilized West” and the mutant synthesized Zionist state, with the enemy manifested by the “heathen” Islamic East. No one likes to suggest that the horrible acts, often labeled as “Islamic terrorism” and sometimes suggested as “Islamic radicalism” are justified by any means and least of all by Islamic doctrine or are even closely associated with genuine Moslems as these bigots are alluding. But to assume that all evil is rooted in Islam as is apparent by the literature being put to discussion in this Anti-Islam “awareness” effort is heinous and points to the hypocrisy of its sponsors.

O'Reillysaurus: A Dinosaur In Need Of A Tar-Pit

Krugman never says there's no threat of terrorism, he just doesn't buy into the White House's calculated use of the word Islamofascism which - just like the O'Reillysaurus cut and pasted in his attempt to create a Krugman-boogeyman out of hole-cloth - was created as a simplistic fraud to frighten people on to the Bush war-making wagon.
Perhaps, BillO, we should ask all the dead and injured you callously exploit how they feel about being manipulated for your own selfish fear-mongering, fabricated propaganda.

From "pointless" to intolerance: Islamofascism week
By Dana Al-Qadi, freshman in LAS, and Mohsin Alvi, sophomore in Engineering

Dan Streib ("Columbia and Islamofascism," Oct. 26) claimed that "Islamofascists" were "those who perverted the fine religion of Islam." At first glance, there seems to be nothing wrong with a word whose purpose is to set apart the bad guys. But when the underlying tones are recognized, the term sets a double standard exclusive to Islam, setting the stage for dangerous discrimination against Muslims. Throughout history, the political ideology of fascism has been religiously motivated. Hitler was raised Catholic and often said he was fulfilling God's work by carrying out mass extermination. But this prime example of fascism has not provoked the introduction of the term "Cathofascism" into our lexicon.


Spinning at The Globe
By FrontPage Magazine

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week’s speakers could never get away with painting Islamists with as broad a brush as Hedges paints Southern Baptists. And what truly separates us from his ilk is that we do not want to. All IFAW speakers noted a minority of the world’s Muslim population accepts “Islamofascistm” and longed for them to accept a moderate, pluralistic Islam in its place. None felt there was anything “inevitable” about a clash between all Muslims and all others.
However, since Islamofascists are the perpetrators of the War on Terror and Western “infidels” are their targets, only Islamofascists can end this war – and they won’t. A clear assessment of these organization’s goals and theology are necessary to strengthen American resolve to protect her own freedoms and continue fighting the terrorists in their chosen battleground: Iraq.

A lazy, simplistic analogy

If language is a window on the world, a deliberate smudging of that window will make it harder to see the world clearly and comprehend it. So it is with the highly ideological term "Islamofascist," a label that is being wielded as a blunt weapon in a left-right debate and has been carelessly bandied about by some presidential candidates.
Recently, the former leftist turned rightist David Horowitz promoted something called "Islamofascism Awareness Week" on college campuses. The implication was that the academic left has so lost its bearings that it can no longer recognize its historic enemy, the old fascist wolf, under that beast's new disguise. Another apparent aim was to discredit scholars who insist on making careful distinctions among the various movements and ideologies that are grouped under the rubric of political Islam

Islamo-Fetishism
By James O. Goldsborough

Deprived of traditional issues, Republicans have turned to the neo-conservatives, who gave us Iraq, for their new theme. They call it Islamofascism, and there is a competition among them to see who is its stoutest foe. Democrats, they claim, are soft on the thing they call Islamofascism.Being soft on something or other has been a stalwart GOP theme for years. Harry Truman was soft on Bejing, Jimmy Carter soft on Moscow and Bill Clinton soft on Belgrade and Baghdad. But let's not forget that until Bush brought them out of the closet, neocons accused Republicans themselves of softism: Ronald Reagan was soft on the Soviet Union. His successor, George H.W. Bush, was soft on China and the Arabs.

Islam and Islamofascism
Larry Houle - 11/8/2007

How could any person be ‘proud’ to follow a man who was a pedophile, endorser of clitoridectomy, slave trader, rapist, polygamist, punched his child bride and endorsed whipping/beating women and ploughing them like fields, stoned women to death, flogged his slave women for fornication while he had sex with slaves himself, propositioned women and passed them round to friends, denied women equal inheritance, or equality under the law etc forever and abused and denigrated them in every way--not to mention his general sadism to others, mass murder, beheading captives, massacres, terror, torture, owning slaves and raping them, looting and pillaging, amputations, flogging, thievery, lying, hate, megalomania--- unending horror.All Muslims believe the Koran is the Eternal divine word of God – the Eternal laws of God. All Muslims believe that God authored the Koran and a copy of the Koran is in heaven. The Koran remains for all Muslims, not just "fundamentalists," the uncreated word of God Himself. It is valid for all times and places forever; its ideas are absolutely true and beyond all criticism. To question it is to question the very word of God, and hence blasphemous. A Muslim's duty is to believe it and obey its divine commands without question.

Islamo-Fetishism
By James O. Goldsborough


Islamofascism is as meaningless a term as "axis of evil," or "war on terrorism" -- other neological inventions that substitute slogans and fear for fact and reason. Who or what exactly is an Islamofascist? Al Qaeda, Hamas, Taliban, Wahhabis, Salafists, Syrians, Iranians, Shiites, Sunnis, Pakistanis, all of the above? What about Turkey's PKK? One sees the problem: These groups and governments see Islam in different ways and none unites the principal characteristics of fascism -- power, industry, organization and desire for world conquest.
By hiring Norman Podhoretz, one of the original neocons, Rudy Giuliani has injected this absurd notion of Islamofascism into the presidential race. The other Republicans, led by Romney, have joined the chorus. They have Iran principally in their sights, an "Islamofascist" country that Podhoretz, and presumably Giuliani and the others, would have bombed long ago.Iran's theocratic government is loathsome in Western eyes, but hardly bent on world conquest. Iran's desire for nuclear power, which dates to the time of the Shah, is understandable in a world of diminishing carbon fuels and rising oil prices, and it is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Last month Egypt indicated it, too, was going nuclear. Western nations would like to prevent Iran from converting its nuclear power program into bombs, and the burning question is how to do that -- whether to "war-war" or "jaw-jaw," in Churchill's formulation.

The Associated Press: Evangelicals' Issue: Radical Islam: "'The war against Islamofascism is in many respects a 'values issue,'' Bauer wrote. 'That may seem like an odd statement at first glance, but, as I have often said, losing Western Civilization to this vicious enemy would be immoral.' From one perspective, branding 'radical Islam' as a family values issue is yet another example of the broadening of the evangelical agenda. But next November, it also could energize one of the Republican Party's key voting blocs, much like anti-gay marriage measures did in 2004."

“Islamofascism”: The Failure of a Concept
by Gary Leupp / November 1st, 2007
The Louisiana politician Huey Long declared in the 1930s that “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism” and “in the name of national security.” I don’t think we’re there yet, but there are some fascist-like forces mobilizing, and they’re doing so in the name of protecting American Judeo-Christian civilization from a phantom they’ve conjured up called “Islamofascism.” (Variants include Islamo-Fascism, Islamo-fascism, Islamic fascism, etc.)

Evangelical leaders hope 'radical Islam' threat will awaken weary voting bloc

"It's the ultimate life issue," said Rick Scarborough, president of the Texas-based conservative Christian group Vision America. "If radical Islam succeeds in its ultimate goals, Christianity ceases to exist."
That might sound alarmist, but Scarborough's words illustrate how many conservative Christian leaders view matters of national security as a battle between good and evil - nothing short of a clash of civilizations.

More religion won't stop fundamentalists
November 20, 2007

Is Islam threatening Christianity? Well yes, as are fundamentalist Christians threatening liberal Christians, invading their camps with evangelical zeal and imposing stricter views but, importantly, without murdering them.
Fundamentalist Islam is a particularly virulent strain of deadly evangelism. Secular reasoning and law enforcement is the correct antibody.
More religion is not the answer; it is the problem because victorious religious zealots always impose laws favoring themselves.


Ohio State Does Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week Right
By Patrick PooleFrontPageMagazine.com Tuesday, November 20, 2007

You have to admire the sheer brilliance of the organizers. To my knowledge, no other university or college participating in Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (certainly not in the Big Ten, at least) offered their community a chance to see an actual Islamofascist in action. Participants in the CAIR/MSA educational forum, ironically entitled “Interfaith Relations – the Muslim Perspective”, were invited to observe Badawi for an up-close and personal study of the North American species of Islamofascism.
Sadly, I was not able to attend the festivities, but a subsequent press release by CAIR quoted CAIR-Ohio president Asma Mobin-Uddin in her description of their Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week event: “The opportunity to listen to Islamic scholars like Dr. Badawi was a great opportunity for the community to become educated, and it gave people the change to ask questions about things they may have heard about Islamic teachings.”



Report: 'Islamofascism' blinds U.S.
Published: Nov. 28, 2007 at 4:52 PM

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- The term "Islamofascism" dangerously obscures important distinctions and differences between groups of Islamic extremists, says a counter-terror think tank."Since Sept. 11 conservatives have continually lumped various groups and countries together … into one threat that they term 'Islamofascism,'" according to the National Security Network, a group of left-leaning former U.S. officials and experts in counter-terrorism and national security."The reality is much complicated," reads their report issued Wednesday. The groups and nations that make up the "Islamofascist" threat include al-Qaida, al-Qaida in Iraq, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian government institutions that they control, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran

Report: 'Islamofascism' blinds U.S.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- The term "Islamofascism" dangerously obscures important distinctions and differences between groups of Islamic extremists, says a counter-terror think tank."Since Sept. 11 conservatives have continually lumped various groups and countries together … into one threat that they term 'Islamofascism,'" according to the National Security Network, a group of left-leaning former U.S. officials and experts in counter-terrorism and national security."The reality is much complicated," reads their report issued Wednesday. The groups and nations that make up the "Islamofascist" threat include al-Qaida, al-Qaida in Iraq, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian government institutions that they control, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran.In reality, the report says, "These various groups and countries have different intentions and capabilities, often work at cross purposes and are in some cases ideologically opposed to each other."Escalating tensions across the region between Shiites and Sunnis only emphasize their divergent interests and intentions.

Attacking Muslims under the veil of free specch is wrong
Chris Shortsleeve
Issue date: 12/3/07 Section: Opinion

A few weeks ago, something called Islamofascism Awareness Week came to almost 100 college campuses across the United States. Organized by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, this speaker series was intended, in its own words, to "alert Americans to the threat from Islamo-Fascism and focus attention on the violent oppression of Muslim women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and other Islamic states." A simple survey of modern Middle Eastern history will show that the number of Muslim women killed by American empire and its puppet regimes is more than the most egregious Muslim patriarchs could ever hope to accomplish with all the stones in Arabia. In Iraq alone - a country terrorized for decades by the American-backed dictator and former CIA agent Saddam Hussein - civilian casualties as a result of current U.S. occupation and U.S.-led sanctions that preceded it are now over one million.Yet, white racists like Horowitz, who have no interest in the liberation of the Middle East, repeatedly whine about the veil and the lack of freedom in Muslim societies. This Horowitz-led diatribe against "Islamofascism" is not a good faith attempt at solidarity with Muslim women suffering under patriarchy, but a shallow, opportunistic demonization of an entire religion and culture, all for the ultimate purpose of justifying American imperialism in the Middle East. These people do not feel anything for the women of Islam. They preach from a pulpit of bones.

O’Reilly and Beck get chummy over Islamofascism.
Yesterday evening, right-wing talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly teamed up on the O’Reilly Factor. Beck criticized the University of Florida for admonishing the campus College Republicans for airing the film Obsession, which students promoted with posters stating, “Radical Islam Wants You Dead.” O’Reilly and Beck agreed, “They missed 9/11 in Gainesville”:
BECK: And in the — when they played it, they put out a flier all around the campus that said militant Islam wants you dead. Well, the university came out with a statement and said how dare you say that? That’s hate speech. That’s completely inaccurate. I mean, Bill, would you agree…
O’REILLY: Well, they missed it. They missed 9/11 in Gainesville. You know they missed it. That was the only city in the country that didn’t get the broadcast around the world.
BECK: Right.
O’REILLY: I don’t know why, but they are looking into the technical problem.


Islamofascism: Why It Is Fascism and Why Hating It Isn't RacistNicholas M. Guariglia -

12/8/2007 This is getting a bit tedious, but for as long as there are those who decry antifascists as something they are not, there must be those who forcefully defend the spirit of antifascism. A few weeks ago, student groups across some 200 universities aligned with commentator David Horowitz, amongst others, to declare Islamofascism Awareness Week. Such “cause-awareness” charades –– global warming/cooling awareness, the danger of giant man-eating squirrels/how to save endangered giant man-eating squirrels, etc. –– where do-gooders sit around a table and discuss how they “feel,” usually leave me with a feeling of exasperation. But for this, I will concede: defending liberal Western munificence against foreign clericalism is no small gig.This task, however, seems to begin with two fallacies leveled against the democratic resistance. The first untruth being that Islamist fanaticism is an aberration, not commonplace abroad; a political equal to its religious counterparts, not authoritarian; its followers simply misguided distorters of actual Islamic instruction, not the enforcers and heeders of literal Islamic text. The second lie, perpetrated by relativists and multicultural therapists, would be that challenging this despotism, in all its forms, is somehow indicative of racism; that hating a belief is the equivalent to hating a people. These two falsities should be confronted at the very start, and at their very core.Let’s start with the latter, and, I propose, the indisputable: Islam is not a race. Even its harshest critics, if they limit their criticism to doctrine and to those only who follow it, are not to be labeled bigoted or racist. Religion is an idea, a belief system not immune from mockery or even detestation, and abhorrence for it is perfectly ethical (and legal, at least in this country). Succumbing to political correctness would have me now declaring impartiality for all the monotheisms, claiming an equality for each theology. I am all for equal-time ridicule, but not today.

Attacking Muslims under the veil of free specch is wrong

A few weeks ago, something called Islamofascism Awareness Week came to almost 100 college campuses across the United States. Organized by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, this speaker series was intended, in its own words, to "alert Americans to the threat from Islamo-Fascism and focus attention on the violent oppression of Muslim women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and other Islamic states." A simple survey of modern Middle Eastern history will show that the number of Muslim women killed by American empire and its puppet regimes is more than the most egregious Muslim patriarchs could ever hope to accomplish with all the stones in Arabia. In Iraq alone - a country terrorized for decades by the American-backed dictator and former CIA agent Saddam Hussein - civilian casualties as a result of current U.S. occupation and U.S.-led sanctions that preceded it are now over one million.

Ron Paul and the War on Islamofacism

And Bin Laden knew this. This is what he was talking about when he talked about "bleeding America to death" http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060905-7.html (I can't believe the White House has this on their website and doesn't get it). In short, Terrorists can only defeat the United States by--FEAR which leads to overreaction, overspending, and in the process creates more terrorists who believe the incredibly extreme propaganda promoted by Bin Laden and crew because they have seen the "horrors" of the United States with their own eyes. Dr. Paul is the only person who supports a policy which could actually rid the world of these "Islamo-Fascists" in the long run (or at least return them to a size and threat level which no American could fear). We are the United States of America. If a kid came up and punched you, would you pull your leg back as far as possible and try to kick its head off? If you missed, you'd hurt yourself in the fall far worse than the kid's punch hurt you. If you hit, you would incite the rage of his parents, his community, and even the population as a whole that otherwise would be disconnected from this act until they found out what you did. Compared to us, terrorists are just little kids. The best way to deal with them is to let them know what they did was wrong (tell their parents, or kill the terrorists who actually did this in our case--not overreact and bring people into the battle that have nothing to do with it) and laugh about it and move on.

What is Islamofascism?
A simplistic term designed to mask the complexities of the Middle East

I can't remember the first time I heard the term "Islamofascism," but I can remember the first time I knew it was going to stick. It was Oct. 6, 2005, and President George W. Bush was delivering a speech. In it, he said, "Islamic terrorist attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamofascism."
From that moment, if not before, the media took Bush's ball and ran with it, where every new stumbling block in the Middle East could be reduced to one word — Islamofascism. Bill O'Reilly couldn't get enough of it. Rudy Giuliani was glad to finally have a verbal substitute for "9/11." And Rush Limbaugh hadn't been so happy to have a new word to repeat ad nauseam since "Clinton" in the 1990s. Yes, for the neoconservatives, most of whom didn't have much of a purpose in life since the end of the Cold War, the new menace on the horizon finally had a name, and they intended to use it.
The problem is Islamofascism doesn't really mean anything. Trying to reduce the complexities of Middle Eastern politics into a single, jingoistic phrase is not only impractical, but a disservice to the American public. Explains conservative columnist Joseph Sobran, "Islamofascism is nothing but an empty propaganda term. And wartime propaganda is usually, if not always, crafted to produce hysteria, the destruction of any sense of proportion. Such words, undefined and unmeasured, are used by people more interested in making us lose our heads than in keeping their own."
Sobran is correct. Take for example the recent assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Every pro-Bush talking head was screaming "Islamofascists" before the woman's body was cold. Bhutto's supporters and family were blaming Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf was blaming the "extremists." But who are the extremists? Who are the Islamofascists?