I haven’t seen or heard this report out of London anywhere, with the exception of The Washington Times, but I think it’s cause for concern.
Sheik abd-al-rahman al-sudays, saudi arabia’s top cleric (imam of the mosque of mecca) has called on muslims to unite against [ol][li]Jews (nothing new here; pigs, monkeys, aggressors, zionist usurpers),[]Christians (cross worshippers, advocates of credit),[]The West (fake globalizers that waste human values), []Secularists (arrogant & aggressive toward islam) and []Hindus (idol-worshippers indulging in open hatred).[/ol]and to **humble the infidels & destroy the enemies of religion (i.e. Islam) **.[/li]
“Well”, you might say, “Don’t concern yourself with the ramblings of one very orthodox cleric, he neither speaks for his country nor all people of his faith.” Besides, “people like Jerry Falwell, Meir Kehane et al. are just as, if not more guilty, of making inane comments.” Maybe it’s me, but I see a huge distinction;[ul][li]People of the islamic faith put absolute confidence in their religious leaders and are more than willing to die in the name of their religion. The imam of the mosque of mecca preaching destruction is the equivalent of Jim Jones serving up the cool aid. The saudi’s, who according to our diplomats in the State Dept. are allies in the war on terror, gave their blessing to this thinly veiled “call to arms” by letting his message go out over their state-controlled air-waves.[/ul][/li]
Since last September, I’ve become more and more convinced Mr. Berlusconi was right when he opined:
Unfortunately, too many people in the West continue to hide their head in the desert sand. So much for the enemy of my enemy is my friend.[ul][]The Hindus and Jews will still be regarded as the aggressors as they attempt to push back the onslaught of terrorism.[]The secularists will continue to find fault with western values while praising arafat (the man with the eyes of colin furgeson) on NPR.[]The Christians will continue their pursuit of understanding with such moronic gestures as bringing food to terrorists holed up in the Church of the Nativity. []The West will continue waffling and wavering as their need for oil overshadows the necessity of fighting back terrorism.[/ul]It’s long passed the time to wake up and smell the sandalwood. The West has either got to completely sever all ties to the islamic world or it has to fight fire with fire. The middle ground of understanding and cohabitation can’t work unless both sides want it to…and I’ve seen very little that points to muslim calls for harmony.
Wow, all 1,000,000,000 of them? Don’t you think you might be painting with an insanely large brush there?
Most of the world’s airwaves are “state-controlled.” See, e.g., the BBC. But it would be lunacy to ascribe the British Government’s “blessing” to every message that gets broadcast on the Beeb. Why is it not lunacy to do so with respect to Saudi television?
There’s a lot of legitimate criticisms that can be made of Islamic Fundamentalism. You have made none of them. All is see is exactly the same sort of fear-mongering religious bigotry that the Imam is engaging in. Decided to fight fire with gasoline, huh?
In Islam, the term “religious leader” runs a pretty wide gamut, from people who have spent their whole lives studying Islamic jurisprudence to somebody who’s memorized a few verses of the Qu’ran and knows a few hadiths. There’s no central authority or licensing board, and it’s a mistake to think that just because one Muslim religious figure says anything, a lot of people are going to listen to him, or his beliefs are shared by Muslim religious leaders as a whole.
Er, can I just point out, that fundamentalist Islam is a lot like fundamentalist Christianity, i.e not all Muslims are fundamentalists.
Secondly, the cleric in question is more than likely a political apointee, and hence his words probably have as much to do with true Islamic feeling as a crooked lawyer’s words do to the truth (apologies to all lawyers).
Thirdly, Islam is a religion of peace, it says so in the name darnit!! (Islam is old Arabic for peace). So, again, like I said above, the cleric’s words have very little to do with true Islam.
That’s a bit of a generalisation there, isn’t it?
http://www.iis.ac.uk/ismailis/ismailis_l2.htm may well help. Its a description of a little known interpretation of Islam (we believe that it follows the original messsage of Islam (peace, love and respect for one’s fellow man, etc etc)), which is basically the antithesis of everything you describe.
NOTE: I am not saying that this subsection of Islam is good and all others are bad, I’m merely trying to point out that there do exist some people who use their faith to provoke war etc, but it is not the majority.
I think that uniting against Islam would only make their martyr complex more severe.
I also think it should be mentioned that being a fundamentalist Islamic does not mean you are a terrorist.
The only thing that will stop (violent)religious fundamentalism is economic prosperity. When people have nothing to lose, they’re much more likely to place more faith in hereafter and do whatever the cause might need.
This is patently untrue. Islam is not, has never been and will never be a religion of peace. I will ascribe your statements to ignorence and leave it at that. I suggest that you buy a Koran at some point and read it before you decide to side with the Muslims. As soon as I get home I can begin quoting from the Koran for you, if you like.
There is no reality to the claim that Mohammad (or Akmed…whatever) was a white-flag-waving peacenik. He was the leader of a military campaign. He did not preach tolerance towards other religions. He did not say that we should all get along in peace.
There is a verse in the Koran (I believe that it was in The Cow) which commands the true bleievers to not even be friends with the non-believers. I don’t generally bring my Koran to work with me, but that is the gist.
minty:
As for the State control over the radio in Britian. It is nothing like the State control in Saudi Arabia. Britian may have a monarch, but she is a figure head in politics. The Saudis live under a totalitarian regime. They do not have the same reality at all. The radio really is controlled by the State in S.A., and if they don’t like what you say there they can and will kill you for it.
As for the objection that not all Muslims listen to the imam of Mecca: Of course not all of them do. Not all Catholics listen to the Pope in Rome either. That is not to say that none of them do.
The thing that we have to understand in America is that the Muslims do not think the same way that we do. They don’t have the freedoms that we do. For the most part they have no freedoms. Religion is life there and it is the most important tenent for them. Thus the suicide bombings.
Yes, indeed. Let’s look again at what Berlusconi said:
“We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilization, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion. This respect certainly does not exist in Islamic countries.”
This statement ought to be obvious. The evidence is all around. In addition to the cited quote, we have seen the attacks on the WTC, the USS Cole, and various US embassies, the suicide bombings in Israel, the Arab attacks on European Jews, the murder of their own citizens perpetrated by Libya, Iraq, Syria, the lack of democracy or civil liberties in the Middle East, etc.
Actually, this IS obvious to most Americans and most Israelis. I suspect that most Europeans get the picture as well – one reason why conservative candidates are doing better. Only the smartest, best educated members of the intelligensia have enough wit and knowledge to rationalize away what is in front of our nose.
Unfortunately it has not been politically correct to actually say what Berlusconi said. It’s time to start doing so. Then, the west will find itself devising more realistic policies and the world will become a better place.
Is JohnBckWld passing around that gigantic paintbrush he used to write the OP? There are over one billion Muslims in the world, sax, and the large majority of them do not ascribe to the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism, no matter how it is defined (and there are any number of formal and informal schools of fundamentalist thought in Islam). To ascribe this particular leader’s ideas to Muslims in general is asinine at best and outright bigoted at worst.
But how do you know that Islamic fundamentalists are a minority in Islam? Why are you so confident? Not that I’m siding with the OP in any way; it’s just that your brush is equally as broad, but only in another color (to really push a metaphor to the breaking point).
I am aware of the number and size of the Muslim world, [b[minty.[/] There are right around a billion Muslims in the world. There may be more than that, but there are almost certainly quite a few less. Most of the countries that are predominately Muslim will have you shot if you tell them that you aren’t Muslim.
It is fine to say that not all Muslims are fundamentalist, but the fact is that there are entire cities which are fundamentalist. That’s the difference between the Islamic and Christian worlds. Did you know that we (as infidels) are not even allowed to go into or near the cities of Mecca or Medina?
The average American Muslim probably is not as fundamentalist as is the average Arabian Muslim. We aren’t talking about people with a Western Mindset here.
The vast majority of Muslims are of the Sunni variety. The link that Angua posted was to a site on a very small sect of Shi’ Muslims. They sound like they are nice folks. Thing is, the rest of the Muslim community sees them as heretics. Not what I would call a representative sample.
All this is to say: “Don’t buy the propaganda without doing your homework.” Caution is warrented when we begin to put the things that we value on these people who have wholly different values than we do.
Schools of fundamentalist thought. I’m having trouble finding demographics, however. Unless somebody else can come along with the statistics, I’ll have to simply rely on the easily verifiable observation that most Muslims live in nations with relatively secular systems, such as Indonesia and Lebanon, rather than fundamentalist-dominated societies like Saudi Arabia and Iran. And you will note that teh fundamentalists are slowly but surely losing the support of the people, even though they retain their grip on power.
Yes, the government is losing some of the support that they once enjoyed, but that means right around nothing to a totalitarian regime. I am skeptical about the secularism in either of the countries you mentioned. There is no real secularism in a Muslim country. There may be laws that are enforced by the State instead of the church, but they are still the laws of the church. Anyway, what does that prove? That they are not fundamentalist because they have a leader who is not an imam?
I’m confused…
I agree with the slowly, but we will have to wait to find out how surely they’re losing support.
In any event, because of the terrible weapons that exist today, a future loss of fundamentalist power may not be enough to save us from disaster today. E.g., did you see this article: Military intelligence says Palestinians tried to use cyanide gas in bomb attack
Please do, I look forward to it. I’ll even be happy to check your translations and if need be correct for bad etymologies.
I suppose of course that you are learned in fiqh and are not just randomly pulling odd quotes out of a translation, right?
[qupte]
There is no reality to the claim that Mohammad (or Akmed…whatever) was a white-flag-waving peacenik. He was the leader of a military campaign. He did not preach tolerance towards other religions. He did not say that we should all get along in peace.
[/quote]
Mohammed, Akmed isn’t even a fucking name. Ahmed is, but then it’s not Mohammed, although they are from the same HMD root, albeit different forms, but I am sure you knew that, eh what?
But that aside, yes Mohammed was not Christ. As to the second part, preaching tolerance, well there you’re wrong. Tolerance in the broad, late 20th century, early 21st century view of tolerance, no not really. Tolerance in a fairly operative manner for the 7th-19th centuries (ex-the emerging secular tolerance in limited places in W. Europe and N. America during that last century or so), yes. The concept of Dhimmi arises from the suraat on respecting ahl al-Kitaab.
True, as in its sister Abrahamic religions, there’s lots of self-contradictory lines, befriend the people of the book, don’t befriend non-believers…. Meat for all one can say.
The Imam in Mecca has not, traditionally been the fellow with a great deal of influence in the Islamic world. Mecca, for all its religious significance, has long been a cultural and theological backwater. The real influential folks are and were in al-Azhar (Cairo) – but again, there structure of Islam is not such that there is any formal command structure, however much certain Islamists dream of such to get their projects in place. There is no comparison between the Pope, who for most Catholics at least has a clear authority. Rather, the Imam in Mecca has as much authority say as the Archbishop of Canterbury over Protestants – that is whatever persuasiveness he possesses. To engage in comparisons with the pope simply reflects a sad and fundamental ignorance of the manner in which Islamic religious leadership works. (ex-Iranian shites)
No the OP is simply engaging in ignorant fear-mongering.
As for December, what can one say? Some forms of ignorance are incurable.
Now, as to this follow up:
Ah, the unlearned presume to lecture. Now, really where do you derive the last from? Other than raw ignorance and prejudice? Do recall much of my professional life has been spent in the Muslim world.
“Entire cities which are fundamentalist” and then uses the closing of Mecca and Medina to non-Muslims. My what a confused person you are. Is it really worth responding to such fuzzy thinking?
Which “Western mindset” are we talking about here?
Yes, most Muslims are Sunni. But then Sunni is rather like saying Protestant it covers quite a lot of fucking ground. What does a Tijani Sufi from North or West Africa, who practices estatic musical worship, believes in intercession in some form and largely follows a pacifist path have in common with the dour asceticism of the Wahhabites? About as much as my Calvinist forebears with High Church Anglicans or rural charismatic Baptists in America.
Caution is warranted when someone who clearly doesn’t know one fucking thing starts spouting off and over-generalizing in such a manner as to give me a headache.
As to the percents of the population which may be characterized as attracted to political Islam – which is not of necessity the same as attracted to religious conservativism – there is clearly no solid data. It is a widely held impression among those of us with substantive experience in the region and able to speak the language that the appeal of political Islam has faded mightily in most regions. The negative examples in Algeria and to an extent Iran have been drivers, as well as a degree of political progress in the Arab world.
As to your confusion, well given your ignorance that is hardly surprising.
So, yes, technically speaking, Islam is about peace, but not in the sense that you imply. By “peace” they don’t mean “make peace with everyone”. They mean “force everyone else to make peace with you”.
I think it is meant as “to make peace with oneself”. Others don’t come into the equation, as only they can bring peace to themselves (aka Surrendering to Allah).
Oh you have GOT to be joking. I mean, that doesn’t even work as hyperbole. Hey Collounsbury, during all your travels in Muslim nations, have you ever been shot for telling them you weren’t Muslim?
So freakin’ what? As a non-Mormon, I’m not allowed to enter an LDS temple. Am I supposed to be outraged or terrified about the Mormons too?
The Ryan, Arabic and Hebrew stem from the same linguistic family. The word, “Islam” comes from the same root element SLM, as “shalom” or peace.
Islam, contrary to what a lot of people, think, is not necessarily a violent religion. some elements of Islam, as in the writings of medieval Sufi mystics, sounds a lot like Meister Eckhardt’s ruminations on Divine Love, and Zen Buddhism’s attempts to free the souls from the temporary attachments of the flesh.
Saying that all Muslims think alike is as ridiculous as saying all Christians think alike. Islam, as befits any global religion, is a circus tent that holds many subsects that hold wildly differing interpretations of the Qu’ran’s meaning. I’m not going to be charitable to Islam only because I despise all religions equally.
My query to Minty Green was meant to show that his painting Muslims as fuzzy ecumenicists is just as faulty as the OP’s painting them as fanged boogeymen. I’m trying to understand what Islam means on its own terms, and not as viewed from a culturally biased prism. One book I have found interesting is Karen Armstrong’s Islam: A Short History. It’s just a brief overview of Islam’s history, but it’s very informative.