tagged w/ Muslims
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On Sunday, May 1, 2011 Barack H. Obama, the 44th President of the United States announced that Leader of al Qaeda & terrorist Osama bin Laden Killed by the United StatesOn Sunday, May 1, 2011 Barack H. Obama, the 44th President of the United States... more
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Even Muslim critics of the face veil, who insist that it has no sanction in their reading of Islam, do not necessarily support the French ban, says Yoginder SikandEven Muslim critics of the face veil, who insist that it has no sanction in their... more
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On the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is clear that al-Qaeda was a tiny fringe terrorist movement, not a globe-straddling threat to Western societies. The organization has been decisively disrupted and now lacks command and control. Its leader, Usama Bin Laden, has not been seen in a video since 2004, and is either dead or horribly disfigured. Its number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is dangerous only in the way that any other terrorist crank is, firing off crackpot messages to his dwindling band of followers from time to time. With the startling rise of anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States, fanned in large part by Republican Party fear mongering, it is worthwhile underlining the ways in which September 11 contravened Islamic values and Islamic law.
1. It is forbidden to attempt to impose Islam on other people. The Qur’an says, “There is no compulsion in religion. The right way has become distinct from error.” (-The Cow, 2:256). Note that this verse was revealed in Medina and was never abrogated by any other verse of the Quran. Islam’s holy book forbids coercing people into adopting any religion. They have to willingly choose it.
2. Islamic law forbids aggressive warfare. The Quran says, “But if the enemies incline towards peace, do you also incline towards peace. And trust in God! For He is the one who hears and knows all things.” (8:61) The Quran chapter “The Cow,” 2:190, says, “Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! God loveth not aggressors.”
3. In Islamic war, not just any civil engineer can declare or launch a war. It is the prerogative of the duly constituted leader of the Muslim community that engages in the war. Nowadays that would be the president or prime minister of the state.
4. The killing of innocent non-combatants is forbidden. According to Sunni tradition, ‘Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the first Caliph, gave these instructions to his armies: “I instruct you in ten matters: Do not kill women, children, the old, or the infirm; do not cut down fruit-bearing trees; do not destroy any town . . . ” (Malik’s Muwatta’, “Kitab al-Jihad.”)
5. Muslim commanders must give the enemy fair warning that war is imminent. The Prophet Muhammad at one point gave 4 months notice. Sneak attacks are forbidden.
The World Trade Center had a mosque in it, which Bin Laden destroyed, and he killed dozens of innocent Muslims in the attack along with thousands of others. All of this is an abomination in Islamic law.
By the laws of classical Islam and the instructions of the Quran, then, the September 11 act of terrorism was illegal. It is not an affirmation of Islam but a departure from its laws of war. That is why, contrary to popular belief, Muslim authorities have roundly condemned al-Qaeda’s actions in no uncertain terms. See also the Amman statement, to which large numbers of prominent Sunni and Shiite leaders subscribed.
Al-Qaeda can legitimately be seen as not a Muslim group at all. Usama Bin Laden openly said of the hijackers that ‘those young men had no fiqh [Islamic law]‘– i.e. they were lawless secret operatives rather than proper Muslims. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad when in the Philippines lived like James Bond, going to nightclubs with a pure silver cigarette lighter. Several of the hijackers frequented strip clubs. Ziad Jarrah was from a secular family and had a Turkish live-in girlfriend. Many of these operatives simply were not fundamentalists but rather an odd sort of Muslim nationalist. Bin Laden did not target the US because of its way of life, but because he said it imposed a boycott on Iraq in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, because it encouraged the Saudi regime to pump more oil than it should so as to keep the price low, because it stationed troops in the kingdom. Even if Bin Laden hadn’t been a crackpot with conspiracy theories, these points are not civilizational or religious issues. They are just politics.
Bin Laden wanted a big fight between the Muslim world and the United States. He wanted the US mired in Afghanistan. He is a nobody, leading a tiny group of cells now mostly disrupted. But the US has sunk itself into a quagmire of wars in a vast over-reaction to a terrorist attack. Without the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, al-Qaeda might well have just disappeared even further into insignificance than it did. And now, instigated by the Republican Party, US society is moving toward an Islamophobia that could well set it at odds with 1.5 billion Muslims.
Bin Laden is not a proper Muslim, and his actions contravened Islamic law. He is a Jim Jones-type cultist with a fringe, violent People’s Temple. Americans need to stop blaming Islam, and to recognize that most Muslims in the world are their friends, and that American Muslims are patriots and contributors to our well-being.
Every time Americans tear down Islam, Bin Laden gets a little bit of what he wanted.On the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is clear that al-Qaeda was a... more
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I don't trust MEMRI in general, but if the translation to this speech is accurate, then this explains why the Military Industrial Complex has had Libya in the crosshairs.
He talked mad shit about the Obama election hype, about the myth of American democracy,their phony elections, how American leaders are no better than the dictators and how Obama should be focusing on Israel's WMD stockpile in Dimona instead of Iran's imaginary nuclear weapons program.I don't trust MEMRI in general, but if the translation to this speech is... more
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Chicago (CNN) -- Rola Othman sits at her dining room table littered with papers, poring over school board minutes.
She's anxiously preparing to speak at the Reavis High School District 220 board meeting in Chicago's southwest suburbs, where 11 teachers are about to be laid off.
And she has had enough.
Othman, a mother of two, is pursuing a doctorate in education. She says that when her son's school cut Advanced Placement classes and slashed the budget for academic programming, it was time to act.
"I see my kid's school going in the opposite direction, it's kind of scary. You can only make calls for so long," she said. "You need to effect change by being in the place to make decisions."Chicago (CNN) -- Rola Othman sits at her dining room table littered with papers,... more
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CAIRO - Thirteen Egyptians were killed in violence between Christians and Muslims as sectarian tensions resurfaced in Cairo and a new government met for the first time on Wednesday, discussing how to restore law and order.
The Health Ministry said the 13 people were killed and 140 wounded in violence on Tuesday night ignited by tensions built up since an arson attack on a church south of Cairo on Saturday.
The protests spread elsewhere in the capital and hundreds of people faced off in the violence, hurling petrol bombs and rocks, witnesses said.
The injuries included head wounds, bruises, bullet wounds and broken limbs, the state news agency quoted a senior health ministry official as saying. At least one of the dead, an 18-year-old Christian, had been shot in the back.
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=211399CAIRO - Thirteen Egyptians were killed in violence between Christians and Muslims as... more
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WHACKO-TV editors were so busy with all that Charlie Sheen nonsense that they almost missed one of the biggest stories of the week: New York Republican Representative’s hearings on radicalization of Muslims in American Society. One of the old hippies in the newsroom wrote a song about it and so we decided to run with it. We don’t know what it means, but those guys are always daydreaming in there.WHACKO-TV editors were so busy with all that Charlie Sheen nonsense that they almost... more
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http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/06/tennessee-bill-would-make-it-a-crime-to-practice-sharia-law/?hpt=Sbin
The ongoing battle against Muslims got fiercer in Tennessee when two state lawmakers introduced legislation that would make it a felony to practice Sharia law, which includes lessons found in the Quran, the holy book of Islam, and which can inform how Muslims live their everyday lives, including prayer rituals. The possible punishment for practicing Sharia law is 15 years behind bars.
Tennessee isn't the first state to consider anti-Sharia law legislation. Oklahoma passed a similar bill last year. This month Missouri House Speaker Steve Tilley said he would support a similar bill.http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/06/tennessee-bill-would-make-it-a-crime-to-practice-s... more
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Remember all those cases of fake terrorism, FBI infiltration and entrapment of Muslims from last year?
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Muslims in southern California claimed they have been unfairly targeted because of their religion. Now they are taking on the FBI with a new lawsuit, which they hope exposes violations of the US Constitution.
As American Muslims prepare for prayers, a fear remains that the worshiper next to them may be a spy.This is especially true in Southern California, where paid FBI informants have fractured the cohesiveness of a law abiding community.
Now the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council of American Islamic Relations are teaming up against the FBI suing the agency for what they say is its attempt to incriminate people based simply on where they pray.Something they consider a violation of the US First Amendment freedom of religious worship.
The FBI insists that it does not ask its informants to target people for their religious affiliations.Something Muslims are finding hard to believe.Remember all those cases of fake terrorism, FBI infiltration and entrapment of Muslims... more
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Two pics which show a group of Christians guarding another group of Muslims as they pray.
http://yfrog.com/h0btz6j
http://yfrog.com/h7ap5rdj
A wise human being once said - "Whether you are a Christian, whether you are a Muslim, whether you are an atheist, you will demand your God damned rights!"Two pics which show a group of Christians guarding another group of Muslims as they... more
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Falling birth rates will slow the world's Muslim population growth over the next two decades, reducing it on average from 2.2 percent a year in 1990-2010 to 1.5 percent a year from now until 2030, according to a new study which will undoubtedly be ignored by the xenophobes.
Muslims will number 2.2 billion by 2030 compared to 1.6 billion in 2010, making up 26.4 percent of the world population compared to 23.4 percent now, according to estimates by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The study saw a close link between education and birth rates in Muslim-majority countries. Women in countries with the least education for girls had about five children while those where girls had the longest schooling averaged 2.3 children.It said about 60 percent of the world's Muslims will live in the Asia-Pacific region in 2030, 20 percent in the Middle East, 17.6 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 2.7 percent in Europe and 0.5 percent in the Americas.Continued migration will swell the ranks of Europe's Muslim minorities by one-third by 2030, to 8 percent of the region's inhabitants from 6 percent, it said.Muslims in France will rise to 6.9 million, or 10.3 percent of the population, from 4.7 million (7.5 percent), in Britain to 5.6 million (8.2 percent) from 2.9 million and in Germany to 5.5 million (7.1 percent) from 4.1 million (5 percent).The Muslim share of the U.S. population will grow from 0.8 percent in 2010 to 1.7 percent in 2030, "making Muslims roughly as numerous as Jews or Episcopalians are in the United States today," the study said.Pakistan will overtake Indonesia as the world's most numerous Muslim nation by 2030, it said.The report did not publish figures for worldwide populations of other major religions, but said the United States-based Pew Forum planned similar reports on growth prospects for worldwide Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Judaism.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70Q12D20110127
Falling birth rates will slow the world's Muslim population growth over the... more
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dave discovering the sites and scenes in lebanon and here are some of the vibes captured for the world to see. Truely a amazing country. I recomend everybody to see and visit this country/ ride the ridedave discovering the sites and scenes in lebanon and here are some of the vibes... more
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Here is a short glimps of the tour in egypt and some of the sites captured for the world to see.Here is a short glimps of the tour in egypt and some of the sites captured for the... more
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dave touring through the middle east and one of stops is syria and what a fantastic place with amazing sites. Here is a short glimps of the sites he captures to share it with the world.dave touring through the middle east and one of stops is syria and what a fantastic... more
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Islamophobia has "passed the dinner-table test" and become widely socially acceptable in Britain, according to Lady Warsi, the co-chairman of the Tory Party.Warsi, who is the first ever Muslim woman in the Cabinet, will in a speech at Leicester University today raise the alarm over the way in which she believes prejudice against Muslims is now seen by many Britons as normal.She will also warn against the tendency in the media to divide Muslims between "moderates" and "extremists", which she argues can fuel misunderstanding and intolerance.Extracts of the speech has been published in the Daily Telegraph. Here are some of the highlights: "It's not a big leap of imagination to predict where the talk of 'moderate' Muslims leads; in the factory, where they've just hired a Muslim worker, the boss says to his employees: 'Not to worry, he's only fairly Muslim'," she will say."In the school, the kids say: 'The family next door are Muslim but they're not too bad'."And in the road, as a woman walks past wearing a burka, the passers-by think: 'That woman's either oppressed or is making a political statement'."Baroness Warsi will also say terror offences committed by a small number of Muslims should not be used to condemn all who follow Islam.But she will also urge Muslim communities to be clearer about their rejection of those who resort to violent acts."Those who commit criminal acts of terrorism in our country need to be dealt with not just by the full force of the law," she will say."They also should face social rejection and alienation across society and their acts must not be used as an opportunity to tar all Muslims."
Islamophobia has "passed the dinner-table test" and become widely socially... more
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Apparently Jews are leaving Europe, due to harassment. It is starting in The Netherlands and Belgium, but also other nations like Sweden and France -- is there room in Israel, since many are intending to go there?Apparently Jews are leaving Europe, due to harassment. It is starting in The... more
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Fareed Zakaria, who occasionally throws fairly well-disguised bombs from his perches at CNN and Time in a manner so serene many fail to notice– is taking on his cable news stylistic opposite, Glenn Beck– or at the very least, his math skills. In his trademark soothing tones, Zakaria gave Beck a math lesson on those 10%, or 157 million, “Muslim terrorists” Beck claimed were plotting to attack America– namely, that that figure is “1000% wrong.”
Zakaria opens up his segment, aptly titled “What in the world?,” by simply following through on the 10% math to figure out just how many people 10% of the international Muslim community would be. Zakaria’s lesson even included a virtual chalkboard, just to make sure Beck got the message, one must assume. He correctly points out would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 157,000,000 Muslim terrorists, and notes Beck’s laments of “why, oh why wasn’t this receiving any media coverage?”
Zakaria’s answer? “Well, let me suggest one reason: it is total nonsense– a figure made up by Glenn Beck with absolutely no basis in fact.” He also uses U.S. State Department figures to negate Beck’s, which claim there were 11,000 total terrorist attacks around the world in 2009, including every act of terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, and testimony from terror expert Peter Bergen, who emailed Zakaria to tell him Beck’s figures were “1000% wrong.”
It doesn’t get much better for Beck during Zakaria’s semi-out of character deconstructing of his argument. Team Beck, meanwhile, has already put together a comprehensive retort to Zakaria, with data showing, among other things, that support for Osama Bin Laden “ranges from 4% in Azerbaijan to 56% in the Palestinian territories.”Fareed Zakaria, who occasionally throws fairly well-disguised bombs from his perches... more
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Helen Thomas said on a radio show that aired Tuesday that the Jewish- run harrassment group, the Anti-Defamation League, was intimidating her. The journalist defended comments she made last Thursday in Dearborn.
"I just think that people should be enlightened as to who is in charge of the opinion in this country," Thomas, 90, told the Marion, Ohio, radio station WMRN-AM.
The ADL has called on groups to remove honors in her name. Hours later, Wayne State University pulled an award in her name.
Thomas, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, grew up in Detroit and graduated from WSU.
"I'm going to tell the Anti-Defamation League to back off," Thomas said. "They think they have the right of intimidation." "They already got my job. They want to get my honorary degrees."Helen Thomas said on a radio show that aired Tuesday that the Jewish- run harrassment... more
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