Islamophobia Watcher

Who's the Bully?

2008-01-08T22:35:00.000+11:00

The arrogant captain of the Australian cricket team and his backers, who are rightly being berated in the media for their repugnant sportsmanship in the viewpoint of most cricket fans -- except by the usual suspects: one-eyed nationalists and yobs, have a lot in common with the crew of the three U.S. Navy warships and the aforementioned. On one hand, you have Australian players who are world cricket's worst sledgers, yet find it a moral duty to report the slur of an Indian player. On the other hand, you have a branch of the US military treating the Strait of Hormuz as their favourite daddy's jacuzzi, and when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard naturally threatens them (as disclosed by 'US officials') it is described as a "significant provocative act". Does it remind anyone else of the Gulf of Tonkin incident? Also, this comes at a time of Bush's visit to Israel, which is planning to brief him concerning striking Iran. How would it be if Iran had continually threatened to bomb the US? And the Iranian Revolutionary Guard would be patrolling the waters in the Gulf of Mexico? And then when the US Navy threatened the Iranian fleets over their presence, the Iranian officials described the American response as a "significant provocative act". I think Iran has been extremely patient following threats of nuclear strickes from Israel. And that if Iran had dispatched fleets to toss around on the coast of the US or Israel, it would most likely result in them being blown up one of those lean explosive missiles which liberal democracies use liberally, especially against those Ayn Rand, based on her colonialist moorings, demeaned as "savages", "typically nomads", "primitive" etc. Please can anyone inform me of the number of Iranian warships off the coast of the United States? Who's the bully?

Martin Amis's Distorted Sympathy

2007-12-14T20:35:00.000+11:00

Martin Amis is a troubled writer, so incredibly afflicted since 9/11, that even the terminology 'right-wing' is insufficient to fathom his deep-rooted failure to either favour sensible realpolitik (like the globalists in London and Washington) or downright conscientious appreciation of other civilisations and peoples. Indeed, the cradle of civilisation is Mesopotamia in the Eastern hemisphere, however incomforting the fact may be to perceived liberals and Likudniks. In his address to the students at Manchester University recently, Amis decried the "abject failure" of Muslims to condemn suicide bombing and terrorism. However, it gets interesting when he legitimises "retaliatory urges" among the British public on learning about Muslim terrorist schemes.

Only a machine would not have felt anger, he said.

Most of us don't have a problem with that reflection, except that it illustrates Amis's own "distorted sympathy". Amis permits no sense of "retaliatory urges" among Muslims when they learn about the British military aligning with the US in the occupation of Iraq, an action which has cost the lives of over 1.2 million peoples. Holocaust deniers disagree with the figure. On suicide bombings, Amis calls for factory sirens "from every corner of the West" exhibiting "disgust for these actions". He does not make any call for factory sirens "from every corner of the West" for outrageous Western actions, which surpass privatised terrorism in their scope and disregard for human life.

His comments on the Palestinians prove to be the most absurd.

"I have sympathy for Israel. It's not nothing to have six million of your number murdered in central Europe in the last century. Don't you think that this has had a psychological effect on this race or religion, or whatever you want to call the Jews?"

...

"Palestinians have never suffered anything as remotely terrible as that."

While Palestinians may not have suffered gas chambers en masse, complete ethnic cleansing is the officially sanctioned and predictable outcome of Israeli policies. Ilan Pappe, the fearless Israeli academic, documents this in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Edward Said's 1979 essay Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims is one of the strongest critiques of Zionism and its supporters.

One needs to repeat that what in Zionism served the no doubt justified ends of Jewish tradition, saving the Jews as a people from homelessness and anti-Semitism and restoring them to nationhood, also collaborated with those aspects of the dominant Western culture (in which Zionism institutionally lived) making it possible for Europeans to view non-Europeans as inferior, marginal, and irrelevant. For the Palestinian Arab, therefore, it is the collaboration that has counted, not by any means the good done to Jews. The Arab has been on the receiving end not of benign Zionism-which has been restricted to Jews-but of an essentially discriminatory and powerful culture, of which, in Palestine, Zionism has been the agent.

And Amis is dead wrong.

Exactly a year ago, Ziauddin Sardar coined the word "Blitcon".

The British literary landscape is dominated by three writers: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan. All three have considered the central dilemma of our time: terror. Indeed, Amis has issued something of a manifesto on the subject he terms "horrorism". In their different styles, their approach and opinions define a coherent position. They are the vanguard of British literary neoconservatives, or, if you like, the "Blitcons".

It is more relevant now. As for Amis's essay 'The Age of Horrorism' that appeared on the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, much of it illuminated by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis's crafty crusade (concealed under shades of scholarship) to legitimise and promote American and Israeli imperialism against Arabs, it was proof of another writer's mind collapsing with the twin towers.

John Pilger on Terrorism and the Iraq War

2007-12-07T17:48:00.000+11:00

On state terrorism:

Statistically, the majority of terrorism is our terrorism. It is state terrorism. There's no question about that. And the greatest victims of terrorism are Muslims. Those who either died as a result of the medieval embargo imposed on Iraq during the 1990s or Palestinians who've died and others. So the whole understanding of terrorism is upside-down.

On the other terrorism:

Now there is, as opposed to state terrorism, a kind of privatised terrorism. It's very tiny. It's run by organisations called Al Qaeda. There is one study at the University of Chicago that found that of this privatised terrorism in the last thirty odd years something like twenty odd thousand people had died. A very tiny figure compared to the millions who've died as a result of state terrorism.

On the Anglo-American war on terror that has gained worldwide credence to oppress foreigners, ethnic groups and minorities for various aims:

I don't think there is a war on terror. I think that's a propaganda notion. The attacks of September the 11th were appropriated by a clique in the US establishment in order to further its aims around the world. If that isn't clear to most people, as I believe it is, then I don't know where they've been for the last few years. But it is not reported that way. Yes, a lot of journalists put terrorism and war on terror in inverted commas, but after a while they're weary of that. It's as if there really is a war on terror or there isn't a war on terror.

UK Teacher Not Guilty for Naming Teddy Bear "Muhammad"

2007-11-30T21:24:00.000+11:00

Say: "Whether ye hide what is in your hearts or reveal it, Allah knows it all: He knows what is in the heavens, and what is on earth. And Allah has power over all things." (Aal `Imran 3:29)

Guilt is a feeling of culpability for offenses. Ikhlas or purity of intention applies all over Islam, like the Golden Rule. I am referring to the case of the British teacher in Sudan who was arrested (to be prepared for forty lashings) in Sudan for naming a teddy bear 'Muhammad'. But which 'Muhammad' are we talking about? Not the Apostle, but a little boy in her class. The children, not the teacher, voted for the name. The dominant Western media is very accurate and 'objective' in reporting the errors of other parts of the world, which is not necessarily a bad thing, so we know it is true. Where do we move from here? Express outrage, yes. That's a collective obligation on the rest of the world. My purpose is to look at it from a slightly different perspective, while making clear my objection to it.

There has been a tendency among some Muslims to completely whitewash the sensibilities of Muslim peoples living in Asia and Africa, something I myself have been guilty of in the past. The Muslim Council of Britain is spot on when it decribes the judgment "completely injustified", but there is no attempt made to change the system that produces those judgments. Words like "ridiculous" and "unfair" flow readily from the lips of Muslims who are educated enough to know better, but they ignore the dignity of the people they are talking about. On scaling the Everest, Hillary said: "I came, I saw, I conquered." With more privileged Muslims in capitalist democracies, it's like: "I came, I saw, I spoke aloud so the crowd could hear [that would make one good Muslim] and I went home feeling smug." Shame on us.
Is this the first time this year that a teacher has been subjected to forty lashings? If a strong case can be made against a smokeless barrel [reminds me of the WMD], I'm sure there were plenty of rulings against Sudanese teachers before this. So let's not turn this into a debate about a "British woman". It is a ruling against an innocent lady, and it is incumbent upon the Muslim-majority state to protect her just like it must protect its own citizens.
The non-humanitarian, war-mongering, pro-Globalisation Western Right's response on various newspaper columns is symptomatic of a disturbing anti-Muslim war that is being waged for imperial hubris and geopolitics. They care as much about justice and life as a B52 cares about a little boy in Afghanistan before blowing him to shreds. It doesn't make sense when people who articulated the war against Iraq and demonise Muslim immigrants in Europe with fascistic fervour get pro-justice all of a sudden.
And the question of ikhlas or the purity of intention. Ask yourself. Most of all, this is something the Sudanese authorities should be asking themselves for imprisoning an innocent lady. Will their ego let go?

The Story of Hamid Sayadi

2007-11-12T19:23:00.000+11:00

I urge everyone to read Chris Collin's moving report of a post-9/11 harrassment case in the US. Chris, who writes a weekly column for the San Francisco chronicle, speaks with a fair amount of empathy, though rightly dispassionate to maintain 'objectivity' in whichever way you may understand the concept or semantic, which is all but missing from journalism these days. Or was virtue ever mainstream?

His story is one of the many that have both nothing and everything to do with 9/11. A witty and eloquent Kurdish-American in his 50s, Sayadi waved the flag of his adopted country and cheered its military for three decades — all to end up stripped to his underwear one day, in the boiler room of his workplace, he says, a ragged and sobbing husk of his former self.

My apologies to Chris and my readers for such a tardy response. I consider this story a people's case of Islamophobia. We know that 'Islamophobia' is in danger of being hijacked by some Muslims who wish to deny their wrong behaviour, just like the supporters of Israel who hurl the charge of 'anti-Semitism' whoever questions their apartheid. And I think we have to watch out for that. I try to allay that fear by having several posts on "introspection" on this blog. However, there is no doubt that there exists a people's case of Islamophobia. What I mean by a "people's case" is that its victims are Muslim individuals, because they are Muslims or even Arab or African Christians. The "people's case" of Islamophobia is affected by the "cultural and religious case" of Islamophobia, which have been concocted from European expeditions to the Orient, purposes of which are/were not merely enlightened curiosity, contrary to what the agent of the Cold and New War Bernard Lewis writes, but which have been a time-honoured excuse for imperialism. I think I may gone a bit off tangent, but that's what I consider this: a people's case of Islamophobia. This can be fought by the media, and salutations to Chris for informing the public in such an eloquent and noble journalistic capacity.

Muslim Terrorism

2007-10-09T14:20:00.000+10:00

In their brilliant introductory book 'The Vision of Islam' that I advise everyone to read, Murata and Chittick nonetheless commit the same error of generalisation that I commented on in the previous entry by reducing wide-ranging Muslim practices to 'modernist Islam'. But what I agree with is their analysis of Muslim terrorism. I state that the phrases 'Islamic terrorism', 'Islamist terrorism' and 'Islamic rage' are all clever lingual constructions that mostly conceal the actions of the state that is engaged with them, but there indeed is a segment of Muslims that participates in ways which are both ignorant and criminal. Murata and Chittick argue that modernist Islam rejects the intellectual understanding of the tradition. I will not employ their term, because it is deficient in itself. Instead I will use Karen Armstrong's phrase "Qutbian terrorism" in its place.

One is the tremendous stress placed upon tanzih and the almost total eclipse of tashbih, at least among those who speak up vocally for Islamic values [eg. Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda], especially those with political agendas. In some cases, the celebration of God's wrath and anger is used to justify methods of warfare - such as mass killing and terrorism - that are explicitly forbidden by the Shariah....Islam does have its own political teachings, but these have always remained peripheral: To place them at the cent[re] is to break with the tradition. Of course, the political ideologies of contemporary Muslim movements are seldom rooted in Islamic teachings; rather, they are reinterpretations of the [Qur']an and the [Ah]adith based on modern presuppositions concerning democracy or other "good" forms of government...[1]

I think this is a really good analysis, and it basically explains in a few words what they don't tell us. They is more than they here. Yes, it is.

Sources:

Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam (New York, USA: Paragon House, 1994), pp. 333-334.

Contemporary Islam?

2007-09-22T16:22:00.000+10:00

Some people incorrectly use the phrase "contemporary Islam" to prove that the actions of Al Qaeda are not discordant with Islam as practised in this day and age. Whatever tranformation has come has been with Muslims and not Islam, so the assertion that Islam was itself transformed in the 12th Century is a shot in the dark. What we call "Islam" is the religion based on the Qur'an and the Ahadith. With these unchanged, it is impossible for Islam to "change". Hence, Christianity and Judaism cannot be compared to Islam in this essence. Instead what has happened is the muddling of interpretation with nationalist ideologies and sometimes revolutions or the rejection of some of its teachings. In this regard, which considers it isn't just 12th Century but all the centuries after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) there has been an array of Muslim movements, whether proggie or salafi or sufi, that have constructed their own Islam. But true Islam has always been there unchanged, open to dialogue, tradition and revivalism.

Summing it all up, one commits the crime of "generalisation" when one boxes the experiences and ways of living of more than a billion people on this planet into one phrase -- "contemporary Islam" -- which one then argues is not discordant with the heinous actions of "some of its adherents". In fact, there is nothing like "contemporary" Islam. Islam is as diverse as there are Muslim communities around the world. The actions of some of its adherents can be understood by placing it in a colonial context, mostly nationalist struggles that have learned to strike back at centres of power, mostly killing innocents (thereby replicating the actions of the centres of power), but always uncaring of the system of war in Islam. In my philosophy class, our tutor told us about what inspired Osama bin Laden to plan 9/11 from a documentary he had watched. According to Osama bin Laden, it was the Hiroshima bombings. This doesn't justify his brutal act of terrorism amd neither does it fully reprieve centres of power, but it does show the "roots of Muslim rage", contrary to what the person who coined the phrase says to his enlightened readers.

This rescues Islam from being framed by some as a religion that fosters terrorism. On the other hand, there is credible information of brainwashing of little boys in schools in tribal regions of Pakistan who chant "Osama" far more than they chant "Allah". They are taught hatred of Jews, Christians, whites, Westerners and other non-Muslim communities. I guess I've made my point that Islam is far too great and the Muslim community is far too diverse to be hijacked by Al Qaeda's Islam, which is falsely replaced by "contemporary Islam". The many Islams cannot be generalised, but so often they are as is evident in the writings of Melanie Philips, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer et alii.

The Diction of War Propaganda

2007-09-17T20:15:00.000+10:00

One of the ways in which the victims of Empire are dehumanised and misrepresented is through ‘language’. The English language is a beautiful language, and has earned itself the title of the ‘universal language’. How did English spread? While it is a kind of colonial poltergeist that cannot be forgotten or underestimated, it is largely a simple, easy language that has incorporated from many nations and peoples. It is no more “the British way of speaking” that reflects “the British way of life”, but is now the world’s way of speaking. It is a force that unites peoples. But an old misgiving still lurks in Anglo-American and even Australian politics, which is the tendency to repeatedly borrow from its imperial discourse and throw up words like “civilisation”, “democracy” and “freedom”, to which I have previously hinted elsewhere. During the Crusades, both Muslims and Christians referred to each other with this good vs. evil imagery, whereby they represented a more superior civilisation, not by actions and good deeds but polemics. I was going through John E. Richardson’s book ‘Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse’, and it explained this really well:

They launch
Sneak Attacks
Without Provocation
Their men are
Troops
Hordes
Saddam Hussein is
Demented
Defiant

We launch
First strikes
Pre-emptively
Our men are
Boys
Lads
George Bush is
At peace with himself
Resolute [1]

Much of the media is concentrated in the ‘North’ (America, Europe), and this lends a veneer of acceptability to actions which would otherwise be viewed as crimes. Hence, the ‘South’ is depicted as an area of expendability, and how best it may serve the interests of the North. Such is the state of the ‘media’ that my pointing out this failure will be construed as radical, while what is actually radical i.e. contemporary newspaper reporting will be construed as ‘normal’. But no matter how serious and eloquent the propaganda, truth will out time and again. Alan Greenspan, "America's elder statesman of finance", has claimed (as reported yesterday) that "the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil". As the sectarian killers in Iraq undermine Islam, so do the war profiteers in America undermine the very Western values they exhibit as "saviours" to the lesser peoples 0f Iraq.

References:

John E. Richardson, Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis (New York, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 48.

Ramadan Mubarak!

2007-09-12T21:43:00.000+10:00

Too many things have been going on in my life, but it has been utterly devoid of blogging or as I call it "hunting big game Islamophobes". Assignments, assignments and assignments. But here's a song of Ramadan, to accumulate some of this year's frustration and success on to a cloud, to sprinkle the earth. I am not making any sense. I know. Don't ask. Ramadan mubarak! The long overdue articles like 'The Black Armband of History' will insha'Allah be up soon. Do keep checking. Sinister laughter.

Chomsky Wrong on "Jihad"

2007-08-27T19:50:00.000+10:00

Noam Chomsky, world renowned linguist and political thinker, has previously been accused by David Horowitz of the Front Page Rag of waging a "jihad" against the United States because of some of his anti-authoritarian views. Even his activism against Israel's war on Lebanon elicited an Israeli media of accusing him of [wait-for-it] applauding "jihad". Of course, jihad like other Arabic words (eg. mujahideen, madrassah, dhimmi) is a media buzzword. Unlike the so-called noble word "crusade", jihad is synonymous with holy war and aggression. But what does jihad really mean? The truth is that unlike the word "crusade" as in Bush's notable "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile", jihad has nothing to do with terrorising the 'enemy' out of religious bound duty. There is no concept of holy war in Islam, as I've said before.

It is an Arabic word the root of which is Jahada, which means to strive for a better way of life. The nouns are Juhd, Mujahid, Jihad, and Ijtihad. The other meanings are: endeavor, strain, exertion, effort, diligence, fighting to defend one's life, land, and religion.

Jihad should not be confused with Holy War; the latter does not exist in Islam nor will Islam allow its followers to be involved in a Holy War. The latter refers to the Holy War of the Crusaders.

The above definition is the most concise and straightforward you'll find on the subject. But now to roll back, and address Chomsky's own misuse of this word. In April of 2007, Chomsky said on Democracy Now! while referring to Alan Dershowitz, an apologist for Israeli apartheid and terrorism, who was rightly accused by Norman Finkelstein of plagiarising and spreading lies: "he launched a jihad against Norman Finkelstein, simply to try to vilify and defame him, in the hope that maybe what he’s writing will disappear." I agree with Chomsky's choice of words, like "liar" and "maniac", toward the media hack Dershowitz. But jihad, the professor of linguistics should know, doesn't mean what he thinks it means. It means a righteous struggle. It doesn't mean lying, vilifying and filing suits against academics who take you to task. Alan Dershowitz like Osama bin Laden is incapable of jihad.

Introduction to 'The Black Armband of History'

2007-08-26T23:37:00.000+10:00

Peace. Tomorrow or day after insha'Allah I'll be updating my blog with the planned article 'The Black Armband of History' as a tribute to the indigenous peoples of Australia. I had been thinking about writing on this, but my encounter with some Muslims who, like the ruling elites, view the Aboriginal people with disdain or are wholly ignorant of Australia's extraordinary pre-conquest civilisation of which there is much to be proud, calls for a juxtaposition of their marginalisation with the outright destruction of the Aborginal homeland. One of the objectives of this blog is to constructively address issues of social significance (hat tip, Erik). This article comes at the wake of Pauline Hanson's xenophobic and supremacist political statements against Muslim immigrants. One of my peers counts Pauline Hanson among the three worst persons she wouldn't want to be stuck in a desert with.

To be honest, I don't like flags. I don't like people who wave their nation's flags in front of my eyes out of some war-mongering, nationalist mania or to prove their flag has brighter colours. But if there's one flag I would proudly hang in my window, it would be the Australian Aboriginal flag, which is much more sincere and artistic than the one flying atop Howard's headquarters, servile as it is to the dismantled British Empire. The Aboriginal flag illustrates the dignity and beauty of the Aboriginal peoples. Literally, it is an imprint of their struggles against what John Pilger called "one of the most intransigent and meanest political establishements."[1] But it is also what I hold to be the legitimate symbol of Australia, an Australia distinctive from the European brotherhood.

References:

1 - John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2002), 12.

'Sufism' and US Foreign Policy (Part III) - An Examination of the 2004 Nixon Report -

2007-08-19T15:59:00.001+10:00

Part I
Part II

Polemics, ‘Moral Panics’, Racism, Al-Hallaj and Orthodoxy, and Conclusion

As long they were giving history lessons, things went swell. Enter Polemics and Politics, regular chief guests at think-tanks and foreign policy institutes (without them the show can’t go on, dear reader, and you must be full already).

I was in disagreement with much of what Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi Executive Director, Islamic Supreme Council of America said of Salafism. She gave the impression that all of a sudden there was this anti-Western force in Islam which destroyed Muslim tradition and Sufi schools of learning with the aim to purify Islam. I was particularly taken aback by her phrase “Wahhabi destruction”. This sort of polemics is completely irrelevant to the productivity of my critique or to ordinary Muslims for that matter. What she says stems more from self-centred passion than a historical narrative. It is a universal truth that every civilization has its revolutions and changes, and it is not about the emergence of Salafism but ‘moral panics’. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this term. ‘Moral panics’ is basically a concept that is used to describe great and prevalent fear or concern in a society that some enemies from within that particular society are trying to sow unrest by mainly hostile actions.[1] It can be used by ruling elites to conceal bigger problems. I’ll give you an example. Once upon a time in England, even mugging was considered a form of ‘moral panic’, and a rather clever gentleman by the name of Waddington said that this was merely because the ruling elites wanted to divert attention from British capitalism.[2] There are loop holes in the cause and effect theory, I’m not saying that, but instead of blaming an ordinary set of people who call themselves Salafis and their version of Islam, we must ask what really led to the collapse of this so-called wonderful Islamic civilization as described by Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi. Was it really anti-Westernism? (Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi in my opinion makes this point because she is addressing mainly a Western audience, sort of fortifying the anti-Salafi programme). Could it be anti-Westernism? Why did Muslims want a change? Did they want a change for themselves or against the West? I know she is keeping in line with Bernard Lewis’s outrageous essay 'The Roots of Muslims Rage', but honestly Muslims were more likely to first think about setting themselves for each other than against ‘the West’. There was surely something lacking? I’ll tell you what was wrong. Things had already fallen apart and it wasn’t working out before the emergence of Salafism. This is the only possible explanation for a movement of thought or action. This is when it is a time for reaction to circumstances and grievance. To blame the economic and political failure of Muslims – I didn’t say “spiritual” because that is up to an individual himself – on those damn “Wahhabis” as we hear time and again repeated by media experts and a great number of Muslims is wrong and ahistorical and nonsensical. The Muslim World didn’t change because of a handful of “Wahhabis”. This was a movement in response to failure that had already occurred and not without the acceptance of the populace. It is my view that an effort must be made by Muslims to understand identities forged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in terms of their anthropological and historical relevance rather than smearing or slandering others. The hostility to Salafis is sometimes coloured by racism when instead of talking about the theological disagreement, which should be encouraged, people make unruly remarks about Saudis, which of course is true for the leadership but far removed from the habits and intelligence and nature of ordinary Saudis who are people like you and me. I mean, you put a guy with a turban on T.V. and the maximum response, even those of Muslims, will have that Ann Coulter flavour and immediately a ‘Wahhabi’ label will follow even if the man has more intelligence and sobriety than half the half-wits combined who are disparaging him behind his back, other than the obvious attempt by the news commentator to make the guy look stupid. These same people will also sit the way hell up and listen attentively with their ears pricked and all when some small-minded celebrity is talking about his or her egotistical life or something.

I agree with Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi’s feelings about literalism in Salafism. This I think is a valid approach. Salafism should be open to critique over questions of literalism or even the ugly attitudes of some of its adherents. And each movement is Islam must be critiqued as it isn’t cast in stone. Only the Qur’an is the perfect text which has always withstood critique due to its subliminal and divine mark, and the Hadith is the secondary text which has been analyzed through the generations by learned scholars and respected thinkers. And you would think she is right on it, but wait until you hear her support for shrines of saints, which is one of the things for which Sufism must be critiqued. There is nothing wrong with shrines in my view as historical monuments but her argument that people come to build bridges and all through these absurd rituals is false. The only thing that it leads to is shirk and if you look at those portly managers of shrines you know what happens to your charity. Later on in the report, Dr. Alan Godlas also stresses on the importance of visiting shrines for “Turkmen tribal identity”. From an Islamic perspective, we have to remember that it is incorrect though it is a very touchy subject for the followers. From an anthropological perspective, it can be understood. It is here we must apply Islam and rather than going about it sacrilegiously, we must do what the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) would have done: educate, through wisdom and mercy that we are to worship God and not men (this is the most basic belief that links all Muslims); but not override their version of Islam with ours regarding interpretation or worship. Time and again there have been instances where Muslims in the majority have persecuted those in the minority, mostly defenceless Sufis, which is totally anti-Islamic e.g. in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where in fact a campaign has been waged to eliminate other traditions and even eccentric ideas that aren’t so much anti-orthodox as anti-authoritarian. Another example of ‘moral panic’. Of course, the case of Al-Hallaj is totally different – there’s at least one thing on which Shaykh Hisham Kabbani and I can agree on despite his fascination with European Orientalists who as luck would have it are absolutely head over heels in love with Al-Hallaj – and I’m not at all satisfied with Mevlana Rumi’s defence of Al-Hallaj’s statement or Al-Hallaj’s execution which is really lamentable as he wasn’t given any chance to repent which is a Qur’anic right given to every creature. The Orientalist fascination with Al-Hallaj as Edward Said critiques in his seminal work Orientalism wasn’t to do with what Al-Hallaj said, though it may have given them immense pleasure to find that it was anti-orthodox and anti-monotheistic other than Al-Hallaj verbally elevating himself to godhead. Rather it was the way in which Al-Hallaj was executed: crucifixion. This gave Orientalists the prospect to link Al-Hallaj, a Muslim figure, to Christ, Jesus son of Mary (peace be upon them both), in accordance with Christian tradition that Jesus was crucified; and this in my opinion was played against the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who died a natural death, and also there was a psychological manoeuvring in my opinion to overplay the significance or role of Al-Hallaj for the above reason. The case of Al-Hallaj also became a tool for some Muslims to provoke the majority or the orthodox with a condescending impression of ‘intellectualism’, which was nothing but distasteful sham, as throughout Muslim history the contribution of the orthodox has been pivotal to progress and creativity though mostly unacknowledged and snubbed off as ‘boring’. This enshrouding of the contribution of the orthodoxy to Muslim civilization has largely been accomplished by paying undue attention and reverence to anti-orthodox figures like Al-Hallaj.

The other speakers basically speak similar sorts of things: Dr. Alan Godlas ends his talk with Sufism Vs ‘Wahhabism’ imagery (and who will lead and get to be the big-shot I guess) but I respect his nuanced and generally non-polemical approach along with his cautioning the US to not interfere; Dr. Mohammad H. Faghfoory is the only speaker who doesn’t say anything about Salafism but rather dwells on the Persian influence and what I think of as a sincere discussion on Sufism – he is again silent on the issue of foreign policy – but at the end he says that those who disagree with Sufism are ideologizing Islam. I must be one of those because I tend to disagree with some or many aspects of Sufism and Salafism on solely intellectual grounds and Islam to me is not about ideology and I don’t believe in force, though I generally support resistance movements whether in Vietnam or Iraq against the centre of power and not innocent people, which has nothing to do with my religious beliefs; Dr. Charles Fairbanks bemoans the supposed fact that Washington is not a religious centre in the “war on terror” which to me is odd because George Bush is a devout Christian and the neocons are worried about Judeo-Christian heritage and all that and they go to church on Sunday to listen to those hymns – but they’re hypocrites of course! What is he trying to say? That we should officially have a Fourth Crusade? It is interesting that Dr. Fairbanks considers the “war on terror” of a quasi-religious nature. What he calls “modern, secular states” in the Muslim World are all Washington’s lapdogs with an increasing movement of resistance from its peoples. I guess any atom of rebellion by Muslims, however legitimate, is labelled as a “Wahhabi” scheme by the bosses in Washington and the Muslim figures speaking at such events. He differentiates between Sufi resistance and Salafi resistance simply because Sufis are fighting against Russia in my opinion. This is not harmful of course. I mean, with the Cold War and all, it’s really cool; Alex Alexeiv, the last speaker, talks of the Salafi methods of fighting in the Caucasus as tactically wrong which definitely is the case in my view and he doesn’t hint at foreign policy measures, which is good.

I know it’s way over time and too lengthy but I want to put all the speakers of this event in perspective, even those who didn’t directly advocate foreign policy in this talk. Why did they attend this conference? What was the objective of Washington? Each of these speakers shares blame for knowingly participating in a conference that was funded, made or supported by hawkish war-mongers and corporate institutions (given its role in stifling the facts on global warming, don’t be surprised if Exxon Mobil is one of them). Did these speakers see pictures of the Iraq invasion in 2003 and its bloody impact on the children in Iraq? Why are they making a pact of “foreign policy” with the thugs in Washington? While describing “Wahhabi destruction”, why did they participate in a conference that clearly aims to destroy those they disagree with? Pausing here, I equally condemn any campaign by the Saudi dictatorship to infringe harm on the Sufis and “force” their viewpoints on Sufis as they do! The image of Shaykh Hisham Kabbani quoting alleged “peace” poetry, which actually seems as a form of provocation, while denouncing an entire group of peoples (that comprises of ordinary family-oriented folks who don’t care about politics) as terrorists, and supporting governments engaged in state terrorism is disingenuous to say the least. And it is always easy to say a lot like the self-styled experts who congregated for the International (?) Security Program of The Nixon Centre in Washington on October 24th, 2003. While these men (as they all were indeed men, except Zeyno Baran the editor) were having a go at all the stuff I critiqued and quoted, the people in Iraq trembled in fright of the air raids and lawlessness and death, the objection and the voice of humanity unheard beneath the walls of some warm building where Bernard Lewis, a staunch advocate of the war, was sanctimoniously providing a rationale for the madness, a madness that was definitely incubated in one of these so-called international security institutes. And the speakers, waiting to pounce and announce their own grand agendas, against savage, irrational souls – in this case, the ‘Wahhabis’.

References:

1 – Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 11.
2 – Ibid., 42.

Massacres of the 21st Century

2007-08-17T15:20:00.000+10:00

The fledgeling 21st Century has already been marred with massacres. We have heard of Sept. 11, 2001 the most, and indeed it was a terrible atrocity. But we have failed the people of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Congo. Perhaps one of the most neglected and frightening systematic killings of people has been in the Indian province of Gujarat. Thanks to Amad for reminding us. In the words of the extraordinary writer Arundhati Roy, winner of the Booker Prize and more significantly the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize:

While the parallels between contemporary India and prewar Germany are chilling, they're not surprising. (The founders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS], the National Volunteer Force that is the moral and cultural guild of the BJP, have in their writings been frank in their admiration for Hitler and his methods).

Not surprisingly, she has been accused by ideologues as being both anti-Indian and anti-American, for making an association between the Right and fascism. She is so wonderfully vocal that she was censored from the Charlie Rose programme on PBS.

The Cheshire Cat Syndrome

2007-08-14T19:57:00.000+10:00

From the imprudent appraisal of bloody-minded, apathetic politicians like Blair and Bush in modelling of harmless dog breeds, we arrive at the less pleasant topic of cats. A fictional cat rather. The Cheshire Cat. For those unfamiliar, here’s a literary background.

I was tuned into the radio some weeks ago, when the programme on faith and intercultural debate began. It wasn’t a debate at all, for the moderator was a crude partisan hack. The two sides were one really; Christian and Jewish commentators upset with multiculturalism and Muslims and Islam. The woman, whose Jewish identity was frequently underlined by the moderator, didn’t stop informing the public how it was all right to be against multiculturalism. Her message was nothing short of racism, and it maligned the early Jewish immigrants, which of course led me to question whether she was one of those white drop-ins who unaware of the national Jewish history seek to demonise Muslims, playing a part in the new anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. The Christian man, who polemically sided with the woman, proclaimed his Catholic passions of the despicable era still venerated as the Crusades. I was kind of shocked as the so-called debate progressed. They said that there was no such thing as moderate Muslims and the Qur’an was preaching violence. I realised at that point that this anti-Muslim temperament was in fact mainstream. That journalism as John Pilger regards is indeed an extension of the government or priggish power. Ethics in media is an academic study, not a practical one. The programme got most insane when they glorified the totalitarian, fascist Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, comprising of Iranian communists, whose stated aim is to rid the world of Islam. At one point, the moderator even gave some air play to the rabble-rousing Islamophobe Maryam Namazie.

What did I learn from the programme? I’m not going to tout myself as a moderate or progressive Muslim for the entertainment of Islamophobes. I don’t care a fig if they charge me of radicalism and extremism for the crime of criticising this or that war-mongering, psychopathic government. If I’m combining my criticism of Uncle Sam and Thatcher-esque liberalism with that of Afghan warlords and Al Qaeda, I can go to bed in peace every night, unlike those who content themselves with the plea to make Muslims apologise for every atrocity committed by a person with a Muslim name. I call to witness the apologists of the Anglo-American empire that is responsible for massive terror campaigns against the peoples of Iraq, Palestine, Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor and countries in Latin America to nominate a few.

The post-9/11 Muslim reaction to compliantly separate themselves as moderates has been gradually disavowed, thanks to the efforts of people like Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes. Their manufactured hate, easy to believe because of its simplistic comfort, has seeped into the hearts of many people looking not for an explanation but any explanation that won’t impinge on their own sense of worth in their country, religion or race. A law-abiding Muslim unspoken on his or her government policies became a moderate, but that privilege has also been erased. The claim of Robert Spencer is that it isn’t the fault of bin Laden’s but he is acting true to the spirit of Islam. This spurious falsehood has been propagated by other Islamophobes. This also implies that all Muslims are evil, a method by which Jihad Watch is spreading direct hate and propaganda against the Muslim neighbours and countrymen of Jihad Watch subscribers. A Muslim was first categorised into moderate and extremist. Rather than defining Islam as “the peaceful worship of and submission to One God”, Muslim spokesmen started the “Islam means peace” PR drive. This, too, was met with ridicule. LGF’s racist loonies facetiously refer to Islam as a religion of peace. Islam doesn’t mean “peace” per se. Salaam as in the greeting salaam alaikum means peace. Is Islam a religion of peace? Like all religions it is a religion of peace. But that’s half the truth. Islam, perhaps more importantly, means surrender to One God. This is a voluntary submission with “no compulsion”. It forms a complete realisation of an individual toward the universe and other forms of creation and the humankind, to live in peace with them, in balance. There is nothing like a moderate Muslim and an extremist Muslim. An extremist is defined in freedom movements as someone who uses force or violence if necessary. If a Muslim can be categorised as an extreme example of his faith, American and Israeli military personnel must be defined as such as well. An American soldier must be called an extremist American because he has the stars and stripes on his breast. He is fighting for a cause with violence. To selectively apply labels to a group of people is disingenuous and against basic human rights. But with the erosion of the personal identity of a Muslim, a Muslim previously upheld for his or her compliance with the state, has been assimilated into the pool of ‘Islamofascists’, portrayed as a bearded barbarian; or a veiled Oriental waiting to be rescued by her snobbish French mate who’ll leap down from a chopper, single-handedly kill the score of hooded abductors and hold her in his arms, and a patriotic yob will be flying the flag behind them.

The cat has vanished and all that’s left is the grin. Any attempt to respect the dignity of practising Muslims has been lost in categorising, collaring and finally discarding the lot of them, as part of the scheme in their collective evil.

Bush is Right

2007-08-08T19:50:00.000+10:00

I may not agree with George Bush on anything, but for the first time he's left me in quite a tizzy. On June 27, 2007, the Sun quoted him exactly as such, in reference to Blair:

I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that.

Bush is right. The ex-British PM Anthony Blair is indeed bigger than a poodle. Photographic evidence suggests that the poodle is actually bigger than Bush himself, which must make Bush a chihuahua.

Islam and its Discontents

2007-08-06T16:18:00.000+10:00

What is jihad? What is the status of non-Muslims under Islamic leadership? Is Islam compatible with democracy? Is the world divided into two zones: belief and disbelief/non-belief, and if so, do Muslims have a holy mission to convert us? These are some of the serious questions that crop up in the minds of non-Muslims in the present political climate. The public is driven to form opinions based on the availability of popular discourse: that of an Al Qaeda spokesman holed up in a cave with the hottest technology or anti-Muslim commentators. There is seldom a middle ground, as reactionaries on both sides are gratified by the deception. Let me give you an example. In Islam, there is no concept of holy war. But several Muslims and non-Muslims will tell you otherwise. I was debating with an apparently sophisticated poster on a forum, and he countered by providing a link to an unheard of Muslim website that explicitly defined jihad as holy war. Fair enough. Better yet, why not establish that Islam is evil by lending your ears to some other outrageous Muslims like the merry men of the Taliban? It is not unusual, hence, to be charged by some non-Muslims “for sugar-coating Islam”, and by Muslims for being a Muslim apologist. Muhammad Asad fits the bill perfectly for earning the wrath of some Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and Bernard Lewis the fondness. Let’s think it over. There are some non-Muslim individuals who are aware that jihad doesn’t mean holy war. Nevertheless, the Muslim who tells them so is sugar-coating Islam and someone bending of knowledge and tradition is honest. A Muslim who tells you that Islam is here to conquer is a candid spokesman to the oft-discussed, however a first-rate myth, dangers of Islam, and a Muslim who tells you that Islam is a religion of submission to One God and peace is an idiot. Because, you see, conceited people…and I mean those who try to invalidate Islam by believing that Islam is evil anyhow i.e. those who make their personal belief and civilisation look superior, not by irrelative, unannounced intellectual jihad (struggle), but positioning the favourite fruits of their belief with those of the distorted teachings of another. Take up ‘race’. Since infancy, we have been fed the myths that white man is superior. This has not been achieved by science, assumed staple of the European Enlightenment, but a reductionist and colonial exposition. Indeed, even science as religion claims that all of us are equal, that the Palestinian/Iraqi victim of American/Israeli state terrorism is as worthy a victim as a New Yorker or a Tel Aviv club-hopper.

What is my point exactly? I think we have an immediate need to question the contemporary discourse of Islam both among Muslims and non-Muslims. Fourteen centuries ago, God said in His speech, the Qur’an, to come to “common terms”. This doesn’t mean twisting the verses in religious texts out of context like it is the habit of armchair bombers who are hostile to Islam, often parading as sophisticated enlightened free spirits. You might say “liberal”. And nor like an Al Qaeda terrorist who wants to kill innocents, not because he understands the message in the Qur’an, which he clearly doesn’t as mainstream Muslim scholars have affirmed in their writings, but that he believes there is no hope. Of course, this may also lead us to question words like “civilisation”, “democracy” and “liberty” which are callously tossed about by terrorists, apartheid appeasers and stooges of Western triumphalism we never read or hear about.

Why is Hitchens Not Scared of Offending Muslims?

2007-08-04T15:26:00.000+10:00

Cervantes explains the Don's desire to leave his village and take up the profession of knighthood: "he was spurred on by the conviction that the world needed his immediate presence." (Don Quixote, Book 1, Part 2)

In a recent article, the famed film-maker John Pilger referred to a critique of British artists by Terry Eagleton in their failure to "question the Western way of life." John Pilger aptly describes rabid colonialist writers and columnists like Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and others singled out by Eagleton in the Guardian column:

That they play their part in a broadcasting studio or in the clubbable pages of the review sections and that they think of themselves as liberals or conservatives is neither here nor there. They belong to the same crusade, waging the same battle for their enduring privilege.

Hitchens in one such writer given "tombstones of column inches in which to air his pretensions, along with his attacks on Muslims." This is John Pilger bouncing Amis, but I think it rings even truer for Christopher Hitchens. Like the derogatory viewers' feedback on Youtube aimed at Islam, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper with whom Hitchens debated about a New York student's right to dump the Qur'an. This incident is what allegedly elicited Hitchens anew "to air his pretensions, along with his attacks on Muslims." When we analyse Hitchens' columns and slurs since September 11, 2001, the day on which some of the most morally absurd intellectuals and barbie doll newsreaders decided to warn us about the "Islamist threat", which consequently fueled "our search for moderates" and "friendly communists like Maryam Namazie", it is made clear that Hitchens would squander his (and our) time in the process.

Afghanistan: "first country in history to be bombed out of the stone age." [This murderous passion of Hitchens reminds me of those who pride Japan's democracy to the terrible war crimes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, it is irrelevant that Afghanistan is chaotic, overrun by US-backed warlords. Ismail Khan, one of the worst, was endorsed by Rumsfeld as "an appealing man... thoughtful, measured and self-confident"].

Iraq: "And if they're bearing a Koran over their heart, it'll go straight through that, too. So they won't be able to say, 'Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.' No way, 'cause it'll go straight through that as well. They'll be dead, in other words."

This is a period in time when the majority of the Australian, American and British public are questioning their government policies. Hitchens has nowhere to go. One up for the Niger myth.

Islam has since formed an active preoccupation of Hitchens: 'Stop indulging Islamist violence', 'Jefferson versus the Muslim pirates', 'Facing the Islamist menace', 'Londonistan', 'Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?', etc. etc.

Why is Hitchens not scared of offending Muslims? Because, there is nothing unusual about offending Muslims. People have the right to critique Islam, and they indeed do that every single day. What is unethical and strange is when the criticism trespasses into an area of abuse, misrepresentation and fascist fervour. Islamophobia Watch comments that Hitchens wouldn't be "putting his name to a piece subtitled 'Why are we so scared of offending Jews?'". I think this is very true, because I recall Hitchens writing in Vanity Fair not very long ago:

The objection of these people is not really to Judaism, or even to Zionism. It's anti-Semitism pure and simple. The other name for which is racism, of the deadliest kind because it's accompanied by a direct incitement to murder. Not just discrimination, but murder.

The double standards are obvious. It is anti-Semitic to criticise Israel and Zionism, let alone Jews, but we needn't be scared of "offending" Muslims. It is alright for Hitchens to shamelessly indulge in anti-Muslim fascism because it's the norm, like it was the norm to scapegoat Jews in Europe half a century before. And armchair bombers like Hitchens, Spencer and Pipes are the champions who "dare" to offend Muslims, whilst bigotry against Islam and Muslims is almost a universal truth. How unnerving indeed!

"Saddam"

2007-07-26T13:58:00.000+10:00

Very disturbing piece of Islamophobia and racism evidence, via the excellent Islamophobia Watch:

A Muslim street warden nicknamed "Saddam" during a four-year ordeal of racist abuse has won £42,500 after an employment tribunal. Iqbal Rasheed, 59, was the target of a vindictive campaign while working for a security firm under contract for Westminster council and the Greater London Authority.

Father-of-three Mr Rasheed, of St John's Wood, told how colleagues at Chubb Security nicknamed him "Saddam", branded him a "madman who believes in God" and laughed at him when he fasted during Ramadan. He said he was once told not to clean the spray-painted word "n****r" from the side of Selfridges because it was "not offensive".

Shortly after British hostage Ken Bigley was decapitated in Iraq, Mr Rasheed said he was told by a colleague: "I hope they nuke you Iraqis now." One South African supervisor told him: "I don't make tea, I get n*****s to make it for me."

Mr Rasheed, who was born in Aden, Yemen, said he was the subject of a bullying campaign by line manager Mike Edwards and colleagues Marie Robinson and Carol Wheeler, who are mother and daughter. He told the Lite today: "From the moment I stepped in the office I could feel the tension against me. I have lived in this country since I was a child but I was made to feel like a total outsider."

I won't talk about the anti-Iraq and anti-Arab fervour, but "Saddam" is considerably tame when you consider "Sodom" as uttered by American colonialists in the Pentagon.

And, naturally, Said discusses what the Bush administration and their mouthpieces’ cultural gaffes, during the lead-up to the war on Iraq, communicate and how Arabs receive their actions. Barsamian mentions to Said how U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, while addressing the United Nations, repeatedly stated "Sodom" instead of "Saddam." Said responds that this is an example of demoni[s]ing and triviali[s]ing the dictator, and reducing the country of Iraq, home of what is considered the artistic capital of the Arab world, to that one man.

Commenting on news anchors "who say I-raq, I-ran … the Mooslems, and Izlum," Said tells Barsamian, "it’s all part of the same arsenal of Orientalist cliches that are designed to alienate, distance, and dehumani[s]e a people … That’s why most Arabs feel a tremendous animosity toward the U.S. media and government. The prevailing public discourse is so ignorant and at the same time so familiar in its contempt for these central things in our lives that we see it as a kind of assault on our culture and civilization." Indeed, the lack of knowledge that Americans possess regarding Arabs, the Middle East, and foreign affairs in general is all too often manifested in the media, like when the Chicago Tribune, in a recent editorial, refers to Iran as an Arab country, and in another article, defines "intifada" as "holy war."

The analysis, though not directly related, by Edward Said points to the view that Iqbal Rasheed, the man vilified and racially abused, was a lingual and cultural reduction of all Arabs to "Saddam". In my next entry, I'll insha'Allah talk about how the 'syntax' of Islam is ideologically ditched in the textual English language that supposedly indulges in an unbiased, non-political and universal discourse.

Pipe Dreams

2007-07-19T14:13:00.000+10:00

We recognise Daniel Pipes as an Islamophobe and a fear-mongering racist both in his personal and professional benighted reality. However, not much effort has been spared in rendering him as an idiot. I’ve previously exposed him as a fabulous intellectual engaged in struggles for free speech [just pulling your leg], and here I find myself talking about him again. I don’t wish to underestimate the bile and poison he customarily spurts in his writings or his witch-hunting campaigns on American campuses. But let me sit back for a second, and consider Pipes as an idiot and a comic relief in his own dangerous wasteland of military detention, perpetual wars and anti-Muslim fascism.

“Ah ha, and an idiot!” I can hear some of you say aloud with me. You bet, when you read the following:

One clarification: the Fox News video makes it appear that the woman screaming "Liar, Liar" (a fanatical anti-Israel, hard leftist named Greta Berlin) was addressing me. In fact, she was yelling at Wafa Sultan....

What's the background?

Along with Yaron Brook (head of the Ayn Rand Institute) and Wafa Sultan (of Al-Jazeera fame), I participated yesterday evening in a panel on 'Totalitarian Islam's Threat to the West' at the University of California at Los Angeles.

What's the joke? Daniel Pipes is touchy and embarrassed by this video, and is quick to point out that the bitter protest by the Palestinian rights activist Greta Berlin is against the silly opportunist Wafa Sultan whose appearance on Al Jazeera was edited and rehashed by the extreme disinformation Zionist media MEMRI: "either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel". But the joke is on him, because we now know that Pipes is irked by conscientious protest, to the extent that he brands it as "the degradation of free speech on campus". May I ask who founded the vile witch-hunting project called Campus Watch? And it is a falsehood that protest is against free speech, because without protest there'll be no democracy, and we're seeing less and less of democracy in the United States thanks to Campus Watch and Pipes. As John Pilger says, there have always been elements of fascism in the US and I think Daniel Pipes is a fire-breathing fascist monster. What action does he advise against the protesters? That they "be disciplined and the non-students be charged with trespassing and barred from entering the campus".

Recently, the award-winning reporter Robert Fisk had this to say about Daniel Pipes:

But wait, Pipes is at it again. The director of the "Middle East Forum" has been writing in Canada's National Post about "Palestine". His piece is filled with the usual bile. Palestinian anarchy had "spewed forth" warlords. Arafat was an "evil" figure. Israeli withdrawal from Gaza had deprived Palestinians of the one "stabilising element" in the region. Phew! "Palestinianism" (whatever that is) is "superficial". Palestinian "victimisation" is a "supreme myth of modern politics". Gaza is now an "[Islamist] beachhead at the heart of the Middle East from which to infiltrate Egypt, Israel and the West Bank".

Pipe dreams about the annihilation of defenceless Palestinians and other 'counter-terrorist' operations like disciplining anti-fascists. But pipe dreams are known to come true, which is why we must continually expose Daniel Pipes and the international legion of conceited Islamophobes.

Comment on a Comment

2007-07-12T16:19:00.000+10:00

Peace be upon everyone. I'm sorry about not updating this blog sooner, but I've been really busy lately. Anyhow, I'd like to address a comment in an old post titled Kafir Watch? that echoes a rather poignant sentiment:

Nothing in this world is perfect. Life is not easy for anyone, including western people. Everyone has to work to succeed. Don't blame the whole western society for the problems because they aren't the only source. Open that mind to the possibility that some nonbelievers are more than immoral bastards.

I almost wholly agree with this sentiment. But I did not blame the "whole western society". I should indeed have differently phrased or downright edited some of my views had I known they would be interpreted as such. Yes, but I acknowledge some hostility to the West in my words, but they weren't to be chucked on every Western bystander. I wrote:

Not reporting on the real issues faced by the downtrodden does not make them 'free people', however much they may invoke the Enlightenment period which as the Muslim commentator Amir Butler pointed out was a result of conflicts within Europe and its religions. Muslims, on the other hand, have no need of an Enlightnment. No thank-you, Mr Tariq Ali. You may continue to rail against the capitalists who hover around the other end of your system and preach to Muslims and the capitalists may continue to dominate and slaughter Muslims outside the system.

I wrote this in reponse to a popular belief that Western Reformation must be wilfully forced on Muslim populations, as outlined by authors and pundits like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington. But a closer look at world history suggests that Western Reformation has never been successfully transmitted nor has it been seen as a virtue by centres of power that would like to enforce it. It has merely been an excuse for colonialism. I'm not denying that people in the East haven't benefited from Western virtues, but the concept of virtue is universal and democratic. It flows to and fro. When I wrote Muslims aren't in need of a European Enlightenment, it was to counter the new intellectual methods of global order that present virtue as a guise for economic and political greed. Moreover, I don't consider all Muslims innocents. But rather I'm very worried about "the recent terror fitnah being perpetrated by Muslims that has gripped all corners of the world as we know it".

The Western civilian population is as innocent and good as any. And most non-Muslims are not "immoral bastards" and if they were, Muslims wouldn't be very differerent from them, because we're all human beings to start with. There are extremist groups on both sides, and Muslims are equally to blame.

Desmond Tutu Vs Bernard Lewis

2007-07-01T15:49:00.000+10:00

If I had to vote for my favourite personalities in the contemporary world, one of them would be the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, Desmond Tutu. Via the ever efficient Islamophobia Watch:

"I would hope that you in the media would be passionate about letting people judge for themselves, that you would be careful about some of the language that you do actually use," he said. "'Muslim terrorism' – have you ever read anywhere 'Christian terrorism'? – as if Islam propagates violence, but you have never spoken about what happened in Northern Ireland as Christian terrorism," he said.

Tutu added that understanding different religions required peoples of all faiths to understand different perspectives. "We Christians ought to get off our high horse and learn to be a great deal more humble, when you look at our history, the bloody things that we did in the name of religion," he said.

Contrast these well-informed and constructive comments by Desmond Tutu with those of the anti-Muslim and rabid Zionist so-called historian Bernard Lewis, a Barnes and Nobles dusty job. This is from his book 'The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror' (p. 137), suitably titled for right-wing appetites:

Most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and most fundamentalists are not terrorists, but most presend-day terrorists are Muslims and proudly identify themselves as such.

Does that ring a bell? This was a regular Sept. 11, 2001 commentary, and you don't have to guess the origin. The vile Orientalist Bernard Lewis lays claim to most of all controversial albeit celebrated sayings in the media. It wasn't George Bush or any of his criminal henchmen who conceived the idea that Iraqis would receive their oppressors with flowers but Bernard Lewis, the big mouthpiece of intellectual dishonesty and political hubris who waved America's bombers toward Iraq. There is a definite association between Lewis and the "Western Reformation" fascists in Washington and Tel Aviv, in their genocidal campaign for world dominance.

Understandably, Muslims complain when the media speak of terrorist movements and actions as "Islamic" and ask the media why the media do not similarly identify Irish and Basque terrorists and terrorism as "Christian". The answer is simple and obvious - they do not describe themselves as such. The Muslim complaint is understable, but it should be addressed to those who make the news, not to those who report it.

Bernard Lewis himself has participated in acts of terrorism, though in a more dastardly and malacious fashion. Bravo, he wrote the damn the script for it! And he has the temerity to talk about 'Islam in Crisis: Holy War and Unholy Terror', ignorant of the fact that there is no concept of holy war in Islam. What can you expect from someone who has befriended several racist, murderous Israeli politicians; American neocons of death and destruction; coined the catastrophic Cold War propaganda phrase "the clash of civilizations" and led a nation (he isn't even an American) to war against an innocent people? I will write a detailed critique of his book. For now, I will draw your attention to the person to whom he has dedicated this Orientalist junk: Harold Rhode. Who is Harold Rhode? From a source on Juan Coles's blog:

"He considered Lewis his real mentor. Later, [I was told by someone in the know that] that Lewis helped him get a job in Richard Perle's office at the Pentagon. The rest is history....

Some writers are asking about what the connections are between various individuals and groups in the Iraq/Iran/Israel/etc. mess. Were there ever to be a serious investigation of the Israeli infiltration of the Pentagon (unlikely, of course), one would certainly have to examine Bernard Lewis's role here.

Even though Edward Said raised the issue 25 years ago, in view of recent events, it seems high time that a scholarly society promote a frank and more balanced discussion of the political agenda driving Lewis's scholarship as well as his advice to leaders as a supposed senior scholar on the Islamic world. (On the other hand, I am not aware of any reputable treatment of his non-academic side; a Google search only reveals some rather unsavory publications that question his non-academic affiliations.)"

And finally Juan Cole on Harold Rhode:

Rhode participated in the meetings in Europe with the proto-fascist Italian military intelligence organization, SISMI, and the rightwing Italian Defense Minister, along with fraudster Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, at which suspected spy Lawrence Franklin also was present.

Yahya Emerick's Critique of Irshad Manji

2007-06-28T14:05:00.001+10:00

This is American Muslim writer Yahya Emerick's critique of Irshad Manji:

I recently read a book named, “The Trouble with Islam” by Irshad Manji. It was quite a piece of work. She is basically a self-professed lesbian Muslim “Refusenik”. (Whatever that is supposed to mean.) Her premise was that she was questioning the validity of Islam because some Muslims have done bad things, chiefly her parents, but also ordinary Muslims in third world countries. I’m not kidding. This is the entire crux of her argument: some Muslims are bad so Islam must be bad. Try that standard with Christianity and ordinary Christians! It would fare far worse. In chapter after chapter she berated one ignorant cultural custom after another, cited terrorist activities here and there and traced a meandering path through the ideology of the Wahhabis and came away saying that she was “on the brink” of stepping out of Islam and that Islam was darn lucky she was giving it one thread of a last chance.

Conversely, she had nothing but praise for the Western world. Nothing bad ever happened or happens. Western religions are noble and kind. Everyone is a free thinker and savvy human rights pacifist. Women are well respected and they have complete freedom and equality and the civil liberties and rights of all are sacred. So, in her conclusion, Islam had better shape up or she would leave it. There is a word for arguments such as hers and anyone who has ever taken a course in logic and rhetoric will know it: fallacy. A fallacy is an argument that is not only not proved but ill-conceived at its core. It is contradictory, disingenuous and easily disproved with logic that will uncover where the mistakes in reasoning occurred. Sadly, however, Ms. Manji is not the first to use this odd type of mis-logic.

Well Said, Craig

2007-06-24T13:36:00.000+10:00

Craig Murray on Rushdie (hat tip to Zanjabil):

If the Muslims are right, Rushdie will get his come-uppance eternally, which should be enough vengeance for anybody. You can't make eternity last longer by killing someone quicker.

As I have maintained, any out-of-place Muslim reaction to the honouring of Rushdie will not benefit anyone but the politicians, East and West.

Manji on Rushdie

2007-06-23T13:35:00.000+10:00

There are few more obnoxious people on this no-so-green-anymore planet than Irshad Manji. Driven by accolades from liberal-to-right news media like the New York Times and think-tanks, unsuccessful professors, fascists, and Zionists like Daniel Pipes, invitations to radio shows and BBC and CNN and wherever there is a bunch of right-wing sanctimonious "Westerners". I say, "Westerners" because this is what it's all about - it's in the language of Irshad Manji as she addresses the people she claims are on her side, which is far from the truth. The bottom of the article identifies her as a "Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy". There are some things to ponder:

Is Irshad Manji a European?
What European ideals or goals does she support?
What makes her join the European class?

A perusal through her writings and site yields the following results: No, she isn't a European but she supports those Europeans who are "at the top" i.e. war-mongers, anti-Muslim bigots, racists of every kind, Zionists and fascists. One could well imagine her on a paid position under Hitler, demonising Jews. But the not-so-green-anymore planet has revolved so many times since then that she finds herself on the side of Jews. Not all Jews, not the good Jews, those who exhibit humanity and faith. But mostly the secular-minded Jews who support apartheid, anti-Arab racism and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian Arabs who were driven out of their homes into a ghetto, by like-minded people who are delighted by the lies of Irshad Manji. In fact, her article starts with an apparent lie:

Growing up in Vancouver, I attended an Islamic school every Saturday. There, I learned that Jews cannot be trusted because they worship “moolah, not Allah,” meaning money, not God. According to my teacher, every last Jew is consumed with business.

She generalises about all the folks in her schools. It is crazy to assume this is true. But for the naïve Western reader, it becomes a fact. You don't have to question any Cold War propaganda. A propaganda becomes a fact. Irshad Manji becomes "an extraordinary brave woman" for standing up to those Muslims. She becomes "an extraordinary brave woman" unlike those Muslim women who actually stand up for what is right without being paid a single cent, who take bruises for their bravery but their fault is that they don't blame Islam, because they know that there are bad people in every country and religion. And they read the Qur'an and they learn Arabic unlike fear-mongers like Irshad Manji. She writes:

On Monday, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister said that in light of how Rushdie has blasphemed Islam with provocative literature, it is understandable why angry Muslims would commit suicide bombings over his knighthood.

Members of Parliament, as well as the Pakistani government, amplified the condemnation of Britain, feeding cries of offense to Muslim sensibilities from Europe to Asia.

As a Muslim, you better believe I am offended – by these absurd reactions.

I am offended that it is not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence.

The "honours from the West" that Irshad Manji overlooks is that on the same day this offensive announcement was made, which it indeed was, other "honours from the West" included three missiles from a US drone smashing into a school. Thirty innocent civilians died. Not a peep from Irshad Manji or any of those opportunists who used the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 for purposes that included making money and earning contracts. This was achieved through fear-mongering and demonising Muslims by allegedly personal stories of woe. Hirsi Ali is an example of another dishonest opportunist much loved by the fascist Daniel Pipes.

I am offended that every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating their family’s honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Muslims have rightly denounced the mistreatment of Guantanamo prisoners. But where is our outrage over the murder of many more Muslims at the hands of our own?

Unlike Irshad Manji who supports war and racism, many Muslims protest the mistreatment of fellow Muslims and non-Muslims.

I am offended that on Sunday, at least 35 Muslims in Kabul were blown to bits by other Muslims and on Tuesday, 87 more in Baghdad by Islamic “insurgents”, with no official statement from Pakistan to deplore these assaults on fellow believers. I am offended that amid the internecine carnage, a professed atheist named Salman Rushdie tops the to-do list.

Above all, I am offended that so many other Muslims are not offended enough to emonstrate widely against God’s self-appointed ambassadors. We complain to the world that Islam is being exploited by fundamentalists, yet when reckoning with the opportunity to resist their clamour en masse, we fall curiously silent. In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?

She is always offended by the actions of Muslims because she is addressing a Western audience. If she said: "I am offended that many Muslims were blown to bits by daisy cutters and cluster bombs", her contracts to write for any of those "free media" would be revoked and you would never hear from her again. A very shrewd writer, eh? Moreover, she twists the sectarian killers into "Islamic" insurgents, who are run not by the people or Iraq but Washington's appointed puppets. Have a go at Washington, Ma'am. I hear you're very brave. And the "professsed atheist named Salman Rushdie" will take the names of all those innocents killed on his conscience as he supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on..."humane" grounds, if he wasn't pompous already.

In that spirit, it is high time to “ban” hypocrisy under the banner of Islam. Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are.

After all, the very first bounty on Rushdie's head was worth £1 million. It increased to £1.25 million; then higher. The chief benefactor, Iran's government, claimed to have profitably invested the principal. Hence the rising value of the reward. Looks like Jews are not the only people handy at business.

The last sentence proves she is an anti-Semite. This is really hilarious. Did she not phrase it well or what? Read the last sentence carefully, my readers, and relate it to the first paragraph of her article. The Zionists she panders to will obviously disregard it in line with their collaboration with Nazis, but what about us Jews and Muslims? One wonders what her secret views are on Christians, which may just pop out when she's gulping down too much of vodka.

Writeous Sister Covers Chiquita Bloodshed

2007-06-20T14:06:00.001+10:00

Aaminah Hernández, a Native American Muslim writer, has critiqued the Chiquita Banana Company on her blog Writeous Sister Speaks with references to Washington's historical support for corporations that dehumanise people in Latin America and other poor regions.

Sir Salman Rushdie

2007-06-20T12:56:00.000+10:00

I am really disappointed at the Muslim elite response in view of Salman Rushdie being awarded the knighthood. Consider the following google outputs:

Iran Condemns Rushdie Knighthood
Pakistan Minister Says Salman Rushdie's Knighthood Justifies Suicide Attacks
Rushdie Knighthood an Attack on Islam: Iran

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Much silence and a good disposition, there are no two works better than those." And you can bet that those who are causing all this angry brouhaha over a worthless imperialistic award aren't much in tune with Islam. I am aware of Rushdie's anti-Islamic screed in his book "The Satanic Verses" which by the by I have read with the purpose of critiquing him. Those who contested that it was simply a work of fiction, including Edward Said, didn't get it right. In the words of Annemarie Schimmel, the great scholar of Islam: "Misunderstanding of the role of the Prophet has been, and still is, one of the greatest obstacles to Christians' appreciation of the Muslim interpretation of Islamic history and culture." Notwithstanding, the Muslim 'mob reaction' in 1989 was really shameful. I wasn't old enough to witness it though. The best response was artistic, as exemplified by Yusuf Islam, formerly the popstar Cat Stevens, in his spoken-word album The Life of the Last Prophet. What I want to tell my non-Muslim brothers and sisters who visit my blog is that any crass reaction like those I listed is elitist and governmental. Most, if not all, Muslims don't give a fig about this award. The governments of Muslim countries and their minsters are not at all concerned about the wellfare of Muslims. All they care about it politics. On the other end, you have embarrassing, fading heads of states like Tony Blair who when they're not participating in genocidal campaigns against Muslims with liberal literati like Salman Rushdie as the mouthpieces for those crimes, are busy awarding trophies to their henchmen. Yup, the Queen may shake your hand but she also shook the hand of the massmurderer Suharto, darling of the IMF, World Bank and Margaret Thatcher.

Vociferously supporting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on "humane" grounds, condemning criticism of the war on terror as "petulant anti-Americanism" and above all, aligning tyranny and violence solely with Islam, Rushdie has abdicated his own understanding of the novelist's task as "giving the lie to official facts".

Rest assured, this will only help in increasing the sales of Rushdie's, what I view as otherwise, mediocre books. June is a good time for business, especially with all those Iraqi deaths and oil wells flowing. Money-making is a humane cause.

Iraqi Children Singing for Iraq

2007-06-17T13:53:00.000+10:00

A song I don't claim to understand, but truly beautiful. It shines out through all the ravages of war, excesses of despotic control, haunt of death squads, gathering of Al Qaeda, celebration of "democracy" by neoliberals and neoconservatives, and poison-stained fingerprints of Orientalists on the nape of Iraq. But this was before the invasion occurred.

Chiquita Banana Company

2007-06-14T14:43:00.000+10:00

Some time ago I displayed a documentary on sweatshop labour in Indonesia. Well, although this isn't directly related to Islamophobia, I'd like you to watch another video I found on youtube that silently declares the romance between Globalisation and multinational corporations, which severely brutalises Muslims in poor countries as well:

Fellow blogger and immigration activist Kyle de Beausset contacted me among many to cover it:

With the recent failure of a flawed immigration bill it has been made clear to me that I have to start taking action again. I want to start small, but I hope to rack up the successes and start working on initiatives that have a global impact. The first thing I want to do is get people to speak on and denounce the fact that the Chiquita Banana Company has admitted to paying paramilitary groups in Columbia. Here's the post I've written up if you want to learn more.

As I've said before, if we really want to counter the negative effects of mass migration, we have to attack the things that make migrants leave in the first place. The violence and the bloodshed caused by paramilitary groups in Colombia is certainly a reason for a lot of migrants to leave the country. The first step in this fight is simple. People don't know about these atrocities and how U.S. companies have contributed to those atrocities....

The first step is to raise awareness. It reminds me of Coke paying the terrorist group AUC in Columbia. When I read that, I boycotted Coke and took to the Juice. Now I think I'm going to take to the Apple. If the banana price is high, the workers must be getting paid? Not at all. The sweat-streaked child is still going hungry every night. The Chiquita Banana Company's profits are pocketed by men in suits and ties, and they have spared 1.7 million for the bandits of AUC. I mayn't have noted before but right-wing and left-wing ideologies that are alien to Muslim tradition and theology are none of my concern, especially when we find Chiquita happily funding the Farc leftists. However, we are bonded by "common terms" of which there is humanity. Kyle will best acquaint you with all the facts on his blog Immigration Orange.

Islam Session #1: Muslims and Racism

2007-06-09T16:12:00.000+10:00

Does racism exist among Muslims?

Indeed, it is a sad reality that must be confronted. Black Muslims have been targeted both by Arab and Asian Muslims. Some white Muslims have also derided Arabs and other Muslims. Of course, it can be the other way round in rare circumstances as well. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that racism is a reality within the Muslim community. For instance, check out Muslim Apple’s first hand account of it.

Is the conflict in Sudan about racism?

I spoke to a Christian Sudanese gentleman last year in July and he said it was because of land and Muslims and other things. What he overlooked was that the victims of this conflict have basically been Muslims. It is a conflict over land and hegemony, nothing racial. In fact, the anti-Arab discourse on this subject in the First World Countries and by Zionist groups in the US has been racist. It’s been their way of ‘getting back at the Arabs’ for the justification of their treatment of Arabs in Iraq and Palestine. You have to look at a country like Congo. 3-4 million people have died in Congo than in Sudan, but nobody talks about Congo. Nobody cares. This stems from ‘residual racism’ which we are now seeing as directed against Iraqis, arguments like “they don’t deserve democracy”, “their mindless rage”, “they hate each other” etc. etc. So no, the conflict’s not about racism. But we mustn’t overlook the silence of Arab leaders over it, which again proves nothing as they continue to be silent as Iraqis die.

What is Islam’s attitude to racism?

Zero tolerance. Islam has never tolerated racism or any such evil. Someone told me that the difference between Easterners and Westerners was 500 years of a period called the Enlightenment. What he meant was that Easterners were 500 years backwards or inferior. To even suggest such a thing is grossly incorrect. For example – compare the treatment of Afro-Americans in the American South until the Civil Rights Movement in the US with the treatment of Bilal, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Bilal was a man who climbed up to the mosque and delivered the first adhan (call to prayer) ever. He was the first muezzin in Muslim history and a beloved companion of the Prophet. He was equal in his humanity to everyone, and it was not 1960 in the English calendar but much before 960. Now am I to assume Easterners are 1200 years superior to Westerners? This also proves that race is a historical and social construction. The Arabian Nights which relates stories of wanton Muslim men and women owning ‘black slaves’ is a literary record of that tradition, of mankind’s exploitation of another group. Of course, this logic applies to Columbus’s and Captain Cook’s notions of the ‘New World’, whereby the land on which they stepped was “discovered” even though there were folks living there. This discourse of the European Enlightenment stems from Euro-centric arrogance, something which we must oppose in these times when words like “civilization”, “democracy” and all are used to justify oppression and colonialism as before. To cut a long story short, it is an Islamic ruling, placed by God in the Qur’an (the holy book of Muslims) that all humanity is equal. Racism is one of the worst sins a person could commit. This is drawn from the fall of Iblis who disobeyed God because he thought he was ‘superior’ to a human. And to watch humans thinking they are superior to each other because they are from Saudi Arabia or Europe or the United States or Israel, under the Hitlerian argument of some sort of racial or cultural purity, is idiocy and a kind of moral blasphemy in itself.

Neocon Hacks, New Crazies and AIPAC

2007-06-02T14:08:00.000+10:00

So it has come down to this. Now if only Sam Cooke was here to croon A Change is Gonna Come.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog chief warned on Friday against the "new crazies" advocating military action to halt Iran's nuclear programme and said he did not want to see another war like that in Iraq.

"I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis, innocent civilians, are dying," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview for BBC Radio.

"I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran'," he said in a documentary, excerpts from which were published on the BBC's Web site in advance.

The fate of our planet in the hands of neocon hacks, new crazies and AIPAC. Rice says there are no plans, but can we trust the same folks who brought us blockbusters like Weapons of Mass Destruction; Manifest Destiny; Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On...uh...Me; Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L); I'm Your Apple Pie; King George and Anthony Blair: A Tale of Two Evil Morons; Texan Werewolf; The Fantastic Mr Olmert; Daniel Pipes and the Bald Spencer (Under 15s must be accompanied by an adult); Latenight Nazi Talk with Debbie Schlussel; Bernard Lewis's Day Out; and other such mind-boggling productions?

Londonistan on Fascist’s Map

2007-05-26T15:47:00.000+10:00

Londonistan is a hotspot on the map of fascists. For the rest of us, it doesn’t exist. We know there is a place called London, the capital of Britain, where a fictional character called Sherlock Holmes solved complicated crimes; and it was also the headquarter of countless pompous imperialists who laid to waste countless lands inhabited by coloured peoples. But as for Londonistan, no Ma’am, I haven’t heard of such a place. Are you telling me it’s there? What? Melanie Philips’ Atlas. Christopher Hitchens’ Atlas, Ed. 2. I’ll have to check the library database for some fascists’ maps.

Hitchens’ article Londonistan Calling is illustrated by a picture of incensed Muslims threatening violence against those insulting Islam. What the picture leaves out (and for good reason) is 99.999999 percent of Muslims working in the office, buying grocery, playing with their children or talking to their spouses and saying salaam (peace) to their neighbours. Rather than reflect reality, the picture mirrors Hitchens’ hatred, prejudice, Islamophobia; and if we’re to record the tempo of his frustration, a deep-seated fascism. I don’t want to waste too much of my time rebuking this person who has such a disturbing tendency, not with my end-of-semester essays, but I’ll say ‘hi!’ to some of his venomous, at times subtle, rot.

Returning to the old place after a long absence, I found that it was the scent of Algeria that now predominated along the main thoroughfare of Blackstock Road. This had had a good effect on the quality of the coffee and the spiciness of the grocery stores. But it felt odd, under the gray skies of London, to see women wearing the veil, and even swathed in the chador or the all-enveloping burka. Many of these Algerians, Bangladeshis, and others are also refugees from conflict in their own country. Indeed, they have often been the losers in battles against Middle Eastern and Asian regimes which they regard as insufficiently Islamic. Quite unlike the Irish and the Cypriots, they bring these far-off quarrels along with them. And they also bring a religion which is not ashamed to speak of conquest and violence.

With a guy who imbibes great quantities of alcohol (this is not an ad hominem attack on Hitchens but a fact), the scent of Algeria (how exotic) may indeed be disturbing. And what’s Hitchens hassle if the women are wearing the “all-enveloping burka”? On one hand you have the Taliban and Washington’s chums the Afghan warlords who force women to wear the burka and on the other hand you have so-called feminists like Hitchens who find it disturbing that women in London are wearing the veil but not disturbing that he supported the bombing of women in Iraq, bombs which tore through the veils of women and laid everything bare, the skin and bones. Drink your fill, Hitchens, your liberation is appreciated. Your notion that Islam should be ashamed for your imagined violence and conquest is indeed shameful, but on your part. The land on which you currently write your Cold War thesis is the United States. You and your friends in Washington brought your ideas of conquest and violence from Europe. The Native Americans, who are and always will be the original Americans no matter how many more you massacre at South Dakota, didn’t dock a single canoe on Ferdinand’s ugly foot.

In much of his fear-mongering article, Hitchens, having nothing standard to say, raves about “British jihadists”, and with no real substance overplays the role of a few infamous British Muslims, trying to extend the Islamophobic guarantee to the rest of the British Muslim population. But he fails miserably as usual. Remembering his deceitful manoeuvre to link Iraq’s WMD myth to Niger still gives me the odd chuckle.

Another atrocious personal characteristic of Hitchens is his fear of "loneliness" in his hatred and Islamophobia. This is especially striking in his fascination with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was used (for her hatred) and kicked out of the Netherlands; and is now employed at an American think-tank, and you can bet she is rubbishing Muslim immigrants and receiving the almighty dollar. This fascination can be best witnessed with people having Muslim names but Western-oriented like Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi and Monica Ali.

Hitchens is also unable to make powerful conclusions, though he seems a rather gifted fear-monger:

I find myself haunted by a challenge that was offered on the BBC by a Muslim activist named Anjem Choudary: a man who has praised the 9/11 murders as "magnificent" and proclaimed that "Britain belongs to Allah." When asked if he might prefer to move to a country which practices Shari'a, he replied: "Who says you own Britain anyway?" A question that will have to be answered one way or another.

On one hand, Hitchens attempts to paint voices which are absurd and not reflective of the wider Muslim community as absurd and strange; and on the other hand, he extends those voices and pulls them over the face of an entire community, trapping everyone inside. And if Hitchens and like-minded people are permitted to air their fascism as if it’s conventional thought, Europe is headed into the direction of another…a word that doesn’t dare to speak its name. It may seem too far-fetched. But when you start seeing one voice as representative of all and make generally bigoted and crass statements against a religion and there are more of you, and there might be even more, baying for action against immigrants and those with less pale skin colour or a different system of belief to yourself, you are promoting a fascistic climate.

And history has shown the price people pay for fascism. If you don’t want immigrants, it’s up to the people. The only reason why people (and birds) immigrate is to live a better life. But as the Daniel Pipes quotation in If Birds Could Talk to Daniel Pipes has shown, human beings are treated far worse, as if there is no avian flu but immigrant flu. Of course, they’ll protest if you bomb their home country. It was true when Christians immigrated to Istanbul under the Ottoman Turks and it is true now for the First World countries. But don’t make laws which in any way harm the image or residence of those that are part of your country. The only way Muslim terrorism can be prevented on Western shores is if there’s no Jewish and Christian terrorism on Muslim shores. It is an uncomfortable historical truth. Common sense dictates that you don’t bomb another country to prevent another terrorist atrocity on your country, though your purpose may be in money proceeds. Hitchens can’t prevent terrorism by supporting terrorism himself, let alone the information on Islam he acquired from Jihad Watch or something.

Intro. to "Londonistan on Fascist’s Map": Rushdie, Hitchens and Rich Fascists

2007-05-26T15:40:00.000+10:00

Take note: it is vogue for fascists to pronounce entire communities as "fascists". This fits into the "war on terror" propaganda. One of these evil fascists who is so guzzled with the calumnious hate phrase "fascism with an Islamic face" and fantasises about bullets penetrating through copies of the Qur’an before tearing through the flesh and bones of Iraqi resistance fighters is a man, rather say a tosspot, by the name of Christopher Hitchens. An ex-Socialist (based in London) turned neo-colonialist (based in the United States), Hitchens has spared no effort since 1989 to demonise Muslims and Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). First wielding the European battleaxe, against those damn Muslims who dare protest against Salman Rushdie, along with other “enlightened bourgeois intellectuals” like Fay Weldon etc., Hitchens always evoked a totalitarian mood while claiming to be against totalitarian himself. Angry Arab who more sincerely protested against the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa has referred to Hitchens as a "great poseur". For today, Islamophobia Watcher wishes to take Hitchens up on a hate-mongering, fear-mongering article he wrote for the overrated but moneyed Vanity Fair recently.

[Before I proceed, I’d like to state that the Rushdie affair is vastly seized upon by Islamophobes of all stripes and colours, not least by Salman Rushdie himself who is himself an Islamophobe though he may describe me as “philistine, reductionist” for levelling this accusation, all the while Rushdie sitting smug on his couch with a ham burger and frothing about some lady in a veil who is certainly more educated than him. What’s his fetish with veil and anti-Islamic gobbledygook, I think I do understand. It’s an illness. Islamophobia is indeed an illness, a boil on the conscience. For some it’s a concept to make money, for some it’s a Cold War DNA and for some it’s like supremacist politics. For fascists, it’s some of each].

If Birds Could Talk to Daniel Pipes

2007-05-21T19:33:00.000+10:00

"....I walked on the beach and saw hundreds of tree swallows flying west along the edge of Long Island Sound, a migration no less impressive than that of broad-winged hawks. If I had stayed awhile, I probably would have counted a thousand swallows, but I could not resist foraging into a rank growth of shrubs and weeds above the beach." (Robert Winkler in National Geographic News, September 27, 2002)

"Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (Daniel Pipes in National Review, November 19, 1990)

The Stork by Ghalib ibn Ribah al-Hajjam

She is an immigrant from other lands.
When she stretches out her ebony wings
shows her ivory body
opens her sandalwood beak
and laughs with great guffaws
it's a sign of good weather.

(Source: Poems of Arab Andalusia, Translated by Cola Franzen from the Spanish versions of Emilio Garcia Gomez)

'Sufism' and US Foreign Policy (Part II) - An Examination of the 2004 Nixon Report -

2007-05-12T15:08:00.000+10:00

You can read Part I on Austrolabe (I didn't hear from them about the following, so I'm publishing it here after some editing).

Deconstruction of Poetry, Programme Objectives and Introducing ‘Neo-Sufism’

[In this part, you’ll find that I’ve corroborated the first part and basically looked at very broad themes. It is in the final section i.e. Part III of this series that I have introduced new ideas and themes that mayn’t directly relate to the report, because all along my effort has been to humanize the dehumanized in this report as I initially stated. This of course is because of the underlying argument of the report itself, which casts aside “Wahhabism” as a scourge not just to the world; but given the diplomatic, conceited slant of its address to an American foreign policy audience, “the West”].

This is a follow up to my last entry in which I basically discussed the fanatical standardisation of Islam by Shaykh Hisham Kabbani through his private Sufi viewpoint as distinct from the understanding of Sufis in general, and where all other roads or sects would be monitored, and if need be, their followers designated as terrorists. Before I proceed, let me once again affirm that my critique of the 2004 Nixon Report titled Understanding Sufism and its Potential Role in US Policy (edited by Zeyno Baran) isn’t a slam on Sufism. My objective is merely to talk about it in terms of political implications. I remember I did touch upon the poetry and philosophy aspect of Rumi and Ibn Arabi, but this was in response to Bernard Lewis’s obvious extolment of the tolerance in the writings of such aesthetic, spiritually sensitive Muslim thinkers which he played against ‘standard Islamic texts’ i.e. the Qur’an and the Hadith. I personally have a lot of respect for Sufi poets, though I have the right to disagree with some of the things they said or did. Let me mention here that according to Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, Al-Hallaj is too extreme. But his personal pact with neocons is not extreme and they’re made merry with anti-orthodox Hellenized philosophy that he doesn’t mind quoting, which casts great doubt on his supposed faith. Let alone the fact that the particular quote by Rumi may well have been inauthentic as Ibrahim Gamard shows in this brilliant article. It is interesting that none of the Muslims who shamelessly participated in this phoney albeit curious conference had the mettle to confront Lewis. For every Muslim of whichever school of thought or sect, the Qur’an and the Hadith serve as the texts. And it is absolutely fallacious to contend that the writings of poets and thinkers are of greater merit for co-existence between peoples of different religions and races. While the writings of poets may have that charm and some lovely rhymes and some of their authors may have been good souls, the Word of Allah is far superior, it can’t even be compared. Poets mostly cling to wings of imagination and as you may know, imagination is a moody enterprise. All chapters in the Qur’an proclaim mercy and compassion of Allah right in the beginning and Allah means everything in His speech. Mevlana Rumi himself wrote in taut reflection:

I am the servant of the Qur’an as long as I have life.
I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen one.
If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings,
I am quit of him and outraged by these words.

[man banda-yé qur’an-am, agar jan dar-am
man khak-é rah-é muHammad-e mukhtar-am
gar naql kon-ad joz in, kas az goftar-am
bezar-am az-o, w-az-in sokhan bezar-am]

-- Rumi’s Quatrain no. 1173, translated by Ibrahim Gamard and Ravan Farhadi (in “The Quatrains of Rumi,” an unpublished manuscript)

Shakykh Hisham Kabbani would never quote this. I mean, you would need something anti-orthodox to make everyone happy in the conference. Ah, and what a conference! The objectives of which I may quote as drawn out right in the beginning of the document:

Major programs of the Nixon Center include the Chinese Studies Program, Immigration and National Security Forum, International Security and Energy Program, National Security Program, Regional Strategic Program, and U.S.–Russian Relations Program. Topics addressed by the Center’s programs range from U.S. relations with China and Russia to energy geopolitics in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin and European Security Issues. The Center is supported by the Nixon Center Library and Birthplace Foundation endowment as well as by foundation, corporate, and individual donors.

Did you spot the word ‘peace’ or ‘love’ or any of those fuzzy words so sanctimoniously used against Islam throughout this lecture, Islam made sapless by describing it and calling it ‘Wahhabism’ and bashing ‘Wahhabism’? Pausing here, let me mention that I’m no fan of fundamentalism or the Jahiliyah culture as exhibited by the Taliban, or Afghan warlords (currently supported by the Bush administration) of whom Ismail Khan has “religious police” to go after women or any extreme, but the ideas expressed in this report are absolutely rash. By the by, these are cultural and contrary to the principles of Democrats and Republicans (and other similar things) on CNN, not inspired by “Wahhabism”, let alone the oft-repeated calumny of labelling any depraved Muslim a “Wahhabi” and painting the entire group as backward, literal and unimaginative (you just have to peruse through some of the Salafi blogs to know that it is untrue and bogus); moreover, I doubt the Taliban and their fellow warlord schmucks are even aware of women’s rights and hygiene issues as prescribed in Islam. Fundamentalism and ignorance and brutality in patriarchal (too light a word) cultures can be handled without snubbing any government process that engages with ordinary members of another community. What has chiefly upset me is this gross slander against mainstream Muslims that they are prone to terrorism – that’s just about how Shaykh Hisham Kabbani brands others. And as it has Bernard Lewis’s peaceful, darling seal on it, I must confess it must be a great forum for co-existence and tolerance. I mean, when the pioneer of the so-called clash of civilizations talks about tolerance and acceptance and the lack thereof in “standard texts”, it must be true I suppose. There’s a phrase in an earlier paragraph “American national interests” which I didn’t quote as it’s pretty obvious just like everything else in it. You don’t need to be a critic to see right through it and decipher that what seems like appendages are really bloodsucking leeches. I’ll now insha’Allah briefly look at some of the speakers.

Dr. Timothy J. Gianotti, Department of Religious Studies, University of Oregon spoke well on the advent of Sufism that will definitely be accepted as fair speech by Sufis (especially on the spread of Islam in which Sufi Muslims played a leading role as you may know), and personally I’ve tended to agree with the anthropological explanation of it which is slightly hinted at by Dr. Gianotti as its one possible course. The reason why I said this is because the Sufi Muslim Council is trying to extend it socially even further, but not merely socially but rather politically even if it leads to libellous slander and state crimes. This is when it gets interesting because all the poetry and philosophy becomes valueless and a group takes advantage of the times and politics, against aesthetics previously chanted and held dear, never mind the teachings in the Qur’an.

Dr. Zeki Saritoprak, Department of Religious Studies, John Carroll University takes the baton from Dr. Gianotti and resumes a history tour, punctuated with interesting insights, and close to the end of his speech he throws up a very interesting term “neo-Sufism”. I think this explanation is the lace which ties up this conference and the motives of the Sufi Muslim Council. Dr. Saritoprak notes that “neo-Sufism” will not merely concentrate on spiritual matters but advance to [wait for it] “social, political and economic realms.”

To me this was very interesting. Dr. Saritoprak has described, in my view, the policy and goals of the Sufi Muslim Council. Allow me to mention here that the Sufi Muslim Council is not a money-grubbing or contract-whacking organisation like say in the vein of Irshad Manji or one of those Muslims for Imperialism and Bombing Iraq and Anti-Terrorism mountebanks but ideologically sufficient to lobby in foreign policy institutes against those it deems different sorts of Muslims. This as we know is being picked on by Western governments leery of mainstream Muslims, and just the shooting glamour of the “spiritual organ of Islam”. Let us leave aside the fact that Muslim Sufis or students of the science of tassawuf, who have heard or read of it, are furious at the antics of this lobby group, which is the antithesis of what they practise. Let us leave aside the fact that those damn “Wahhabis” and as Laurie Silver might say “whacky Saudis” et al are accused of being prone to terrorism in the eyes and on the tongue (it was heard by everyone) of Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, a die-hard sectarian. An illustration of this is his support for the repressive government of Uzbekistan that is apparently so concerned by the legal activism of orthodox Muslim dissidents that it thinks it wise to give them a shove into scalding water whenever it deems fit (and now that those orthodox Muslims are being tortured, let Orpheus play his harp and the bloodthirsty leader Islam Karimov and some of his sinister generals go around the circle and chant that wonderful mantra “How to Deal With the Islamist Threat, See Ya Daniel Pipes”). I think this venturing of the Sufi Muslim Council into what Dr. Saritoprak calls “neo-Sufism” (though he doesn’t point the finger at those in the conference; I have simply linked the two in a figment of irony) is a very important political landscape for Muslims, mostly around the Atlantic and which may well spread overseas. The only way in my view to resist this is for Muslims to collectively speak out, as one body. We should boycott all Muslim lobbying groups in sync with the neocons, including the Saudi dictatorship, which are taking pot-shots at those who don’t have the privilege of public speech like them. Running around politicians, who are worried about Muslim votes while making war, may get them seats and podiums in conferences, but will it get them the trust of those they aim to represent or the respect of those they aim to tame for the crime of not being them?

I don’t think so.

White Racism

2007-05-12T14:31:00.000+10:00

Across the world, one formulation dominates the opinion of peoples: race. This social construction echoes in the newspapers we read, films we watch and in other forms of medium. When was the last time you saw a native Australian on the channel 7 evening news? The native Australian becomes the “Aborigine” or the Other. White man lands on a land. It becomes the "New World". Columbus lands on a land and he thinks it is India. The indigenous peoples become “Indians”. The original inhabitants become the Other, the lower class or the second class. Mexicans have more right to California than the European settlers. The fact that Mexicans are treated like second-class citizens fits into my theory. Hernan Cortez, a vile rapist and mass murder, succeeds Columbus in the tradition of naming lands and rivers and even the trusting, simple-minded peoples who live peacefully in those lands. Francisco Pizarro walks across the shore. On some shore in Cuba now stands Guantanamo Bay, a glaring modern day symbol of racism. Connected to the concept of race is Bernard Lewis’s phrase “Judeo-Christian heritage” but with race predominating as it is illustrated from the current Pope’s saying that Eastern and other Christians must curtsey to Plato’s (or was it Aristotle?) concept of ‘logos’.

“Iraqis hate each other”, “Iraqis are killing each other”, “they only know the tribe”, “they like to blow each other up”, “Arabs haven’t built anything material” etc etc. are regular phrases we hear. This is known as ‘residual racism’. This discourse is borrowed from a feeling of superiority that ‘we are in the free world’ while they are miserable lives. We went there to liberate these peoples, coloured peoples, with our principles and all. We weren’t received with flowers but you bet these hajjis love to see us pacing their streets and shooting anyone we feel like. Prove to me that our well-mannered home-grown soldiers are raping Iraqi women and girls? Yes, they are allowed to rape our home-grown female soldiers. We are free people after all, and our female soldiers have the right to be raped. Why do you hide your women under those bed sheets? Why do you like to blow yourselves up? We’ll leave when you stop blowing yourselves up? Why do you hate the Jews? Any good person will be against the racist Israeli apartheid system and so speaks Jewish humanity against the policies of Israel. Even Jewish humanity is not given consideration.

To learn about Muslim opinion, blogs are good place to start. There are millions of blogs where Muslims record their experiences. Yes, they are free. Yes, they have the ability to think. No, they aren’t blowing themselves up. Yes, they have the right to disagree with you. Yes, they defend humanity, all humanity, not just theirs.

Impact of Globalisation on Indonesia

2007-03-26T18:03:00.000+10:00

Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country on earth, but what you mayn't know is the sixty million of its population is extremely poor. I have yet to hear the exclamations of Arab and Muslim leaders that followed the Danish cartoon controversy, against the sordid, miserable working conditions of Indonesians, mostly sweatshop labour. Apart from the racism spewed by Western corporations, there is racism from Muslims themselves -- in their absolute silence over the fate of these people. While we rage about Palestinians in political apartheid, we mustn't overlook Indonesians in economic apartheid. Tiger Woods is paid more money for promoting Nike than almost the entire workforce actually making Nike in Indonesia, John Pilger informs us. Mostly women have to work in 40 degrees heat under poor light for the entire day. They are only paid seventy-two pence a day. Imagine the world we live in. World Bank, IMF and other corporate, Cold War vulture institutions are draining the very blood and spirit out of these sixty million people. Say no to Globalisation! Say yes to humanity! Say yes to One Ummah! Say yes to One World for all, Muslims and non-Muslims, without borders!

The Road to Peace

2007-03-18T14:07:00.000+11:00

The following is a romanticized reproduction of my comment on Framing Conflict, a blog that impartially examines both sides in the conflict:

The road to peace can be obtained through the settlement of human affairs. The number one problem we face is "selective codemnation".

[In an earlier post, I talked about how 9/11 2001 was an act of terrorism from more than the American perspective which by its method and barbarity climbed to the scales of an international crime against humanity].

Yet, any effort to replace Anno Domini (A.D.) in the Christian calendar with 9/11 or a post-9/11 world is severely unfair and ahistorical and racist. An actual effort must be made to acknowledge the suffering of Iraqis at the hands of...[wait for it] the war-mongering, mass-murdering and oil-for-blood-scavenging-capitalist government of the United States. Lancet, a British medical journal, notes that about 6, 50, 000 Iraqis have died as a result of the illegal invasion. Quoting Iraqi body count is total nonsense [read Riverbend's response to this]. You can say that again. You can bet many Americans have died without an invasion, of natural death, in the last four years. In fact, figures in some countries is even higher thatn 30, 000 or 40, 000 without an invasion. Shame on those who have so little regard for humanity and laughingly mock numbers, each one that breathed life like them. For more on what I'm talking about and the Lancet methodology, here's an excerpt from an interview with Les Roberts, co-author of the Medical Study, on Democracy Now! You can even look at another one.

You know, I don't want to sort of stoop to that level and start saying general slurs, but I just want to say that what we did, this cluster survey approach, is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn’t very functional or in times of war. And when UNICEF goes out and measures mortality in any developing country, this is what they do. When the U.S. government went at the end of the war in Kosovo or went at the end of the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. government measured the death rate, this is how they did it. And most ironically, the U.S. government has been spending millions of dollars per year, through something called the Smart Initiative, to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters.

But I guess it's useless to cast pearls before swines who have the temerity to deny the suffering of Iraqis while they laugh and sing. As to Iraqi Body Count, here's Riverbend, an Iraqi woman who is living the occupation unlike the Holocaust deniers, right on queue:

The responses were typical- war supporters said the number was nonsense because, of course, who would want to admit that an action they so heartily supported led to the deaths of 600,000 people (even if they were just crazy Iraqis…)? Admitting a number like that would be the equivalent of admitting they had endorsed, say, a tsunami, or an earthquake with a magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale, or the occupation of a developing country by a ruthless superpower… oh wait- that one actually happened. Is the number really that preposterous? Thousands of Iraqis are dying every month- that is undeniable. And yes, they are dying as a direct result of the war and occupation (very few of them are actually dying of bliss, as war-supporters and Puppets would have you believe).

For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc, seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that's about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush- especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers.

There has been ample proof that this war waged by Herr Bush and his fascist minions has been a war against mainly children who had done no harm to any soul in the "free world". These kids had dreams like those of children around the world.

There have been several insensitive responses to the tragedy in Iraq. Some of them have been to minimize the death toll to "thirty thousand more or less" in the words of George Bush himself. Imagine him saying that the number of dead on 9/11 were three thousand more or less. Imagine the outrage, not just in America, but across the world. But as the victims of the Iraq war aren't white or Christian, they become as wasted as the air. They are everywhere but there's no use counting people who are cheap compared to the master race and lovers of democracy, whatever that means.

Another attempt has been to say "Iraqis hate each other" with a deeply sardonic tone. Forget religious folks. This abomination is time and again repeated by self-proclaimed atheists who are undoubtedly anti-Muslim bigots who were supposedly so affected on 9/11 that they forgot human decency altogether.

"Iraqis don't deserve our help" or "they only understand the tribe" is the third form of intellectual camouflage expressed by both Democrats and Republicans. A similar attempt was made by Fanciscan priests to dehumanize the Aztecs when the conquistadors openly slaughtered and hacked and killed and pillaged Tenochtitlan and its people and its neighbours and labelled the indigenous peoples as "barbarians". It isn't difficult to guess who the real barbarians were. Hernando Cortez, the killer of Native Americans, even said that the Spanish conquerors were greedy for gold and riches. Dick Cheney has already honoured us with such impious exclamations.

Hence, the road to peace is for the world to empathize with the people of Iraq just like they did with the innocent victims of 9/11. The road to peace is for victim to stand shoulder to shoulder with others. The road to peace is to tell it like it is. The road to peace is to grieve for all sorts of blood, whether they be American or Iraqi. It is only by acknowledging the suffering of others instead of using disgusting slurs that the people will come together and know that WE care!

Kafir Watch?

2007-03-17T14:07:00.000+11:00

Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch must be hooting with joy at some of the Muslim website names. In fact, when I googled 'kafir watch', the first result was from Jihad Watch titled Islamist Barbarism and the Western Media. I didn't click on it, so it may well have been noted in the comment section; and the comment section of Jihad Watch is polluted by racists and hate-mongers in a similar vein as the great bigot Robert Spencer himself. Speaking of media, check out Framing Conflict's Media Tenor Releases Report Comparing Al Jazeera, European, and American Television News Content: Must Read!

Al Jazeera is considerably doing a better job than Western news channels as I always suspected though I have never watched it. I remember in the media class, I was shaken when a girl got up and said that news in the West was 'balanced' because 'we love freedom' or 'we are free', and the tutor agreed. That is not quite the case as we know. As the great journalist Amirah Hass wrote:

Journalists are not neutral, cannot be ‘objective’...The more closely I came to know Palestinians (and Israeli occupation methods)… the less and less neutral I could be.

In an interview with Robert Fisk, she said:

There is a misconception that journalists can be objective. Palestinians tell me I'm objective. I think this is important because I'm an Israeli. But being fair and being objective are not the same thing. What journalism is really about – it's to monitor power and the centers of power.

In my view, this is the truth. Journalists either work for the people or the common man or the rulers. They DO have a moral obligation toward the victims and the oppressed. Not reporting on the real issues faced by the downtrodden does not make them 'free people', however much they may invoke the Enlightenment period which as the Muslim commentator Amir Butler pointed out was a result of conflicts within Europe and its religions. Muslims, on the other hand, have no need of an Enlightnment. No thank-you, Mr Tariq Ali. You may continue to rail against the capitalists who hover around the other end of your system and preach to Muslims and the capitalists may continue to dominate and slaughter Muslims outside the system. Yes, I think we Muslims have a lot to do. We have a lot to work on. We have a lot to think. We have a lot to study. We have a lot to introspect about. But no, we won't be like you. We won't talk about socialism and honour Fidel Castro who definitely has several millions in his back account. Islam has always been a religion that preaches egalitarianism, and it doesn't need the broken pieces of Enlgihtenment or Marx. We are a religion of One God and truth and charity and science. And we did it all without your Enlightenment.

"Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq"

2007-03-15T18:12:00.000+11:00

A must watch video which will certainly give you a background into the conflict with Iraq. This is by the great film-maker John Pilger.

US Soldiers Behaving Like Terrorists

2007-03-10T14:52:00.000+11:00

Tony Jones talks to US soldier about Iraq war publication

US Soldier Joshua Key has told Tony Jones about his new book, which concludes that American soldiers were behaving like terrorists in the Iraq war, as a result of their training.

One example:

You know of course they were never called Iraqis or Muslims, they were always used in derogatory terms as hajis, habibs and so on. I would say it was definitely a form of dehumanising. I mean, if you see something - that effect all the time - they were never referred to as civilians or Iraqis or Muslims.

Another example:

When I got out of the back of my truck I heard one American soldier screaming that we had lost it. I mean, I looked to the other side and I seen American soldiers kicking the head around like a soccer ball. I got back inside of my APC, which is an armoured personnel carrier, said I wouldn't have no involvement.

May God bless the courage of Joshua Key, the Hugh Thompson of the Iraq War.

Segal's Anti-Palestinian Polemics

2007-03-08T18:04:00.000+11:00

Hat tip to one of my friends for letting me know. When we were having a conversation, he said: “I have found Segal’s The Class to contain some Zionist propaganda.” [Note: Zionism is a racist secular ideology which has nothing to do with Judaism as a religion, but Israeli apologists argue that the criticism of Israel and its apartheid and its Zionism is anti-Semitic. Some people may indeed use it in an anti-Semitic way, just like you can use an empty bottle of soft-drink to store water. Israeli apologists and their fellow supporters of ethnic cleansing and apartheid ought to know better.]

You may have heard of Erich Segal, author of several books on how shall I put it... ‘love’, as I’m choosing the word right out of his titles. But skimming through The Class, I agreed with my friend. I didn’t have time to read the whole book or anything, but I am quoting all the instances of lies and polemics directed against the Palestinians:

"I don't know all the details," he stammered. "Eva just called and said that there was a terrorist attack. Their kibbutz is very close to the border. Apparently some Arabs crossed over in the night and threw hand grenades into the children's dormitory. Fanny was seeing to a sick little girl and-" He broke down and sobbed.

At first Jason was numb. "I can't believe it," he murmured to himself. "I just can't believe this is really happening."

I had to find out about this Fanny character, so I turned back the pages. In brief, Fanny and Jason fall in love and to get Jason into a hate mentality and Zionist trapdoor, Segal the author kills off Fanny and blames it on an ‘Arab’. The above extract is a perfect example of how some writers in works of literature highlight compassion for themselves and disgust for others even though their enemies are the real victims. Quite an angst writer, this Segal, but that’s not all as he uses angst to dehumanize Palestinians. First of all, it’s in his language where he doesn’t say 'Palestinians' but ‘Arabs’ whenever he’s mentioning Palestinians which is a clever attempt really to say there are no Palestinians and these so-called Palestinians are basically Arabs, a very broad term to divest them from any right to their homeland. And as you may know from Fox evening news, all Arabs are terrorists and all Israelis are lovers of freedom etc. etc. Believe it or not, race plays a big part in this. One of the characteristics of Zionist propaganda is to say that all Palestinians are Jordanians or they aren’t a people at all! Now I’ll quote the next one:

"I don't care what his reasons are," Yossi retorted defensively. "Besides, doesn't the Bible allow us an eye for an eye?"

"That's primitive and you know it," Eva countered. "It's a metaphor, not to be taken literally."

"The Arabs take it literally," Yossi interposed.

"Hey, let's cut the polemics. Do I have your blessings to enlist or not?" Jason asked.

Is Segal talking to himself or what? He is the one who should be cutting out the polemics. He is putting his thoughts into a character’s mouth and asking him to quit it in hopes of sounding an arbitrary to his naïve teary readers after indoctrinating them with lies.

Israel was now confronted by over a quarter of a million troops, two thousand tanks, and seven hundred aircraft. The country was menaced on three borders. Its fourth frontier was the sea. And that was where the Arabs intended to drive them.

This is terrible shorthand by Segal, and quite amusing to those of us who study history which honours Palestinians in their dignity and right to self-determination, which Segal doesn’t mean to grant them. He had to fall into his own trap yet again. The following is the original statement uttered not by any bloodthirsty Arabs as Segal makes them out to be but Yitzhak Rabin, a former Israeli Prime Minister in 1992: "I would like Gaza to sink into the sea."

Even as he spoke, the shell shocked and defeated Arabs were planning a new kind of war against their enemy. A campaign of terror and sabotage. They created the PLO, whose stated aim was the "national liberation" of the people who had never been a nation.

Guess what? The Palestinians or as Segal says the “defeated Arabs” had “never been a people”. Of course, there is a grain of truth in that. The Palestinians have never been a people because Israel never saw them as one. I mean, you would need to dehumanize people if you, Mr Segal, don’t see them as people. They weren’t seen as people at all. Not when they were driven out of their homes, ethnically cleansed in some parts of their homeland, driven into a thin stretch of land called the Gaza which Yitzhak Rabin wished would sink into the sea. Your police state shelled them, bulldozed their homes, drained their economy in exile even, settlers from America and Russia and other parts of the world (just like your lionized character Jason) continue to come into Israel and that means one less home for one poor Palestinian, and they’re further pushed ‘into the sea’. Israel builds a large apartheid wall so the cries of the oppressed cannot reach the world. Journalists are supposed to be pro-Israel or they get fired for alleged anti-Semitism and the apartheid wall becomes a fence. Compassion and reason not being on your side, what will you do? Like other defenders of Israel, you’ll resort to lies. I’m not surprised by such absolute ahistorical gibberish. I would suggest to my readers to not buy any books of this prevaricator, borrow one from a library if you must.

I have read some complaints about the works of Leon Uris, too. I'll insha'Allah take up these Orientalists and history revisionists one by one. These writers must feel very miserable defending an apartheid country like Israel.

Scapegoating Sufism

2007-03-05T18:35:00.000+11:00

I have put the word Sufism within single inverted commas in my last post because I don't want to insinuate that it is really Sufism. It is clearly not. In a similar vein, the actions of some Salafis aren't respresntive of all Salafis. We must be careful not to scapegoat Sufism or its followers. Some of the finest Muslim bloggers are students of the science of Sufism, and over time I have learned of some great Muslim bloggers who are Salafis or even those like me who simply refer to themselves as Muslims and haven't a clue otherwise :). Let us fight for each other, because that's the best way to unite in peace.

Coming Soon!

2007-03-03T14:01:00.000+11:00

'Sufism' and US Foreign Policy

We'll talk about Bernard Lewis, 'Sheikh' Kabbani and the legacy of Richard Nixon, just another American president who committed war crimes (though we won't talk about war) -- they're all in the pigsty together, you see. This will be unlike anything you've read on this matter, I assure you. It isn't as recent a problem as it seems.

Prince Harry in Iraq

2007-03-03T13:47:00.000+11:00

Via between two rivers (no pun intended):

To be deployed in Basra, the party loving Prince is reportedly 'over the moon' and 'thrilled'. He has apparently undergone a course in cultural awareness and customs (presumably including kicking down doors at 3 a.m., hurling families from their beds and dragging kids into barracks and beating them up, with the odd bit of torture thrown in.)

'Cornet Wales', is his official army title, equal to a Second Lieutenant (a cornet is a conical wafer filled with ice cream, which drips copiously unless eaten with speed) said, of his determination to deploy, rather than be grounded at home for safety reasons: 'There's no way I'm going to sit on my arse while my boys are fighting.'

Well, let's hope he doesn't don that swastika...er, pixie cap in Iraq.

"Iraqis Are People, Too"

2007-02-28T19:58:00.000+11:00

The great activist Cindy Sheehan rails against the blaming of Iraqi people who are the only victims of this war:

The invasion/occupation of Iraq is a horror that was based on lies, deceptions and greed. The people of Iraq are suffering terribly in THEIR country while George Bush, Dick Cheney, and 99% of the American public do not have to sacrifice one iota of comfort or concern because of the terror that is being inflicted on a civilian population that have done nothing to be punished so harshly.

Another one of our fellow Americans had this to say about civilian casualties:

"You have to look at who's doing the killing," said Neal Crawford, a restaurant manager in Suttons Bay, Mich., who guessed that about 10,000 Iraqis had been killed. "If these people are dying because a roadside bomb goes off or if there's an insurgent attack in a marketplace, it's an unfortunate circumstance of war — people die."

This comment also ignores the fact that the occupation of Iraq is a war of choice that never should have been waged. No insurgency existed before American troops were forced to roll their tanks into a country that was filled with innocent people. Would Americans take such a cavalier attitude towards “unfortunate circumstances of war” if it were an equivalent amount of Americans being killed? I don’t think so, 3000 of us were tragically slaughtered on 9-11 and we have used this as a justification to destroy two countries that didn’t attack us and commit genocide on people who just want to be left alone. Now Bloody George has killed more Americans than Osama bin Ladin and many, many times more Iraqis.

A mother who has lost her son in Herr Bush's war feels and knows more than the fascist politicians in Washington for sure!

Too Cheesy

2007-02-18T00:49:00.000+11:00

I'm editing the last sentence of the letter to Iraq's Justice Minister Hashim al-Shabli: "Because, Iraq needs your love." I think it is too cheesy. Anyway, I hope you've sent your letters. I think I am really into it because I believe it may suffice if all of us write to halt this illegal and immoral execution. Insha'Allah.

Story Background on Amnesty International Website

Bombard Iraq's Justice Minister With Protest Letters

2007-02-16T19:04:00.000+11:00

This post is related to my last one. Please read it before continuing.

I urge all the readers to write protest letters to Iraq's Justice Minister Hashim al-Shabli. Emails (type all three in the mail address bar): minister@iraqi-justice.org, head-minister@iraqi-justice.org, deputy@iraqi-justice.org. Please forward this information to all your family and friends without delay, because we have a moral obligation toward the three Iraqi women (some reports claim there are four) who are to be hanged on March 3 for resisting the occupation. I have written my letter below for the benefit of those who don't have time though I advise it'll be better if you write your own protest letter. But a sample letter may serve as bombarding material to be forwarded by many people to many more people. If the pro-Israel lobby can have Barbara Plett removed from reporting on the occupied territories for the unforgivable crime of expressing humanity by dispatching lewd, abusive and calumnious messages to the BBC, I think we can reach a similar goal by making a well reasoned, compassionate call to those occupying the Plane of Judgement. I think we can reach this by expressing humanity. Anyway, use the "Your Excellency" salutation (cost benefit!) when you write. You may also wish to write to Prime-Minister Nuri al-Maliki (email: iraqigov@yahoo.com) and Hoshyar Zebari, Minister of Foreign Affairs (email: press@iraqmofa.net). And here's my sample email:

Your Excellency,

I write to you today to express my concern at the news of the execution of three women scheduled for March 3. Two of these women have small children, and one of whom is still nursing her baby. This execution, if it proceeds to its unjustifiable conclusion, will be the antithesis of Islamic teachings and a further bloody imprint on the battered corpse that Iraq has become. Women in Iraq are suffering the most, and I ask you in the name of Him before whom all of us will congregate on the Last Hour to spare the lives of these sisters. This execution will exemplify Saddam Hussein at his worst, and that is an ironic enigma that we in the international community don't support. If you have mercy on these sisters, it'll be a light at the end of the tunnel, even an inspiration for Iraq to greet mercy if not glory, and it is mercy that paves the way to peace. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) once said: "That man is nearest to God, who pardoneth, when he had in his power him who would have injured him." And I ask in the name of Allah, most Merciful, most Compassionate, to pardon the sisters and release them from prison.

Your sincerely,

Sindbad.

The Price to Pay: Women Freedom Fighters

2007-02-13T23:40:00.000+11:00

And if you're a courageous Iraqi woman with a babe at your breast, the Iraqi puppet government still has all the right to execute you. Why? Because, you my dear sister had the decency and courage to take up arms against the occupation, which has made you suffer the death of several of your family members, your whole world has been turned upside down, your children are starved and your dignity is crushed. The information below was received in the mail list of World Tribunal on Iraq. Also added was a note that the execution is expected to take place on March 3.

The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Court sentenced to death by hanging of three women on charges of complicity in the murder of Iraqi police loyal to the occupation in Baghdad and participation in what the Court considered 'terrorism'. News from a source in the Iraqi Lawyers Union. The three women are:

Wassan Talib (31 years old). The charge is killing five police officers through the participation with gunmen in an attack on police.

Zainab Fadhil (25 years old). The charge is attacking a joint patrol of the Iraqi army and the the American army last September with her husband and her cousin in Baghdad.

Liqa Omar Muhammad (26 years old). The charge is the participation with her husband and her brother in the killing of an official from the Green Zone.
Walid Hayali, lawyer and member of The Iraqi Lawyers Union, said the Court issued a ruling under item (156) against the three women without allowing them to engage counsel from a lawyer. The lawyer asked the whole world to move to stop the execution of the three women and to condemn of the Court's ruling. He pointed out that "Liqa" gave birth to her daughter in prison a few months ago (still nursing), and "Wassen" has a three-year-old daughter. He explained that the three women are now in "Kazimiah prison" in the Kazimiyah region.

May Allah bless our Iraqi sisters, and grant them peace on earth and in heaven. They're caught between Muqtada Sadr's lunatic cabal with an ill-informed extraction of Islam steeped in Jahiliyah culture that is most vehement toward women, and the sectarian occupation that is disrespectful of Iraqi civilization and its people. We can only hope and pray that this mad government doesn't hang our three sisters, because it is exemplifying Saddam Hussein at his worst, and yet again supported by Uncle Sam. I'm sure all of you're familiar with American outrage against the treatment of women by the Taliban in the days leading up to the invasion of Afganistan. No sooner was the Taliban chucked out, the Northern Alliance made up of vicious warlords took over, described by some to be even worse than Taliban. An illustration of this is when thirty-five women and children jumped to their death into a river to elude a band of commanders who were on a rampage to rape them.

"Those Whacky Saudis!"

2007-02-11T17:06:00.000+11:00

Imagine an ordinary Saudi citizen getting a whiff of the xenophobia and generalization fired up by the Neanderthal American Muslim movement called Progressive Islam or PMU. On the Progressive Islam blog, Laurie Silvers writes:

Nothing is more fun than listening to the US government try to deflect our attention away from the Saudis towards Iran as if Iran were the source of all that is scary. Not that the Saudis are the source of all that is scary, but dagnabit if they don't give it all they got! Those wacky Saudis. Watch this exquistely painful interview with the head of a British Muslim school that uses books saying that all other religions are worthless, etc....

At least once they disagree with Uncle Sam and that's not about anti-war mongering but an exchange of targets. What Laurie Silvers seems to say is that the US should rather attack Saudi Arabia for its religious intolerance than Iran. A reasonable person will never invoke the American govt., which is responsible for great crimes against humanity, but work to quell the propaganda in their country that anyone with a turban offshore is a threat to national security. Laurie Silvers doesn't say it, but I can already hear that oft-familiar: "Damn those Wahabbis!" (For the benefit of those unfamiliar with it, let me mention that the term "Wahabbi" is corrupted and a label to denigrate the so-called Wahabbis. The correct term is "Salafi"; and no, I don't fall for the line that all Salafis are crazy and creditworthy for the crisis of Muslims -- frequently trumpeted by some Muslim bloggers and media spokesmen).

When you look at Laury Silvers' statements, you'll find that it comes through a sanctimonious throne of self-pride, in this sense the US government, and indicates that just because you live in the most powerful empire on earth you have the right to dictate to others, ruefully absent from your discourse is both what you're trying to address and what you mean. For what may seem like an attempt at Muslim introspection by a non-Muslim reader, it is a delightful birdsong of a progressive, delighting in using words like "whacky" and "Saudis".

Laury Silvers has every right to call for tolerance and respect by Muslims for the demonized and vilified (with racist connotations) Christians and Jews in Saudi textbooks, it should be noted. And the Saudis indeed need to wake up and erase the hatred in their textbooks and those which they export to other countries. This intolerance and hatred is indeed a tragedy for the average Muslim, and action must be taken. But unfortunately, Laury Silvers squanders such an opportunity by invoking the US government to attack the country (doesn't the writer read of what occurs in Iraq every single day?). Let me add that Saudi Arabia is rightfully called one of most intolerant countries in the world. It is from what we gather, but I think while we are at it there isn't a need to bomb it. Isn't bombing and nuking supposed to a be a haraam violent terrorist act? And so the progressives shall find reasons to bomb everyone, do fox-trots around the White House, and ask: "Why do they hate us?" I didn't think I would have to say this, but all the Muslim Saudi-haters need to familiarize themselves with the unbearable fact that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was a Saudi. And if any progressive is curious, no, I'm not a Saudi but I wouldn't mind. All people on this earth are beautiful. Unfortunately, that is an old-fashioned thought.

Check out PMUNA Debate, Dr Maxtor, Living Tradition and Progressive Muslims for more on the the so-called progressive movement. For a more tasteful and helpful overview of Saudi textbooks, visit the Wikipedia page.

Bernard Lewis on Muslim Rage (Part 1)

2007-01-25T20:21:00.000+11:00

Side-note: I am still travelling but I wrote this on my notepad, and decided to publish it on the blog (via a thumbdrive) when I got the chance to access the Internet.

An Introduction:

In his infamous essay The Roots of Muslim Rage, which spawned the Hitlerian science of the clash of civilizations (actually, it has an entire section devoted to it), vulgar propagandist Bernard Lewis tries to explain Muslim anti-Americanism/anti-Westernism for his already partisan readership. The late Professor Edward Said remarked that the moment you hear the word “us” as in Lewis’s “our Judeo-Christian heritage” against the Other, you want to head for the door. That would mean walking a couple of miles if we’re going to be through with this tiresome ode to Lewis’s ego embodied by labels like “America”, “Western presence”, “Western models”, “revulsion against America”, “Western civilization”, “anti-Westernism”, “anti-Americanism”, “Western paramountcy” against “House of Islam“, “Muslim lands”, “Muslim dissidents”, “Muslim hostility”, “Muslim possessions”, “Muslim masses”, “Muslim response” etc. Let me mention that not once does Lewis in the course of this whole drivel mention anything about “Western rage”, “anti-Islam and Islamophobia” (in which he shamelessly indulges throughout, evoking some very hateful moods on which hate-mongers base their arguments), and when Lewis does consider, he chooses arguments that recoil:

Some Western powers, and in a sense Western civilisation as a whole, have certainly been guilty of imperialism, but are we really to believe that in the expansion of Western Europe there was a quality of moral delinquency lacking in such earlier, relatively innocent expansions as those of the Arabs or the Mongols or the Ottomans, or in more recent expansions such as that which brought the rulers of Muscovy to the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian, the Hindu Kush, and the Pacific Ocean?

Take note of how he twists the entire attempt at introspection. And just to make it clear, Islam forbids imperialism and terrorism as they go hand in hand. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) never spoke of invading another country or people. In fact, he was a persecuted refugee himself, and it was in the Year of Sadness that the Holy Prophet lost his beloved wife Khadijah, may Allah be pleased with her. The other tactic that Lewis employs is intellectual camouflage, e.g.

A new variant of the old golden-age myth placed it in the Third World, where the innocence of the non-Western Adam and Eve was ruined by the Western serpent.

If you read Lewis’s writings, even this essay, you will find that Lewis is trying to establish this himself except the other way round. In Lewis’s world, the West is holy and the East is barbaric, serpentine and full of “rage”. The very fact that Lewis is so depleted on scholarship and lofty on American foreign policy propaganda tells us where all this is coming from. In the next part, I’ll talk about how Lewis is not so strictly referring to Muslims but the Eastern race, specifically the Arabs. This is interesting given Huntington’s, the torchbearer of Lewis’s rage, characterization of the Confucian and Islamic civilizations in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. Not even a molecular effort is spared by either Lewis or Huntington to come to common terms. An example of Lewis’s rage is the Iraqi conflagration which he advanced and supported with his neocon pals like Dick Cheney aka Hordak of the She-Ra cartoon grunting from the side-lines.

And if they ask what of the Rebellion against this neo-fascism that is gripping the self-proclaimed freedom lovers and corporate crooks, say we are. We salute our brothers and sisters in humanity from Korea to Mexico and we don’t feel any clash of civilizations but clash of egos. The bigger the ego, the bigger the propaganda and the gun of the M1 tank. In the words of Bernard Lewis himself:

It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilisations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both. It is crucially important that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival.

This is a bit of Lewis’s venom analyzed by the late Professor Edward Said in that memorable speech. Lewis must be glad to know that both his secular present and his Judeo-Christian heritage have been expanded and the Iraqi people are waiting with flowers for him and his cronies like Fuad Ajmi and Sheikh Kabbani. Just as it was predicted. And down the street, he’ll also find some WMD. After all, the lying Muslim-baiting war-mongering sanguinary drunkard Christopher Hitchens had found a correlation with Niger.

Fortnight Leave

2007-01-17T20:11:00.000+11:00

I'll be back after a fortnight insha'Allah.

Some maybe wondering what's Snoopy doing in the Rabbit's plane. The Rabbit was last seen hopping into a vertical burrow by cat-lover Alice. You must be all confused. Bye!

Pipes on Lewis's Madness

2007-01-13T23:29:00.000+11:00

A while ago, I wrote on Bernard Lewis's deadly doctrines that pave the way for imperialism and contaminate already fascist politics with racism by pitting the West against the rest in a civilizational conflict. I just gave you the title of his lecture: "Bring Them Freedom or They Destroy Us".

The great American protest singer-songwriter David Rovics sums it up in the last stanza of his song "Evening News" which severely mocks corporate media for indoctrinating the populace:

Evil men are plotting
To blow up Washington, DC
'Cause they don't like freedom
And democracy
They're fans of the Dark Ages
They are all around

They're marching from the desert sand
And coming to your town

Unfortunately, this is how many people view Arabs and Muslims -- propaganda heated up by Lewis, Pipes, Spencer and Kramer etc. The question is where do we move from here, a positive attempt, and not be drowned by hate literature like The Roots of Western Rage, The American Mind and The Crisis of Judaism and Christianity. Actually, I forgot to mention -- none of these book exist. The correct list is The Roots of Muslim Rage, The Arab Mind and The Crisis of Islam. My point is that hate and racist literature by the likes of Lewis and Raphael Patai when cloaked in sophisticated Western authorship is worthy of bestselling material. How do we change this trend? Not by falsifying information against our non-Muslim brothers and sisters, but by challenging this portrayal by those select few.

Not suprisingly, Daniel Pipes, the man in question, is in full agreement with Lewis. On the same subject, allow me to inform you in case you aren't aware of an upcoming showdown between the London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Daniel Pipes scheduled for January 20th concerning the so-called clash of civilizations. Hopefully, we'll have the video up on youtube. Watch out for it.

Pipes is even behind Lewis on this Hitlerian concept. While Lewis contents himself with the war-mongering power-thumping phrase "the clash of civilizations", Pipes does a back somersault to fall flat with his nut stuck in the Orientalism sewer, and pietistically declares into the filthy foam: "not a clash of civilizations, but a clash between civilization and barbarism." While Lewis is bad, Pipes is worse. He disagrees with the atom of supposed goodness in Lewis's theory, after propagating Lewis's theory offshore and then turning it inwards he bares the fangs at Western Muslims:

There are plenty of born-free Muslims in the West who are Islamists. Take, for example, the four 7/7 bombers in London. Freedom did nothing for them.

And in his classic, insensitive tone toward the people of Iraq, Pipes delivers a terrible judgement:

The goal in war has to be to defeat one's enemies, not liberate them. The invasion of Iraq, dubbed "Operation Iraqi Freedom," suffered from this mistake. The same applies to the war on radical Islam, where we must cause our enemies to feel a sense of defeat. We must crush their will. After that bitter phase has been experienced, they are then eligible for freedom.

The only positive thing about Daniel Pipes is that he may be more truthful about American-Israeli policies and objectives than other policy-makers and propagandists. It is indeed better to say "we came to crush them" than "we came to liberate them". This, however, doesn't discount Pipes's obliqueness.

On "Moderates" and "Extremists"

2007-01-09T18:14:00.000+11:00

Since 9/11, we've had various Muslims talking about terrorism and signing petitions against it, which is all good, but the trouble is further expounded when Muslims single themselves out as law-abiding, "moderate" and anti-terrorism against others. Some Muslims on the blogosphere even have the "American Muslims Against Terrorism" logo with stars and stripes. Let's see. You want to say you're against terrorism while wrapping yourself in stars and stripes in the manner of bourgeois intellectual Salman Rushdie on the cover of a French magazine while bombs from your country rip apart innocents. Your overbearing silence puts you in league with the Muslims on the other end who chant from the Qur'an and praise Osama bin Laden. The only reason you are comfortable with that logo is because power rests there...the mainstream media is on that side, and you shall be tipped by the masters for your patriotism around state terror and apology around terror from co-religionists. Why not stand up and condemn state terror alongside terror inflicted by Muslims? Contrary to what is said, that will make you a better Muslim. Do away with labels like "moderates" and "extremists", which while may make you rest easy will harm other people just because they they don't share a similar enthusiasm for presenting themselves as "moderate" Muslims.

O-I-L (Operation Iraqi Liberation)

2007-01-08T19:28:00.000+11:00

"By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies." (Dick Cheney; US Vice-President, 1999)

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." (Benito Mussolini)

This is sad news for both war-mongers and us anti-war "troublemakers". While its piercing spike on the hearts of war-mongers is not bothersome to me as their hubris and lies are never-ending, we have to bear with the consistent abnegation of the politicians and a further substantiation that this war was indeed about oil. I have secretly tried to look for excuses all along, that maybe despite all the bombs and imperial pomposity and dead people, the end is not what the least of pessimism makes it out to be, because the fate of the Iraqi people depends on it. And while we talk of the world gone mad and all, most of us can at least be free. But what about people in the Iraqi quagmire? For whose comfort are they dying or have died? The answer can be directly traced to centres of power in Baghdad and Washington and London. The truth is that 655000+ Iraqis have died for the whim and hubris of the powers that control them. But above all sits the prized possession of Iraq: oil. And as expected, it is being looted by American corporations who have sent death squads aka US military to shed blood, divide people and install puppets all for oil. They have proven themselves to be less civilized than Saddam Hussein himself who invaded Kuwait for oil and was thwarted by its ally, the United States, which couldn't bear to see the rise of one Arab country over others. What with the hypocrisy?! Here's a bomb of conscience for the war criminals and the real fascists who have destroyed Iraq for their personal gain:

So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.

Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil producer. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's number one and two oil exporters, both tightly control their industries through state-owned companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration, as do most members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Opec.

Critics fear that given Iraq's weak bargaining position, it could get locked in now to deals on bad terms for decades to come. "Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome," said Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months.

Need I add more? Another thing that has affected me recently is the audacity of some people to blame the Iraqis themselves for the deaths of civilians and the destruction of Iraq ("Middle East is like that", "it's in their culture", "they hate freedom", "we tried but...", "they are uncivilized", "the Arab mind" etc. etc.) which I hope to discuss in a different post.

What Does Dershowitz Have to Say?

2007-01-03T22:39:00.000+11:00

Yes, what does that lawyer aka professor of torture who when he's not smearing Jimmy Carter who dared to think of Palestinians as human beings, or dehumanizing Lebanese civilians as legal targets for Israel; and yes the same man who defends paedophiles for money and not just supports but plagiarizes anti-Palestinian propaganda -- what does this history revisionist have to say about this?

FBI agents documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the Guantanamo Bay military base, including one detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting the Quran and another who pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.

Documents released Tuesday by the FBI offered new details about the harsh interrogations practice used by military officials and contractors when questioning so-called enemy combatants.

The reports describe a female guard who detainees said handled their genitals and wiped menstrual blood on their face. Another interrogator reportedly bragged to an FBI agent about dressing as a Catholic priest and "baptizing" a prisoner.

Click here to read the entire article. 21st Century fascism is on the roll.

The Spirit of Christmas: Christian Easterners

2007-01-03T21:38:00.000+11:00

These bunch of Christian Easterners (on those wondering why I say "Christian Easterns", hold on) have "unfortunately" sided with Muslims (has Robert Spencer stuck the Dhimmitude Poster yet?). This, my friends, is some refreshing news from Bethlehem. Indeed it is in the spirit of Christmas:

In April 2003 at the height of the military campaign directed against Iraq, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem decided to ban President Bush and Prime Minister Blair from the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

"They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever,"

"Their entry into the church will tarnish it as [Bush's] hands are covered in the blood of the innocent,”

The Church of the Nativity is under the authority of the Greek Orthodox church.

Of utmost significance, the US News media has not reported this story.

Spread the word to Church parishes in the US and around the World.

Unseat the War criminals.

Now about the expression "Christian Easterners". I think this is reflective of how similarly victims irrespective of their religion think -- it is their opinion that matters when they are invaded or occupied and not of the New York Times or CNN. Most Muslims and Christians in the East rightly conclude that George Bush and Tony Blair are war criminals. In the same breath, it needs to be maintained that Christians in the West rightly conclude that Osama bin Laden is a mass murderer. How positive it would be if we could add the names of Western leaders to the list of international terrorists. We could start with Henry Kissinger who last I read was going to eulogize former president Gerald Ford with fellow master of deceit George Bush.

A Dictator Created

2006-12-30T20:21:00.000+11:00

then destroyed by America, writes Robert Fisk in the Independent:

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Riverbend reflected on the issue prior to the execution:

Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam's execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq. Some Sunni and Shia tribes have threatened to arm their members against the Americans if Saddam is executed. Iraqis in general are watching closely to see what happens next, and quietly preparing for the worst.

This is because now, Saddam no longer represents himself or his regime. Through the constant insistence of American war propaganda, Saddam is now representative of all Sunni Arabs (never mind most of his government were Shia). The Americans, through their speeches and news articles and Iraqi Puppets, have made it very clear that they consider him to personify Sunni Arab resistance to the occupation. Basically, with this execution, what the Americans are saying is "Look- Sunni Arabs- this is your man, we all know this. We're hanging him- he symbolizes you." And make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood (though low-budget, if you ask me).

I ask, when will we execute those other war criminals who were chaperoning Saddam Hussein when he was committing his worst crimes? You know, those who walk around in suits and ties and throw words like "freedom" and "civilization" into the faces of poor people while shooting them down!?

Defining/Defiling America for European Past

2006-12-27T18:42:00.000+11:00

Hat tip to islam.about.com. Vote in their poll whether Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim convert, should be allowed to hold the Qur'an in the swear-in ceremony. As you might expect, this has caused immense outrage among talk-show hosts (can't tell the difference between conservative and liberal these days) and fellow Congressmen. We had just got over Dennis Prager's preposterous comments that make a subtle comparison between the Qur'an and "Hitler's Mein Kampf". Now we have Virgil Goode, another ignoramus, attacking Mr Keith Ellison:

Goode wrote that to "preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States," an immigration overhaul was necessary to avoid "many more Muslims elected to office demanding the use of the Quran."

CNN reports that Mr Keith Ellison replied that Mr Virgil Goode "would be wise to learn more about Islam". Quite true. But I don't want to just leave you with updates (with which you might already be familiar). What I found common in the comments of both these critics is the trumpeting of what America means: stuff like "American civilization" and "America's culture" and "what America decides". Well, I'm going to take these two at their own game.

1. The Native American culture is the true representation of the US and if we're going to have a single book or text, it is the Native American text people should be holding. David Rovics recently wrote on how "the Arizona Snowbowl Corporation is making plans to build a 14-mile pipeline from the city of Flagstaff to the nearby San Francisco Peaks. They want to expand a ski resort there, and make snow out of the wastewater. These mountains are sacred to 13 different local tribes..." No outrage against sacrilege there.

2. Christians in the US are no more "Americans" than Muslims, chiefly people of African origin. The European origin is simply an equivalent of the African origin unless one subscribes to the theory of the master race. Hence, Mr Ellison is as much as an American with Islam as his religion as the Christian Virgil Goode.

3. Do the American Christian people, the majority, value a Muslim who sincerely takes oath on his religious book and means what he says on committment or a Muslim who for-the-sake-of-it swears on the Bible and makes proclamations which he may carry out but not be committed to?

Conclusion: People like Virgil Goode and Dennis Prager need to read their history. They could start with Alex Haley's Roots and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The bottomline is that the days of the plantation owners and aristocrats and British imperialism in the Americas are long over.

Freedom of Speech in Iran

2006-12-24T19:13:00.000+11:00

One of my favourite blogs, Austrolabe, which I urge everyone to bookmark, has an excellent dissection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial Conference by the writer Amir. The first paragraph is especially telling on what it was all about:

The conference of ex-KKK leaders, trucker’s daughters, contrarian Jews, and innocent Canadian professors with tendencies towards career self-harm recently convened by the Iranian state to “discuss” the supposedly fake Holocaust has been cast by some as striking a blow for “freedom of speech”. (Of course, people promising dissenting views were banned from attending; even Iranian understandings of free speech have their limits).

Later, in the almost surgical procedure, Amir lists a couple of bullet points with explanatory quotes on the habits of Iran pertaining to freedom of speech: "good old fashioned censorship of books", "arrest journalists for criticising the state", "shut down newspapers that criticise the State", "ban students from attending university because they are 'outspoken'”, "blocked the New York Times internet site, Youtube and even Wikipedia" etc. etc.

In short, a mild totalitarian state (but don't jump up and down, George Bush -- this doesn't give you the right to "bring them freedom" as you're fit for the shackles of the Hague, and the Iranian people can manage without your cluster bombs and genocidal sanctions and they've recently shown Ahmadinejad that they dislike blusterers).

I recommend everyone read Does Iran support freedom of speech? in its entirety on the Austrolabe site. This Holocaust Denial Conference in my view is deeply abusive and disparaging to the Jewish minority in Iran who have one seat in the Majlis, and they might feel how Danish Muslims felt when the Flemming Rose attacked them with racism and Orientalism. Any centre which takes potshots at the minorities or slanders another people in the name of virtue and freedom proves nothing but that it is so fattened with all the power and authority that it can't even move to the window to see the Face of Freedom.

Fighting Bernard Lewis's Liberty

2006-12-23T19:37:00.000+11:00

I've had this on my radar screen for quite a while, but for several reasons: naturally lazy, hesitance on not having widely read Lewis and busy with other stuff, I couldn't write a critique on this intellectual aspersion of scholarship. Rather than go about doing all that, I'll leave you to make your own conclusions. I have now read some of Lewis's writings, but there is not even a mild requirement to equip oneself to tear down Lewis's mask and examine his words in this case, words that haven't been cloaked in subtlety. Instead Lewis makes no bones of the fact that now at over ninety, he can say whatever's on his mind without hints or queues. That's what you do when you're caught several times. I'll just give you Islamophobia Watcher's brief background into Lewis's train of thought. To learn more about the Orientalist, visit the Wikipedia page.

Whether he is asking What Went Wrong? or pontificating on The Crisis of Islam and The Roots of Muslim Rage, it’s all the same – the failure of what Lewis calls "Islam" to acknowledge the success and brilliance of "our Judeo-Christian heritage". The pioneer of the Hitlerian science of the clash of civilizations, much of the world torn by imperialist war and strife, owes its tragedies indirectly to Lewis and the other government-appointed or patronized heirs to the growing international class system of intellectuals like Fouad Ajmi, the proponents of sadistic war and imperialism. It doesn’t surprise some of us that his most faithful disciples are all rabid Zionists.

As he is nearing a century in years, the poison that at times spurted on to the shores is now a routine manifestation. Edward Said once noted that Lewis's "truth" came out when he was on television, but I see that it has also crept into his writings, not that it was "pure" by any chance erstwhile.

Whether he is telling Dick Cheney that the only way to discipline an Arab is to hit him with a big stick right between the eyes or promoting imperialism in Muslim countries as he did for Iraq, the mask of scholarship peels off all of a sudden. After unsuccessfully predicting that Iran would attack Israel on August 22 what Juan Cole called “Lewis’s weird interpretation of his millenarian beliefs”, it turns out Lewis had done a crazy striking earlier on July 16th, in a lecture aboard a cruise ship in the British Isles, what a place for another Lewis prophecy indeed:

Bring Them Freedom, Or They Destroy Us

I won't waste any time dwelling on the points Lewis makes here. You may understand them as bloated versions of the title itself. In my next article, I'll dissect another Neanderthal Orientalist, Daniel Pipes, who has been missing from this blog for a while, on his perspective on Lewis's dangerous trumpery. Well, not for long insha'Allah.

Typos!

2006-12-18T22:15:00.000+11:00

I noticed a few typos in my last post. I must have been in a bit of a hurry. Sorry about that. I'll try to be more careful. I'm serious about spelling and grammar :).

Kudos to the Indian Prime-Minister

2006-12-10T19:41:00.000+11:00

Hat-tip to an Indian Muslim reader of this blog for pointing out this very interesting news in my email.

Side-note: Apologies to those readers who feel that the Islamophobia prevalent in their countries has not been represented here. This blog aims to be universal in its application without any partisanship, and not centre around a particular country. Feel free to write to me if there is any such development in your community or society. It is a fact that Muslim minorities are facing a daily struggle from China to America. It has also come to shore that pious Muslims are persecuted in the so-called Muslim countries like Uzbekistan and last I read, Egypt was demanding that girls remove their veils in some college if I'm not mistaken. One of the things I had in mind when I ran this blog was to record the experiences of Muslims everywhere. I acknowledge that I have also failed to deliver on another aspect: hypocrisy, which has a firm foot-hold in some Muslim circles. Hence, if Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden think that they should be the next Caliphs, Islamophobia Watcher thinks they should cool it and the Muslim community is in no need of thugs. Believe me, that's the last thing we need -- a band of deranged killers who hide in caves and torture women and children. Muslims have made it clear we don't support lunatics and terrorists who have played a big role in the suffering of innocent people.

Now turning to the news:

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said plans for minorities, particularly Muslims, must have the ‘first claim’ on resources so that benefits of development reach them equitably.

"We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably the fruits of development. These must have the first claim on resources," he said in his address at the 52nd meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) in New Delhi.

The Centre's resources, he added, will be stretched with greater responsibility given to states in this regard.

"The Centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within its overall resource availability," he said.

Cheers to the Indian prime-minister, Manmohan Singh, for this mammoth attempt at recognizing the plight of Muslims and other minorities in his country. This, however, has annoyed the fascists in India, who last we knew were slaughtering thousands of Muslims in a a state called Gujarat:

The RSS and the BJP flayed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his remarks that plans for minorities, Muslims in particular, must have the first claim on resources.

"This is precisely the language used by Mohammad Ali Jinnah before the partition," RSS leader Ram Madhav said.

I also found a 1998 article on a Socialist website, during my research on these groups, that one of the persons they admire is Hitler:

While Indian Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee and Home Minister L.K. Advani of the BJP refrain from praising Hitler--unlike their ally, Shiv Sena leader Bal Thakeray--they do insist that India's 120 million Muslims must "nationalize" themselves.

Good riddance that the fascists are out of power, dethroned and howling bad.

CIA's Torture Program

2006-12-05T18:03:00.000+11:00

This news is about a week old, but a rare victory for Muslims and other people who care for equality in the United States though no amount of apology, monetary or other, can compensate for the destruction of lives of ordinary people. Another individual worthy of mention is the Canadian Muslim Maher Arar, winner of the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, who was abducted by U.S. officials at Kennedy airport in New York in 2002, and then transported to a prison in Syria where he was confined for more than 10 months in a cell that looked like a grave. He was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession about having ties to Al Qaeda.

The U.S. government has agreed to pay $2 million and issue a written apology to a Muslim attorney in Oregon who was jailed two years ago after the FBI mistakenly linked him to the Madrid train bombings. Brandon Mayfield sued the FBI alleging that his civil rights had been violated and that he was arrested in part because he is a Muslim convert.

Another good news is that Ireland has decided to ban what she calls CIA's "Guantanamo Express". Proinsias De Rossa, Dublin MEP and a member of the committee, talks of 147 suspect flights having moved through Ireland.

Click here to read more about CIA's torture program. I also recommend this article which shows the participation of the Boeing Jet in these inhumane programs. You might already be aware that any non-US citizen can be legally kidnapped anywhere in the world, detained indefinitely without trial, and tortured, according to the US Congress. Welome to fascism. It's staring you right in the face and it's not "Islamo-fascism".

Democracy Against Democrats?

2006-11-23T18:07:00.000+11:00

"Withdrawal" in my view is a euphemism that is too soft on the ears of the trigger-happy coalition and the military brass, not just America's but the wider gang as well, which is slavishly egged on by visions of imperial grandeur. But the beautiful, suffering people of Iraq have spoken up yet again and it is time for America and other nations which call themselves democratic to heed that call. Over 70% of Iraqis have called for a "withdrawal" from their native country within one year. This is a democratic test for America, Britain, Australia and other we-drink-oil cookie lands. Quite strange that those who trumpet democracy for themselves are good at denying the same to others. We'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, I as a world citizen, want all the coalition flags waving around in Iraq to be torn down and turned into rags to sweep the bloody streets of Iraq. Salute that, war-mongers.

Edward Said: The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations

2006-11-19T17:49:00.000+11:00

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Did You Know?/American Terrorism

2006-11-17T23:40:00.000+11:00

Click here.

No War With Iran!

2006-11-16T04:29:00.000+11:00

Via United for Peace:

Click here and sign Peace Action's "No War with Iran!" petition today! This petition rejects any U.S. military action against Iran and demands direct negotiations.This petition is directed to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice; copies will go to Chairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Committee on International Relations.

An excerpt from Juan Coles's Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! in retrospect:

One, two, three, four! We don't want your stinking war! ....

We are not going to put Yazd behind barbed wire to liberate it, as a millenarian Christian general did to Habbaniyah in Iraq.

We are not going to imprison and torture thousands of Iranians at Evin Penitentiary in Tehran, as worthy successors to the bloodthirsty Shah and Khomeini.

We are not going to kill 200,000 Iranians with aerial bombardments of Tabriz, Isfahan, Qom, Kerman, Shiraz and Mashahd.

We are not going to let dozens of US corporations loot the American people and the Iranian people alike with no-bid "contracts", embezzlement, corruption, and graft.

We are not going to let you have a war against Iran.

So sit down and shut up, American Enterprise Institute, and Hudson Institute, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and American Heritage Foundation, and this institute and that institute, and cable "news", and government "spokesmen", and all the pundit-ferrets you pay millions to make business for the American military-industrial complex and Big Oil.

Yup.

If This Is Love...

2006-11-10T15:55:00.000+11:00

I want to know what hate is. Check out these nasty statements by Clippard (?), the executive director of the state Convention, a coalition of 2,000 congregations who are aligned with 16-million Southern Baptists in the United States:

Clippard reserved his strongest words for what he said he considered paramount for all Americans: the threat of Islam. "Today, Islam has a strategic plan to defeat and occupy America," he told the 1,200-strong crowd of delegates (called "messengers"), pastors and lay people, many of whom cheered his words.

Clippard said that Muslims were hoping to take over the United States government one city at a time, and that they were starting with Detroit, where there is already a large Muslim population.

"They are trying to establish a Muslim state inside America, and they are going to take the city of Detroit back to the 15th century and practice Sharia (or Islamic) law there."

In an interview Tuesday, Clippard said he believed the Islamic "strategy for taking over America" was to wait until there was a Muslim majority here and then "eradicate those who don't conform to their religion."

On Monday night, he told the crowd that "your freedom is on the floor with their foot on it, with their sword raised, and if you don't convert, your head comes off."

::Sigh:: But that isn't the worst.

Clippard said Tuesday that his message was really about love.

"I don't hate Islamic people," he said. "We need to love these folks, go after them and love them, one at a time. We need to crucify them with Christ."

Read what Islam says about the "crucifixion" of Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him). And we must abstain from love henceforth. I'm serious. We don't need this kind of love. Sort of like the Taliban and Afghan warlords in Afghanistan mistreating women. And they say it's love. It reminds me of this George Bush quote (Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002):

People say, how can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil? You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you.

This is the same man who bombed shut-in's houses in Afghanistan and Iraq.

John Howard and Women

2006-11-07T15:06:00.000+11:00

…oh, Muslim women…no, Woman herself -- and through such sweet words bestowed on the first:

In an interview marking his 10th anniversary as Prime Minister, Mr Howard also describes the burqa, the full head covering worn by some Muslim women, as "confronting".

Am I to be sure that many Muslim women, indeed all women, find this guy handsome and "appealing" -- the man who by the Nuremburg Tribunal will be considered a war criminal? Not a squeak when bombs dropped by the new and fragmented NATO ripped apart not just the veil but the flesh beneath it in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq on orders from men like him. May be Jack Straw learned some of Howard's sayings? I mean, this was back in February. And the same old diatribes are played out in Australia by weasel-worded politicians. Howard's love for women doesn't end here of course. Take for example women in the Exclusive Brethren sect, the group that campaigned for Howard in the run up to the 2004 elections. It is alright that members of this sect don't vote as per their religious beliefs. It is alright that...

The Exclusive Brethren sect excludes married women from workplaces altogether and single women are forbidden from any job where they have authority over men.

It is alright because they are a Christian sect. Howard said so on 27th September this year: "I have to say that strikes me as what you might call an unorthodox Christian...it strikes me as a little unusual, but that is their right and should be respected." Senator Brown's reaction to the double standards, even attempted by Howard on false grounds, is admirable:

Muslim children in Australia are not prohibited from their basic right to a university education. Apparently this Prime Minister thinks this radical Christian sect is beyond public admonition.

It is noted elsewhere by Senator Bob Brown that Howard blocked an inquiry into this sect which he finances/supports. Muslims, however, should not be respected. It runs contrary to our white supremacist politics and we need O.I.L (Operation Iraqi Liberation). Muslims should not be respected because we're counting on them to win the next election. Malcolm Fraser, a former Australian prime minister, under whom Howard served as "treasurer boy" and who may have been accused of "dhimmitude" in the process by the obnoxious Robert Spencer, hits the bull's eye:

"There are already suggestions that this next election will be a 'Muslim election', as a while ago it was the Tampa election," he said. "It would create a terrible and unnecessary divide between Islam and the rest of the community."

John Howard has rightly been called the most xenophobic leader in Australian history. In my mind, the buck doesn't stop there. Howard merits a number of labels on my list. Perhaps I should make one for "dangerous opportunists", too.

Bernard-Henri Lévy's Veil Philosophy

2006-11-02T21:34:00.000+11:00

God is dead but my hair is perfect. ~ Michael O'Donnell on Bernard-Henri Lévy

There has not been any news coverage or speculation on the sick and derogatory comments made by Bernard-Henri Lévy on the veil issue, not that I know of, the so-called philosopher and co-endorser of that anti-Islamic manifesto. The total interview he gave to the Jewish Chronicle on 14th November 2006 is not available online. But fortunately I have the relevant quotation through Islamophobia Watch:

Our time is almost up, but BHL becomes the most animated I have seen him when I ask him about Jack Straw's intervention on Muslim women and the veil. "Jack Straw," he says, leaning close to me, "made a great point. He did not say that he was against the veil. He said it is much easier, much more comfortable, respectful, to speak with a woman with a naked face. And without knowing, he quoted Levinas, who is the philosopher of the face. Levinas says that [having seen] the naked face of your interlocutor, you cannot kill him or her, you cannot rape him, you cannot violate him. So when the Muslims say that the veil is to protect women, it is the contrary. The veil is an invitation to rape."

Imagine The Australian or any other mainstream media/press for that matter covering that? The storm over Shaykh Taj al-Hilali's comparing rape victims to a piece of meat was so big that the Aussie Mufti suffered a heart attack. Bernard-Henri Lévy is having no heart attack, not that we wish him unwell. Bernard-Henri Lévy may be wiggling his toes in his Morrocan palace for all we know. The question is why was there no criticism of Bernard-Henri Lévy for remarks that dwarf those of the Shaykh. This French imposture is practically encouraging rape of veiled women.

About the picture: I hate it when people chuck pie on each other's faces, because you have to think about those in the world who don't even have bread to eat. But for once this looks good. Noël Godin has creamed Henri-Lévy around eight times because he thinks BHL is a "vain, pontificating dandy" and "pompous". Quite right. And an Islamophobe.

“There Has Never Been An American Army As Violent and Murderous As the One in Iraq”

2006-11-02T21:09:00.000+11:00

Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh slammed George Bush at McGill address. And shared another disturbing news on the conduct of American troops:

“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”

“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”

“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

“In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation,” he said. “It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”

Despite all this, the United States is increasing the number of troops on the ground. There are now 150,000 troops inside Iraq – the largest number since January. This has got to be the largest gathering of illegal foreign fighters in Iraq.

"Precious": War on Iraqi Children

2006-11-01T19:50:00.000+11:00

This is a video on the effect of this war on Iraqi kids with images by Robert Fisk. The first Iraqi victims of Western governments have been children. This act of terrorism that rained whole cities with napalm and bombs and applause from morally bankrupt politicians is the third cut after thirteen years of economic sanctions (the most comprehensive in human history). Watch this shattering but instructive documentary Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq by the great journalist John Pilger. These are children who have been subjected to not just DU and disease but the isolation from the minimal joys of childhood that every child deserves. A 2004 survey found that "Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than rates in Uganda and Haiti."

The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

One can only imagine how it is now (in 2006), amidst the bloody violence and homelessless and sectarian divides and trigger-happy American troops.

UPDATE: Child War Victims of Iraq's War Trouble U.S. Medics

Shaykh Taj al-Hilali Hospitalized

2006-10-31T19:39:00.000+11:00

Hat tip to Austrolabe, which has been covering the developments very well. Shaykh Taj al-Hilali has been admitted to hospital after an angina attack (may God restore his health) in Lakemba Mosque, Sydney. And in a statement [PDF format] he isssued since then, he has apologized (sort of):

I confess that this analogy is inappropriate and unacceptable for the Australian society and the western society in general.

I am deeply saddened and distressed by the acts of some devious groups which lurk in the dark watching me, and who cannot tolerate the moderate balanced way...

Well, my viewpoint on this is that this analogy i.e. Guilty Meat But Innocent Cats is wholly inappropriate for not just Australian/Western Society but also Eastern Society. It is strictly a case of basic morality. On Islamophobic, racist sites like LGF and Jihad Watch, they're having a real go at this. Take for example this slur, all nonsense of course, by Robert Spencer (my regular readers may have observed that I don't provide links to sites featuring Islamophobic content as I have no wish directing more traffic their way):

This sort of thing may just seem silly, or even cute, until one realizes that to anyone who takes the Sheikh's claim seriously, Australia is now Muslim land. Islamic law stipulates that Muslims possess by right any land that once formed part of the House of Islam; this is a key element of the claim to Israel put forward by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The same claim has been advanced, by the way, for America.

I'm sad to note that Islam is often judged by the slightest error on the part of its followers. Nobody spoke when some rabbis justified the bombing of innocents in Lebanon and the second Qana massacre by proclaiming that there were no innocents in wartime:

The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."

"All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said.

Yesha Rabbinical Council is the recognized authority on Jewish religious questions in Gaza and the West Bank. This week it decreed that at least 56 Lebanese citizens of Kfar Qanna, including at least 34 children, targeted by an Israeli air strike, were not “innocent.”

The council’s edict reflects existing Israeli military/religious law. The chaplain for the IDF forces says, “In war, when our forces storm the enemies, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians that are ostensibly good.”

At least some of the Israeli religious heads are more honest and forthcoming about the intentions (as played out) by their military than the American guardhouse lawyers who have beleaguered the rest of the world with the phrase "collateral damage" during their vicious slaughter of millions for more than half a century now. P.G.Wodehouse wrote there are is no use apologizing if you make a mistake: good people will forgive you anyway, but bad people will use your apology against you. Welcome to humanity. Everyone knows that the statements by this rabbinical council doesn't speak for Judaism or ordinary Jews per se. But guess what, Islam doesn't have the privelege of unequivocal understanding. It is the Other. Whatever can be used against Muslim immigrants and our crusade against their oil-rich homelands will be splashed on our papers. C'mon, The Australian, you who are a flagship paper owned by the corporate lord Rupert Murdoch have been digging your heels on this issue as it runs parallel to your right-wing agenda. You love nothing more than to watch Muslims stumble...brings on the almighty dollar.

IOL is reporting that the Australian Federation of Isamic Council (AIFC) will vote to abolish the Mufti post that is presently held by Shaykh Taj al-Hilali. Amir, the author of the article Guilty Meat But Innocent Cats, commented well before this news appeared:

AFIC should just abandon the ridiculous idea of a mufti and stop trying to turn Islam into an “organised religion” with its own clerical class and “official leaders”. Of course, that would mean AFIC would itself have to go but then that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Hmmm...so it was AFIC who came up with this ridiculous concept in the first place.

Cats and Milk...No, Meat!

2006-10-30T00:20:00.000+11:00

Via Austrolabe:

The Australian is reporting today* and, as one might expect, the media is abuzz with Sheikh Taj al-Hilali’s alleged comments during Ramadan. According to the report — which I hope is untrue — the sheikh is reported to have likened rape victims to a piece of meat and those that rape her to cats merely dining on the meat that has appeared in their view.

I left a comment there, yet to be moderated (last checked): "I agree that these comments are utterly sick and he should be stripped off this title. It’s really sad. We don’t need muftis etc." I found the author, Amir's, feedback most succinct in this respect:

The problem is that he is seen as the “spiritual leader” of Australia’s Muslims so even though none of us have any connection whatsoever with him, we all get held hostage — like Douglas Woods — to whatever he says. His comments are then given the same weight by non-Muslims as if, say, George Pell or the Pope was to make some statement about Catholicism. That’s the real issue here. AFIC should just abandon the ridiculous idea of a mufti and stop trying to turn Islam into an “organised religion” with its own clerical class and “official leaders”. Of course, that would mean AFIC would itself have to go but then that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

* this item appeared on the 25th of October, 2006.

Additional note: Islamophobia Watcher doesn't endorse the smearing of Muslims or Islam as is being done over this issue by hate sites like Jihad Watch, LGF and other right-wing idiotorians (to use their own vocabulary against themselves). Islamophobia Watcher will insha'Allah record the progress of this situation on these media and give them a share of their due. I've decided to introduce an Introspection/Self-Criticism category, because that's one of the things that separates us from the rest -- a love for truth.

Planet of the Arabs

2006-10-25T20:57:00.000+10:00

A trailer-esque montage spectacle of Hollywood's relentless vilification and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims. Directed by Jacqueline Salloum, http://www.jsalloum.org/. Official Selection at the 2005 SUNDANCE Film Festival. Inspired by the book "Reel Bad Arabs" by Dr. Jack Shaheen.

Note how thoroughly and deeply the Orientalist propaganda manifests itself. The clever synchronisation of skin colour, accent, religion and race. It is much worse and carlessly constructed than Spielberg's Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom for which the director/producer got slammed. The great journalist Robert Fisk wrote on 21st Oct., 2006 in the Independent, although referring to the Hollywoodized European production of O Jerusalem, loosely based on the epic by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins:

But it's not this routine bestialisation of Arabs and Muslims that concerns me. You only have to watch the Arab slave-trader film Ashanti, again filmed in Israel and starring Roger Moore and (of all people) Omar Sharif, to see Arabs portrayed, Nazi-style, as murderers, thieves and child molesters. Anti-Semitism against Arabs - who are, of course, also Semites - is par for the course in movies. And I have to admit that in O Jerusalem, the confusion and plotting of the Arab leadership - only King Abdullah of Jordan is an honourable man - is all too realistic, not least the arrogance of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini (he who shook hands with Hitler).

No, what I object to is the deliberate distortion of history, the twisting of the narrative of events to present Jews as the victims of the Israeli war of independence (6,000 dead) when in fact they were the victors, and the Arabs of Palestine - or at least that part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 - as the cause of this war and the apparent victors (because the Jews of East Jerusalem were forced from their homes after the ceasefire) rather than the principal victims. Take, for example, the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin, where the Stern gang murdered the Arab villagers of what is now the Jerusalem suburb of Givat Shaul, disembowelled women and threw grenades into rooms full of civilians. In O Jerusalem, the Stern gang is represented as a gang of wicked men, a kind of Jewish al-Qa'ida, hopelessly out of touch with the mainstream Israeli army of young, high-minded guerrilla fighters.

And finally I'll end with a great quote from the Danish Muslim journalist Knud Holmboe who was murdered by Italian fascists for daring to speak the truth: "In Europe one is only told that the peaceful Italians in Cyrenaica have been attacked by the bloodthirsty Arabs. Only I, who have seen it, know who the barbarians are."

"American Terrorists"

2006-10-23T00:36:00.000+10:00

There's a very interesting wikipedia discussion page on "American terrorists" which includes people like Timothy McVeigh and John Allen Muhammad among many. People have questioned having the category on the grounds that it is very selective and POV based which didn't include George Bush, who many of us see as an international terrorist, war profiteer and war criminal. I couldn't agree more and added my view as well: Category talk: American Terrorists. Hint: Sindbad the Sailor. It's good to see people speaking up, even if on private chalk boards.

Miao/Where the Cat Goes

2006-10-19T14:27:00.000+10:00

If you haven't watched the video yet, this is a link. The song Heaven/Where True Love Goes picks up from the closing words of the 1973 Foreigner song The Foreigner Suite. Yusuf has altered the word "girl" to "soul", and this is new albeit not-as-good musically. The other songs that reviewers have commended are Midday and Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, the latter a cover of The Animals. There's also a song for the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) though it makes no direct reference. The album An Other Cup is scheduled to be released on the 14th of November, the fortieth anniversary of Stevens' first single I Love My Dog.

And Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam is again facing difficulty in the US. That's why I am writing this. News is out that his US tour may be in jeopardy. I don't know how an ageing philanthropist and former popstar who wants to spread a message of peace is a national security threat. Oh well, and the co-producers of his new album at Atlantic Records have said something very interesting in defence -- that his new lyrics don't mention Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. What difference does it make if his lyrics mention Allah or the Prophet Muhammad? How could the American administration get so paranoid about Muslim figures or even Muslim themes and subjects? Same with Tariq Ramadan. The Sovietization of the United States unforutunately seems to be in progress, but tides can turn as they have in the past. Egypt has also barred Tariq Ramadan for some absurd reason. And I read that the infamous oil-smuggler George "Democrazy" Bush had thrown an Iftar party with some of our Uncle Toms and clueless Muslims. One time George Bush is using hate speech like "Islamo-fascism" and another time praising Islam as a "religion of peace". One time he is shipping bombs for Israel to drop on Lebanon and another time he is saying Iraqis are "tolerating the violence". I'll leave you with this interesting cartoon of Cat Stevens (click to enlarge if it's not clear) from 2004 when he was taken off a plane in the United States in some little known place called Bangor:

In Search of Islamic Fascists

2006-10-19T14:15:00.000+10:00

IOL is running a very hilarious series called In Search of Islamic Fascists. It is a sort of detective mission by Canadian journalist Alexander Gainem where he roams around like a possum in Syria, a country that has been labelled as "evil" by George Bush and his cronies. In one place in Part III of his adventure, he muses:

I was beginning to feel a sense of disillusionment descend from the heavens. I had seen no sight of Islamic, Ceramic, or Panoramic fascists for that matter.

And at the end of the first chapter:

Still, I decided to wait till day two; maybe the Islamic fascists would come out of the woodwork then.

Will The Adventure of the Islamic Fascists be solved? Hold on, Watson.

Yellow Skin and Slanted Eyes

2006-10-16T17:31:00.000+10:00

This is a very interesting bit of news, with undertones of classic Orientalism, from Haaretz which reports the words of the Israeli ambassador to Australia:

The Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned remarks by the Israeli ambassador to Australia in which he told Haaretz that the two countries are white sisters amid "the yellow race" of Asia.

"If the article is accurate, this is a grave and unacceptable remark," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said it will not return to business as usual if an internal examination confirms that the ambassador, Naftali Tamir, in fact made the comments attributed to him.

Tamir said that due to what he characterized as the racial similarities between Israel and Australia, the two countries should work together to enhance ties with other Asian countries.

"Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia," Tamir said in an interview with Haaretz during a visit to Israel this week. "We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not - we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side."

Racism in my view is the never-ending fulmination of the most evil. It is that sin coupled with extreme disobedience for which Iblis was/is punished by Allah:

And surely, We created you (your father Adam) and then gave you shape (the noble shape of a human being), then We told the angels, "Prostrate to Adam", and they prostrated, except Iblis (Satan), he refused to be of those who prostrate. (Allah) said: "What prevented you (O Iblis) that you did not prostrate, when I commanded you?" Iblis said: "I am better than him (Adam), You created me from fire, and him You created from clay." S. 7:11-12

Even though Iblis refused to obey his Creator, Allah the Lord of the Worlds, the reason he gave seems to be more convincing (if we're to take the line of racists) than theirs within the human race. I wonder what some of them would say if Allah had made them djinns among men. Whether it's Irshad Manji bad-mouthing and demonizing the Palestinians and clicking photographs with two smiling children from the same camp to show her "humanity", the little ones having no idea what she conceals in real and how she advocates their present state; or George Bush saying that Iraqis are "tolerating the violence" (655000 dead!) in their bloody war for freedom which the so-called liberators said they would get. Never mind the fact that the first place the US military captured in Baghdad was the Oil Ministry. Never mind dead bodies found drifiting in the Tigris everyday. Who are they? What are their names? Did they have families? Were they happy when they last left home? Was there a real need to go out? Did they have aspirations, dreams and a simple imagination? Did they think of the fleeting pleasure on the faces of their grandparents when they were young?

Letter to the American People

2006-10-14T23:11:00.000+10:00

Dear Fellow Men and Women beyond the Ocean,

As you know, we are living in very difficult times. And I know you’re not responsible for the atrocities and killings on earth. I have enough reason to be angry, but as I sat thinking about the 655000 dead in Iraq and North Korea, a tense silence with pin-pricks of melancholy afflicted my heart. I don’t know if this letter will reach more than a few of you but I want you to know we can change things. We can start anew, blossom and wallow in mirth for the sake of humanity and the prize of relentless love.

We people of the world, an overwhelming number of Muslims, don’t hate your way of life or freedom. We want to live side by side, shoulder against shoulder, soft skin for borders and the circle of arms for absolute brotherhood. We extend our hand of friendship to make you feel that you’re not alone. We are with you. Let us challenge the dictators who reside in ivory towers all over the world. Let us shut our ears to propaganda travelling from evening news or men swathed in government coats who claim to speak for us. No, they don’t represent any of us. We are the power but together. Let us heal the lands laid to waste by wars and sanctions but together. Let us ride into Sudan without boots and kiss and feed the children but together. See how beautiful the world is – no hate!

Let us have institutions that will be administered with honesty and link us all to the magnificent throbbing heart of humanity. Verily, on which the tears of heavens shall shine…and God’s barakah on everyone. No one is strange. No one is foreign. No one is inferior. But embraced like lovers on a star-lit night with vehement adoration for everything which has breath in its breast.

Let us start a global revolution toward goodness, tolerance, anti-war, anti-sanction and a strong point of view by me and you. Let us raise high the beams, the minarets, the walls of churches and synagogues. Let us sit at tea – United States, North Korea, Iraq, Australia, Poland and all the wonderful nations on God’s earth. Let us practice gallantries and charm – Jews, Christians and Muslims. Let us do our forefathers proud. And all the prophets who roved this earth, shed their blood for the cause of God and walked with nails under their feet – just to see us through. And what have we, the people of the world, become? We have undermined all the lovely teachings of our scriptures and set to slay our neighbours. And we’re all neighbours, aren’t we?

In the memory of every human unjustly killed and every poor orphan, let us free the blaze of conscience that flicks deep inside. For the children of tomorrow, let us stop this madness. Let us help those hurt and bereaved. Let us hold together. Let us speak up against injustice. Let us love. Let us forgive.

Yours,

Muslim, student, 20 years.

Note: This letter was inspired by recent events in our history with the fear of reprisal against ordinary people time after time. I wrote this after reading Dumb and Otherwise Tragic Moments in the Dunya on Izzy Mo's blog.

The Country Where Nothing Happened

2006-10-08T17:27:00.000+10:00

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the bombing of Afghanistan. As I've written about the 9/11 mass murder, it is only fair I write about the Afghan victims. More civilians were killed in the bombing of Afghanistan than 9/11. But what makes this tragedy unheard of is because the victims weren't priveleged Westerners or whites or Americans. This is both advantageous and disadvantageous; advantageous because their country is not in a positition to practise hubris and go about warning and carpet-bombing the United States (which is a good thing from a human perspective), and disadvantageous because their lives count for nothing. Noam Chomsky wrote:

There had been no interest in this before September 11, or even in the month that followed. A week after the bombing began, the president reiterated that U.S. forces “would attack Afghanistan ‘for as long as it takes’ to destroy the Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden, but he offered to reconsider the military assault on Afghanistan if the country’s ruling Taliban would surrender Mr. bin Laden”; “If you cough him up and his people today, then we’ll reconsider what we are doing to your country,” the president declared: “You still have a second chance.”

John Pilger, the great journalist, who gave us the harrowing truth Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq on the criminal economic sanctions imposed on the people of Iraq by the brutal leaders of the United States and Britain, records the life of one such victim of war in his documentary on the "war on terror" called Breaking the Silence, an Afghan lady named Orifa who lost most of her family, including her husband. A five hundred pound destroyed her modern stone house. No flag or vigils for them. And as Orifa sits with her fearful children outside, homeless and cold, no one will talk about her. May Allah raise the meek like Orifa to the highest heaven on the Last Day and reunite them with their families and may He reunite the 9/11 dead with their missing families.

The following is the lyrics to the song The Village Where Nothing Happened by protest singer David Rovics based on actual events described by Richard Lloyd Parry about the fate of an Afghan town called Kama Ado:

The Army commander spooke to the media
He said, "This is a nation of laws
"We do not target civilians
"And we only bomb with cause"
And he said as he looked into the camera
With a cold, bone-chilling stare
"As for the village of Kama Ado
"Nothing happened there"

In the village where nothing happened
Most people had risen from bed
Women were preparing to cook
And make sure every mouth would be fed
Just before the beginning of Ramadan
Water was set out to boil
Little fires were heating tin kettles
Upon the dry Afghan soil

In the village where nothing happened
Children played in the street
Men were bending in prayer
Some with no shoes on their feet
It was another day like so many
That had gone down before
And nobody told Kama Ado
Just what lay in store

In the village where nothing happened
Nobody knew
That this place would be changed forever
By an American B-52
The bombs fell all around them
So many a deafening blast
And the people of Kama Ado
Learned that life can end so fast

In the village where nothing happened
The houses collapsed in the morn
Not one terrorist died there
But maybe some were born
In the village of Kama Ado
There are no underground caves
There's just rubble and dust and craters
And 115 new graves

Two Minutes of Silence for Them

2006-10-03T19:08:00.000+10:00

I have found it very surprising and disturbing that much of the privileged world, including the depraved Brutuses and Judases of the Muslim World, haven't spared two minutes of their existence on planet earth for the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. No flags for these people. No funerals for these people. We don't do body counts of those we kill. And just when the morgues can't take no more, the president of the United States has warned of attacks throughout the world: "The only way to protect our citizens at home is to go on the offense against the enemy across the world. When terrorists spend their days working to avoid capture, they are less able to plot, plan, and execute new attacks on our people. So we will remain on the offense until the terrorists are defeated and this fight is won." Such apolcalyptic language deserves nothing but disdain. Everyone knows that it is exactly this sort of blunder by powers that breeds terrorists.

When we do it, it isn't terrorism. When they do it, it is a barbaric atrocity against humanity. Correction. It is a barbaric atrocity against "our" humanity. When we kill, it isn't that because those we kill aren't human beings. They don't have families, children, careers and loves. They may lie down and tremble under our bombs, chemicals and other inventions of our civilization, but we can never tell if they're human beings. We can bomb pharmaceutical companies in Sudan and kill 30, 000 people but how dare Chomsky compare that to 9/11. We in Washington, the neocolonialists, are evil racists but we want to save Africans from Arabs and Kurds from Arabs and Arabs from Arabs and Americans from everyone because we are the "lords of good behaviour", and in doing that if we wipe off half the world's population we don't care. It was never in our interest to declare: "God bless the whole world."

The Pope Debate

2006-10-02T22:16:00.000+10:00

With the latest outrage and delight, for and against, the remarks of Pope Benedict VII, by far the most intelligent and enlightening response in my opinion has come not from media pundits or commentators but a Muslim scholar. Here is Shaykh Jaafar Idris's reply in relation to the concept of logos. You can read the entire thing on Austrolabe:

...the nature of God becomes contrary to unreasonableness only if, with the help of Greek philosophy, God is identified with Logos, Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning was the ‘logos’."

In the beginning was the Logos, and Logos is God, says the Evangelist.

This means that the God whose nature is compatible with reason is not the traditional God of Christianity. It is not God the Father, or God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost, or a combination of the three. The Pope must have had to resort to this understanding of God that identifies Him with reason because he cannot say about the traditional God of Christianity that unreasonableness is contrary to His nature. He cannot say so because he knows that unreasonableness characterizes the traditional conception of the nature of that God. This has always been Islam’s main objection to Christianity. The Qur’an tells them that the claim that God has a son is not compatible with reason and cannot therefore be compatible with God’s true nature.

But this is not necessarily a point that is being investigated. And we must also seek another discourse, a non-theological discourse, because I believe the issue can be resolved just by studying Manuel II, the source whom the Pope quoted when dealing with the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Gary Leupp writes of this medieval figure:

Crowned co-emperor by his father, in 1373, he lost his throne to his bother, who seized it in 1376. How’d he get it back? By calling for help from the Muslim Turks! I suppose that was reasonable.

Back on the throne in 1379, no doubt acting in accordance with logos, he paid tribute to the Turkish Sultan and actually had to live as a vassal at the Turkish court!

Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc) brilliantly deconstructs the myth that Islam was spread by force, contrary to what has been discussed by the Pope, in Muhammad's Sword:

Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

Islam in truth was spread by Arab traders and preachers. A typical example is the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, which is surrounded by water on all sides.

I think we have to forget the past and move on for the sake of tolerance and peace between each other. This sentiment has also been expressed by the New York Times. We don't need angry words or words that divide man...no, at this time we don't! Most Catholics have disagreed with the Pope's comments.

Daniel Pipes and Freedom of Speech

2006-10-01T21:10:00.000+10:00

Islamophobe extraordinaire Daniel Pipes wrote an article Zuhdi Jasser and "Monitoring Islamist Media" dated May 11 2006, and I shall contrast his statements there with the publication of the mythic, racist and Orientalist caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that he defended. I'll first quote from his article Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism dated February 7 2006 where he harps about "freedom of speech", a basic human right that is at times eroded by hypocrisy and employed as a weapon by centres of power to take potshots at the powerless whether they be Muslim or not.

The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: Will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise: Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.

All this lecture over wrong or right civilization doesn't wash. It seems Pipes is not only invoking the racist theory of the clash of civilizations but calling for a separation of Western Muslims from the West. Also notice how he refers to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as "Muslim Prophet Muhammad". And this is the same man who once had the bigotry to deny the existence of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). But what is surprising about all this is that Pipes is the founder of Campus Watch, a witch-hunting project that targets university professors and others, and "smears any critics of US policies as unpatriotic" and equates the criticism of Israeli brutalities against Palestinians as anti-Semitic or pro-terrorism. But hold your breath for now. Let's give him some more air play on this. After criticizing the more civic Western countries like New Zealand that refused to publish the caricatures, Pipes starts off talking about the Ayatollah and Rushdie -- Ayatollah being the scapegoat for much of this sort of discourse because he had the daring to overthrow the brutal US-backed Shah. And then this:

Even worse, in 1997 when an Israeli woman distributed a poster of Muhammad as a pig, the American government shamefully abandoned its protection of free speech. On behalf of President Bill Clinton, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns called the woman in question "either sick or … evil" and stated that "She deserves to be put on trial for these outrageous attacks on Islam." The State Department endorses a criminal trial for protected speech?

Note how he says "Even worse..." as he's obviously comparing this to the Rushdie affair, but he considers it "worse" because there was an "Israeli woman" involved not to mention a "poster of Muhammad as a pig". Neither he nor Rushdie give a fig over the forty Muslims killed during that crisis leave alone one or two helpers of Rushdie. One can do nothing but agree with Nicholas Burns when he called the woman "either sick or ... evil" because that's what she ultimately was. I wonder what would happen to an Arab distributing pictures of Sharon as a pig -- Moses being another "Muslim Prophet" much to the discomfort of Pipes. The Arab would be shot point-blank by the IDF. It is not the Muslims in America who are unloyal to their country but Zionists like Pipes. I now quote what Pipes says about freedom of press in his second article as he talks about Muslim media in America comparing George Bush to Ghenghis Khan. Hmmm...I should have thought of that before. Not a bad comparison as both of them destroyed and pillaged Mesopotamia. After patting the "native informant" on the back, this is what Pipes writes about freedom of press when America or Israel are at the receiving end (my empasis in pink):

We certainly defend Breek Publishing's right to freedom of speech as we do all of its sponsors and distributors. But, perhaps its sponsors or distributors are not aware that an advertisement or shelf space for distribution is a clear tacit endorsement of the acceptability of the ideology. Certainly, advertisers and distributors need not agree with all of the ideas presented in a newspaper, but when the paper travels into the distant margins whether far to the left or far to the right from mainstream America it becomes a real liability for all of its sponsors.

Aren't the double standards too obvious?

Brothers of Hate: Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer

2006-10-01T21:08:00.000+10:00

Interestingly, an ad caught my eye on the blogs of both the vulgar Islamophobes -- Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer. The link transported me to an eerie anti-Islam movie propaganda site. Undoubtedly the agent of that film had known about the poison the two men routinely spill against Muslims. It openly declares its central theme:

An examination of Islam, violence, and the fate of the non-Muslim world.

Very clever. One rarely hears such nonsense outside the vicinity of neo-Nazi sites like Jihad Watch. How can they talk about the "fate of the non- Muslim world" after the United States has bombed two Muslim countries to the ground, and has already started a propaganda war against the third? How can they talk about the "fate of the non-Muslim world" when the Palestinians live in apartheid? How can they talk about the "fate of the non-Muslim world" as Russia continues its history of genocide in Chechnya, and the Muslims of Bosnia live in fear and poverty? And what about the Muslims all over the world? To makes this statement is not only theologically incorrect but historically rubbish. Muslims have meted out better treatment to Jews and Christians than vice-versa. But the falsehood ran deeper when I investigated further. I will insha'Allah return to this topic with refutations of the lies against Islam outlined in the project. I don't know how they can play this movie in the United States, but maybe it dishes out their global agenda.

The Nakba

2006-10-01T21:05:00.000+10:00

Forgive me for coming on to this a bit late but it cannot be ignored. Nora Barrows-Friedman, an American Jewish woman, wrote a very passionate piece Shadows and Distortions: The Nakba in Palestine dated May 18 2006 on Counterpunch. She began by describing the present situation of the Palestinians, and how they are barred from turning the keys of the dreadful past:

As the heavy shadow of the 1948 Nakba hovers and recedes over the narrow alleyways of refugee camps and Diaspora communities this week, Palestinians remain at Israel's whim to starve, die, or become displaced and divided.

Subdued commemorations are happening all over the rocky hillsides of occupied Palestine; there are the throngs of children waving the colorful and banned Palestinian flag which whips in the hot springtime wind, the busloads of people trying to travel to city centers to hear stories of the Nakba, only to be stopped at checkpoints and ordered back to their dusty refugee camps and shrinking villages. 58 years after the Zionist militias lay siege to over 450 Palestinian towns and villages, Palestinian refugees are still waiting, holding the iron keys that unlock the doors to homes that no longer exist.

The most disturbing moment comes immediately after this when she quotes Dr. Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian reseacher and historian:

"Israel is 58 years old today. Israelis have already celebrated with barbecues and parties. And so they should, for they've pulled off an amazing stunt: the creation of a state for one people on the land of another - and at their massive expense - without incurring effective sanction."

In the name of her religion and history, she speaks out strongly against the Nakba that was defined by ethnic cleansing and deportation of the native Palestinian population by the Zionist enterprise:

As a Jewish American, I do not want this tied to my history. This ballast, this anchor now inextricably linked to my ancestor's struggles, my dead relatives' stories. How dare we as American Jews allow this to happen. How dare we. How dare we support the ethnic cleansing in Palestine. How dare we argue over oppression hierarchy. How dare we march against the war in Iraq and keep our mouths shut on Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza. How dare we let lobby groups such as AIPAC drench our collective histories in soups of militarism, imperial domination, and snarly relationships with US weapons manufacturers and fascist politicians.

Recommended Reading:

The Nakba; then and now

US Marine Committing War Crimes in Iraq

2006-10-01T20:59:00.000+10:00

On May 4 2006, a thought-provoking article titled Message from a Vet of My Lai Time: "Our Descent Into Hell Has Begun" by Tony Swindell appeared on Counterpunch. He first addressed his concerns over the atrocities against the Iraqi people and predicted an explosion in America's face compared to which the Abu Ghraib incident would be a mere "fraternity beer bust".

In Iraq, our descent into hell, our "Apocalypse Now" moment, has begun. First there was Gitmo, then the global rendition program, then Abu Ghraib, then the pulverizing of Fallujah, and now trigger-happy raids that are filling multitudes of sandy graves with men, women and children. Has "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" become the mission in Babylon? Can't anyone remember Vietnam, where we left behind more than a million dead civilians?

He talked about the psychological trauma of soldiers who commit these crimes and went on to give an account of his experience in Vietnam, a country where the United States was responsible for mass genocide. And by the relation of Iraq with Vietnam, it was more convincing than ever the terrible suffering the Iraqi people were putting through. And two days ago, another article titled Lawmaker: Marines Killed Iraqis ‘In Cold Blood’ by Jim Miklaszewski and Mike Viqueira surfaced on NBC.

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.

The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

There seems to be a behavioural pattern of soldiers in wars as they plunder, murder and raid -- and as Tony Sindell writes:

I listen in vain to hear the voices of young Americans who will be directly and immediately affected. Current events in the Middle East should be a paramount issue, but, inexplicably, the kids are completely nonchalant. Raised on the Internet and X-Boxes, maybe Iraq is just another Hollywood-style media production to them.

When innocent people of the world are denigrated and thought of as sub-humans or lower by any group or coalition, we have a bomb ticking somewhere in our collective humanity.

Arafat and Aid Money

2006-10-01T20:55:00.000+10:00

Robert Spencer, who has been spearheading a campaign to dehumanize and vilify Muslims and Islam much like his neo-Nazi co-star Hugh Fitzgerald, has reported an article from the Jerusalem Post that Yasser Arafat used international aid funds to purchase weapons. His website, Jihad Watch, which serves as the breeding ground for bigotry garners a lot of participation from racist drumbeaters. My point is that it isn't a question of refutation of the charges against Yasser Arafat. They may indeeed be true. But we don't have to act like the Zionists and just degrade the Palestinians. We have to take the argument of the Zionists and turn it up. Hmmm...let's see. Since its inception through ethnic cleansing and deportation of the native Palestinians, the Zionist state of Israel has received more than 140 billion dollars. Israel is the only recipient of US aid that does not have to account for how the so-called aid money is spent. What do the Zionists do with that money? Nothing much. They just steal land, build walls of apartheid next to their nightclubs while the Palestinians starve, bulldoze buildings, murder Arab children, run their specially designed behemoths over peace activists and curse HAMAS. America's support for Israel through the so-called aid money is like funding state terrorism, something for which the United States is itself guilty of. American aid money to Israel is the very life blood of occupation.

ECRI Reprimands Denmark Over Treatment of Muslims

2006-10-01T20:49:00.000+10:00

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) listed Muslims as a "vulnerable" group along with Roma/gypsies in its report on Denmark issued on 16th May 2006. It started off by highlighting the objectives of the previous report:

In its second report, noting with concern the climate surrounding Muslims and Islam in Denmark, ECRI recommended that the Danish Government undertake awareness-raising measures in the public sphere as well as in the education system to promote a more objective and informed perception of Muslims. ECRI also recommended that public opinion leaders promote a more informed and diverse image of Muslims and Islam.

It bemoaned the failure of the Danish Government to not only to live up to the goals, but reported a further escalation of negative climate against Muslims.

ECRI notes with deep concern that the situation concerning Muslims in Denmark has worsened since its second report. ECRI has been informed that, apart from the above-mentioned discrimination that Muslims face together with other minority groups in areas such as employment, education and housing, politicians from some political parties such as the Danish People’s Party and some media continue to make incendiary remarks about Muslims. Although, in 2003, a number of cases of incitement to racial hatred in general, and against Muslims in particular were successfully prosecuted, ECRI notes that the police are generally reluctant to investigate complaints made by Muslims concerning hate speech directed against them.

A little later on in the report, it condemned the publication of the Orientalist and racist caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him):

In September 2005, with the stated intention of verifying whether freedom of speech is respected in Denmark, a widely-read Danish newspaper called on cartoonists to send in caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad; such drawings are considered to be offensive by many Muslims. This newspaper thus published 12 such cartoons, one of which portrayed the Prophet as a terrorist. The issue has caused widespread condemnation and a protest march was organised in Copenhagen as a result. The fact that, according to a survey carried out regarding the publication of these drawings, 56% of the respondents felt that it was acceptable is a testimony of the current climate in Denmark. ECRI considers that the goal of opening a democratic debate on freedom of speech should be met without resorting to provocative acts that can only predictably elicit an emotional reaction.

We can safely conclude that the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has lived up to its name and purpose, and is a model to be followed everywhere. Now the question is whether the the Danish Government will satisfactorily live up to the objectives set.

Through Osama bin Laden's Own Words

2006-10-01T20:43:00.000+10:00

A relatively new book titled Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden which was released a few months ago makes it very clear that Osama bin Laden's ideology isn't remotely influenced by the religion of Islam. It was edited and introduced by Duke University religion professor Bruce Lawrence. The is an excerpt from the review on the news section of the Duke University site (my empasis in pink):

A major goal of the book is to show, through his own words, how bin Laden’s views differ from mainstream Islam and even other radical Muslim thought, said Lawrence, the author of several books on Islam, including “Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age” (1989), “Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence” (1998) and “New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims & Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life” (2002). By reviewing the decade-long record of his public declarations, readers can better grasp how bin Laden shifts his interpretations of the Quran and manipulates his audiences to his own ends.

“It is not enough to say he is a terrorist and the scum of the Earth,” Lawrence said. “I think we need a balance. We need to better understand how bin Laden has wrapped himself in the cloak of Islamic legitimacy to support his cause and to attract followers.

"The majority of the Muslim community supports peace, equity and living in a way that balances the good and condemns the bad,” he observed. “Radical Islam exists on the fringes, yet attempts to co-opt the center, with a significant number of extremists drawn to bin Laden and his message of anger and vengeance against the world.

“My hope -– and it is the best hope, I think -- is to have more Americans, both Muslim and non-Muslim, understand the goal of bin Laden and then reject it in search of a common agenda for productive change.”

"Messages to the World" is the first of three upcoming books by Lawrence that, to varying degrees, look at bin Laden.

There you have it -- straight from the horse's mouth! It is sufficient to say that Osama bin Laden's actions are borne out of passion and rage and not Islam. The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) once said that there will be some Muslims who'll say that they're fighting for Islam but in truth they'll be doing nothing of the sort. The first paragraph of the book description at Amazon hits the bull's eye:

Despite the saturation of global media coverage, Osama bin Laden's own writings have been curiously absent from analysis of the "war on terror." Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued a series of carefully tailored public statements, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video recordings. These texts supply evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of Al Qaeda.

Why won't Uncle Sam make the study of Osama bin Laden a priority? Are they worried that he might have some bad things to say about US policy (which are probably true), and/or will the foundation of the so-called war on terror crumble if it's found out that Islam isn't the enemy? They'll have to find new enemies then. And that seems to be a bit of an "oilee" problem.

The Further Separation of Daniel Pipes's Brain Cells

2006-10-01T20:39:00.000+10:00

It seems Pipes won't stop romanticizing about the "Islamic threat" to America and Israel. While this is common in all his articles, in the particular article Deterring Tehran dated May 9th 2006, Pipes talks about "a further separation of civilizations". So the racist ideology of the great false prophet, Samuel Huntington, is not only being played out very well but now we find a "further separation" by Pipes as a run up to the attack on Iran. I think it's a further separation of the brain cells in Daniel Pipes' head. It's "us" (enlightened Jews and Christians) against "them" (lowly Muslims). This is what Professor Edward Said called a "Hitlerian science". And I think it is a very serious theory that should be condemned by Muslims, Christians and Jews alike.

Pipes also talks about how an attack on Iran will result in more terrorism by Muslims and oil crisis in the West, but later twists his words like his mentor Bernard Lewis, and quotes John McCain: "There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option. That is a nuclear-armed Iran." No word for the impact of this hubristic madness on ordinary Iranian people. And these are the sorts who are influencing American policy in violation of the American values of justice and peace, and the abuse of power vested in them by the American citizenry.

Noam Chomsky is someone we should pay heed to, because he is calling for peace: "The regional superpower Israel is threatening to attack [Iran], the U.S. is threatening to attack it. These threats alone are outright violations of international law and of the U.N. charter. Iran is in difficulty. Iran has been trying for some years to negotiate settlement but the U.S. just refuses."

Even the President of the IAEA and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Mohamed ElBaradei, has called for a diplomatic solution but the war-mongers in Washington and Israel don't have that word in their dictionary anymore.

Welcome to Islamophobia Watcher

2006-10-01T20:37:00.000+10:00

The aim of Islamophobia Watcher is not to curtail the discussion of Islam, but to point out polemics and sophistry concealed as scholarship toward Islam. Muslim populations in many countries are subjected to hate and prejudice because of their race, colour and religion. Islamophobia Watcher will also offer articles on the reality of Islam with all its inner dynamics.