NEWS: Finally A Moderate Muslim Speaks, Let's Kill Him

I don't believe that I said you did.

To be honest, I'm confused what we're arguing about at this point. I think we all generally agree.

Me no argue.

I'm so glad I stopped involving myself with religion a long time ago.

Whew.. I had to go back and reread my own post to make sure I hadn't typed something in knucklehead mode.

They didnt just kick him out~
Wikpidea

Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633. The sentence of the Inquisition was in three essential parts:

Galileo was required to recant his heliocentric ideas; the idea that the Sun is stationary was condemned as "formally heretical." However, while there is no doubt that Pope Urban VIII and the vast majority of Church officials did not believe in heliocentrism, Catholic doctrine is defined by the pope when he speaks ex cathedra (from the Chair of Saint Peter) in matters of faith and morals. While Church officials did condemn Galileo, heliocentrism was never formally or officially condemned by the Catholic Church.
He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.
His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial and not enforced, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

A very good moderate voice on Islam and a warning. Islam never separated church and state so in its current incarnation it is a carnivorus entity that distroys any freedom of expression or dissent. The few real intellectuals of Islam often have more to fear just for just speaking then most of us can imagine.
Current Islam like Goyas painting
Islam Eats its own children.
http://www.nysun.com/article/48806?page_no=1
Copied from the NY SUN
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
February 16, 2007


Remember "Orientalism," that landmark book by the late Columbia University professor Edward Said?

The 1978 work put the fear of God into any Western scholar who dared to discuss Islam, Muslims, or Arabs in anything less than superlatives _ and it has succeeded beyond Said's wildest dreams.

In a prescient new book, "Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents," author Robert Irwin notes that "because of the possible offense to Muslim susceptibilities, Western scholars who specialize in the early history of Islam have to be extremely careful what they say, and some of them have developed subtle forms of double-speak when discussing contentious matters."

What goes for academia has been happening in a more dramatic fashion in the press, literature, and the creative arts, where death threats, death sentences, and actual murders of writers, artists, and intellectuals have taken a toll.

Bottom line: You can't talk about Islam, not really. Those transgressing are hounded like hunted animals.

The persecuted British-Indian author of the 1988 book "The Satanic Verses," Salman Rushdie, is a refugee here in America. Nearly two decades later, he's still living under a death edict issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini the year after the book came out.
A more recent refugee is the Dutch-Somali writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is facing death threats of her own in the Netherlands after collaborating on a film about the oppression of women in Islam. One of her collaborators, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was assassinated in Amsterdam in November 2004; a knife pinned a note to his body that said Ms. Hirsi Ali was next. Islamic history is served up airbrushed in academia, and the result is a public denied knowledge. The reason many in the West are so surprised by the Sunni-Shiite split now tearing apart the Persian Gulf is that few know the history of early Islam, when a bloody succession to the Prophet Muhammad yielded that split 13 centuries ago. The storm around the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad last year was a perfect example of what happens when willful ignorance and self-censorship come together.

To this day, self-censorship about Islam is the norm. The only works that study, analyze, and teach Islam are those by politically correct Arabs, Muslims, or a few "vetted" Westerner scholars who know where not to go.

Edward Said's obsession was, of course, Palestine and the Jews. But his sweeping condemnation of all scholarship by Westerners as basically racist affected further academic endeavors. It took the tragedy of September 11, 2001, to begin reversing the intimidation. In a review of "Dangerous Knowledge" in the March issue of the Atlantic Monthly, the writer Christopher Hitchens notes that Western scholars and authors "have adopted the strategy of taking Islam's claims more or less at face value." Such undue deference, coupled with a fear of retribution, has led to a situation where "even a relatively generous treatment of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, such as that composed by [the French Middle East scholar Maxim] Rodinson, is considered too controversial on many campuses in the West," and puts "readers or distributors in real physical danger if offered for discussion."

If you follow the money, you'll discover quickly that the intimidation continues. Oil-rich fundamentalist Arab regimes, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar have put big money into spreading their version of Islamic history.

Take two donations to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization that has participated in its share of sinister activities. In June 2006, it was announced that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal _ supposedly a friend of America who built his multibillion-dollar fortune partly through owning Citibank and Apple stocks _ will fund a $50 million CAIR project "to create a better understanding of Islam and Muslims" in America.

Surely the prince, who has scores of American advisers, knows how controversial CAIR is. Yet he is giving it $50 million to interpret Saudi militant Wahhabism, making it "accessible" in America.

The other multimillion-dollar donation to CAIR came from the Al Maktoum Foundation, the prime money-distribution arm of the ruling family of Dubai, also supposedly a friend of America.

We cannot afford such hypocrisy. The West is engaged in a major confrontation with Islamic terror, in which much of the Islamists' ammunition is coming from the charities, schools, teachings, and treasuries of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf. There is no need to hold America's door open to them.

His mosque's reaction makes me sad.

I support this guy, and hope that he gets enough press that even more Muslims start speaking up publically. If the people making the war decisions on our side are too damn dumb to listen, maybe having voices of reason on the "terrorist" side will help. Not that I'm holing my breath, but I am hoping.

There was also some truth to Orientalism, which is what gave it power. The West had taken a very patronising approach to other cultures. However the reaction, not unsurprisingly, has swung too much back the other way.

I always shake my head when I hear leftwing feminists defending Islamic treatment of women on the basis that it is their culture and racist/colonialist/imperialist for us to condemn them for it.

Sorry, complete load of CRAP!

By that standard western women should still be second class citizens since it certainly wasn't part of European culture for women to be considered equal when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792.

Islam needs to move into the modern era or it can be rightly classed as a backward threat to modern society and treated accordingly.

The chauvinism inherent in Islam and obvious in the reaction to Miftah's article is a case in point. We have submitted to Allah therefore we are better than the kafars. We have more rights. We are special. We are owed etc. You don't build a healthy community on these beliefs. You don't become a functioning part of wider society with them. You see the same nasty communal issues in welfare communities that often develop similar psychological traits.

It doesn't help that Arabian culture has some nasty Luddite, intolerant and backward attributes and that is what Wahabism is in many ways: Bedouin Islam with its entire nasty habits writ large. The Saudi's have pushed this for half a century using oil money and now it runs rampant through Islam, turning what was a heterogeneous religion into a homogeneous and vile facsimile of Arabia.

really interesting. thanks for posting that.

Actually, this is not true at all. The Shia tradition for centuries was that the ulema, the leaders and scholars of Shiism, eschewed involvement in affairs of state, except to put pressure on leaders to lead justly and to follow Sharia law. It was Khomeini who violated this tradition and crossed the line into theocracy. And it was Khomeini who first used the fatwa for political purposes.

This conflation of mystical, fundamentalist religion and matters of state has been mirrored in the rise of Christian, Jewish and Hindu fundamentalism as well. I mean have you checked out
Christian Reconstructionism or The Christian Identity Movement or the Gush Emunim or looked into the BJP and Developing Hindu Fundamentalism

The essence of all fundamentalism is the fear of annihilation by modernism and the secular state. Hence, the "rational" choice of fundamentalists of all stripes is to take over the state.

As with any radical movement, speaking out against it is a betrayal - a sign that you have gone over to the dark side and are now the enemy.

As for this guy, I think that part of the issue (and I do not condone it) is that sharing internal conflict with the infidel is a no-no for many in the culture - although the Koran nor the Sunnah really say anything about it.

It's this sort of infantile all-or-nothing response that really really REALLY puts me off religion in general and fundamentalists in particular.

Yeah, me too, but just so we're clear, they hunted down and assassinated Trotsky in Mexico years after he left Moscow. So it ain't just religions that do this.

Well, if you believe that the community of western culture is healthy, then you do build one on these beliefs. Western culture was almost exclusively Christian by 1500 years ago - partly as a result of massive campaigns so consolidate political and religious power.

Over the intervening millenium and a half, the concept of being better and having more inherent rights than the "heathens" was enforced throughout Europe and its colonies. Any change liberalizing this idea is extremely recent, from a historical perspective.

Prior to the Christianizing of Europe, it really had no common cultural identity. The same is true of the Muslim world.

And I decry them as I object to the JDL or the tamil tigers.
(Although I do support the Montinyards)
When extreamists come to the front moderate voices dissappear from fear. This is when the choce must be made by the society of which direction to go. Horror and Ignorance or Change and Uncertanty. Islam is not rising to its challenge and becoming a horror.
There is little outcry from muslims and this poor fellow was chased out of his Mosque. God dosent want him because he speaks out? Its Wrong.
Once upon a time Islam stood for Intellect but they seem to has missed the enlightenment or gotten off the boat.
And yes poor Trotsky in the Study with an Ice axe;
Col. Alexander Litvinenko in London with radioactive material . Voices of light must tread carefully.

I am currently converting to Islam.... which of course will end my membership at SG... but that's besides the point. Islam is a religion of peace... I am in no position to judge another, but Osama Bin Laden is not a true Muslim. If anyone has any questions about anything, just message me or e-mail me at isa.delgadillo@yahoo.com. I am more than happy to answer and hopefully shed light on any questions or myths.

Assalam-u-Alaikum (May peace and blessings be upon you)