Not in the name of Islam

I have long held the view that terrorism cannot be defeated if it is blamed on a religion, as such I think nor religion, advocates terrorism. It is only when some people bend religion for a political motive that terrorism can be justified. The recent car bombings in U.K. is a call for all the majority of moderate muslims to stand up and say 'Not in the name of Islam'. Looks like progress is happening.

British Muslim group condemns car bombings
Tue Jul 3, 9:07 AM ET
Britain's main umbrella group of Muslim organisations on Tuesday strongly condemned the three failed car bomb attacks here, calling for cross-community efforts to tackle the extremist threat.
"Those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of us all," said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the moderate Muslim Council of Britain.
Speaking at a news conference at the MCB's east London headquarters, Bari said there was "no cause whatsoever" to justify the attempted bomb attacks in central London early Friday and at Glasgow airport on Saturday afternoon.
"Those who engage in such murderous actions and those that provide support for them are the enemies of us all, Muslims and non-Muslims, and they stand against our shared values in the United Kingdom," he added.
Bari's comments come amid continued concern among some sections of Britain's 1.6-million-strong Muslim community about radicalisation as well as government and police efforts to tackle it.
There have been complaints since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States that the Muslim community has been unfairly targeted after a series of high-profile raids.
Those concerns were exacerbated following the July 7, 2005, attacks on London, in which four British Islamist extremists blew themselves up on the capital's public transport network, killing 52 others and injuring over 700.
But like many commentators, Bari praised new Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for their "calm and reassuring" response and also singled out Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond for his calls for calm.
"It cannot be stressed enough that terrorists actively seek to divide us and to undermine our collective strength," he went on.
"To be successful in our collective effort to deal with the threats of terror it is imperative that we all work together.
"We need to have confidence and mutual trust in each other. The challenges facing us as a nation require us to work together for the joint benefit of all."
Bari and his deputy Daud Abdullah expressed their shock that up to six of the eight people in custody were medical doctors.
"As we have stated in the past, terrorism is not a regional nor a national matter. Neither does it have a profession or class," Abdullah told AFP as the MCB called on all Britons to help the police and the security services.

Yet another boil.....

Yet, another disgrace in the name of Islam and muslims. When will these people realize that this is wrong. Now it's going to be a while before a state is restored in Gaza. Almost similar to the coming of power by the taliban. This only brings misery to the ordinary people but may be Hamas and other millitant groups can enjoy their 'success'.

As Islamist gunmen mopped up his routed forces in Gaza, Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Palestinian government on Thursday and declared a state of emergency after six days of bloody faction fighting.
But as the United States rallied support for Abbas, Hamas fighters stormed remaining strongholds of his secular Fatah group in the Gaza Strip, leaving the presidential compound the last bastion of Abbas's authority in the enclave.
The violence has ripped apart Palestinian hopes for a state.
Hamas said Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, would ignore his dismissal decreed by Abbas in the West Bank. Jubilant Hamas men hunted down Fatah loyalists in Gaza, killing some and parading one top militant's mutilated body through the streets.
Abbas said in a statement he was "declaring a state of emergency in all the lands of the Palestinian Authority because of the criminal war in the Gaza Strip ... and military coup."
Medics said at least another 30 people were killed during the day, taking the death toll since Saturday to over 110 in a civil war that has ripped apart Palestinians' hopes for a state and leaves an aggressive Islamist entity on Israel's borders.
Abbas, the successor to the late Yasser Arafat who embraced negotiation with Israel to try to found a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, said he would form an emergency cabinet to rule by decree and held out the prospect of early elections.
But gun law not the constitution held sway in Gaza.
Gunmen hoisted green Islamist flags over Fatah buildings and pounded a Abbas' Gaza compound with heavy weaponry.
The White House accused them of "acts of terror" and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Abbas to emphasize support for Palestinian "moderates" but admitted that finding troops for any international force for Gaza would be tough.
Some of Gaza's impoverished 1.5 million people view with trepidation the success of religious rulers set on defying a crippling Israeli and Western embargo on the Strip. But Hamas, which enjoys support from Iran and Syria, has many supporters.
Rice's spokesman said she had "underlined U.S. support for President Abbas, for Palestinian moderates who made the commitment to working with the Israeli government, working with others around the world on the issue of peace."
Analysts believe that could signal an easing of year-old anti-Hamas sanctions on the West Bank to bolster Abbas.
PRISONERS
Casualty figures are unclear, as was the fate of Fatah fighters seen led away, bare-chested, after surrendering. There were unconfirmed reports of prisoners being shot.
A Fatah official in Gaza said he had seen eight colleagues gunned down while he escaped death "by a miracle."
Hamas's armed wing issued a statement saying it had "executed" Samih al-Madhoun of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a close ally of Abbas's top security aide Mohammad Dahlan. His body was later dragged through a Gaza refugee camp.
For Hamas fighters, some in camouflage uniforms, the fall of the security headquarters was a cause for celebration. They fired gunshots in the air to seal their victory and handed out chocolates to local people in the coastal enclave.
"Allahu akbar!" (God is Greatest) one chanted through a megaphone from the roof of the beachfront headquarters of Fatah's intelligence service, captured later in the day.
Others paraded in the streets and showed off weaponry seized from Fatah, whose forces the United States has helped train and arm in a bid to counter the rise of Hamas -- to little effect.
Diplomats told Reuters that an aide to Abbas had admitted that hundreds of Fatah's men ran from the battle or ran out of bullets during the fighting. Those in Abbas's own presidential compound in Gaza were among the few still holding out.
The Islamist group said it had also swept control of other Fatah strongholds across Gaza. Pro-Fatah broadcasts went off the air and the Voice of Palestine radio station was set ablaze.
Some Fatah gunmen retaliated against Hamas in the West Bank, shooting and wounding a Hamas man near Ramallah, seizing Hamas supporters in the towns of Jenin and in Nablus, where they also stormed a Hamas office and hurled its computers out the window.
Even businesses owned by Hamas supporters were targeted by angry crowds in the territory occupied by Israel, where some 2.5 million Palestinians live, in the hills around Jerusalem.
Hamas won a parliamentary election last year, triggering Western sanctions on the whole of the Palestinian Authority.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi and Wafa Amr in Ramallah and Ori Lewis, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem)

We need more of this.

BALI, Indonesia - Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, hosted an unusual gathering Tuesday of religious leaders and victims of terrorist attacks who denounced
Iran' 's president for claiming the Holocaust was a myth.
The daylong conference on the resort island of Bali brought together Indonesia's former President Abdurraham Wahid, Hindu spiritual head Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Buddhist teachers, a Jesuit priest and even rabbis — rare in a country that does not recognize
Israel or the Jewish religion.
One of the goals was to discuss ways to end the growing polarization between faiths since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Another was to counter a December conference hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that tried to cast doubt on the killing of an estimated 6 million Jews during World War II.
Wahid, who led Indonesia from 1999 to 2001 and remains a highly respected moderate Muslim leader, said it was important that people have the courage to speak the truth.
"Although I'm a good friend of Ahmadinejad, I have to say that he is wrong," he said. "I visited Auschwitz's Museum of Holocaust and I saw many shoes of dead people. Because of this, I believe the Holocaust happened."
A Jewish survivor of the Nazi genocide made an impassioned plea for tolerance.
"I hope people will learn from the past," said Sol Teichman, 79, who was a teenager living in Czechoslovakia when his city was occupied first by the Hungarian army and then the Germans. "We should try to improve life instead of destroying it."
The conference was sponsored by the Libforall Foundation, a U.S.-based organization that seeks to counter Muslim extremism in the Islamic world by supporting religious moderates, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance.
"Why are the Jews so concerned about the Holocaust? Well one-third of our people were killed and only within six to seven years," said Rabbi Daniel Landes, who teaches theology in Jerusalem.
"That abhors us not only as Jews, it's abhorrent to us as members of humanity," he said. "If it can happen once to a group of people, it can happen to everyone."
Security was tight at the five-star hotel that hosted the discreetly organized event.
Indonesia's government is secular and most of its 190 million Muslims are moderate, but a vocal militant fringe has grown louder in recent years. Al-Qaida-linked terrorists have twice attacked Bali — a mostly Hindu enclave — killing more than 220 people.
"It has been difficult for me to excuse in my heart those who committed this act," said Tumini, a Balinese woman who suffered severe burns over her body during a nightclub blast on the island in 2002.
She said she still has not recovered emotionally, physically or financially.
Holocaust survivor Teichman, speaking publicly for the first time in a predominantly Muslim nation, said Ahmadinejad's questioning of the Holocaust made him want to "push a little harder" to talk to Islamic leaders.
"I ask only one question," said Teichman, who was sent to Auschwitz, Dachau, and three other concentration camps before allied forces liberated him in 1945.
"If that is a lie, can you tell me what happened to my mother? To my sister? To my brothers? To my grandparents?"

The Liberals speak

Yeah, there are some people who have the guts to do what is needed. According to The News


Hundreds rally against religious extremism

Civil society opposes ‘state’ within state; urges govt to take action against Lal Masjid, Jamia Hafsa administration.

ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of rights activists rallied in big cities on Thursday against Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa, which are trying to impose a Taliban-style justice system.More than 300 demonstrators, around half of them women, rallied in the federal capital, chanting slogans including “No to terrorism and extremism” and urged the government to take action.“We want to mobilise public opinion against violations of the law by religious students and the inability and reluctance of the state to deal with these violations,” rally organiser Shireen Mazari told AFP.“The government should take very stern action against the rowdyism being demonstrated by the mosque’s administration,” leading rights activist AH Nayyar told AFP.Liberals and rights activists rallied in Lahore on Thursday to press the government to act against Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa.“Mullahs have ruined our society. They have distorted the image of Islam. We’ll not accept extremism anymore,” Jugnu Mohsin, a rights activist, told a rally after around 700 people had marched, shouting slogans outside the Lahore High Court.“It is government’s failure. They have been blackmailed by the Mullahs of Lal Masjid who are pushing the country towards Talibanisation,” Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Chairman Asma Jehangir said. -AgenciesSyed Bukhar Shah adds from Peshawar: Activists of various civil society organisations and political parties staged a protest demonstration in front of the press club and later took out a procession here on Thursday to condemn what they termed religious extremism propagated by the Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid in Islamabad.The Women Action Forum, Peshawar chapter, had given the call and activists of various NGOs, including Aurat Foundation, Action Aid, Noor Education Trust (NET), Human Resource Management and Development Centre (HRMDC), Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), Tribal Women Welfare Association (TWWA), Awami National Party (ANP) and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP), gathered in front of the press club to register their protest against the ongoing activities of the Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid administration. Tribal women from Khyber, Mohmand, Bajaur and Orakzai agencies were prominent among the participants.Carrying banners and placards inscribed with slogans against religious extremism, the participants chanted full-throated slogans against “bigotry in the name of enforcement of Shariah”.Speaking on the occasion, representatives of NGOs and political parties deplored that a moderate majority in the motherland had always been held hostage by a small conservative minority for the sake of vested interest. They said the clerics of Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid were trying to set up a state within the state by forcing the people to conform to their own brand of religion.Criticising the administration of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa, the speakers said that illegal occupation of the state land in the federal capital by fanatics in the name of religion was totally unacceptable. The protesters reminded the religious extremists that Islam did not permit coercion of any type and instead put stress on tolerance and humility.“Asking women to give up driving cars and threatening owners of shops to stop selling audiocassettes and video CDs and switch over to other businesses is nothing but an encroachment on the rights of the citizens,” they said.The civil society members asked all the freedom loving people to rise in unison and join hands against the religious intolerance and extremism. “It is a must as the actions taken by the intolerant religious elements of Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid are tarnishing the image of the country in the comity of nations,” they said, telling the baton-wielding students of the seminaries that the people of Pakistan were well-conversant with religious teachings and there was no need to force on them any ideology.The protesters said they have decided to organise various functions and seminars to educate the people regarding the on going activities of the seminary students in Islamabad. They said it would lead the country to civil war if the government did not stop the religious students from imposing their own brand of Islamic ideology on people.

A good point

Double standard


It was understandable that many Catholics were offended by the "chocolate Jesus," just as it is understandable that many Muslims were offended that their Prophet was deliberately and gratuitously mocked in Danish cartoons. All people of faith reject seeing their beliefs defamed so hatefully.However, death threats and violence on the part of either side is unacceptable. And, yes, newspapers were right in not reprinting the hateful cartoons, not out of fear, but out of journalistic ethics and the true meaning of free speech as opposed to hate speech.
Yet, why does Kathleen Parker apply double standards when she tries to say that violent threats from one side aren't as serious as when they come from another side? Is Parker blinded by a hatred of Islam and Muslims that becomes apparent when she makes stereotypical generalizations?Parker doesn't mention that the vast majority of the 1.3 billion Muslims condemned violence committed by a few people. Nor did she mention the peaceful protests by Muslims across the world or the boycotting of Danish goods, knowing that "money trumps everything." For Parker, Muslims -- broadly -- are people who are reactionary, unintelligent and animalistic, contrary to people of other faiths.More than ever, we need unprejudiced writers on our op-ed pages who are able to present fair arguments on issues affecting religious people so that we, readers from various religious backgrounds, can examine the root causes and offer solutions that are beneficial to our community and the world.Sabiha KhanExecutive DirectorCouncil on American-IslamicRelations -- Florida/Orlando

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/orl-le10_507apr10,0,1917972.story

Oceans of hatred and ıgnorance

This article appeared in Daily Times by Razi Azmi and it correctfully points out the ignorance and backwardness that is widespread among our so-called champions of Islam.

Oceans of hatred and ıgnorance

THINKING ALOUD: Oceans of hatred and jahiliya —Razi AzmiDaıly Tımes February 22 2007

Extreme conservatism, the preaching of jihad, Islamist supremacist chatter and terrorist attacks in Europe and America have allowed one Israeli academic to advance a theory that life can become untenable when the Muslim population of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per centSixty-six mostly elderly people from India and Pakistan visiting or returning from a visit to their relatives across the border were incinerated on a train. Not by accident, but by design. The carriage they were travelling in was firebombed by people who do not approve of the process of reconciliation and normalisation of relations between the two neighbours.No one has yet claimed responsibility and probably never will, for the crime is too ghastly to claim credit for. But one can easily surmise that the perpetrators are religious fanatics or religio-nationalist extremists. They could be Pakistani jihadists graduated from the many madrassahs that dot the land or Indian Hindu extremists from the Sangh Parivar. The perpetrators may choose to hide because of shame, but they stand stark naked before the bar of public opinion. In the name of religion they worship hatred, and are happy to sacrifice innocent human beings at its altar. “I haven’t seen anything like this. Some bodies were burnt beyond recognition, and I saw one pair stuck to each other at the stomach,” said a railway police inspector, Shiv Ram.Zille Huma, the Punjab minister of social welfare, has just been shot dead by a stonemason for simply daring to be a minister and not putting on the veil. Sarwar Mughal, fittingly known as Maulvi Sarwar, believed that a woman’s place in Islam was in the home and behind veils. And having arrogated to himself the role of lawmaker, judge and executioner, he killed the mother of two in Gujranwala, the political and cultural heartland of Pakistan.And why not? Maulvi Sarwar, like many before him, had a few years ago murdered six women for being ‘immoral’, but the case against him had been dismissed for “lack of evidence”. When it comes to women in Pakistan, especially poor women, it seems that men have an open season. Women are even less protected than the Hubara bustards.Brainwashing can do wonders. We have seen evidence of it throughout history and all around. North Korea is a good current example. Its starving and deprived people have successfully been led to believe by their despotic and totalitarian government that they live in a lucky country.But brainwashing in the name of God and with paradise as an incentive can achieve even greater results, as is obvious from the jihadists’ romance with murder, mayhem and suicide. No city, no country is safe from their grip: New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Nairobi, Casablanca, Riyadh, Cairo, Baghdad, Bali, Islamabad and Kabul. The list lengthens.Suicide bombings are now occurring in Pakistan almost on a weekly basis. As in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban are making short shrift of all kinds of ‘infidels’ –teachers, social workers, women activists, shi’as, army recruits, judges and lawyers.Further afield, Iraq is in the throes of a civil war and a sectarian conflict so gruesome as to defy imagination. Multiple suicide bombings of markets and buses occur every day and the monthly death toll is in the thousands. On Tuesday, in one attack, thirteen members of a family from a tribe known to oppose the actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq were killed on the road to Falluja.If fantasy and hatred are the end-products of indoctrination, then ignorance is their breeding ground. The parents of 24,000 children in the tribal areas in northern Pakistan have refused to allow health workers to administer polio vaccinations. Rumours are rife that the vaccine is a US plot to sterilise Muslim children, the aim of which is to depopulate Muslim countries.Imams and maulvis in the NWFP used loudspeakers, sermons and illegal radio stations to spread this message to villagers. The scare-mongering and appeals to Islam echoed a similar campaign in the Nigerian state of Kano in 2003. The disease then spread to 12 polio-free countries over the following 18 months.Dr Abdul Ghani Khan, chief surgeon at the main government hospital in Bajaur, was killed when a remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded as he was returning from a jirga (tribal council) to debunk rumours of an ‘infidel vaccine’ and persuade people to immunise their children against polio. Paramedic Hazrat Jamal, who is one of the three injured in the explosion, said that the residents of Mullah Said Banda were against the polio campaign. “As soon as we reached there, an armed prayer leader warned us against visiting the area. Some locals said: “On one hand, our enemy (a reference to the United States) is bombing us for no reason while on the other hand you are coming here disguised as polio campaigners to spread vulgarity,” he told Daily Times at the hospital. One recalls that when the US government first introduced the Diversity Visa lottery programme in the early 1990s, many people in Pakistan, Bangladesh and elsewhere refused to believe that the US government could mean what it said. It was widely suggested that the DV programme was a conspiracy and a trap to blacklist applicants for visa purposes.The fact is that the Washington was perfectly honest and truthful in this matter. Thousands of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and others have been able to migrate to and settle in the US by being successful in the draws. In other words, while the programme sounded too good to be true, the US government acted faithfully and implemented it just as it said it would, year after year.Nobody should be surprised that resistance to the polio vaccinations is highest in areas where conservative clerics and self-styled ‘Pakistani Taliban’ hold sway. It is worth mentioning that everywhere and always, Muslim ulema have consistently opposed the spread of science and education.Also worth mentioning is the fact that some women have been brave enough to defy their men on the issue of polio vaccination. According to a report, “up to 200 babies a day are vaccinated at the Khyber teaching hospital in Peshawar, where burqa-clad women arrive with children in their arms. Some arrive in secret, slipping into the clinic in defiance of male relatives who oppose vaccination.”Extreme conservatism, the preaching of jihad, Islamist supremacist chatter and terrorist attacks in Europe and America have allowed one Israeli academic to advance a theory that life can become untenable when the Muslim population of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent. Professor Raphael Israeli, who specialises in Islamic history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said Muslim immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.Professor Israeli said that in France, which has the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There were regions even the police were scared to enter, and militant Muslims were changing the country’s political, economic and cultural fabric. “French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.”The Jewish professor may simply be advancing Israeli interests in promoting this theory, but the world is listening, for there are a lot of worried people out there. Irrespective of what the people of the world may think of jihadists and extremists, surely the masses of Muslims present a picture of backwardness and ignorance, best captured by the Arabic word ‘jahiliya’.
The writer may be contacted at raziazmi@hotmail.com

Guilty unless proven innocent

Who are the bad guys? What is the 'definition' of a bad guy? These are questions I have always thought of. I may have not found the complete answer yet but there is one thing for sure. We all view the others side of people (whom we do not understand) with suspicion and if they do not fall in line with our personal interests the punishment for the other side is they get labeled as ‘bad guys’. Fox channel has come out with the new series ‘24’ which is supposed to show Muslims succeeding in blowing up a nuclear device near Los Angeles. May I ask what great purpose does this serve? Isn’t this taking monetary advantage of people’s fears and gaining on the stereotypes. Shouldn’t there be a debate on the ethics of such show? Doesn’t this contribute towards hostile feelings towards Muslims? And then the question you hear every once in a while is that ‘why are Muslims not speaking out against terrorism?’ Does it ever dawn on someone that there comes a point when the individual gets tired of proving that he is not a terrorist? Fox can afford to spend millions of dollars to make a stereotypical show like this, how many thousands can I spend to go out there and prove to every one I am not a terrorist. When does it just become too much? Full story here.