OT: Article By A Former Islamic Terrorist - OR - Wake Up And Smell The Coffee

[Guest guest]

Howdy y'all,

 

The below article (dated yesterday) was sent to me by one of our nice

list members .. it is timely .. it sorta says in words that I am not

capable of saying .. pretty much what I was trying to get across with

my first post on the dangers of Islamic Fundamentalism.

 

I am repeating the entire post because I believe that only Wall Street

Journal members can open it .. members can find it at ..

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009890

 

The author is Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a one time member of Jemaah Islamiya,

an Islamist Terrorist Group. He is a now medical doctor and Muslim

reformer living in the West. The title of his article is, " The

Trouble With Islam " , and knowing Islam as I do .. I cannot disagree

with any point he makes.

 

Also interesting is his point that many Western " Progressives " who

claim to support human rights and the downtrodden .. are actually

obstacles to reform of Islam. If you think on it a bit .. these same

" Progressives " don't do much to help minorities in America .. lip

service is about all we can expect from them.

 

It has long been popular for certain Politically Correct groups in the

U.S.A. and in Europe to list reasons why some folks just can't seem to

get out of the hole they find themselves in .. it has to be the

system's fault because the system doesn't treat them fairly. I agree

that there are some who have less chance of success than others .. but

there are many amongst that group who made their own chance. The

world is not yet at a point where it can guarantee a rosey environment

for the rearing of all children. Perhaps someday the government will

decide to build a bunch of homes and schools and take youngsters away

from those parents who don't live a lifestyle that some team of

experts decides is the correct atmosphere for raising younguns.

 

Finding justification for bad behavior only reinforces continuation of

that bad behavior.

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

 

The Trouble With Islam

 

Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.

 

BY TAWFIK HAMID

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

 

Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published

a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled " What Went

Wrong? " Astonishingly, there was, among many Western " progressives, " a

vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics

protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things

have been, or could be, right.

 

But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic

world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang

from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of

Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other

daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the

ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic

establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily,

the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come,

actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.

 

These " progressives " frequently cite the need to examine " root

causes. " In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation

of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite

different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya,

a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know

firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can

transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without

confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be

impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological " rootlets "

of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam,

a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.

 

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic

teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows

apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them,

seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies

declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the

Jews before the " end of days. " The near deafening silence of the

Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough

that there is something fundamentally wrong.

 

The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack

of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that

clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism,

more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not

provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel

proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20

years I have been developing and working to establish a

theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.

 

Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western

intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have

become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among

Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity.

They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism

such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of

Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when

Western " progressives " pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if

the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder

why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances

refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.

 

Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that

Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This

analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder

of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last

few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or

the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything

to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and

opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural

relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live

under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot

vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

 

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to

self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans

demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate

against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them.

Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish

citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But

once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror

attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message

to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.

 

Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the

problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the

Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few

violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish

magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The

apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.

 

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners.

It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal

identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to

morally support America's enemies.

 

Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an

antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and

practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that

Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take

for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we

experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.

 

Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been

fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim

organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce

violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims

who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be

considered " moderates. "

 

All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When

Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually

endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of

suppressing their voices.

 

Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of

relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the

reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue

to face us.

 

Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist

group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West.