If they're really nursing political grievances under the guise of religion, how do they attract converts to their cause? Why do the terrorist cells find a comfortable home in mosques? Why did Muhammad Atta, as he taught classes in Islamic doctrine, not find his views contradicted by the peace and tolerance in the Qur'an? From Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
HAMBURG - A German who converted to Islam testified Tuesday to a Hamburg court about how he became acquainted with the main 11 September suicide attacker, Mohammed Atta, in a city mosque.The 23-year-old witness, whose name was withheld in line with ethics guidelines, was testifying at the trial of Mounir al- Motassadeq, a Moroccan student accused for the second time on charges of aiding murder and being a member of the Hamburg terrorist cell.
According to the witness, Motassadeq was in Atta's inner circle. The group became more and more committed to "jihad" or a holy war on behalf of Islam and regarded suicide attacks as a legitimate form of combat, the witness told the Hamburg state superior court.
Motassadeq denied at the first trial that he was part of the terrorist cell, but has exercised his legal right to remain silent at the re-trial. He was freed from jail after his first conviction was overturned on appeal and is seeking re-admission to university.
The state's evidence is based mainly on the network of friendships in the mosque group, with prosecutors saying Motassadeq must have had advance knowledge of the 11 September 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania....
The witness said he had converted to Islam while was still attending school in the city, and had made Atta's acquaintance in 1997 in Hamburg when Atta was giving classes on Islamic doctrine.
The debate is still going on. Should Islam be banned, or is this wrong?
http://www.bearstrong.net/warblog/000764.html#comments
Again this is just Islamophobia,remember CAIR insists Islam is a faith of Peace and tolerence
so this must be a CIA plot to help bush win the election.
Lets be fair people,just because the 99.6 percent of Muslims that live outside the USA
follow Islams tenets of smiting the Christian and Jewish pigs til they're dead,doesn't mean you should unfairly judge CAIR and other benevolent
Islamic groups that are the peaceful followers of Islam and just want to murder Gods children for the glory of Muhammed and Allah.
We're just not being open enough to see the world through their eyes,as filthy godless infidel pigs that deserve to rot in hell with the judgement of the merciful and loving Allah(PBUH)
we must know our place in the structure of Islam and submit to the peace and justice it offers.
So what if Muhammed was a misogenistic pedophile and murderer, 1.2 billion Muslims can't all be wrong ,can they?.
Find it difficult to believe Mossadeq DIDN'T know
anything about 9/11 intentions of Mohammed Atta & co.
Nice for him, he is seeking readmission to University whilst 3,000 Innocents will never have any choices : they were horribly burnt or blown to bits by Mossadeq's murderous friends.This guy should be deported at the very least. Notice, NOT ONE apology or even a sign of remorse about what did happen on 9/11...
OT:
Cha'nad, are you there?
I was away for while, and didn't have an opportunity to thank you for your responses to the multiple questions about your sect's views on such subjects as shariah etc.
The most fundamental, basic, foundational question was: Can you define a "right?"
You commented that that was a complicated question, and it would take a long time to answer.
If you are having difficulty, join the crowd. Because of the educational systems of most of the world, including that of the United States, most people are deprived from understanding just what a "right" is. Knowledge like that can rock many a boat.
Many people think of a "right" as some sort of privilege that can be granted (or taken away) by governments, not unlike a traffic law.
In fact, the philosophers of the Enlightenment came very close to understanding the nature of a "right" when the Constitution of the United States was conceived and written.
(By the way, Americans, the first official Thanksgiving was proclaimed by George Washington in October of 1789. It was to be the last Thursday in November of that year in gratitude for the Constitution. It was NOT the Puritans' harvest festival, grateful and thankful though they were. Given the philosophical "breakthrough" represented by the Constitution, and the protections of our rights resulting from it, perhaps we should all toast both George Washington and the Constitution he wished to honor with a Day of Thanksgiving. Most of us never knew this while we were learning American history.).
They described a "right" as "unalienable," something with which we human beings were "endowed."
Today, we would describe a "right" as something that is inherent in our nature, something innate, something part of us, something we are born with and therefore cannot be separated from.
If something is innate, if it is part of our nature, it cannot be separated from our physical being; it is as much a part of us as the requirement for food or water or the color of our eyes or skin.
A "right" is: "The biological mandate of a living entity to act to support its life in a manner consistent with its nature."
It is important to point out the words "...in a manner CONSISTENT WITH ITS NATURE."
Each entity has a specific nature. It has biological requirements which, if not met, will result in the termination of life.
Life is not guaranteed; it is conditional. It begins, and it ultimately ends. It exists only so long as conditions consistent with its requirements also exist--the availability of nourishment, safety from danger, temperatures that it can survive, water requirements, health and so on.
It's easy enough to see, for example, that an obligate carnivore such as a lion has a "right" to pursue a zebra so it can eat it, since it cannot survive unless it is able to eat animal protein. By the same token, the zebra has a "right" to try to escape the lion, since if it does not, it will surely die.
Every living entity has a nature that distinguishes it from every other. That distinguishing feature is the most important one to be satisfied in order to promote survival.
The particular distinguishing feature of human beings--the defining feature that above all others describes our nature as living entities and makes us different, by nature, from all others--is our capacity for REASON.
Unlike other conscious beings, we use concepts to acquire knowledge (epistemology), we have a moral code based on values chosen to guide our thoughts and behavior (ethics), we apply ethics, our moral code, to social behavior(politics), we have a view of our ability to use our minds to survive and thrive in the universe that lets us know whether the universe is a benign place or a malevolent one (metaphysics), and we develop art as a means of showing ourselves what is important in our lives, how life can be, what it should be (esthetics).
These are the five major branches of philosophy; the closer we come to getting it all right, then the closer we are to using our capacity for reason in our own best interest. If we are rational, it means we use our capacity for reason well. If we don't use our capacity for reason well, then we are less successful at pursuing those things that help us survive and thrive.
A "right" is indeed ours by our nature as living beings; a "right" cannot be given, granted, or taken away. "Rights" can only be violated by those who would try to create obstacles to our pursuit of life-supporting thoughts and behaviors, and that violation can only be accomplished through the initiation of physical force or its intellectual equivalent, fraud and deceit.
The old expression goes "Your rights stop at my skin."
There is much to be said for that, incomplete though it may be.
Posted by at August 18, 2004 10:23 AM