Dhimmitude in the holy month, as protests mount against the visit of a legitimate representative of a sovereign state. From Haaretz, with thanks to Twostellas:
CAPE TOWN - Hundreds of Muslims in South Africa marked the start of the holy month of Ramadan with marches Saturday to protest a visit next week by Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert is expected in the country next week to discuss strengthening economic ties with South Africa."Suddenly economics is more important than human suffering," said Mandla Sishi of the Palestinian Solidarity Group, which helped organize a demonstration in Cape Town, one of three major cities where rallies were staged.
"We call on our government to cease negotiations with Israel. Impose sanctions on Israel now," Sishi told a crowd of about 500 people gathered outside the District Six mosque at the foot of Table Mountain.
But sanctions is not all they want:
Marchers waved placards reading, "Death to Israel," "Sharon the butcher" and "Stop the holocaust in Palestine."
"Death to Israel" and "Stop the holocaust in Palestine"? So some holocausts are better than others, eh?
Would these be the same Muslim groups that have been firebombing restaurants and cafes they deem "immoral" and making life hell for non-Muslims -- as best they can -- in overwhelmingly Christian South Africa? They may discover that non-Muslims in South Africa are not quite so intent as Western Infidels on turning the other cheek -- as Nigerian Christians have previously demonstrated.
When Colonel Ojukwu, the leader of the Christian Ibo against what Ojukwu, in the Ahiara Delcaration, rightly called the "jihad" against the Christians of Nigeria, led the movement to create a free Biafra, the cause of Nigerian Christians -- from under whose land, after all, all the oil comes, just as the oil in the Sudan is under the lands where non-Muslims live -- few heeded him. But the African Christians understand perfectly what Islam is all about. Would that Western Christians, so pale and wan and etiolated in their beliefs (at least in Western Europe -- America is another matter), heeded the African example.
No doubt there is some residual thirdworldism which permits the Arabs, despite the murders in the southern Sudan and now Darfur, the Egyptian pilots who bombed Ibo villages and killed tens of thousands, the Arab enslavement of black Africans in Mauritania and Mali, the longstanding slave trade that was conducted by Arab slavers in the interior, which began earlier, and ended later, and was far more devastating, than the slave trade conducted in West Africa by Europeans, to continue to pretend that there is some identity of interest between themselves, who without lifting a finger have acquired trillions of dollars from oil revenues, and black Africans, who have never been anything but the victims of Arab brutality, including massacres (Darfur and the southern Sudan are only recent, and publicized examples of what has gone on through the last millennium), forced islamization, and political manipulation (ever since the 1967 war, when the Arabs forced the black African states to cut ties to Israel, and to cease receiving Israeli economic assistance, for which the black Africna states received, in return, not any Arab aid -- save for the occasional bribed dictator -- neither economic aid, nor aid in irrigation and farming projects, which had been an Israeli specialty. No, from the Arabs, since 1967, the black Africans have received nothing.
These morons have no grasp of history or logic. what Holocaust in Palestine ? How can the death of 50 islamic terrorists in one month be judged a holocaust ? Sad isn't it that black Africans whine about a supposed "genocide" in Palestine whereas the reality is that a real holocaust is being commmitted against their fellow Africans in Sudan. They can't protest against that though because they have been brainwashed by islam into always supporting Arab Imperialism and it's bloodlust. Talk about the living (brain) dead !
Doesn't the following sound good! It was taken from the Khilafah.com site, expounding the virtues and explaining the wonderful religion/politics of the cult of Islam.
I bet the black Muslims and others of Darfur and Sudan would love to see this!
"The Islamic way of ruling is to equate between the subjects in all the regions of the state. Islam grants non-Muslims who hold citizenship, the full rights and duties that Muslims have. They enjoy the same fairness as Muslims and are subject to the same accountability like them. Furthermore, every single citizen, regardless of his or her creed, enjoys rights that even a Muslim living abroad who holds no citizenship does not enjoy. With this equality, the Islamic system differs completely from the Imperial one. It does not make the regions under its ruling into colonies, areas of exploitation, nor a source of wealth funneled back into the central region for its own benefit, no matter how far apart they were, and no matter how different their races were. It considers every single region as a part of the state and its citizens enjoying the same rights as those in the central region. It also makes the ruling authority, its system and its legislation the same in all the regions. "
This site also states clearly that if the Khalifate (rule by Islam) in any country is resisted, one must cut off their heads. And this is the Law!
I can see how utopian idealists would think that this is all just wonderful, these promises of fairness and equality, just as they have about socialism and communism. Too bad the promises don't pan out, men being men, people being people - natural and unnatural drives taking the forefront over 'do unto others' everytime.
It seems that regardless of how 'good' and 'holy' those of superior morals among us profess to be, they eventually show themselves to be as bad or even worse as the more humble among us, aware of and regretful for our human failings. Note: Priests, Swaggarts, Bakers, Imelda Marcos, Bennetts, Stewarts, and perhaps now, O'Reilly's. Not to mention politicians in general....and notable CEO's, charities that defraud compassionate contributors. Yes, we should trust each other, but count the money anyway.
Islam demands that the people put explicit TRUST and BELIEF in the religious leaders who have been chosen to have total control over their lives. If anything goes wrong, such as a high and mighty Imaam (wham bam thank you M'aam) doing anything untoward, you may be powerless, but just wait, Allah will deal with him sooner or later. Just leave it to Allah. Like, 'Just wait until your DAD comes home!", he'll deal with that bully.
Yeah, that works.
Thank you once again, Mr. Spencer, for your thought provoking site. I've been here, reading and thinking for hours, doing my morning studies. I tell people I'm in school every morning, learning world history and social studies. :>)
Some perspective on the above story. Though not a fan of the Jihadist ideology and the ‘blame it all on Israel’ bandwagon attached to it (as my previous posts amply demonstrates), I have to explain a bit about the South African (and especially Cape) Muslim community. Unlike the Muslim communities of Western Europe and North America which consists mostly of recent immigrants, the Cape Muslim community is more than 300 years old. Centuries of isolation from the rest of the Muslim world ensured that a particularly tolerant and accommodating brand of Islam developed at the Cape. Also Muslims were tied to the wider society and culture in ways that make them ‘South African’ first and foremost. They made valuable contributions in terms of cuisine, music (Yes music! New years day in the Cape is traditionally celebrated by a music festival in which Muslim troupes compete against each other), language (the first written Afrikaans was written by Muslims in the Arabic script!) and even the visual arts.
Of course you get the radical stream. Organisations like PAGAD and Qibla tries periodically to stir up trouble, and the Cape went through a really bad patch of bombings in the 90’s as Hugh mentioned. The refreshing thing however was that this problem was dealt with from within the community itself. Perpetrators were brought to book and testified against by fellow Muslims! There hasn’t been a single bomb since. The Cape community also seems to manage to resist wholesale radicalisation. 500 people out of about 300 000 attending a protest is really not all that significant.
The following letter which appeared in ‘Die Burger’ (an Afrikaans daily) is instructive. In it an Imam registers his protest against a photo which appeared in the paper which showed a completely veiled woman praying. (Some excerpts, free translation from the Afrikaans): “The hidden face of the Muslim girl does not give a true reflection of local Muslim dress and presents a twisted picture of us and our faith. The way she is dressed represents certain pre-Islamic norms and does not represent us today… We want to be seen for who we truly are. That is: Cape Muslims. Yes the roots of our faith is in the Middle East, but genetically we are linked to our Christian neighbours…The Retreat (a suburb of Cape Town) Muslim Forum would like to serve as a critical voice against any twisted portrayal of Cape Muslims as fundamentally different from our Christian neighbours, family and countrymen.” The difference between the Cape Muslim community and many others is that this opinion is uncontroversial and more or less represent mainstream Cape Muslim opinion!
I want to reiterate. I deplore Jihadist ideology. I am also not trying to pretend that this is a community is without problems, or a radical fringe. Still we have to encourage examples of largely integrated Muslim communities where we see it – I believe that Cape Islam is an example of this.
There are some worrying factors as far as SA Islam is concerned though: 1) The Northern Muslim communities (Kwazulu Natal and the old Transvaal provinces) have strong links with Pakistan and are much less assimilated. It is clear that Muslim militants from other countries manage to disappear amongst them. 2) Arab groups are hard at work as far as Da’wa activity in South African black ‘townships’ is concerned. The bring social services and with it a radical brand of Islam. It is interesting that the person mentioned in the article has a Xhosa name (Mandla – meaning ‘power’), he is therefore most probably a black Muslim converted to Islam through Arab sponsored Da’wa activity. Interestingly enough most Cape Muslims deplore the activities of the Arab da’waists. They also keep their distance in practical ways. The Arab funded Mosques at the Cape are not in traditional Muslim areas but rather in the ‘townships’ where people are not so picky as to where their funding comes from.