But their efforts are hindered by the high-profile pro-jihad activities of people like Omar Bakri. From the Christian Science Monitor, with thanks to Kemaste:
LONDON – Hunched in black robes over his microphone, Sheikh Omar Bakri suddenly heaves himself upright in rhetorical climax and pounds the table. "Embrace capitalism or Christianity, you go to hellfire!" he bellows. The crowd of men seated before him nod in agreement as Sheikh Bakri warns against misplaced sympathy for Western society."Don't think that because [the unbelievers] give us income support we should have less hate," he continues. "Because we hate not for our sakes, but for the sake of Allah."...
Hard-line Islamists like Bakri have become the bête noire for Britons who question whether the growing ranks of Muslims here want to integrate more fully into society. This anxiety, felt throughout Europe, has intensified after weeks of headlines played up the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamic extremist.
It's an anxiety felt acutely by Britain's 1.8 million Muslims. They are one of the country's fastest-growing, poorest, and least educated minorities. But many are struggling to repair a reputation tattered by home-grown radicals like Bakri and find a place in mainstream society. And despite setbacks to their image, they are making progress.
• Muslim leaders supported a government initiative to filter out extremists by imposing an English test on foreign imams seeking work permits.
• Mosques are transforming themselves into community hubs in an attempt to dampen the mistrust and alienation that observers say can cause some young Muslims to turn to radicalism in the first place.
• Many mosques now host regular interfaith discussions, organize after-school youth groups, and have worked with local police to foster goodwill.
• Muslims voted in record numbers at this summer's European elections, defying both radical imams' and some non-Muslims' view that Islam and democracy don't mix.
"The Muslim community has to stand up and be counted as a British Muslim community," Khurshid Ahmed, spokesman for Muslim issues at the Commission for Racial Equality, told the BBC.
Many Muslims seem to agree. A recent poll commissioned by The Guardian newspaper showed that 33 percent of Muslims wanted more integration into mainstream British culture.
"The generation that's grown up here calls itself British and Muslim," says Imam Yunus Dudhwala, "and I don't think that's a contradiction."
But the same poll showed that 26 percent of British Muslims felt integration has gone too far.
"We have pockets who ... feel that even integration is a threat to their way of life," explains Ibrahim Mogra, head of the Muslim Council of Britain's Imams and Mosques Committee.
Indeed, Muslim parents often worry - with some justification - that their kids will pick up un-Islamic behavior from their English peers.
"Muslim girls aren't supposed to smoke and drink and hang about out on the street like boys," says Ima, a Muslim woman out shopping for a new sari in her Muslim neighborhood.
But when she slips into a side-street for a quick cigarette, she confirms fears that mainstream British culture will corrupt traditional Islamic values....
• In 2001, Richard Reid, a British convert to Islam, boarded an American Airlines flight with shoes packed full of explosives. (Crew members restrained him before he could set them off.)
• In 2003, two British Muslims blew themselves up in a Tel Aviv bar, killing three and wounding 55.
• British-born mujahideen were found fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
• Last spring, British police foiled a massive bombing plot by Muslims targeted inside Britain.
• And three British Muslims are alleged to have joined the radical insurgency of Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.
Although some blame the media, many Muslims - especially younger ones - complain that their community lacks unity and strong leadership.
"I don't think there are inspiring spokespeople for mainstream Islam, and that's a major problem," says Wasif, who runs a graphic design business.
Above all, moderates say, mainstream Muslims must confront the extremism that has taken root in Britain.
"Much of the Muslim leadership has not only denied the problem, it has maligned and ostracized those who have attempted to address it," stormed Fareena Alam, the managing editor of the Muslim magazine Q-News, in a column for The Observer newspaper last April.
This is the same point that was made some time ago by the BBC: the radicals present themselves as teaching "pure Islam," and the moderates have no effective comeback -- and they won't, until they address honestly the fact that jihad ideology does have deep roots in the Qur'an and Sunnah, and have the courage nevertheless to repudiate it.
This is exactly what I was saying in another comments posting. "Moderate Muslims" are going to have to get their heads out of the sand. YOU CANNOT CHANGE WHAT YOU DON'T ACKNOWLEDGE. They refuse to acknowledge that there is no hedge against radicalism in their own holy writ. Instead, they try to continue living in a state of Denial and mouth mealy mouth platitudes like, "Islam isn't about that." "Islam is a religion of Peace." etc.
If they want to reform their religion, they are going to have to be honest about where the problems lie - in the Qur'an. Anything less than that is a foolhardy attempt to deny the obvious reality of the truth.
The Christian Science Monitor article tells us, in effect, nothing -- for what does it mean if "33% of British Muslims want more integration into mainstream British culture"? Does it mean: we want to stay as we are, but to be accepted -- i.e. to be in a better position to conduct Da'wa, to be free from scrutiny, and so on? Does it mean: we really can't bear the constraints of Islam but can't admit to that, and wish we could be part of a freer "British culture"? Does it mean we want greater sexual freedom, or tattoos, or rock music, but will still continue to hate Infidels because that manichaean division between Believer and Infidel remains, whatever else changes at the edges?
The more one reads the article, the less one can be sure of drawing any conclusions. Again, one is left with the "Manchurian Candidate" or "My son the fanatic" problem -- one never knows who will metamorphose from "moderate" to "immoderate" Muslims. And someone who is "immoderate" in is Islam is a permanent threat. And the "moderate" Muslims, when it comes to political power, and stifling criticism, lend weight and influence -- in the first case simply that of numbers, in the second by their attempted denial or feigned ignorance of the essence of Islam -- are as dangerous as the "immoderate" ones.
The endless discussion of moderates and immoderates gets Infidels tangled in knots, and off the point. The point is that Islam itself is a threat to everything about Western civilization that is worth saving; that it has a record, after Jihad-conquest, of subjugation of all non-Muslims -- those who are allowed to live -- that results, the historical record over 1350 years shows very clearly, of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. This was studied by a number of scholars in the past, who then died, and whose work, over the past 40-50 years, has been overlooked (one thinks of Dufourcq, for example.
But Bat Ye'or, in her work that makes use of many of those scholars, but goes far beyond a work of synthesis, relying as well on the testimony of non-Muslims -- dhimmis themselves (the chronicle of Arakel of Tabriz, for example), and Western diplomats, and the historical record is filled out -- so that the scandalous scanting of Muslim intolerance, Muslim aggression toward all non-Muslims, Muslim indifference to all pre-Islamic or non-Islamic civilizations.
In this respect, it should be recalled that it was not Muslims, but Westerners, who unearthed the artifacts of the great pre-Islamic civilizations of the Near East, which is why the attempt by some Muslim natives of the area to claim a special insight into those artifacts is so comical (e.g. Zainab Bahrani at Columbia, Saidian Junior-Grade, apparently believes she has some special ability that Leo Oppenheim or Henry Layard or Leonard Woolley, as Westerners, cannot possibly possess - a nice way of carving out a jobs program exclusively for Arabs and Muslims, though they never showed much interest in non-Islamic civilizations, and both the Cairo and the Baghdad Museums were British in origin --the latter, for example, originating in Gertrude Bell's Department of Antiquities).
Islam is a threat to art, science, human freedom. It is a kind of fascism. Those who objectively further its interests, who swell its ranks, and who help to prevent a clear understanding of what it is all about -- those who sang soothing lullabies While Europe Slept during the past 40 years of Muslim migration, are part of the problem, whether or not some of them claim, without more, that they wish for "greater integration" into "British culture." There is one way to assure that: drop Islam. Why should anyone, made aware of its doctrines, and of how it stunts the mental growth of its adherents, and of how it is a constant source of hostility toward all Infidels, that those desiring such "greater integration," and of course acceptance by the Infidels around them -- so strangely more rational, kinder, altogether more appealing, than their fellow Muslims -- should rethink the power of that filial piety that prevents them from acting like Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Azam Kamguian, Irfan Khawaja, and a great many others.
What is this fantastic hold of this belief-system? What blend of brainwashing and family pressure, and social pressure, forces people to stay within? When one thinks of how much one must avoid discussing, or embarrassedly to try to hasten quickly over -- just take Aisha, or Sura 9, or the Bani Qurayza, or the Khaybar attack, or the "science" discovered in the Qur'an which presumably explalins everything -- from geologic upheavals, to subatomic particles, to DNA. How much of this stuff can a rational human being, living in the West, continue to put up with, because he (or she) is fond of a devout grandmother or some similar tug on the heart?
The relief that so many ex-Muslims have felt, upon no longer pretending to be Muslims at all, and being able to tell the truth about Islam -- the weight that falls from psychic shoulders, if the awkward metaphor may be allowed -- is great. Free at last, free at last. Amazing what a grip certain kinds of dogma. How many Muslims, or people born into Islam, now living in the West, really would wish for their children to be limited and constrained and forever engaging in lies with their Infidel colleagues and friends --which is what they will have to do, or to keep well away from the subject of Islam altogether? Surely there are those who, in the freedom of the non-Muslim world, and looking back at the disarray, despair, hysteria, and sheer craziness of Muslim public discourse (look at the press, look at the television, look at the level of thought), will come to realize that Islam itself is what has limited the potential of Muslims. It is the cause of lack of freedom, fatalism instead of economic industry and entrepreneurial activity, social inequalities based on the suppression of women and non-Muslims, and intellectual failures, which will always result when people are satisfied by a Total System of Explaining the Universe, instead of being encouraged to use their minds.
The poll reported tells us nothing of what lies behind the desire for "greater integration" into British society -- some for good reasons, some for silly reasons, some for sinister reasons.
Infidels will not be impressed -- and should not be impressed even if 100% of Muslims in a poll answer "Yes" to such questions as "Want better releations with people of other faiths" OR "Want greater integration in society" or "Want to participate enthusiastically in political system." A "Yes" in every case can be more dangerous for the Infidels than a "No" if one thinks clearly about what it may mean (and even allowing for taqiyya, where a yes can hide a no, a no hide a yes).
I have noticed for years that the word hypocrisy seems to escape many muslims for some reason, maybe it does not exist in Arabic? As you read about the rants of Shiekh Omar Bakri and those who follow his Islamic thinking, one always wonders; why are they living in the middle of a bastian of capitalism,democracy, and Christian beliefs while at the same time condeming it? Is it that they are the marching soldiers for Islam, hoping to eventually bring their totalitarian beliefs to where they will control all of the EU and Britain possibly in the next 75 years or so ?
The first thing that hist you upon reading the headline is that 2/3rds of them don't wanna join the social mainstream. And 2/3 is by no means a tiny minority of extremistrs, its a clear bloody majority. And make no mistake, these dorks who refuse to integrate are the greatest high-risk group for jihadi recruitment. Sure, Atta and co. weren't really in this camp but the majority seem to come from there.
Actually, Mackie, the reason why it drops from their mouths so quickly is that many of them are the MASTERS OF HYPOCRISY.
For example, liquor is taboo to Muslims, yet it is quite well known that the people at the top of the food chain have a little hidden in their homes when they want to get a party going. The Bin Ladens were well known to get on a jet plane for a night on the town and fly to Paris, or the French Riviera. They would get on the jet with their Muslim clothing and once the plane got into the air, they would change into Western clothing and wear it until they were getting ready to land back in Saudi Arabia hours or days later. Years back, I overheard an Egyptian Muslim talk about how women in her country would don the Hijab because they wanted to look pious and devout, but once they came home, slipped into jeans and an almost see-through blouse. I also heard another person say that they knew the limits of the law (Sharia Law that is) and they would find ways around it whenever possible.
So, it seems that Hypocrisy is a real problem in Islam. People put on a good show when it suits their purpose, but when no one is watching they sneak a bit on the side.
As to them making comments about our hypocricy??? Well, that is a simple issue of projection. We may be somewhat hypocritical as well, but at least - for the most part - when we are called onto the carpet, we admit it. I am not so sure this happens with the Muslims.
Yes I do recall staying at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas several years ago and hearing that a Saudi Sheikh and his entire entourage had taken over the entire top floor of the hotel and dropped millions there. I read that Baghdad is awash with hoses showing porno flicks to Muslim men , and of course western society is responcible for this happening.
I've heard the same type of rumors regarding the Saudis. Once they leave Saudi airspace, they break out the booze and the blondes. Hows that for hypocrisy?
The fact that...
"Muslims voted in record numbers at this summer's European elections, defying both radical imams' and some non-Muslims' view that Islam and democracy don't mix."
Isn't necessarily a good thing. Over 75% of muslims voted Liberal in Canada's last election while only 1% voted Conservative. Despite the fact that on domestic issues muslims have FAR more in common with conservatives they voted on the basis of Israel. Our Liberal government not only is biased towards Palestine but they resisted labelling Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The muslims take credit for the narrow minority victory the Liberals achieved.
Benelux:
I suggest going to the university's website and e-mailing the links, article and the comment to all his superiors - department heads, deans, chancellors, or whatever else they are called in your system. Go all the way up the "chain of command" to the very top, and write an accompanying letter expressing your outrage. Don't just let it lie - make him accountable to his superiors for his views. At the very least it may cause him a few uncomfortable situational moments.
re:
"Does anyone else find it extraordinary that any western university would employ a person who supports the death penalty for a child who is herself a victim? No doubt these colleges are thus far unaware just how extreme this professor's views are."
benelux,
First off, nice piece of research.
Secondly, no, I do not find it particularly extaordinary that this guy would be employed by a western university. For a long time now, universities have gone out of their way to make room for those who can only be described as "intellectual perverts." Academic freedom, you know.
Lastly, although some of his colleagues would probably be disgusted with his views, these types, those with the capacity for decency, no longer have the power to remove those who don't.
"Stoning is a duty laid down in Allah's Book for married men and women who commit adultery when proof is established, or it there is pregnancy, or a confession. (Sahih Muslim, Book 017, Number 4194)
You people do not understand our traditions yet. Your grandchildren will be muslim"
Sounds like my old friend reza the borg master. If they keep stoning their own grandchildren I guess we won't have to worry about them being muslim eh?
Some speculation:
Such belief in Sharia and 'divine revelation' in the Qu'ran probably leads to irrational bias in linguistics (note an article on Arabic and Hebrew grammar. Why Hebrew? A guess: Arabic cannot play second fiddle to Hebrew. There must be something in Arabic grammar that 'reveals' something.). Again, I don't know his work, but folks might look for subtle suggestions for some kind of 'a priori' structures, the seeds of an 'immutable divine grammar' (which will be called something else), that sort of thing: 'The grammar of God'. And, Arabic must have something to do with it all. That's a guess. If it proves true, folks at UCD should feel very uneasy having this fellow around.
Hugh,
The Soviet empire and the doctrine that supported it collapsed with a clamorous thump because its magnificent solidity. Its monolithic structure lent it a formidable strength but alas! it on the other hand hid inside its enormous fabric the secret of an Achilles heel: the incapacity to reform from within, to steer, to adapt; the well known features common to all mastodonic creatures.
If you try to alter an element or two of, say, a building, you need elements to start with, don’t you? Faced with the necessity to adapt or reform, an ideology whose tenets are famously written on a basalt rock, cannot do it without compromising the whole bloc. Doesn’t matter how uncomfortable or absurd, an iron-cast building indeed is a quake-proof thing designed to last for ever. But when it becomes an old-fashion architectural oddity it defies reform, other than the one accomplishable with a truckload of TNT. Its modest brick-by-brick counterpart may have not been intended to last long but on occasion of a necessary facelift, the constructor can always resort to just taking away the compromising bricks to be replaced by a fancier variety. Shortly said: you cannot have it all. It is precisely keeping this law in mind that I propose the following axiom: a sincerely moderate islamist is the one who proclaims he is not islamist at all.
Hugh, Being yourself a fantastically well versed scholar in all the intricacies of the koranic text, please tell us all where in it or any of its accompaniments is contemplated the flatness of the Earth, just a silly example of the inept vision of an ignorant Bedouin who pretended to have a straight redline with God Almighty. If, as seems to be the case, God misled him on such a basic scientific piece of data, either Mohammad wasn’t too efficient as a messenger or…errr, hmm…God did not have a good day when He instructed his turbaned medium to propagate the up-teen eternal truth. Here you and we all (mohammadians inluded) have a simple example of the impossibility to admit a mistake after having proclaimed the absoluteness of everything koranic, written as it was ‘before Adam’s soul had been created’. Compare it with the however slow reaction of the Vatican to admit the validity of Charles Darwin’s theory, the Big Bang one (by the way, first mentioned in 1927 by an obscure Belgian priest named Georges Lemaître) or apologize for giving poor Galileo a headache.
Benelux
Excellent work my friend. Is there a newspaper or radio station in Ireland that we can get interested in following up on this story? I would especially like to hear his explanation for the assertion that "your grandchildren will be muslim"
The creepiness is astonishing, but I like people like him, who tell it straight, that dont lie about the truth of Islam.
Is there any instance of a man having been stoned to death for commiting adultery? I presume it has been done by the Taliban in Afghanistan but I've got the impresion that whenever the news hit the press that another of these barbaric capital punishments has been carried on (Saudi Arqabia, Iran) or is on its way to execution (Nigeria) it involves a woman or a girl.
"Hate them (the infidels) for the sake of Allah, even if they give us income support"-
This is about as good as keeping
rattlesnakes in the house for pets!
And we should not be allowed to hate them?
Cid -
As I understand it the male offender can only be found guilty if two or more MALE witnesses testify against him. In a sex case involving one male and one female, such witnesses are unlikely, to say the least! Testimony by a female witness doesn't carry the same weight as that of the male accused.
In this instance, the boy involved has apparently been jailed but is not in danger of execution.
Anyone who would like to know more about the case of 13 year-old Jila, and to sign the online petition asking for mercy, please check out --
http://www.stoning.webbyen.dk/
"Indeed, Muslim parents often worry - with some justification - that their kids will pick up un-Islamic behavior from their English peers.
"Muslim girls aren't supposed to smoke and drink and hang about out on the street like boys," says Ima, a Muslim woman out shopping for a new sari in her Muslim neighborhood.
But when she slips into a side-street for a quick cigarette, she confirms fears that mainstream British culture will corrupt traditional Islamic values...."
If that's how she feels, why didn't she stay in whatever country she comes from. And what about her own hypocritical behaviour, slipping into a side street to smoke where she is less likely to be observed...
"Hate them (the infidels) for the sake of Allah, even if they give us income support"-
That's part of the problem. STOP GIVING THEM INCOME SUPPORT. MAKE THEIR LAZY ASSES WORK AND THEY WILL HAVE LESS TIME FOR JIHAD.
An up-to-date set of links to Irish media can be found at www.abyznewslinks.com/irela.htm
Thanks, Paul, for the link - could be very useful!
Suzan:
A "good muslim" does not occupy himself with something so profane as "work". He needs to study that "holy book" and go to the mosque. Apart from that it is most important to meet other like minded Jihadis to plot and to conspire to bring about the end of Israel and other important matters!
I've always been amazed at how Muslims feel no guilt or shame by going to Christian based Countries as professed "Refugees" and then accept all the dirty money from the social programs that cover all their needs until their case it heard.
You would think they wouldn't want to offend Allah by being a unproductive financial burden
to the compassionate,generous Christain values
they seem to hate so much. Islamic States save allot of money by shipping their poor to democratic Countries where they can also have State funded programs to have a large family of kids born into Islam for future use as suicide bombers.
One major complaint by Imam's in Canadian Mosques is that our Tax laws forbid them from using the Mosque to promote a Political agenda,Muslims claim the Mosques is also a community centre and therefor allowed to hold anti-Government rallies or harbour failed refugees or deportee's refusing to leave.
I just don't trust the Quran or Islam,Muslims may be fine people on the surface and truely believe their faith is about Peace and Tolerance,but when the population gets large enough the militant wing of Islam will control the Mosques and resort to terrorism to impose Islam on others.
Last night a Muslim show claimed Christians will be glad for the return of Christ because he's a Muslim and when he destroys all the infidels there will no longer be a tax on them because the world will be Islamic ruled and this will bring peace because Muslims won't kill Muslims.
NO ISLAM - KNOW A LIVE THEO VAN GOGH
FYI:
Deidre Veldon
Editor
Irish Times
dveldon@irish-times.com
It would be great if any of our Irish friends could keep us updated on this and see what happens.
good work everybody!
I second Spencer's advice. And my speculation above is baseless, as far as I can tell.
The way the muslims want to integrate into the western society,is to bring it down to their level and to impose sharia on it,by way of political pressure,demographics,political corectness,westerners naivete,etc.
In sweet,innocent Denmark,they are discussing,as we speak weather or not the sharia law would be appropriate in a contry like Denmark...
This is the idea of integration that the 33% of them hold,in Britain,or elsewhere.
The rest of them,the 67%,or the vast majority ,just want to impose the sharia by sword and dagger.
Should the media get interested in this and it turns out to be a prank, then jihad hunters will have far more difficulties in being taken seriously when real situations with real evidence comes up.
This chap has a big CV, and I cannot imagine anyone in his position supporting stoning publicly.
I think well known anti-jihadi Mark Steyn writes for the Irish Times, perhaps its worth contacting him, suggesting he investigates it ?
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=34
DANIEL PIPES FOR PRESIDENT!- 2008