The family of one of the civilian non-combatants killed by Hamas (which killings it has celebrated as part of its "Glory Record") is fighting back. And of course the BBC is more concerned for the associates of the perpetrators than for the victims. From the BBC, :
The family of David Boim, an American teenager shot dead by Hamas at a West Bank bus stop in 1996, is suing a group of Chicago-based organisations who they say helped fund Hamas operations.It will be the first courtroom test of a piece of federal anti-terror legislation passed in the early 1990s, which supporters say helps strike a blow at terror support networks.
But the case has also raised concerns for the Muslim community about where support for militants ends and guilt by association begins.
'Anti-terror tool'
"This federal statute is designed to provide Americans who are injured by international terrorism a right to sue in American courts the people who are responsible - and it reaches beyond just those who pull the trigger or carry the bomb," said Rick Hoffman, an attorney for the Boim family.
"We just happen to be the first to pursue this, but hopefully this is a tool that others will be able to follow as well to cut off the funding of these sorts of terrorist attacks."
The lawsuit is being fought a world away from where Boim was killed
The family is seeking damages of $600m (£310m). But even if the jury awards such a vast sum, neither the family nor the lawyers may see that money because many of the organisations' assets have already been the subject of separate, government actions.Nonetheless, according to Jewish leaders the Boim case is a positive precedent for Chicago's Jewish community, which has long harboured concerns about local Islamic charitable organisations acting as conduits for funding militants.
"This is an uphill struggle against international terrorism, and the forces of good who fight fairly now have a law in their defence that gets a measure of justice against the known supporters of terrorism," says Jay Tcath, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council.
But others are concerned that the effects of the law may not be so clear cut....
One of the defendants in the case is the Quranic Literacy Institute.
In the basement of an unremarkable suburban house in south-west Chicago, it has built up a vast library of Arabic texts to support its 12-year project to write a new English translation of the Koran.
The Boims accuse the Institute of knowingly providing cover to a man alleged to be a key Hamas figure in the United States.
But the group's secretary, Amer Haleem, says the Institute has been "dragged into" the case for other reasons: "guilt by association and religious persecution.
"There's absolutely no connection between us and any terrorist organisation. They're depending on the fact that any Muslim can be accused of anything now and the American people will say 'By and large, well, it must be true'."
Well, this doesn't seem to be a very complicated question: did they knowingly harbor the man or didn't they?
"Every community now feels tainted by this broad brush stroke. Every mosque, every centre, every book publisher is now suffering [a drop in] what is being given to their organisation," says Seema Imam of the Muslim Civil Rights Center.The Boim case, she says, undermines philanthropy, which is a pillar of the Muslim religion, and has a devastating effect on individuals and the community.
Again, this is really not so difficult. If charitable giving goes to terrorist groups, it must be stopped. And Seema Imam and her coreligionists should want it stopped. Why is it so hard for them to establish charities that don't end up giving money to jihadist murderers?
"There's an extensive amount of fear among Muslim[s]. The conversation is of confusion - how do I live in the land that I thought was the land of democracy, what do we do, how do we worship and where do we go from here?"For the family of David Boim, this week may finally bring an end to their long search for legal reparation for a past tragedy.
But it will be many years before its clear how the legacy of his death will affect the future of America's Muslims.
If they are really anti-terror, then it can only affect them positively.
A "new English translation of the Qur'an"? Why? There are plenty of them already, and can be consulted at www.usc.edu. Ali's is a bit slanted, Dawood the most reliable, but those attempting to undercut even the latter in the hope of persuading Infidels that they just cannot possibly say anything about Islam because -- despite all those translations -- they are simply misinformed (a good way to keep critics at bay, except what about the 80% of the world's Muslims who do not read Arabic? Have they been lead astray as well?).
It's all nonsense, of course -- put side-by-side 3-4 translations -- oh, and the recensions of the hadith by Bukhari and Muslim can be found at the same website, and there the problem of the unintelligible (about 20% of the Qur'an) in any language, is not apparent.
Anything to convince Infidels they cannot possibly learn what hundreds of millions of Muslims have learned -- no, it's hermetically sealed, off-limits, you need the Special Decoder Ring.
And that brings us to the obvious question? If someone "knows" what is in the Qur'an and hadith and sira when he is a Muslim, what happens if he ceases to be a Muslim? Do Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Azam Kamguian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and a thousand other articulate ex-Muslims, suddenly stop knowing what Islam teaches people, what they themselves learned growing up as Muslims, in Muslim socieities (where there is no need to pull any punches, or make any pretense of accomodating the Infidels in a circumambient Infidel land) somehow cease, the minute they say "Basta" to this belief-system, what it is all about? No longer to be invited to conferences or solemn seminars at Yale on "Violence in Islam" or "Discourses of Representation of Islam" (get it? let's fuzz up the picture for the Infidel public, Foucaldian style, seminar crawlers(on the model pub-crawlers), who Sincerely Want to Know, let's drizzle on the offered seminar crepes at the power-is-knowledge breakfasts and break-outs some sirop Derrida, a specialite de la maison). And what of the hundreds of thousands of ex-Muslims who do not step out to publish their disaffection and dismay and even horror at what is containued in the canonical texts, and how Muslims are taught to regard 1) Infidels 2) women 3) art 4) science 5) individual autonomy 6) the use of deception in the Jihad 7) antisemitism 8-100 (read Al-Qaradawi, read the hadith, read Michael Cook on what is prohibited and what is promoted in Islam, and fill out the rest of the list to your heart's swelling discontent.
The "new translation," the phony call for papers at phony apologetic conferences where a certain undeniable reality will be "contextualized" and "all representations of Islam" dontcha know, will be found to simply "represent -- not Islam, which is not a monolith and about which no generalizations can be made, but about the particular political agenda of those doing the (mis)representing."
Do I have it right? Do we need to bother going to all that expense in New Haven or Cambridge or Washington or wherever it is the New Muslim Apologetics is going to take place? Save some money. Just clip out the paragraphs above, write and place lots of Op-Ed articles by the likes of Noah Feldman, Michael Lerner, Cornel "World's Greatest Authority Now that Irwin Corey Is Gone and By the Way University Professor" West, and so on and so forth.
Put the money saved into scholarships -- for non-Muslim refugees from Islam. Or a Chair in Dhimmitude Studies. Or in Islam and Human Rights. Or in Apostasy Studies. Or in buying 10,000 copies of "Why I Am Not a Muslim." That should do the trick.
"There's an extensive amount of fear among Muslim[s]. The conversation is of confusion - how do I live in the land that I thought was the land of democracy, what do we do, how do we worship and where do we go from here?"
Pity maybe the New Iraq it will have demrocy soon??
This would be a WIN WIN sit-u-a-tion!!
they can help Iraq catch up on lost time and help get the farms going and some bussiness to being them up to date??
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Sight,Wisdom, and Courage to stay the course to Victory to Defeat ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Amen
... philanthropy, which is a pillar of the Muslim religion...
Yeah, they sure gave a lot to Persia and the Buddhist/Hindu kingdoms of Asia, didn't they. I bet the good people of Darfur also appreciate all that kind-hearted Saudi/Arab/Muslim "philanthropy" too.
And one will notice, the kerry-favored UN is not doing a Damn thing about it, kj- while the US is opposed if they say a single word against it.
In the story we have a Muslim who expresses pretend-confusion as to "how do we worship" in the (supposed) "land of democracy"? Worship the way you please, believe the things you please, and expect to be judged accordingly, based on a real understanding of what those beliefs are, based on identificalbe texts, and with those beliefs having been acted upon, from Spain to the East Indies, over 1350 years. Do not expect Infidels to ignore either what is contained in those texts -- not as sanitized by the Michael-Sells brigade of apologists -- or what the history of Muslim treatment of non-Muslims, subjugated and then offered the choice of death, immediate conversion, or the status of dhimmi, that is a status of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. Why should this history, why should these texts, not be examined, and understood, and acted upon by Infidels in trying to defend their own civilisation, which for some reason they persist in believing is far superior, in every way, to that of Islam (though when this is said publicly, for some reason people are shocked or pretend to be shocked -- look what happened to poor Berlusconi for stating the obvious).
Expect Infidels to draw conclusions from the texts, history, and the behavior -- seen all over the world -- not only of those many Muslims implicated in acts of terror, but all those who in coming out to chant their support, or who identify with Bin Laden (more than 90% of Saudi males in one opinion poll) or Hamas (more than 3/4 of Arabs), or similar individuals or groups, show that they support this way of dealing with Infidels. The evidence piles up; it cannot be gainsaid, not even by the 97% of the membership of MESA that, we are told, deplores the American governmnet and works mightily to mislead the American college students about the nature of Islam (and how impressionable those young are, how lazily unwilling to check, for example, what "defectors" from Islam, the ex-Muslims, say about it).
How could one, understanding that in Islam one is taught, over and over again, that the Infidels are hateful, not to be trusted, and that one's loyalty must of course be only to fellow Muslims, only to the umma al-islamiyya, how could one possibly expect a Believer in Islam to offer a true, rather than feigned, loyalty to the Infidel nation-state? It simply is not possible.
And why should Muslims in this or any other country be at all surprised -- "you Infidels just don't play fair!" -- if the behavior of Muslims in one Infidel country, whether it is in the Netherlands, or France, or Spain, or Britain, or Russia, should be carefully observed, taken note of, and lessons drawn, by Infidels in other countries. The behaavior of Muslims in Holland is not of concern to the Dutch alone. What happened in Madrid or Beslan is not something that only the Spanish, or the Russians, need worry about. And what happens to Israel, as it attempts to deal with the relentless Jihad against it, with terrorism accompanying the demographic weapon, will be of interest in Europe -- and if the Europeans prevent the use, in self-defense, of mass expulsion of what are clearly enemy aliens, how will they, in turn, justify similar action when they find, as a last resort, that such will be necessary -- just as the Czechs did with the Sudeten Germans after the experience of World War II?
Again, here we go with the Islamic rewriting of the dictionary.
'"There's an extensive amount of fear among Muslim[s]. The conversation is of confusion - how do I live in the land that I thought was the land of democracy, what do we do, how do we worship and where do we go from here?" '
It is the land of Democracy, not the land of do-as-you-please to propagate in a militant and deceptive fashion in the name of freedom.
If one but tweaks a certain cliche, one can hear Amer Haleem in the above article (not to mention the apologists) saying:
"What are you going to believe? My taqiyyah, or your lying eyes"
Hugh has succinctly stated: "Expect Infidels to draw conclusions from the texts, history, and the behavior...." This reminds me of a gentleman I saw answering a rabid lefty/anarchist student in a Q&A on C-SPAN recently after the student blathered the predictable Robert-Scheerlike drivel about the evils of capitalism, corporate takeover of American government, superiority of Marxism, and the like -- the lecturer stated [paraphrased], "You're right. I agree with you. That's why the city of Miami is in such trouble, because so many of their residents are fleeing to Cuba in makeshift rafts. That's why South Korea is losing so much population due to the mass migration north." In other words, who really is the fool?