From the Detroit Free Press, "Drug exhibit raises ethnic issues," with thanks to T.
An exhibit on the dangers of drugs and their connections to terrorism did not raise ethnic or religious concerns when it went on display in New York, Dallas and elsewhere. But it has in Detroit.Some members of metro Detroit's Arab-American community are complaining the exhibit at the New Detroit Science Center is insensitive in its use of Islamic imagery and want it changed to ensure it does not offend Muslims.
There are specific concerns over a handmade flag that purportedly belonged to the Taliban in Afghanistan and was given to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, whose museum center in Arlington, Va., created the exhibit.
The white flag carries the statement, written in Arabic, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah" and is displayed near rubble taken from the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Taliban was ousted as the ruling party of Afghanistan by U.S. forces after being linked to Al Qaeda.
But the statement on the flag is fundamental to Islam as a whole and the flag's Taliban connection does not justify its presence in the exhibit, said Hassan Jaber, associate executive director of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services. Jaber saw the exhibit about two weeks ago at the request of the science center after employees raised concerns.
"If these Taliban use it, and if the vicious and killers have used it, it doesn't mean that there's an association between Islam and drug trafficking," he said. "If they would have used any other religious symbols from Christianity or Judaism, there would have been an outcry in the community. That level of sensitivity is not there."...
Too bad, so sad.
Let this be a very stern warning to all of the Jewish and Christian and Buddhist and Hindu and Shinto and Bahai and Taoist drug warlords out there!
You use ANY statements from your holy books on your battleflags near your illegal crops, and they will NOT be allowed to appear in anti-drug exhibits should they be captured in an eradication assault.
Keep it secular, or else!
Are you listening, Mr. Conyers?
They're your constituents.
The taliban was the only truely Islamic governemt on earth and decread poppy production was a jihad against the west .
If they dont like Islam they should leave Islam.
This is from the Friends of Ulster Website
Students of terrorism can easily trace the IRA's connections to the PLO and its numerous factions back to the 1970s and 1980s, when IRA and PLO operatives trained together in Libya and the Bekaa Valley. Today, IRA involvement is ongoing in Colombia, where al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad factions — to name a few — are engaged in illegal arms and drug trafficking and money-laundering. Recent revelations about al Qaeda training methods has been also identified as carrying some of the IRA's trademarks. If the EU and the Bush administration would unify their terrorist lists with "global reach" to include all terrorist organizations — including the IRA, Hezbollah, all Palestinian terror organizations, and the ELN — we might then have a better chance to win the war on terrorism.
— Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the Manhattan-based Center for the Study of Corruption and The Rule of Law, is the author of Narco Terrorism and Evil Money, and is working on a new book, Funding Evil: Follow the Money Trail, to be published in 2003
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Read it here
Using drugs as a weapon works in two ways:
firstly the money raised funds the purchase of arms, secondly drug addiction damages the enemy society.
Actually, the Moslems objected to the flag because it said, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his pusher."
One flag that is flown while pushing drugs to raise money for terrorism.
The same flag is flown while pushing oil to raise money for terrorism.
If Christians were using Christians symbols to promote the drug trade, Christians would condemn, not those that are reporting that fact, if indeed it were a fact.
There is nothing wrong with reporting the use of Islamic symbols as the Taliban was using them to promote the drug trade. Why are Detroit Muslims condemning them instead of the reporters. It seems that they went all out to throw a tizzy over the "desecration of the Koran" incident, yet, for some strange reason they are silent or are blaming the messenger rather than the bad actors. Such hypocrisy...
Anything that might cast a shadow on Islam as these hypocrites want it depicted for their American audience is taboo. How long do they think they can fool us? How stupid do they think we are?
I'm sure the offensive flag will be promptly removed, with effusive apologies from every party remotely associated with the display. The insensitive jerks responsible for this egregious insult to muslims will be forced to pay penance, like maybe a few television spots extolling the virtues of Islam, a little free da'wa and perfunctory dhimmitude. This gross exhibition of bigotry, prejudice, "racism" (that's a given, depite the fact that Islam isn't a race) and any other applicable charge of politically incorrect behavior must be punished loudly and publicly.
What does not offend these people? What else must we change to accomodate their sensitivities? The lengths they go to obfuscate the truth about their filthy religion is just unbelievable. It's a wonder they have time to practice Islam with all the PR clean-up work they're constantly doing.
What a hassle it must be to be a muslim. They have to lie and then cover up the lies with more lies. When they run out of lies, they scream racism, bigotry, prejudice, Islamophobia. Then they demand apologies after telling their sob stories to the media, who fall for them hook, line and sinker. It's a vicious circle of deceit, hypocrisy, lies, obfuscation, victimization, lawsuits, coercement, blackmail, threats, death threats. And then they ask, "why do Americans hate us?" That's so hilarious considering that most Americans have literally bent over backwards to tolerate and accomodate them and their death cult.
What are they going to do when we've had enough of their crap and show them how we really feel about them, their death cult, and the unnecessary inconveniences and adjustments to our way of life they have forced on us? Their petty little complaints that are so overblown and exaggerated will seem trivial compared to what lies ahead. There are so many ways we can make their lives a living hell, all perfectly legal and non-violent. We'll see who are "the best of people, and the most highly evolved." It's going to be such fun, I can hardly wait.
Too bad some people are too stupid to realize when they have it made and they just keep pushing, pushing and pushing for more.
Susanp-
Your last comment hit it right on the head. It reminded me of a fable about "The Old Lady and the Vinegar Bottle" noted by the British author Colin Wilson (in "Mysteries" I think) to make the same point.
It is about an old women who lived, as mentioned, in a vinegar bottle, and one day she found a genie who would grant her wishes, and, of course, she asked for a nice little cottage in the country instead of a vinegar bottle.
This was fine for a while, but she started to notice flaws in the neat little house (mouse droppings, a poor updraft in the chimney,etc), and called up the genie again to wish for a big country estate instead. The genie felt that the cottage was nothing to sneeze at, but gave her the manor house, and she found that satisfactory for a while.
But, as before, the old lady began to feel that it wasn't quite as fine as its should be for her improving tastes, and summoned the genie for a third time, demanding a palace -and her own surrounding kingdom to match.
The genie thought the old lady was getting a little beyond herself, but sighed, gave in, and granted her the wish. After a few months, the old woman found the castle a bit musty, the kingdom not as noble as its should have been, and her solid gold crown a tad too plain.
For a fourth time she raised the genie, complaining that the palace wasn't suitable for a woman of her refined sensibilities, the kingdom was a little shabby around the hinterlands, and her golden crown really could be glitzier and far more jewel-encrusted. She was about to tell the genie what she REALLY wanted...
But by this time the genie had had it, and with a wave of his hand the woman was back in her vinegar bottle.
(Wilson tells it better, but the morale is the same: "Quit while you're ahead!". Or, as they say in the antiques biz: "Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered.")