The Muslims in Bangladesh who did this consider the Ahmadiyas heretics, and thus justifiably to be killed. Not a few would-be Muslim reformers in Bangladesh and elsewhere suspect this would be their fate also, and thus keep silent. From DPA via M&C, with thanks to Twostellas:
Dhaka - Suspected Islamic militants on Friday burned down a mosque and carried out bomb attacks on two other places of worship of the minority Ahmadiya sect in eastern Bangladesh, officials said.Witnesses said the Ahmadiya mosque was razed to the ground after it was set ablaze by activists of a local anti-Ahmadiya group which wants the sect to be officially declared non-Moslem.
At least three people were injured in the fire which had quickly engulfed the mosque in the bordering town of Brahmanbaria, about 110 kilometres east of the capital Dhaka....
A rescue worker said there were a few people inside the mosque when the arson attack took place.
Residents said fire-bomb attacks were carried out on two other Ahmadiya mosques in the town but no casualties from these incidents were reported....
Extremist Sunni groups want the government to declare the Ahmadiyas non-Moslems because of religious differences on the status of Islam's prophet Mohammed.
Most Ahmadiya religious publications are banned in Bangladesh, an Ahmadiya leader said.
WHAT ABOUT THE KORANS?!!
Irene "Guantanamo-is-a-gulag" Khan, a Muslim born in Dacca, has not said anything about how Hindus are beaten to death (and millions driven out) in Bangladesh, has said nothing about the last remaining Buddhists (save for those who came from Tibet) on the subcontinent, those in the Chittagong Hills, and while she has in vague terms deplored violence in Bangladesh she has never, not once, related it to the inculcation of hatred toward those deemed to be Infidels.
The Ahmadiyya are not regarded as real Muslims (in this respect, but for entirely different reasons, they can be compared to the Alawis who, as a military caste, run Syria) by -- real Muslims. The sect, if that is what one should call it, was founded in 19th century India by someone who had his own pretensions to prophethood. And they are, unlike mainstream Muslims, not consumed with Jihad and hatred for Infidels. Perhaps that explains why the only "Muslim" prize in one of the categories where merit, and not affirmative-action distribution of awards, counts -- i.e., one of the sciences -- the only "Muslim" to share a Nobel was one not considered to be a real Muslim, the Ahamadiyya member, Abdus Salam.
The Ahmadiyya mosque was attacked because in the eyes of "real" Muslims the Ahmadiyyas are Infidels. And you know what Infidels deserve, and what they have been getting, for decades now, in Bangladesh, or more picturesquely, Bangla Desh.
One hopes to hear from Irene Khan, a native of Dacca, for a few remarks on Islam, and on what it tells Muslims to do to Infidels. It will be instructive to hear what she says -- and what she doesn't.
Naseem,
Where art thou? Do you see your compatriots being persecuted thus?
What is your take on why the qadiyanis are so hunted in Pak and B'desh but are free in India?
Well - these things will happen - when men are taught to 'Play God' - and sent out to punish others for not being 'Good enough'
002.216 Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing [war] which is good for you and that ye love a thing [peace] which is bad for you?
009.039 Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place.
There can never be true freedom and peace in Islam.
019.083 Seest thou not that We have set the Evil Ones on against the unbelievers, to incite them with fury? Seest thou not? - that it is the Muslims who are the ones being incited with fury?
Now if only 1000 mosques were burnt down a day.
"God told me to do it..." Is one of the most dangerous statements a human can make, if it involves any kind of violence at all.
Violent acts in Gods name are an act of sheer hypocricy and lunacy. A lunar-tic (one who worships the moon god).
This is a psychosis characterized by these symptoms and more.
A loss of ability to discriminate the real from the unreal.
The loss of ability or desire to question.
Loss of critical thinking.
Blind acceptance.
The willingness to act.
A mental patient threw his food tray and dropped his pants. When asked why he did that, he said God had told him to do so. It never dawned on him that if this was really the God of the universe talking to him, why would god ask him to do something as stupid and uselss, as throwing your tray and dropping your pants?
The lunar-tic was in his head.
Thats where they always are.
'Thou Shall Not Kill', says the book...how many people actually need that commandment? If murder was made legal today, there would probably be a lot of murders, but the majority probably would not murder (I would agree that such a law would create chaos and wont happen). If not, why not? The answer is simple. Most people are not murders and are not going to become murderers. So what can we say of those who are? There's big problems in the nuts and bolts dept. Homicidal mania, a psychosis. Mix that with "Allah" told me to do it, and you got big trouble. A supreme justification for murderous intent. There is no way to negotiate with any fanatic who has God backing him up. Jihadi's and supporters are a manifestation of all of the above. There's more , of course. But I have to get back to my lunch of cold potatos and fried ice. Those Gitmo orangies eat better than I do...Rice pilaf!!??..Do you know what I would do for some rice pilaf??? You dont want to know....
A Muslim convert's website contains this article which helpfully explains the Muslim view of Ahmadiyyas, who are known to Muslims as "Qadianis." It is quite clear that the mainstream Muslim view is to regard them as Infidels, not as Muslims. Burning down their supposed "mosque" and attacking others is, therefore, well within the expected behavior of Muslims toward Infidels, and does not imply any kind of intra-Muslim war between "immoderate" Muslims and "moderate" Muslims -- the Ahmadiyya or Qadiyani are not regarded as Muslims at all.
Here is the text, written by Yusuf (pre-conversion Matthew) Smith:
"Qadianis: Common Doubts
One of the issues which makes the Islamic religion unpopular in some quarters is its treatment of a certain sect which originated in the Indian Subcontinent under the tutelage of the British colonial regime. The group, which calls itself the “Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam”, is called the Qadiani group by Muslims. Muslims who understand their religion, whatever their differences in other issues, all agree on this point: this group is not an Islamic sect and its members are not Muslims. Yet there seems to be some misunderstanding of this issue among some converts who possibly are influenced by their liberal upbringing and background. I decided to write this article after a discussion on an email forum for New Muslims, and this article is partly based on posts I made to that forum.
Attitude to religious freedom among non-Muslims is dominated by UN charters which were written after the Second World War, and by documents such as the US Bill of Rights, which flow from European and American experience. The First Amendment states categorically, “Congress shall not make a law concerning religion”, and the US has a great deal of religious diversity. While the founders of the original colonies were Protestants, Puritans and other refugees from an England dominated by the Anglican (Episcopalian) church, the biggest single denomination in the US today is the Roman Catholic church. Europe, and particularly western Europe, saw centuries of war between different, but doctrinally very similar, religious denominations. There was the persecution of Huguenots in France, the crusades against the Hussites in Bohemia and Moravia, and the no-Popery riots in England, and anti-Catholic agitation and violence went on in England until well into the 19th century. This is to say nothing of state persecution of a number of sects, like the Albigensians, or the liquidation of religious orders like the Béguines in Belgium. It was not only Christians who have benefited from the settlement in Europe and America; Jews, Muslims, and numerous other religious groups, as well as Qadianis, have been able to live relatively peacefully in the west in the 20th century. These measures had nothing to do with the preservation of the integrity of any religion; the truth is that these conflicts were between sects with very minor differences where the sect which had political power claimed “Orthodoxy”. It was because of the dominance of these countries after the Second World War that such ideas found their way into the various UN charters and conventions.
Europeans and Americans who witness the treatment of certain religious groups in Muslim countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are often horrified. It reminds them of the persecution of heretics in the Europe of the middle ages. As Muslims we have a different experience of heresy. It has been, on numerous occasions throughout Islamic history, the heretics which have been doing the torturing, persecuting and murdering. It was a Kharijite heretic, Abdul-Rahman bin Muljam, who murdered Sayyiduna ‘Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, and his fellow Kharijites murdered thousands of other Muslims whose only ‘crime’ was to disagree with them. It was Mu’tazilite heretics, who had gained the upper hand in the Abbasid court, who tortured the Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal (and others) for refusing to accept their beliefs. The extreme Shi’a groups known as “Assassins” (derived from the Arabic for hashish-takers, allegedly because they were so brutal that people thought they were on drugs) also waged campaigns of war and murder against Muslims. The infamous mad caliph of Egypt who called himself Al-Hakim bi Amr Illah (the one who rules by God’s command), also a mass murderer, was a Shi’ite heretic. More recently, it was members of the Nusayri sect, commonly called Alawites or Alevis, who bombed the city of Hama, Syria, in 1982 and whose security forces also killed innocent Sunni Muslims in response to the Muslim Brotherhood’s uprising. When they are not actually torturing and killing Muslims, they collaborate with our enemies, as the Shi’a did with the Mongol invaders under Ghengis Khan, who caused devastation in Musilm and non-Muslim lands from China to central Europe. When they cannot find a home in the Muslim world, they seek refuge with the non-Muslims: in the case of the Qadianis, that means the UK, other European countries, and (of all places) Israel.
If anyone wants to know why Muslims react so strongly to false prophets, they should look at our religion, and our experience, which begins from the time of the Sahaba. Islam is truth, and although “Truth stands apart from error”, its defenders are also given the authority to defend it. This includes fighting false prophets and their followers, by the sword if necessary. The most notorious false prophet from that period was Musaylima, who was notorious for his brutality; he tortured the Muslims’ messenger (Habib b. Zaid, may Allah be pleased with him) to death by hacking off his limbs in front of a group of people. Another, Al-Aswad al-Ansi, demonstrated the falsity of his claims to anyone who was in doubt through his diabolical behaviour in Yemen. He was killed by a Sahabi named Fayruz al-Daylami (radhi’ Allahu ‘anhu), and the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) called him a “righteous servant”. As for Musaylima himself, two Sahabis are credited with killing him (Abdullah b. Zaid, the brother of the aforementioned Habib, and Wahshi, may Allah be pleased with them all). They are praised for this, because it was good. Musaylima was an enemy of Islam and a cruel tyrant.
Read any account of the Qadianis’ behaviour in Pakistan, and you will discover that they are a vile, diabolical sect whose “civilised” front is just that - a front. Given the way the Sahaba reacted to the early false Prophets in the Arabian peninsula, one can only conclude that the Qadianis have got off lightly in Pakistan. They still exist, and the Pakistani government does not allow them to call themselves Muslims because they are not Muslims. You cannot sell an empty box and call it a computer if it has no CPU inside. With that borne in mind, how can someone be allowed to call something Islam, when it rejects (whatever weasel words it uses) a central tenet of Islamic doctrine (aqida)?
Some people who spend time with Qadianis are impressed by the superficial unity and friendliness of this group, in comparison with what one may find in some of the mosques set up by Sunnis from the subcontinent. I have to add here that I have never encountered hostility in any of the Sunni mosques I have attended (except in one, and that was not from Sunnis), but there is a very simple reason why the Qadianis are united, which is that in comparison with Sunni Islam they are a tiny sect. The Muslim Council of Britain estimates that the sect (which, by the way, is notorious for exaggerating its membership) has no more than a million members worldwide, (and most of these are Punjabis, as with the Sikh cult); Sunnism, on the other hand, has hundreds millions of adherents in a swathe of land which stretches all the way from Morocco to the Phillipines and Indonesia; it is a major religion in Russia and China, and in Africa; its members speak all of the world’s major languages. Yet despite all this diversity, they all follow four schools of law and two (very similar and mutually accepting) schools of doctrine. A Sunni Muslim from Morocco would find the customs of Indonesia, Kenya or Pakistan not dissimilar from his own. This is a miraculous proof of the Truth of Islam, and this situation remained through centuries when there were no telephones or computer networks.
Like the Jews, until quite recently, the Qadianis are able to keep their membership united by rattling off tales of their past persecutions and trials. (Unlike the Jews, their ‘persecution’ has not included massacres, pogroms and death camps.) It is also easy for the Qadianis to play up their “friendliness” and “unity” to score empty points off other Pakistanis, and to liberalise aspects of their religious law. In truth, they have no ethnic division because almost all of their Pakistani flock come from one ethnic group: the Punjabis. They do not have sectarian divisions, because they are a small sect themselves. They do not have a Breilawi/Deobandi division problem, because the Breilawis and Deobandis are two separate groupings while the Qadianis are a third, who unlike the other two, are not Muslim. So let no-one be deceived by these tactics of theirs.
Another issue raised by some Muslims has to do with the Lahore Ahmadiyya group, which supposedly rejects the notion of Ghulam Ahmad being a prophet. They instead regard him as a mujaddid, a “reviver” of Islam, and insist he never claimed prophethood. However, the ulama of Islam, including those of the Punjab who witnessed the unfolding of these events, unanimously insist that he did claim prohethood. So their position is at best self-deluding and at best downright dishonest. This group are of even less strength than the Qadiani group; there are at least some ‘ulama who believe them to be Muslims, but there are other issues with their beliefs.
It is important that new converts realise the threat posed by the Qadianis, and exactly how far from Islam they are. They cannot spread honestly, because if individual Qadianis were upfront with Muslims about their affiliation, the said Muslims would turn around and walk away from them. In fact, the leadership of the sect has kept facts about their sect (such as their absurd scriptures like “Roohani Khaza’in”) secret from even their own local officials (See here). The group has a presence in Croydon in south London, and used to run a da’wah stall in the North End shopping area. I have had three separate encounters with Qadianis in Croydon and each time the people concerned (two of them were converts and dressed like Muslims) did not reveal who they were with until we had been talking for quite some time. One of them referred to his “Ahmadiyya jama’at” and the other to an “imam” named Tahir Ahmad. One of them came up with a few of their favourite gambits, such as their satellite TV station which, they claim, makes their group the only religious group with a satellite TV station. This is absolute nonsense; there are several Sunni satellite TV stations (Iqra is one of the best known) and well-known shaikhs regularly appear on Arabic TV.
I asked one of them about Ghulam Ahmad’s claim to be the Mahdi, and if he was the Mahdi, where was the Dajjal (Antichrist)? He replied that the Dajjal is “the civilisation”, meaning western civilisation, a strange response given the support their movement has received from that civilisation, which allowed three of their temples to be built in south London alone (including the so-called London Mosque which is actually several miles from the city centre!). Again, this goes against consensus, which says that the Dajjal is a man, of Jewish background. Imam Mahdi (’alaihi as-salaam) is named Muhammad bin Abdillah (not Ghulam Ahmad!), is from the descendents of the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam), unlike Ghulam Ahmad, will be recognised in the Hijaz, which Ghulam Ahmad never visited, and will not appear until after the occupation of part of the Arabian peninsula by Christians and the appearance of the Sufiani tyrant in Syria - all of which has yet to happen, decades after Ghulam Ahmad met his end in a toilet.
Another objection is that the Pakistani government, which supposedly persecutes the sect, is not exactly Islamically-based. It is true that the Pakistani government has a number of un-Islamic laws, some of them loosely based on the Shari’ah and which give a distorted image of the Shari’ah; it is not, however, the Pakstani government alone which declares them unbelievers, nor extremist imams, though such people exist, but the unanimous consensus of Muslim authorities, and I mean religious as well as political. Fatawa have been issued against the group as far west as the Gambia, in the strongest possible terms. Here is what one well-known imam, Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad of Hadramaut, has written about them:
This grouping is more of an affliction to Islam than many of the other sects which are in transgression and error. Its members follow the accursed impostor Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who was created (sic) by the British as a fifth column. He claimed divinity and prophethood, asserted that he was the Messiah, the Mahdi, and the Renovator of Religion and Islam, all in one. What fraud and sedition is this? The Muslims are unanimously agreed that anyone who claims prophethood after our master Muhammad (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam) is an obstinate disbeliever. Musaylima the Liar claimed it, may God curse him! … In fact, [Ghulam Ahmad] was more accursed and vile than Musaylima the Liar and others who have claimed prophethood, for he pretended outwardly to be a Muslim. …
To confute them it is sufficient to show that they have gone against what is clearly stated in the Book and the Sunna, and what the whole Umma has agreed on. That they have done this is proved by the letters of their accursed impostor and their printed literature. The Muslims of today are of the unanimous view that the Qadiani sectaries are kafirs and apostates who have no connection of any kind with Islam. Verdicts to this effect have been issued against them which are clearer than the sun in the noonday sky. … May God Himself fight against them! What falsehood they utter! [9:30]. (Miftaah al-Jannah, translated as Key to the Garden by Mostafa Badawi, Quilliam Press, London, 1990).
It is important to add here that the Finality of Prophethood was mentioned in the Final Sermon, and is something which is known of the religion by necessity, meaning that anyone with any degree of Islamic knowledge knows this (I have heard a shaikh say that such knowledge is what any nine-year-old madrassa student would know). Ignorance is a defence, but only for those in a position to be ignorant, such as those from very remote regions. The actions of the Pakistani government have been motivated by this knowledge, not by political motives, sectarianism, caste or anything else. In addition, the Qadianis are not entitled to be called “People of the Book”, because their false scriptures cannot possibly be remnants of any revealed Book (Al-Misri & Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, Beltsville, Maryland, 1994).
Unanimous consensus means just that - unanimous. They are not Muslims."
That is what Muslims think of Ahmaddiyas, who tried to escape from the real Islam via the half-way house of Ahmadiyya (quasi) Islam. It won't save them. Not when there are real Muslims around to take care of them.
Why not trade in that half-way house, which offers no protection, and go all the way -- in the path of Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the growing cast of hundreds of thousands or millions (and with the likely winner in Iran the impossibly primitive Ahmedinajad, perhaps even tens of millions who will finally admit to the truth about Islam, and rediscover their Zoroastrian heritage)?
Something for Ahmadiyyas to ponder. And Infidels, too, as they note how Muslims in dar al-Islam, where they can get away with anything, treat those Infidels. The evidence keeps mounting. And it all goes one way.
The loss of ability or desire to question.
Loss of critical thinking.
Blind acceptance.
Posted by: duh_swami
Ready for this?
075.002 I swear by the accusing soul that this Scripture is true. [Got that right]
010.094 If thou wert in doubt as to what We have revealed unto thee, then ask those who have been reading the Book from before thee: the Truth hath indeed come to thee from thy Lord: so be in no wise of those in doubt.
The Bible teaches:
1Jo 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
Mat 10:16 be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
'Thou Shall Not Kill', says the book...how many people actually need that commandment?
Posted by: duh_swami
The world cries for peace - and yet - it refuses the ONLY way to it:
Rom 13:9 Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Just because God gave those commands - and man didn't - doesn't make them any less effective /sarcasm off
In Islam - looting the 'infidels' is commanded.
When no more 'infidels' are around - the only option left for the only way of life they know - will be to loot and kill each other.
It is self-destruction
Where was Jerry Faldwell in all of this?
Can't we implicate some Christians somehow in this carnage?
Come on, let's at least get some Mormons in on the mayhem.
Don't tell me only Muslims keep committing these atrocities, from Fez to Jakarta, daily?
We've got to find some Christians up to no good.
The "Inquisition" default is wearing mighty thin.
Maybe:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/105/22.0.html
(Oops! Maybe not...)
“Truth stands apart from error” {A famous Islamic saying
Here's one for all those 'think tanks'
'allah' says....
035.040 Say: "Have ye seen these 'Partners' of yours whom ye call upon besides Allah? Show Me what it is they have created in the wide earth. Or have they a share in the heavens? Or have We given them a Book from which they can derive clear evidence?- Nay, the wrong-doers promise each other nothing but delusions.
Is Palestine a 'delusion'?
Isa 14:31 Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times.
Joe 3:4 Yea, and what have ye to do with Me? O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render Me a recompence? and if ye recompense Me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head.
Joe 3:1 For, behold, in those days, and in that time,
Joe 3:2 I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel.
Joe 3:14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.
Isa 45:21 Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD?
How come Muhammad forgot to mention Palestine?
False prophets are unable to do such predicting of future human history.
Preserving so great a prophecy - for 1000s of years - and to have it still speak when the time comes.
Only God can do that
People should read the bok entitled ISLAM IN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE by Richard Brent Turner. The book states that Ahmadis began missionary work in the United States in 1920s. The book also says that later Muslim movements in America, particulary the Nation Of Islam were influenced by the bliefs of the Ahmadis. Like Ghulan Ahmad, Elijah Muhammad also considered himself a prophet.
I wonder what Minister Farrakhan thinks about the current African slave trade. Particularly in Sudan. Does he believe that ethnic Arab Muslims have the absolute right to enslave black Africans, particularly of the Christian flavor, but in general too?
As I recall, the Arabic words 'negro' and 'slave' are the same word.
Hugh
Thanks for bringing that screed of hate from the new Muslim convert to our attention. I have forwarded it to my Sikh friends highlighting the sentence when he refers to the Sikh religion as 'that cult'. It is always good form to let all infidels know how much hatred is out there for them, especially when my Sikh friends give Islam the benefit of the doubt in a South-Asian solidarity kind of way.
Muslims need to kill kafirs or theirselves for being happy.
"my Sikh friends give Islam the benefit of the doubt in a South-Asian solidarity kind of way..."
--- from a posting above
Are they nuts? The history of what was done to the Sikhs by their Muslim masters, while in numbers of victims could hardly surpass the 60-70 million Hindus killed, should not be forgotten. Remember -- tolerant and syncretistic Akbar was the exception (and revered by Hindus, and hated by Muslims, as a result); Aurangzeb was the rule.
Here are two posts on the subject of the Sikhs, cut-and-pasted from last December. They do not date.
"The murder of the father of Guru Govind Singh, Teg Bahadur, who was put to death for refusing to convert to Islam also was, from his prison cell, accused of peeking into the zenana and said that he was looking in the direction of the sea, from which, he supposedly predicted to the Muslim ruler, the Europeans -- that is, the British-- would come. The Muslim record of atrocities against the Sikhs is a long one. In recent times, the Patna Conspiracy began as a Jihad declared by Indian Muslims against the Sikhs, and then became widened to take in more enemies.
Those Sikh turbans on many members of the staff at Heathrow are, along with the baby rivers glimpsed as the plane comes down, among the most comforting sights in England."
Posted by: Hugh at December 16, 2004 12:19 AM
Hugh
My Sikh friend tells me of the many atrocities committed against the Sikhs by Jihadi invaders and the Mughals. Their founder, Guru Nanak, included some famous verses in their holy book, the Guru Garanth Sahib, about the invasion of India by Babar the founder of the Mughal dynasty. It stands as one of the most startling contemporaneous accounts of the Islamic crusade into India, and is bloodcurdling in its reportage and description of the cruelty and violence perpetrated against the hapless Punjabis. Pointedly, at one section in the verse, he criticises as cowards those Hindus who collaborated with the invader and converted to Islam to escape the wrath of the barbarian. Sikh history is extremely fascinating. This is a website set up to counteract Islamic prosletysation in England against Sikh youth, who are especially hated and targeted by Pakistani Muslims for historical reasons, as well as for the strength of character and culture of the Sikhs. It also provides good information on the Sikh faith. Worth a look, if only as evidence that the arrogance of Islamism is stepping on the toes not only of white people, but every religion and race it is coming into contact with in England.
http://www.whyichosesikhism.com/
It is sad that this has to be done, but Sikhs recognise a threat when they see it and don’t stand on political correctness. That is my impression of them as a people. When you learn about their history, you start to make connections, with the Copts, with the animists in Africa, with Zoroastrians, and you realise the nature, throughout history, of Islamic imperialism, and it makes clear the insipid mantra of Islam and their leftist apologists, that this is all about Zionism and AmeriKKKa. Bring the Copts, Sikhs, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Animists, Eastern Christians into the debate. The rest of the world can’t be wrong.
It is my impression that the clash between Indira Gandhi and the Sikhs in the 1980’s was a blip. Today a Sikh is the leader of one billion Hindus in India and the Army Chief of India, leading the fight against the Jihadis in Kashmir is also a Sikh. It has been my experience that they are amongst the most inoculated against dhimmi propaganda and white washing of history. Whenever a William Dalrymple comes along and talks about the glory of Islamic rule in India they can see through that because their whole history was one of struggle against its power.
Hugh, you must be familiar with the works of Anwar Shaikh? He is one of my favourite writers on Islam. He is British based too. I found his writing to be very clear and relentless in its exposing of the fallacies of Islam."
Posted by: Kaffir Boy at December 16, 2004 05:27 AM
Any Hindu or any Sikh, who out of shared taste in foods, or out of some ignorance of what actually went on in the Subcontinent, and -- by the way, what is going on in the U.K. today to Sikhs and Hindus at Muslim hands -- is simply aping the dangerous innocence of Christians and Jews who know nothing of the history of Muslim subjugation of non-Muslims.
Bat Ye'or's scholarly works do a great deal, but she did not include, in her books on the dhimmi and dhimmitude, anything about Hindustan.
There are some Indian historians -- Sarkar, K. S. Lal, and others -- who have treated of this, but their works are little known. And in India, among the fashionable, or outside of India, among those Indians who become celebrated and insist on misreading and misunderstanding Islam, in an ostentatious attempt to show that they, at least, those "great men," are not guilty of the kind of "communalism" (as it is called) that those rabble-rousing Hindutva "fanatics" (as these celebrities, on their high horses, like to lump together all those Hindus who actually take a sympathetic interest in their own past, and what Muslim conquest did to it -- Sir William Jones would not agree).
In the U.K., it is easy to tell at a glance who is Muslim, and who Hindu. That is far less true in the United States, that diluting culture. And in universities, the promotion of this "South Asian Society" business is deceptive, and used by Muslim students to inveigle Hindus and Sikhs into promoting and defending them, the Muslims, in a show of phony unity that relies on historical amnesia. Unfortunately, many young Indian-Americans exhibit that historical amnesia and indifference to the history of Hindustan, and what actually happened.
It is no different from the way in which Muslim Arabs in the United States have attempted to enroll, in their own cause, as fellow "Arab-Americans," those people with "Arab" (more accurately, Arabic-speaking, ancestors -- for the Maronites and some of the other Christian Arabs from Lebanon and Syria were not Arabs at all, but simply used the Arabic language that was imposed on them, and of course had Arabic names). The notion that the descendants of people who had left or fled the Christian areas of the Ottoman Empire precisely because of the increase in massacres and persecution of Christians by Muslims, should be inveigled into making common cause with Muslims pretending they are all "Arab-Americans" together, and that there is a shared "Arab-American" identity, is a little like the children of Nazis coming to the United States and pretending to make common cause, for their own purposes, with the children of refugees from the Nazis.
And the same may be true of some Hindus and Sikhs who do not know their own history, or the full malevolence of Islam, because the very nice man who sells them that jar of ginger pickle, with the big sign outside saying "Halal Meat," is a fine fellow, and we all know that we should instead of considering 1350 years of history, and the immutable texts of Islam, we should of course make our judgments on the basis of the friendliness, often not entirely feigned, of that Muslim storekeeper who serves us.
Great.
Hugh
I have forwarded your posts to my Sikh friends. Unfortnately a few Sikhs have been attacked by racists who mistook them for Muslims and they were beaten up and this has lead to a feeling amongst some Sikhs that they should not criticise Islam in case they get attcked by misguided people who assume a Sikh in a turban is a Bin Ladenite. But it just seems to me to be the leftist consensus amongst the Sikh intellectuals and bourgiose thinkers in England who go along with this idea of not mentioning the history of Islam for fear of stinking up the place. This allows Muslims free reign to speak any distortion of history, of course. In truth, away from the polite rhetoric of leftists who are brainwashed into some belief of an 'Asian Community', Sikh responses to Islam on the street, so to speak, off the record, are significantly more robust. It seems that the website you quote in the post above proves that.
Another factor is the idea that if Indians were to distance themselves from Pakistanis it would play into the hands of the 'divide and rule' mentality of the racists, unaware that Muslims have effectively divided themselves from Indians in England already. They are fully proud of asserting their Islamic identity before their South Asian one. It is the Romila Thapar Syndrome in full effect.
As I read the apologia for Islam of that Matthew Smith type, I could not help but rub my eyes. If this is the best that they can do for themselves, no wonder they rarely try to argue rationally. Every argument he used in favour of Sunni Islam tells far more cogently in favour of Catholic Christianity - save for when he shows his superficial acquaintance with his own history (the result of PC education) by saying that the reasons for doctrinal conflicts between Christians were petty and irrelevant.
Now what I am trying to do here - before we get the usual snits from Giaour, KJ, Would-be-Loxias and so on - is not an apologia for my Church; if I wanted to, I would do it elsewhere and in another form. It is merely to show that this idiot allowed himself to be convinced by claims that do not apply to his religion so much as to mine. Unity of the Sunna? But the Catholic Church is one in doctrine and belief in all the five continents, and was so since before Mohammed was dreamt of. We do not have four "schools" of interpretation; we have dozens - most religious orders tend to focus on the philosophy of their own favourite saint, the Dominicans on St.Thomas, the Franciscans on St.Bonaventure, the Jesuits on Molina, the Rosminians on Rosmini, and so on - but they all agree on the central issues of the Faith. Hundreds of millions of members of one mind? But there are more Catholics in the world than there are Muslims of all kinds, including the most extreme "heretics"; and if you sum up those churches that share most of their theology with the Catholic Church, you come close to two Christians for every Muslim. Finality of prophecy? But, while a Last Prophet was explicitly promised by the Jewish Scriptures - and therefore the Jews cannot argue on that ground with Jesus, only insist that Jesus was not in fact the Last Prophet - Christians definitely do deny the possibility of further revelations not bound in the Christian one, and therefore when the Muslims claim Jesus as one of their own prophets, they deny the teaching of Jesus' own followers.
What I am saying is this: that this idiot allowed himself to be shepherded into a faith and a community that is the enemy of his own native country and community, by being offered as a sort of a gift from a distant land the things he had - and had in a more impressive and elaborate edition - in his own house, there to be discovered if only he bothered trying. You may think, like Giaour or Loxias, that these are things not worth having, but the point is that he thought he had to go whoring after strange gods to have them, and they were there within his own reach. What a contemptible rake's progress of the intellect.