New York Times: Muslim Leaders Confront Terror Threat Within Islam

There is absolutely no chance of convincing the hard core jihadists to put down their weapons, that is a given. But I believe and effective way to reduce the pool that they can draw their resources from is to curb what is being taught and by whom. If the "moderate" muslim community cannot do that themselves, then our goverment must do it for them. Moderate muslims must take control of their mosques, control who and what is preached in the mosque, the literature that is distributed, the charities they are involved with and the organisations they associate themeselves with. If they cannot show that they are able to police themselves, then something will have to be done. In my opinion, victims of the London bombings, should hold the mosque the bombers attented liable. Take out a law suit to prove that the bombers were covertly encouraged by the mosque leaders or at the very least they were complicit in the outcome, I think there will be a sudden change tone in these places. I doubt the "jihad" can be erradicated into extinction, but I think the tools are there to vastly reduce its capacity for harm in the West.

The reporter Laurie Goodstein needs to read up on Islam before writing about various Muslims promising various reforms. She should tell us a bit more about al-Marayati and about the inimitiable Khaled Abou el Fadl, Scholar of the House Khaled Abou el Fadl,about whom one can find a bit more here:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005615.php

A recipient of a Carnegie Foundation grant to help in this "reforming Islam" project which reform has, during the past two centuries, managed to elude all sorts of would-be "reformers" because in the end there was no way to change the contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, Khaled Abou El Fadl, self-described at the website devoted to him and all his works as
"one of the world's leading scholas of Islam," is apparently going to fix everything.

The New Duranty Times' article makes clear, despite the reporter's naivete and complete lack of skepticism which would, in turn, have to be based on deep and detailed knowledge of the matter (journalists in Italy have to pass tests to become members of the Journalists' Guild -- tests of their knowledge of history and literature. Does The New Duranty Times test its reporters, on their general knowledge? On their knowledge of the subjects they are asked to cover? On anything? Or is it just a question of having worked at one paper for a sufficient amount of time, and then managing a move to The New Duranty Times?).

"Some of it may be rhetoric"? No,all of it is rehtoric, or rather, all of what we are offered shows this is simply an attempt by Muslims prompted not by any change in belief, but undertaken, as Khaled Abou El Fadl (our Scholar of the House) reveals, purely as a response to Infidel pressure, and a changing mood among Infidels for what they will tolerate, and above all a change in the public's degree of comprehension of Islam (which, were I a Muslim, of any sort, would make me terribly uneasy -- to realize that the more people learn about Islam, the lower the opinion they will have of me, and my beliefs, and that this attempt to learn is now ceaseless, and every new bomb or threat or demand will only increase this nation-wide effort of auto-didacticism).

Here is the key:

"There's a transformation going on" among American Muslims, he [Khaled Abou el Fadl] said. "The essential transformation that is taking place is a significantly lower degree of tolerance for irresponsible political diatribes."

In other words, we don't want people speaking their minds. We don't want them uttering phrases that reveal too much about the promptings and tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam. So we shall attempt to muffle or hide, as much as we can, those "irresponsible" -- not bad, not wrong, not miscomprehending of Islam, but "irresponsible" diatribes. And why are they "irresponsible"? Because they do not take account of the new mood among intelligent and well-informed Infidels, or those who were always intelligent, and now are becoming well-informed. It is "irresponsible" because, in the current conditions in this country, in which Muslims are about 1% at most of the population (and this includes "Black Muslims" whose practices do not make them fully orthodox in the Al-Azhar University view), a country where Muslims must tread a little more carefully than they have had to, until recently, in Europe, a country in which there are a large number of people who , whether devout Christians of the non-world-counci-of-churches islamochristian variety, or Jews alarmed by the relentless Jihad against Israel (which many Jews may still not comprehend as such), or Hindus who, even if they may not be devout, need not overlook what the Muslim conquest did to India (a "wounded civilization" in Naipaul's phrase) and to the tens of millions of Hindus massacred, and the tens of thousands of Hindu temples and temple-complexes destroyed, by those ruthless and cruel conquerors. There were more Aurangzebs, and fewer Akbars, in the history of Islamic rule in India.

In this article, there is not a single thing mentioned which should soothe the fears of Infidels. If anything, the emphasis on what, after all, is the new "presentation" -- give a little makeup, a little training in choice of vocabulary and voice modulation, a master's or even a doctorate in one's major field -- advanced taqiyya-and-kitman, with a minor no doubt in tu-quoque.

And that's what it's all about. But Laurie Goodstein doesn't know that. And of course The New Duranty Times still doesn't know, doesn't want to know, can't bear to know, doesn't want to think about, any of this, or what the Western scholars of Islam, and what all non-Muslims on the receiving end of Muslim-dominated societies, have always known.

No,The New Duranty Times doesn't want to hear of anything immutably menacing about Islam, and like Mr. Podsnap, will simply refuse to think about it, will put it out of its mind, and will never never have any of its reporters or commentators suggest that there might, indeed, be such a problem.

For if there were, then one would have to figure out a way to deal with it. And what if there is no easy way, no acceptable nice and tolerant and diversity-loving family-of-man way, to deal with it? What if it is an unprecedented situation, without parallel in human history, where the carriers of a menacing ideology, one that they may not adhere to fully at one time, but that they, or their children or other descendants, can always be prompted to fully embrace, are permitted to settle within the lands of those whom they are taught they must not ever offer real friendship to, must hate, must battle, must subjugate, must kill or convert or relegate to a status of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity.

What if, despite the fantastic-seeming nature of this belief-system, the menace were real? What if there was no way to "reform" those immutable texts? What if non-Believers, or Infidels, recognized that the mistakes they had made in allowing such migration behid their own (enemy)lines insured lives for themselves and for their children and descendants, that had now been rendered permanently more unpleasant, more inhibited, more expensive, and more physically dangerous, than they would otherwise be?

What then would The New Duranty Times counsel? What position would it take? What has happened in Europe, to nice tolerant forward-loooking people, people whom The New Duranty Times could not possibly fault for being "right-wingers," such people as Oriana Fallaci or Pim Fortuyn or Theo van Gogh -- skeptical people, loners, non-joiners, non-respecters of mcuh of anything except what they saw as the truth. What do their examples tell, not us (no one who comes regularly to this website needs to be told much about Islam) but The New Duranty Times, and The Bandar Beacon, and all their ill-informed tribe?

Some may wish to re-read the article I wrote on Khaled Abou el Fadl that appeared at Jihadwatch on April 5, 2005.

Here it is:

Scholar of the House Khaled Abou El Fadl

Devotees of the genre know the pleasure to be derived from reading Hamid Dabashi's eulogy to Edward Said, with its echoes, for the connoisseur, of Dzhambul's 1936 "Song About Stalin" -- the first verse of which you can find, if you wish, in Ogonyok, No. 14, 14 March 1990. The "Song About Stalin" goes thus in rough translation:

Stalin-Sun! For our happiness, may you live [forever] in the Kremlin, We bring offerings to you -- our songs, our hearts, and our flowers. In the whole wide world, on this earthly sphere of Man, No one is more important for All Humanity [or: the Folk} than You.

Now, with those lines dew-fresh in your memory, quickly google “Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said.” You will certainly detect the influence of the "Song About Stalin" on Dabashi’s “Ode to Edward Said” as surely as you would, in “Hyperion,” that of Milton on Keats (two names that naturally come to mind when Said and Dabashi are mentioned).

Why bring up Dabashi on Said yet again? Only because I never dared hope to find something else that would supply the kind and degree of pleasure you obtain from Dabashi’s immortal work. But I have, and it would be churlish not to share it.

Here it is:

www.scholarofthehouse.com

Write that down. E-mail it to your friends. Send it to UCLA law students in the final-weeks-before-exams blend of doldrums and despair. They, while trying to keep straight Future Interests and the Rule in Shelley’s Case, or anticipatory breach and anticipatory repudiation, or to memorize some simple-minded three-or-four part “test” in Constitutional Law that something has to meet for something else to withstand strict scrutiny, would welcome some cheering up.

It is just the thing to post on the Bulletin Board in the lower-level lobby of the designated Washington hotel at the next annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools. What better way to raise the general level of “collegiality” about which so much fuss is made nowadays, and then to have a good laugh? And “collegiality” is so very important, now that the race is never to the mentally swiftest, but to those who can not only churn out articles (plagiarism or triviality or illiteracy be damned), but who can also most enthusiastically engage in mutual backslapping and blurb-swapping, and can attend a “departmental retreat” where everyone can “share experiences” and exchange “thoughts” and “feelings” while “expressing” himself, herself, themselves.

For www.scholarofthehouse.com is the work of “Friends and Supporters” of Khaled Abu El Fadl. Like hagiographers of the Middle Ages producing the “Vita morte e miracoli” of a favorite saint, these magnificent friends choose to remain self-effacingly anonymous. Khaled Abu El Fadl would be the first to deplore anything that smacked of self-promotion, and certainly would have no reason to know who is behind this site dedicated so effusively to him. He may not even know that the site exists. Under these circumstances, one should be grateful to those friends and supporters for managing to ferret out so much about and by Khaled Abou El Fadl, for the permanent edification of so many.

The “Friends and Supporters” explain that the website is "dedicated to the thought and scholarship of the distinguished Islamic scholar, jurist and professor of law, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, the most important intellectual in Islam and Islamic law today."

The domain name “scholarofthehouse” is also explained:

"We chose to name the site "Scholar of the House" as tribute to Dr. Abou El Fadl's having earned this high academic distinction early in his scholarly career while at Yale University….We felt it [the website name] a fitting title and name for an organization dedicated to Dr. Abou El Fadl's distinguished work. For more information on other related efforts, please e-mail us."

This “high academic distinction” is received by a dozen or more undergraduates each year at Yale for getting good grades, and allows those undergraduates to continue to pay tuition in their final year but exempts them from taking courses, so that they may at long last concentrate on their concentration. When El Fadl was named one of the dozen “scholars of the year” as a junior at Yale, the news traveled to Cairo, and his feat received mention in Al-Ahram.

Khaled Abou El Fadl is simply a specific example of a more general phenomenon: Every Man His Own Hero. In pre-Internet days, hundreds of millions of Chinese (some of them now the proud parents and grandparents of single-minded capitalists) held aloft Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Tens of millions of Russians in bad old Soviet days put Stalin’s “Short Course” on their bookshelves, even though it was hardly the stuff that would qualify, nowadays, for Oprah’s Book Club. In Libya, Khaddafy flogged his “Green Book,” containing the Wisdom of Muammar Khaddafy; once upon a time, thousands read it, for the book was the talk and the toast of the town, if the town was in Tripolitania.

Now, with the Internet, disinterested “Friends and Supporters” of virtually anyone can offer that anyone’s words by way of a Spiritual and All-Purpose Guide to Just About Everything. It is not merely that Everyman can now blog here, and post there, over and over again. Now Everyman Can Appear on the World-Wide Web as The Glorious Helmsman of Humanity, courtesy of his self-effacing “Friends and Supporters.” On the Internet, at a dedicated website, you can be not only King or Queen of the Universe, and not just for a day but from here on out, and from beyond the grave (your website will outlast you). Everyman can now count himself a king of infinite space, even if bound in his own gigabyte nutshell, in mysterious Googlelandia, or of something, somewhere.

In offering so many different aspects of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s Life and Works, www.scholarofthehouse.com is simply ahead of its time. It would be hard to choose which section most impresses. There is the biographical “About Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl.” There is the scholarly “Bibliography of Khaled Abou El Fadl.” There are the epistolary “Letters to Dr. Abou El Fadl.” There is “Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl In the Media.” There are “Unedited Interviews with Khaled Abou El Fadl.” And there is even “Recommended Reading” –“recommended” by none other than Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, some of whose books are among those he finds most recommendable. But that is not cause for carping. It would be silly indeed for someone to write a book that, afterwards, he felt he could not recommend.

Indeed, Khaled Abou El Fadl’s refreshing absence of humility, rightly understood, is truly humble. Was it not Golda Meir who once cut short someone engaging in pro-forma self-deprecation: “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.” Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is “not so humble”; it logically follows that, therefore, he is very likely great.

Not the least of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s services is the list he compiled, available at www.scholarofthehouse.com, of what he calls “The Worst Books About Islam,” books so bad that Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl hopes no one will waste his time even opening one of them. That list includes, among much else, Professor John Wansbrough’s “Qur’anic Studies,” Ibn Warraq’s anthology of scholarly articles “The Quest for the Historical Muhammad,” and Joseph Schacht’s “Introduction to Muhammadan Law.” Wansbrough and Schacht have long been admired by Western scholars of Islam: the first as a pioneer in the study of early Islam and a teacher of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook; the second as one of the most scrupulous and authoritative students of Islamic law in the Western world. But neither Wansbrough nor Schacht was a Muslim. And by now it should be obvious that one cannot rely on any non-Muslim scholar’s supposed “understanding” of Islam, no matter how many languages that scholar may know, or how many decades of tireless and, on the surface, disinterested study he may have devoted to the matter. The simplest of seminarians at Al-Azhar, the most grizzled Afghani poppy farmer, by virtue of being a Muslim, necessarily understands Islam in a way that no non-Muslim, no matter how learned, possibly can.

This should not be confused with the whole business of “Orientalism.” Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is no Edward Said, who has been receiving so many palpable hits that his likeness is beginning to look like St. Sebastian. Khaled Abou El Fadl realizes that Schacht and Wansbrough and Crone and Luxenberg and Ibn Warraq may well have had nothing to do with the “imperialism project.” He needs, other Muslims need, to find an objection broader and deeper and sturdier now that burnt offerings are no longer made with quite the same frequency at the Temple of Said.

No, Khaled Abou El Fadl’s objection is broader and deeper and much more profound. It is just that non-Muslims obviously cannot be expended to feel, deeply, the profound richness and variety and multiplicity of Islam, and the permanent impossibility of any non-Muslim making any valid generalizations about Islam ever -- or indeed, of saying anything at all about Islam from “the outside,” as richly various and variously rich as Islam is, so different in its theory and practice, depending on the time, depending on the space. There are practically as many Islams as there are Muslims, and non-Muslims – who seem disturbingly confident that they can make pronouncements on matters they know nothing about -- should never forget it. Especially when they are about to say something negative, as they do so often nowadays, simply because they need that old whipping-boy – the Other. Ever since the Communist lead retired, they have been grooming Islam to fill that role.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl knows that non-Muslims cannot talk about “Islam” because “Islam,” as one thing, does not exist, but only as many things, and only Muslims can talk truthfully, without rancor or hidden agendas, about those things which seem never to overlap or add up to one thing. One particular kind of non-Muslim – the kind that speaks Arabic, and has an Arab name, and calls himself an Arab, but happens to be Christian – may sometimes be exempted from the ban, because the genetic makeup of such people, their DNA, permits a special insight into the nature of Islam. But Schacht, Wansbrough, Snouck Hurgronje and a thousand other scholars did not possess that precious strand of recombinant DNA. The entire corpus of their work, as a result, was fatally vitiated.

Ibn Warraq, whose The Quest for the Historical Muhammad makes the list compiled by Khaled Abou El Fadl of “The Worst Books on Islam,” suffers from a different, equally fatal handicap. Although Ibn Warraq was raised as a Muslim, and began attending a madrasa at the age of 6 (the very age at which, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl began to attend his own elementary classes in Qur’an at Al-Azhar), Ibn Warraq fell away from Islam, and ultimately renounced it. And now he spends his time writing about Islam, as if he understood it.

But a mysterious phenomenon, of which Muslims have long been aware but which is insufficiently appreciated by non-Muslims, is that of the complete mental disarray, accompanied by severe memory loss, that results from the shock to the apostate’s system. It’s akin to whirling about in a centrifuge in a dark laboratory, with a mad scientist rubbing his gleeful hands as he watches you whirl, and whirl. And the name of that mad scientist is Shaytan -- Satan. Apostasy from Islam is a truly wrenching experience, often proving fatal. For in leaving Islam, one is giving up all chance for Eternal Happiness and throwing away the Total Explanation of the Universe, which gives daily life the only coherence it may be said to possess. Imagine stumbling upon the Secret of the Universe, and failing to recognize it, or picking it up, and then throwing it away. That is what apostates from Islam do.

Naturally there are consequences. Whatever they may once have known, or thought they knew, about Islam before, the very act of apostasy renders them incapable of recalling anything of value about the faith that for so long sustained them. Their apostasy renders them incapable of understanding or speaking about Islam. Their so-called “testimony” about Islam is thus essentially worthless. That is true of Ibn Warraq (at www.secularislam.org) as well as of Ali Sina (at www.faithfreedom.org) and so many others. The minute they became apostates, they no longer knew what they were talking about, when they talked about Islam.

A comparison may be instructive. At www.secularislam.org, Ibn Warraq inflicts his articles on Islam on the entire universe, or at least the universe of those who happen to stumble upon his website, free of charge, there for the taking. At www.scholarofthehouse.com, Khaled Abou El Fadl, or rather his Friends and Supporters, do things differently. Visitors have nothing inflicted on them. Instead, they are politely offered his articles, his lectures, his interviews, all demurely on sale. Only those who demonstrate a real interest, by sending in the appropriate sum, will read or hear in detail what Khaled Abou El Fadl wishes to say on a great many subjects. He does not believe in inflicting his views on the entire world, but on a self-selected group.

Perhaps that marks the difference between a coarse apostate such as Ibn Warraq, with his anthologies of pseudo-scholarship (just look at a list of the “scholarly”contributors to his other books, such as The Origins of the Koran and What the Koran Really Says), and the refined Islamic luminescence that is Khaled Abou El Fadl. He is not only a scholar of the house, but if those website sales hold steady, that house should in due time have many mansions.

One marketing trick of Ibn Warraq, and of other ex-Muslims, is the assumption of an alias, designed to make it seem that they are in some danger. Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, in contrast, does not use an alias despite the “many threats” he has received, and has repeatedly told us about only with great reluctance. He is determined, he says, to continue his heroic refusal to kowtow to the “Wahhabists” who are giving Islam such a bad name in some quarters.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl has been just as brave in speaking truth to powerful non-Muslims. It was he who fearlessly argued that “Jihad” means “struggle” and not “Holy War,” and that therefore there could not possibly be any kind of “Holy War” in Islam. It was Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl who, just after 9/11, forthrightly expressed his immediate thoughts, which were to worry about harm that might come to Muslims as a result of this attack. That could not have been an easy and popular thing to say in America just after the attacks of 9/11. The cowardly, of course, would only offer some words of sympathy and solidarity with American non-Muslims; Khaled Abou El Fadl was not about to play the taqiyya hypocrite. He is a Muslim, and he worries about his fellow Muslims. Whether dealing with those threatening Wahhabists, or their mirror-image, the threatening Infidels, he will not trim his sails. “Ich kann nicht anders” – “I can do no other” is as much his motto as it is anyone’s.

One question remains. There are so many things on sale at this website devoted to Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl. These include collections of his articles (for $60), and whole series of his recorded lectures on this or that aspect of Islam, which can be ordered on either audiocassette or CD. The first item at the website is “What’s New”: new articles new interviews, new Qur’anic commentaries, brave new books by Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, each with the price helpfully appended.

Should you, for example, want to buy Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s commentary on Surah 103: Al-‘Asr, that will be $8.00; for the same price, you can purchase his discussion of Sura 111: Al-Lahab. A lecture, “Islam and Democracy” goes for $4.00, while an Unedited Interview on “Islamic Democracy” is a bargain at $8.00. Full information about ordering is available at the site. And if you are moved to send a contribution to support those who operate the website in gathering, and posting, and selling Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s work, information about how to do that in the most expeditious manner is also conveniently available.

At the website, under the “Scholar of the House” rubric, the “Friends and Supporters” of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl note that “Dr. Abou El Fadl is neither involved in nor responsible for any of the activities related to this website, including the naming of the site, the conducting of any matters of business, or the making of any decisions regarding its policies. Dr. Abou El Fadl does not gain any profit from the sales generated from the website.”

But someone must be making some money from the sale of Dr. Abou El Fadl’s articles, and the 10-part lecture series (on Audiocassettes and CD) on Marriage and Divorce, and on a gallimaufry of taped lectures, interviews, writings, and opinions on this and on that. The halo of the hagiographic sanctifies the brazenly commercial enterprise at this website dedicated so flatteringly, even djambullishly, to the Thought and Greatness of One Man.

This raises an awkward question. Could it be that these “Friends and Supporters” are trying to make money from the genius of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl while purporting to honor him, and are using the website only to flog his wares? Meanwhile, the trusting and unworldly Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl himself, that “inexhaustible fountain of fertilacious fertility whose rivetting rivulets water the oasis where the roses and bulbuls of Gulistan bloom and twitter both day and night, even in the endless tract-housing wastes of the American intellectual desert,” as Hamid Dabashi might put it, is apparently receiving not a penny for his thoughts – at least not those of his thoughts that are available for sale at www.scholarofthehouse.com.

What kind of “Friends and Supporters” are these, anyway? Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl has a right to know.

TooBad;

Absolutely. CAIR and it's copies have learned how to use the courts to suppress free speech and threaten citizens and even get people fired(M. Graham). They're OUR courts for God's sake! Let's use them! If contemporary muslim mouthpieces know the value of court action, they will also realize the potential for harm to come to them. They want to hold court action over our heads like a blade's edge, let them look up and see it dangling over them as well.
I thought the Lockerbie suit was battling windmills but it was ultimately successful. We need to copy the ACLU(or UK equivalent) playbook and turn it back on them. This is something where we don't need to bang our heads against the wall trying to convince government about the dangers of islam. All we need is a team of lawyers with their brains functioning properly. We could fight the battle without government help. One thing you have to say for the left, they can organize on the grassroots level. Look at the embarrassing spectacle of Cindy Sheehan.
Within weeks they had everyone down there from aging communists to "Dwarf Lesbian Nuns for Animal Rights". We need to do the same.

Do journalists ever actually research their subjects anymore? Have they even heard of search
engines? Are they content nowadays to be merely mouthpieces?. Seems so, with a lot of them.

"The materials, Dr. Syeed said, will provide a theological rebuttal to Muslim extremists who cite the Koran and Islamic texts to justify violence."

I'd like to see that!

"Mosque leaders are realizing that they could be liable," said Mr. Abou el-Fadl, author of "The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists."

Imagine, Western Civilisation saved by the lawyers!

Shakespeare would be rolling in his grave.

Hey, lets get radical: How about the united muslim's reach out and help the suffering in New Orleans?

I mean, none of us are shocked to hear that typically christian organizations are out performing federal releif: Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Church groups and so on.

Yeah, imagine that. Muslims reaching out to help the suffering.

" Islam teaches peace. .."

"This is the fundamental problem that shows the bankruptcy of most claims by American Muslim groups to Islamic moderation: their evidence that Islam teaches peace is easily refuted by the jihadists..."

and the Koran, the Hadith and the Sira.
The scriptures are self-evident.

In other other words:

You can't make chicken-salad out of chicken-s*i#t, but these 'accredited' Mohammedans want us to believe that they can.

There are many here among us who still gobble it up anyhow, but lately some people are starting to ask the right questions.

"We're trying to convince our own" -a press release for the Infidels - let us stick around so we can increase the Uma.

In any event the Jihadist label is not our problem. It is theirs to disprove. The onus is on them.

Kill Jihadists; destroy or kill their enablers.

A good place to start is the Saudi Wahhabees.

Perhaps one of my fellow JWers can help me here. Aside from LaVey's "Satanic Bible" are there any religious texts outside Islam that actually advocate lying?

The west, it seems, has become far too dependant on journalists - who, I would have thought, are supposed to hold our politicians accountable and subject them to public scrutiny. If the Media cannot or will not inform us then sites like this one will have to stand virtually alone in trying to fight the tide of public ignorance.

As a recent addition to the JW site I have been quite impressed (to express it in the most bland terms) with the courage and enlightened views of people like Robert, Hugh, Dolphin (more power to CAGE!) and Granny Weatherwax.

Now, the big question: How can these enlightened views be brought to the attention of the wider community of my fellow Australians?

Ain't these guys SLICK??? They must have SOME PR! 4 YEARS after 9/11, they decide they NOW must instruct the young not to follow the terrorists??? The NT Times, being the sop for loonies that it is, will publish this incredible development and once again confuse the gullible masses into thinking that the truth is NOT the truth.The idea that the mosque on Main Street USA is very likely teaching terrorism as a religous duty to backwards Moslems is too horrible to believe, so the NYT and their durnfool readership WILL NOT believe it, not until their own family is blown up and the local imam is taken in for "questioning".
Islam is a peaceful religion only for wishful thinkers, believers who missed reading the later part of the Koran, and those who want to lull us as they prepare to slaughter some more American infidels.
SOMEONE in charge in this country HAS to read the Koran in a reliable English translation, and find out INDEPENDENTLY whether Mohammed (and Mohammedanism, now called Islam) preached peace or no. I am certain that he did not, he died with the blood of many thousands of infidel, unarmed civilians on his hands,including women and babies, on his sword, a rich man from the plunder he took from them.
It isn't a "religion" in the usual sense, it is unquestionably the most murderously violent, destructive SOCIAL MOVEMENT in history,dressed up to LOOK like a religion, its adherents having been murdering, plundering and persecuting all the non-Moslem people (PARTICULARLY Christians and Jews, but also any other non-Moslems, including atheists)near them for some 13 CENTURIES. They have levelled whole cities.They climbed cozily into bed with the Nazis in the Second world War.Saying it's a "peaceful" religion is calling a swarm of army ants or an avalanche or a tsunami harmless, is inviting catastrophe.
Cindy

I'm extremely sceptical what comes forth out of the mouths of muslim spokesmen. Their mission is to establish the pre-eminence of islam in the West, and they will say anything to achieve that end.

So let us consider the hypothetical situation that ALL muslims at present living in the West, accepted the call to clean up their communities of extremism. They even went further and made the changes in their teachings of the koran and the jihad. Such an outcome would no doubt come as a relief to many on this site and elsewhere. But I counter, that all such changes were being done merely to protect the ummah while it grows at ever increasing pace in the West. Once a near majority is achieved, that future generation of muslims will simply revoke any changes and return to the traditions of the unchanging and unchangeable koran ie the "canonical texts" as Hugh puts it.They will even praise this generation of muslims for having done what was necessary to protect islam.

Unfortunately, Robert is right. It is more of the same. More denial and half-truth telling. It has been working on the infidels starkingly well so far, so why not keep on using it?

However, I don't want to be making baseless statements. Let's pull out a few interesting quotes.

But the London bombings were "a shocking realization that within the Western world there could be Muslim youth who could be indoctrinated, and in spite of their upbringing, their birth and years of living in the West, that they could be vulnerable to this kind of thing," said Sayyid M. Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella group based in Plainfield, Ind.

Excuse me, against their upbringing? Is Mr Syeed unaware that it is the parents who are a major — if not the primary — agent in shaping a child's views? How can he be so certain that his fellow Muslims aren't teaching their children hatred and intolerance, say, against the Jews?

On top of that, the 'years of living in the West', to which he also refers serve to demonstrate nothing. If the children are continued to be fed the propaganda broadcasted at Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya on a daily basis, read anti-Semitic Islamic textbooks, which cite the infamous Protocols as a reliable historical document (for more info, see here: http://www.acage.org/news/?day=04132005&id=0003 ), does there physical location make much difference to their upbringing. I doubt it.

What has changed is the intended audience. Before, Muslim leaders said they had wanted to reach non-Muslims with the message that terrorism was un-Islamic. They still do, but now they say the more urgent need is to reach other Muslims.

That's right. Wanted. But what if those Muslims, in turn, don't want to be reached? When Kamal Nawash organized an anti-terror march, slightly over 50 people — most non-Muslims — attended (see http://www.acage.org/news/?day=05152005&id=0007 ). What IS required is a deliberate and persistent promulgation — propaganda, if you'd like — of rejection of terror against anyone, including the jews. That must be carried out on all fronts: in madrassas, in the mosques, in the community centres, and not just on the open houses, designed to bog the minds of gullible non-Muslims and show the world how presumably 'tolerant' Islam is.

Finally, there's the example of Muhammad, which makes it extremely hard to convince the jihadists of the error of their ways. Mohammad Siddique Khan, the London bomber, in his farewell statement, the full text of which can be found here — http://www.acage.org/news/?day=09022005&id=0005 — said the following:

Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true god Allah and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad, God's blessing be upon him. This is how our ethical stances are dictated.

That's right. That's how their ETHICAL stances are dictated. By the example of a man who is responsible for dozens of offensive war, thousands of deaths, and who never exhibited an ounce of tolerance for those who did not wish to embrace his religion. You may continue the list if you wish.

And that's not just a view of a radical Islamist. Muhammad is the role model of human behaviour for every devout Muslim out there.

Against this background, I can only agree with DP111 and other commenters — I am extremely sceptical this will lead us anywhere.

But the ice is moving, and at least that inspires some hope.

Let's be optimists.

-----------------------------
dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org

What difference does it make?

Doesn't he want America to be Islamic along with every other muslim in America?

What he's disputing is the way of doing it, that's all.

"that all such changes were being done merely to protect the ummah while it grows at ever increasing pace in the West. Once a near majority is achieved, that future generation of muslims will simply revoke any changes and return to the traditions of the unchanging and unchangeable koran ie the "canonical texts"..."
-- from a posting above

Let's take DP111's interpretation, which is the only sensible one, and push it further. Let's assume that there is not by all Muslims a deliberate effort to fool Infidels, but simply a wish by many to be left alone, to not be under suspicion. Let's assume further that at least some of these people really do have no interest or enthusiasm for violent Jihad. Let's go further, and assume that some of those people do not really believe in Jihad at all, do not wish to see Islam take over the Infidel countries they now live in, even if they sometimes pay lip-service to the idea.

But that state of affairs still does not permit Infidels to treat a Muslim presence as anything other than a menace. Why? Well, because someone who continues to call himself a Muslim, who does not -- despite knowing the tenets of Islam, and nowadays no Muslim in the West can claim ignorance any more -- is always a potential candidate for backsliding from being an indifferent, lackadaisical Muslim, an almost Muslim-for-identification-purposes Muslim, into -- the other kind. And that other kind is the mind that is the menace, the worry.

Furthermore, there is always the problem, if Islam is not clearly abandoned, of someone in a future generation, now ensconced in this country, and calling himself a Muslim, may under different pressures, political or personal, revert to the real, full-fledged Islam. It has happened all over the place -- just look at the Intel engineer "Mike" Hawash now in prison for 27 years, who was transformed from an Intel computer engineer earning $360,000 a year, with an American wife and three children, to somone who transferred all of his property to his wife, and then set out, soon after 9/11/2001, for westeern China, hoping to reach Afghanistan were he planned to fight on the side of the Taliban and Al Qaeda against his fellow Americans. Many of the terrorists grew up in households where, if we are to believe their family members, deep and fanatical devotion to Islam was not to be found.

So however one consructs the hypothetical future, any person who continues to self-identify as a Muslim is a potential danger. Perhaps for a few -- a very few -- this will result in some over-inclusion. But we cannot worry about everyone. It is our lives, our civiliziation, it is art, science, and mental freedom, that are at stake. One should not stop for a minute, once one understands the scope (world-wide) and duration (forever, really) of the problem that Muslims present to all Infidels, and which history amply confirms, to be adamant in the ferocity of one's opposition to Islam, always and everywhere.

Exactly, DP111. It's preferable to have the threat up front and visible, in professionally produced al-jezeera videos, so that the helper t-cells and all can recognize it, amass, and eradicate it. When it continually transforms and disquises itself, like herpes, it is ultimately more dangerous.

So now that the heat is on -- and now the lie they tell that Islam has nothing to do with violence or jihad has lost all credibility -- the REAL TINY MINORITY --- that is, the so-called "moderate" Muslims, the velvet voiced promoters of Islam, begin to fess up -- 'OK -- so maybe Islam does have something to do with all the violence after all... but trust us -- we're gonna clean up this mess -- don't worry!"

Well -- the worst possible outcome would be for people to continue to believe the "moderates" about ANYTHING. They are COMPLETE LIARS -- they have been liars all along -- Why should we begin to believe them when they finally fess up to the bloody nature of their religion? Clearly this unconvincing 'confession' or 'awakening' or 'realization' only happens because it's preposterous to maintain their lies any longer -- They have simply shifted their tactics to further Islam by pretending their eyes have finally been opened, by pretending to recognize that reform may be necessary.

PLEASE !!! -- If it only took the London bombings to make them finally admit their religion causing violence, what about 9/11, Beslan, and Bali, not to mention the catastrophic cultural genocides caused by Islam in Persia, Egypt, India, Assyria, Constantinople, Judea, etc, etc...? Why now? It will be catastrophic for the West to rally to the sides of these prevaricators in the vain hope that this 'tiny minority of moderates' will EVER change the intrinsic nature of the jihad. And we will be signing up for many more decades of Islam's continuing flim flam of the world and ever increasing body counts and misery.

Islam will NEVER change -- if Muslims perceive their tactics are working -- there is absolutely no incentive for them to stop -- We have three choices:

1.) Surrender to Islam...
2.) Buy into the lie that Islam can reform
3.) Begin work to eradicate the poisonous ideology of Islam...

Options 1 & 2 guarantee that the world will continue to suffer in the thrall of this malignant pathogen of Islam for PERPETUITY...

Option 3 offers hope to mankind to finally shake off the shackles of 1400 years of hatred, backwardness, true oppression, genocide, and the Islamic annihilation of world cultures...

There is only one choice that makes sense to me -- #3. Sadly we will probably continue on option # 2 until option #1 becomes inevitable due to sheer exhaustion and demographics, or option #3 becomes so self evident to every non-Muslim that nobody will longer question its correctness. My question is, what will it take to convince the rest of mankind that the only option we really have is to destroy the cancer of Islam before it eats us up?