Why should they condemn people who they don't even believe are real Muslims? Because other Muslims believe they're real Muslims, are are susceptible to their recruitment based on appeals to Qur'an and Sunnah. Isn't that a good enough reason?
From AP, with thanks to Kasia:
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Europe's Muslims have remained largely silent in the face of terrorist attacks that have killed 254 people in Madrid, London and Amsterdam. Europeans want to know why.Why have so few of them publicly condemned the train and bus bombings in Madrid and London? Why have so few spoken out against the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, killed because his work was considered an insult to Islam?
Talk to Europe's mainstream Muslims privately, however, and it turns out they have a lot to say.
Seek them out in the neighborhoods where they live and work - in the outdoor markets and butcher shops that sell halal meat, in the book stores that display literature on Islam and the West, in the boutiques that promote Islamic dress codes, in the Turkish restaurants and smoky Tunisian teahouses, in their schools and youth clubs - and they denounce, the vast majority unequivocally, attacks against civilians in both Europe and the United States.
"Van Gogh was a crazy man, but no one has the right to kill anyone who says bad things about the Quran," said Mohammed Azahaf, a 23-year-old student who runs a youth center in Amsterdam. "If you kill one, it's like killing the whole of mankind," he said, quoting a line from the Muslim holy book.
Of course, others differ, and on Islamic grounds -- specifically, the example of Muhammad:
At the time of the Messenger Muhammad (saw) there were individuals like these who dishonoured and insulted him upon whom the Islamic judgement was executed. Such people were not tolerated in the past and throughout the history of Islam were dealt with according to the Shariah. Ka’ab ibn Ashraf was assassinated by Muhammad ibn Maslamah for harming the Messenger Muhammad (saw) by his words, Abu Raafi’ was killed by Abu Ateeq as the Messenger ordered in the most evil of ways for swearing at the prophet, Khalid bin Sufyaan was killed by Abdullah bin Anees who cut off his head and brought it to the prophet for harming the Messenger Muhammad (saw) by his insults, Al-Asmaa bintu Marwaan was killed by Umayr bin Adi’ al-Khatmi, a blind man, for writing poetry against the prophet and insulting him in it, Al-Aswad al-Ansi was killed by Fairuz al-Daylami and his family for insulting the Messenger Muhammad (saw) and claiming to be a prophet himself. This is the judgement of Islam upon those who violate, dishonour and insult the Messenger Muhammad (saw).
What would Mohammed Azahaf say to that? He was quoting Qur'an 5:32: "On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land." What would he say to someone who asserted that Van Gogh was "spreading mischief in the land," and so deserved what he got?
These are serious questions, because Muslims do say such things. If Mohammed Azohaf really rejects that perspective, he should have a response.
Why, then, the public silence?For some of the more than five dozen Muslims interviewed for this story in Amsterdam, Paris and London, it's a sense of shame, or even guilt, that innocents have been killed in the name of Islam; they say those feelings make them seek to be "invisible." For those lucky enough to have jobs, there is little time to protest or even write letters to newspapers. For others, there is fear of being branded anti-Islam in their communities.
Dutch Muslim rapper Yassine SB wrote a song about his anger over Van Gogh's murder but scrapped plans to perform it out of fear of being ostracized by the Islamic community. He also turned down requests by a popular Amsterdam radio station to sing a song against terrorism.
Why would they ostracise him, if they all condemn what happened to van Gogh?
"If you sing that, it's like you choose the Dutch, not Muslims," said Yassine SB - the initials stand for his surname Sahsah Bahida - who is popular among Dutch North African youths like himself for his songs against racism."People will say 'you are a traitor,'" said the 20-year-old musician....
Why, many Muslims ask, should they have to speak out against, or apologize for, actions of radicals who do not represent them - people they do not even regard as true Muslims?
Because, as the van Gogh anecdote reveals, there are more of these untrue Muslims than anyone wants to admit. Something has to be done about it.
Many find the very idea of being asked or expected to denounce such acts "extremely offensive and insulting," said Khurshid Drabu, a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain.
A thought experiment: imagine you are a member of a group. Any group. And other members of the same group are committing violent acts against innocent people and justifying doing so by appealing to the philosophy of your group. But you think they are misusing that philosophy. Would you be insulted at people who ask you to explain how they are misusing it, and to resist their doing so, or would you find the actual misusers of your cherished philosophy more insulting?
"I'm British," said Tuhina Ahmed, 24, a British-born Muslim in London whose family came from Gujarat in India. "I could have been blown up as well." Why, she asked, should she have to make a public statement to prove her objection to terrorism?
Because the terrorists did come from your group, and claim your religious ideology, Tuhina. Do it for Britain. If you care to, that is.
To many, the pressure to denounce acts of terror smacks of President Bush's warning that 'you are either with us or against us.'"People and politicians say where are the Muslim people, why aren't they on the streets defending themselves? They say we should go into the streets and condemn what happened so they see us as good Muslims," said Karima Ramani, a 20-year-old Dutch born to an Algerian father and Moroccan mother. "I don't feel it's my duty. I'm not responsible for the death of Van Gogh."...
Yet the Internet is filled with blogs - mostly from Westerners but also by some Muslims - asking why Muslims are not expressing revulsion at the attacks. They see the silence as giving the terrorists strength.
"Isn't silence, justification, fear and hesitation in condemning terrorism, a factor in the encouragement of these individuals to appear on numerous platforms and satellite channels and claim that they represent a religion in the absence of active influential groups and institutions?" asked a blog entry by Ahmed Al-Rabei, a Kuwaiti journalist who works for London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.
"Isn't it a tragic crime to label the millions of European Muslims as guilty because of the rhetoric of a few professional lunatics, while the rest remain silent and wallow in self-pity? We have to admit that Islam has been hijacked particularly in European countries."
Muslim leaders say they and other Muslims have marched in a number of anti-terrorism rallies in Europe - the largest was held on the first anniversary of Madrid's 2004 bombings - and Muslims can't be expected to pour into the streets every day. They also say they have condemned the attacks in the media.
The fact that they would have to pour into the streets "every day" shows how ineffective their condemnations have been. When will they begin efforts to teach against the jihad ideology in mosques? If they care to.
Surveys indicate a small but significant chunk of Europe's Muslim population supports the terrorists.In a poll of British Muslims after the July 2005 suicide attacks on London's transport system, 6 percent thought the bombings were justified. Another 24 percent condemned the attacks but had some sympathy with the bombers' grievances.
Many Europeans blame the Continent's Muslim leadership, which they accuse of making ambiguous and qualified condemnations that give the impression they are making excuses for the bombers: grievances over the war in Iraq or the West's support for Israel.
"It's the leaders who are most responsible," said Rory Miller, senior lecturer of Mediterranean studies at King's College, London....
Azahaf, 23, was among the thousands who marched in Amsterdam against Van Gogh's killing. "I demonstrated not for Van Gogh but for freedom to talk, to say what you want," he said.
Olivier Roy, a respected French scholar of Islam, says Muslim silence is a "classical psychology of immigrants" - wanting to be "normal" and become mainstream. "For them, integration means to be recognized as citizens. They don't want to be recognized for their specificity."...
Sure, but to this the Islamic community, with its set and comprehensive social order, has proved particularly resistant.
Many of Europe's best-integrated Muslims say their lives are so far removed from those of the radicals that it simply has never occurred to them to protest.Alia Kdeih, 50, came to Paris in 1977, at the height of a civil war in her native Lebanon. She got her degree from the Sorbonne, married a Lebanese and presents a cultural program on the Arabic service of French government-owned Radio Monte Carlo. Her elegant Western-decorated apartment in a middle-class Paris neighborhood has only a few flavors of Lebanon.
Kdeih said she will not go into the streets to condemn the attacks even though she's appalled by them - pointing out that her identity is not defined by Islam.
"It's not something I want to stress," she said. "I don't feel responsible for what happened even if they are Muslims."
For the attention of all Muslims who want to listen:
As a citizen of Italy, the country that gave the world such brilliant innovations as Fascism and the Mafia, I do not at all mind being asked to condemn them. In fact, I condemn them myself repeatedly and without being asked. I stand for all the brave men and women who died fighting those abominations. While I would find offensive to be EXPECTED to be a mafioso or a Fascist because I am Italian - given that most Italians loathe both and that thousands have died fighting these two evils - to reject them is the duty and indeed the pleasure of any decent human being and good citizen. Anyone who claims to be offended at being asked to oppose murderous scum has mure sympathy for murderous scum than is good for him. (Or her.)
"Olivier Roy, a respected French scholar of Islam, says Muslim silence is a "classical psychology of immigrants" - wanting to be "normal" and become mainstream. "For them, integration means to be recognized as citizens. They don't want to be recognized for their specificity.""
-- from the silly AP article dissected by Robert above
What gives the writer for this singularly jejune AP piece the authority to insist that Olivier Roy is a "respected French scholar of Islam." He's not respected by all kinds of people who know about Islam. Bernard Lewis thinks little of him, and I heard him telling this to someone. The intelligent scholars of Islam at the Universite of Aix-en-Provence, possibly the most solid program in Islam in France, do not think much of Olivier Roy. All kinds of people find him only marginally better, in his repeated misunderstanding, over at least a decade or two, of the nature of Islam and the menace of French Islam, than that other pontificating sociologist, Gilles "Always Wrong" Kepel.
Don't tell us so-and-so is an "expert" or "respected." Tell us only that so-and-so "teaches" X or "has written" on Y or "has studied" Z. None of this argument from authority stuff here. We'll decide, after we study what X or Y or Z says (should I be impressed that Cornel West is a University Professor at Princeton? Should I be impressed that Jeffery Sachs has written 5 books, or 8 books, or 12 books, while someone else has written half as money, or possibly none at all? Shjould I be impressed that Professor Hamid Dabashi is the Kevorkian Professor at Columbia, the very same school at which Jacques Barzun taught for nearly fifty years, and in the same department, practically, as those two great scholars of Islam, Professor Joseph Schacht and Professor Arthur Jeffery? No. No. No.
What about Olivier, respected or possibly, man, "disrespected" right here by me and my posse? What shall we say of his observations above? Do you think his attempt to make us believe that the problem with Muslim immigrants is nothing special, nothing worrisome, nothing out of the ordinary, just what all immigrant groups have always exhibited or endured? Do you think that the Muslims in France now, in their behavior and attitudes, are merely one more group in a world they never made, who simply want to become "normal" and "mainstream"? Is that what they are taught in mosques and madrasas? Is that what they acquire, from the general attitudes of Muslims, even those who never attend a mosque? Is that how most of them think, or begin to think as they become a generation or two removed from those who came to France from elsewhere, and have been born there, and speak French, and have that linguistic and cultural barrier torn down by the remarkable efforts of the French state and its pedagogic civlizing mission?
Are they, in other words, as Olivier Roy claims, merely trying, perhaps a little uncertainly, a little awkwardly (help them, help them, French peole, have patience, help them to find their way), to integrate fully into French society, to accept its laws, its customs, its institutions, to embrace with an immmigrant's touching enthusiasm (who can forget those immortal maserpieces by Leo Rosten, "Hyman Kaplan" and "The Return of Hyman Kaplan" both set in a night-school of English for all kinds of immigrants in New York, circa 1930?). So, are they just like the Portuguese, say, who came to France in the 1950s? Or the Indochinese who came in the 1960s and 1970s? Is it merely a case of immigrants trying to be "normal" and fitting in, and not quite succeeding, and nothing more? Nothing, that is, about the actual contents of the Qur'an and Hadith, nothing about the figure of that Perfect Man Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil? Nothing about what they have been taught, in every possible way, at every possible turn, to think about Infidels, with whom, for now, they must live, and whom, for now, they must endure until such time as the goal of Islam -- to remove all obstacles to its dominance and to the rule of Muslims, which accords with the natural Allah-given and Allah-driven order of things, comes to pass.
And let's look outside France for a minute. We have Spain to look at. How do the Muslim immigrants behave in comparison, say, to all those Ecuadorians now in Spain? Oh, you will say-- but those Ecuadorians are fellow members of the Hispanidad. Not fair. Alright then, how do they compare, the Muslim immigrants, with the black African Christians? With the Eastern Europeans? With the Chinese who can now be found all over Europe?
And the same question must be asked of the Muslims in Italy. How are they doing, as compared to, say, those Filipinos who now make up the army of GOLF, or maids, nannies, domestic help of all kinds? Why is it that the Filipinos fit in, even if they do not know any Italian, while Somalis, for example, many of whom do know Italian, or even Libyans (ditto), remain such a problem for the Italians? In Germany, which has received all kinds of immigrants, from the former Yugoslavia, from the former Soviet-bloc countires of Eastern Europe, from the former Soviet Union, and also large numbers of Muslims from Turkey and, to a lesser extent, assorted Arab countries, why is it that most of the problems with crime, with hostile behavior in schools (including, as in France, the refusal of Muslim students to obey or to study certain topics in the required curriculum) are linked to Muslim students?
Scandinavia? See the essay at JW by Fjordman for more on the crime rates of Muslims in Scandinavia, and compare the behavior of Muslims in Malmo, Sweden, or in Denmark (where Muslim immigratns joined in not merely opposing, but in whipping up hatred and death threats made against Danes among Muslims outside of Denmark, or in Norway, with the behavior of the non-Muslim immigrants -- say, Chinese, or Hindus, or Bulgarians, or anyone else.
Belgium? Holland? Switzerland? It doesn't vary.
No. Olivier Roy, the "respected French scholar of Islam" Oliver Roy, refuses to recognize the peculiar problem that the belief-system of Islam poses to Infidels. He refuses to recognize that at the heart of this belief-system, which owes its origins, at least in its present form, to the need for a "faith of our own," a faith for the Arabs that would both promote, and justify, their conquest of far more advanced, wealthy, settled populations of Christians and Jews, in the lands that were their first conquests.
Olivier Roy will not see, cannot allow himself to see, just as the wilfully blind author of this AP piece cannot see, that something important here is being missed. That something important is that belief-system's uncompromising division of the world between Muslim and non-Muslim, between Believer and Infidel, who are engaged in a struggle that will not end except in the final triumph of Islam, for it is the duty of Muslims to participate in the struggle to spread Islam, until Islam dominates everywhere, and everywhere Muslims rule.
Of course it is understandable why the "respected French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy" could not possibly bring himself to recognize this, just as Gilles Kepel could not, nor any of the other "experts" who have for years been enablers to those successive French governments that did nothing to stop, and everyting to encourage, Muslim migrants from entering France. This has gone on with government after government failing to study the matter of Islam, failing to appoint real, as opposed to the Kepel-Roy variety of experts, to study what problems large numbers of Muslims pose to the political and social cohesion of France, to its institutions, to the continuity of its history, to the physical safety of French Christians and Jews and even French Hindus and Buddhists (for France also has a duty, of sorts, to those immigrants who arrive and who assume that the advanced Western society of which they would willingly be a part, will protect them from those who would willingly destroy that society).
He's part of the problem. He can't admit it. Nor can Chirac, Dominique de Villepin, or Giscard d'Estaing, who fell for that policy of letting the Algerian and other maghrebin workers "be reunited with their families" (i.e., their numerous wives, their endless children), which was accepted as a way to end the otherwise inexplicably sociopathic behavior of those Arab immigrants.
We can see the results. We can draw conslusions about those who refused to permit, as the philosopher (perhaps I should add, for those who like to be told what to think, "respected" or "world-famous" philosopher) Jacques Ellul noted back in the 1980s, any criticism of Islam to be voiced. We can draw conclusions about those who mocked anyone who knew about Islam, including Jacques Soustelle (the "respected" scholar of Mexico who made the fatal mistake of not being quite enthusiastic enough about handing Algeria over to the Arabs, and not being quite willing to dismiss as a shameful episode, the 132 years of French rule, with its hospitals, universities, publishing houses, modern agricultural techniques, that gave Algeria exactly 132 years of civilization between, to borrow a phrase from Nabokov, "two eternities of darkness."
We can draw conclusions about Olivier Roy as well, for he was one of those who never saw the problem, would not see it, still cannot allow himself to see it. And so he is one more of those who can be pushed to the side, seen as part of the problem, as Yesterday's Man.
"respected." "scholar." "Islam." "French."
"I heard about two incidents in the area where I live where the bosses actually did fire muslim employees for the very same thing!"
americaningermany-
That's quite surprising. I'm wonder how those employers were able to do that without facing any legal backlash. OT,(Fox)- Saddam Hussein hunger strike over after one meal.
These unapologetic Muslims are practically a comedy. Someone should ask them if they plan to bequeath their valuables to loved ones when they die by means of unwritten, unspoken osmosis instead of a standard Will and Testament. It would amount to the same sort of logic they are using when they expect to diminish the mistrust of their non-Muslim neighbors by sternly and quietly refusing to actually take a stand with or for those same fearful and justly suspicious neighbors.
Shouldn't reports, like the one in which R. Spencer just showed us the lines in-between, give rise to even more fearful suspicion on the part of non-Muslims?
My question is rhetorical, of course.
Muslims continually give us more and more proof that they are not to be trusted, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Maybe they're silent because they know how evil and false their violent belief system is.
"Alia Kdeih, 50, came to Paris in 1977, at the height of a civil war in her native Lebanon. She got her degree from the Sorbonne, married a Lebanese and presents a cultural program on the Arabic service of French government-owned Radio Monte Carlo. Her elegant Western-decorated apartment in a middle-class Paris neighborhood has only a few flavors of Lebanon.
Kdeih said she will not go into the streets to condemn the attacks even though she's appalled by them - pointing out that her identity is not defined by Islam.
'It's not something I want to stress, she said. 'I don't feel responsible for what happened even if they are Muslims.'
-- from the article above
This Lebanese Muslim was given refuge in France. She was given an excellent French univgersity education. She now works for the French government, at a radio station it pay for. She lives in a "middle-class" neighborhood in Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the world -- possibly in an apartment subsidized by the French state, that likes to take care of its employees?
She nows perfectly well what is in the Qur'an and Hadith. She knows perfectly well what prompts Muslim terrorists to do what they do. She knows perfectly well that a small army of apologists, with such sinister figures as Tariq Ramadan doing their best to keep Infidel inquiries at bay, to prolong as long as possible Infidel unwariness, Infidel naivete, Infidel confusion.
Yet she thinks she is under no obligation to do anything. She is under no obligation to recognize that Muslims, following not some perversion of Islam but the mainstream, orthodox teachings of Islam, of Qur'an and Sunnah, as interpreted and understood for 1350 years, and as clearly acted upon, through those 1350 years of Jihad-conquest (whenever the opportunity presented itself, and the wherewithal for success, or at least a good-faith attempt, existed) and then subjugation of the non-Muslims whose lands were conquered.
She thinks she owes the French, who gave her refuge, who gave her an education, who allowed her to settle and then gave her a government job, nothing. She thinks she has no responsiblity either to tell the truth about Islam, or even just to condemn mass murder committed by Muslims, prompted by the texts of Islam.
She is quite wrong.
"...For some of the more than five dozen Muslims interviewed for this story in Amsterdam, Paris and London, it's a sense of shame, or even guilt, that innocents have been killed in the name of Islam;.."
"Shame & guilt that innocents have been killed for Islam?" That has to be a joke: You will NEVER find that in a proper Mohammadan!
"..Muslim leaders say they and other Muslims have marched in a number of anti-terrorism rallies in Europe - the largest was held on the first anniversary of Madrid's 2004 bombings - and Muslims can't be expected to pour into the streets every day..."
Indeed, they may have demonstrated against terror. But the "terror" they mean is "western terror against the ummah", any action against the spread of their perversion and the 'Israeli terror against the Palestinians" etc. etc.
Not buying it.
When a few lunatics started bombing abortion clinics and shooting abortion doctors "in the name of Christianity," many Christians of conscience were quick to condemn these actions and disassociate themselves from the fringe nuts.
If the "moderate" muslims had a conscience they would do the same.
While Muslims are quiet about the bad eggs of their own group, I'll bet that if you asked the average white, Christian Brit what he thought of the BNP, he'd openly say he found them distasteful.
"...as the van Gogh anecdote reveals, there are more of these untrue Muslims than anyone wants to admit. Something has to be done about it."
Substitute the word "dishonest" for "untrue" and that pretty much sums it up.
It is proverbial that such silence is tacit consent.
If you don't say something, you allow anything.
The real answer is: the minority of Muslims who really disagree with violent jihadists are too chickensh*t to oppose them.
Period.
So the West has to fight their damned battle for them.
And, because we want to survive, we will.
Cowards.
They'll raise a monument to them one day.
An empty pedestal.
"While Muslims are quiet about the bad eggs of their own group, I'll bet that if you asked the average white, Christian Brit what he thought of the BNP, he'd openly say he found them distasteful."
Less so now than a few years ago. Mainstream Brits are getting no answers to their legitimate concerns about Islam from other parties, and the BNP is cashing in by trying to look less radical, slightly less openly racist and more focused on anti-islamism. It's an interesting trend, that will show more votes for extreme right parties everywhere unless the middle ground politicians wake up soon.
Foolish pieces like this appear in the papers every day.
This is from the (London) Times of yesterday by one Michael Gove who is a Tory MP:
The article does criticize the government for listening to bodies such as the MAB and MCB and apologists such as Tariq Ramadan. However, what is one to make of someone who blithely assumes that he knows about Islam on the basis of conversations with people who chose to identify themselves to him as "moderate Muslims".
In what sense could an Islam that is based on the Koran and Hadith, that takes seriously the life of Mohammed, that is professed by the most famous and influential clerics, both Sunni and Shia, such as Qaradawi and Sistani, that is taught in the most prestigious institutions, such as Al-Azhar not be mainstream?
It's clear Gove hasn't a clue.
He says of these "moderate Muslims" that "[t]heir faith is an important, integral, part of their identity". Given what that "faith" consists in, does that not worry him? Or has he simply no idea what Islam teaches? If so, why is he giving an opinion in a newspaper.
If you would like, I could send you many pictures that I have from the days following the London attack. Many people joined together to condemn terrorist attacks.
Only problem? They were all in the ME where they knew first hand what terrorism really is. If you want them, let me know. Have a great day.
It is good that the AP mentioned Radio Monte Carlo as French-govt owned. It should be known in America that Radio Monte Carlo is also an inciter of violence against Israel. It is not merely a reporter of "news." It is highly partisan in favor of Arab nationalism, while obscuring as much as possible the over-lapping of Arab nationalism and Islam. The Israeli govt has at least once criticized Radio MC for false, inciteful agitprop. So the elegant lady interviewed by the AP is very much a participant in jihad, although with the extra satisfaction of a salary provided by la Republique Francaise.
Nevertheless, it sometimes broadcasts real news, no doubt due to its official French govt ties. I heard on Radio Monte Carlo on 4 November 2004 [7:30 pm Israel time] that arafat was brain dead [dans un etat de mort cerebrale]. This was the first place where I heard the cheering news. Brain dead is dead dead. Of course, his death was not announced for a week officially, and suha and leila shahid, PLO spokesperson in Paris, blamed Israel for announcing his death before he was dead [when in fact yasser's French protectors had announced it through Radio Monte Carlo].
Again, let's repeat that France officially promotes anti-Israel violence through Radio Monte Carlo.
Now, as to French scholarship on Islam. There are some points of light. Even in Le Monde, on 13 October 1994, one Ibrahim Ilyes [who seems to be a Christian by his last name] published an insightful piece on Islam and war, etc. He writes: "Si les facteurs economiques et sociaux sont importants dans l'emergence des conflits en cours, ils ne sont pas pour autant determinants." In another words, Islamic doctrine is more of a determinant in Islamic violence than poverty, etc. Ilyes points to Islamic fundamentalism in the wealthy Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, etc.
This short essay was reprinted in a LeMonde "Dossiers & Documents" published in June 2005.
Re-'When I asked for the names of those individuals I was told that they aren't terrorists, they were just happy about muslims killing the evil Americans.
Yeah, that's the attitude some Europeans have.'
I wonder how those German(I assume) employees who overheard this will feel when the Muslims start killing the evil Germans because it WILL happen. Germany is full of non-assimilating Muslims so it's not a matter of if but of when. German idiots.
So, to borrow from Churchill, they "chose dishonour" and they "will have war".
americaningermany-
Ladies can learn judo, too.
Although I recommend Shoto-kan Karate.
The "spear-hand thrust" to the throat is handy.
The ultimate conversation stopper.
There is no central "mall" in Europe where European Muslims are going to march on (like the mall down in D.C.) to protest any terrorists of their own religion, and besides, it is a historical fact that Muslims, regardless of their sect, Shi'i or Sunni, they will look out for each other against non-Muslims. Case closed.
profitsbeard
I have studied Shoto-kan karate. But after watching the UFC, I do not recommend any form of karate anymore, unless you like to wear you rear-end as a hat.
re:' I was also told after 9/11 by co-workers that something like that would never happen in Germany, because unlike the United States, Germany is sympathetic the muslim causes around the world!
They said that if America would just stop playing the World Police and try to help muslims then we wouldn't have the problem either.'
Do they really think that being sympathetic to or helping Muslims will keep them from being attacked? Can anybody be that stupid? I'd have laughed and told them what gullible fools they were.
"If you kill one, it's like killing the whole of mankind," [Mohammed Azahaf] said, quoting a line from the Muslim holy book.
A worthy sentiment. One, in fact, originating in the Jewish Talmud, written so very much earlier that the Koran.
Tractate Sanhedrin, if you're interested.
Not that, than. Oops.
I do not expect the millions of average, hard-working, Muslim citizens of Western countries to go issuing public denunciations of Islamic terrorism every time there is an Islamic terrorist attack. Given how often those are occurring now, Muslim citizens would be having to issue such disclaimers almost daily. So asking law-abiding Muslim citizens to publicly denounce each and every terrorist attack is a stupid red herring.
But my advice to all Muslims: Help chip away at the cancer of radicalism that is spreading through your communities:
1. Find out where your own mosque gets its funding from. Beware, if your mosque is lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia. Their money comes with strings attached, and with a dangerous anti-Western philosophy.
2. If any of your fellow Muslims--including your own imam--make hateful or inflammatory statements about non-Muslims or the country you are living in, challenge it! Raise your hand and say "Excuse me. I don't understand; according to Quran 5:32 it says..." See the reaction you get. I've been a right-winger all my life, but whenever I've heard a right-winger say something in my presence that I thought was racist or sexist, I have challenged it. I didn't let it pass.
3. And most important of all: You are responsible for the upbringing of your own children. When choosing religious schools and summer camps for your kids, insist that you want your kids taught the ways of peace, not to hate others. Check out the curricula and teaching materials that will be used to teach your kids. As for yourself, teach your kids the ways of peace whenever you talk to them about current world affairs. Do not ever rationalize any terrorist acts against anyone to your own children. And listen to what your kids are saying. If they come home spouting radical nonsense, ask them where they heard that stuff from and follow up on it. Keeping your kids from being seduced by radicalism is the same problem, and can be countered by many of the same techniques, that all parents are using today to keep their kids away from drugs.