Italy: Arrest of Top Intelligence Officials 'Defeat for Moderate Islam'

Sbai sounds hollow to me. Why should the extremists be encouraged, why should the moderates be defeated by an investigation that underlines the aspiration of the italian state to be sovereign on her own soil and apply her own law, not the arbitrary ideas of law of a foreign power, be it the US?

Sounds rather like an excuse to reduce moderation a bit.

This is a significant statement from a Muslim, who is aligned with Sheikh Abdul Palazzi. Unlike the majority of Muslim organisations and representatives who have criticised renditions (which are legitimate tools under international law) here is a Muslim championing it as a tool. Muslims like this gentleman must be supported.

Any Muslim who can affirmatively demonstrate that he is loyal and believes in the particular Western countries values, should be welcomed as an ally. I think Mr Sbai is one such Muslim. Italy has traditionally had a stronger presence of genuine moderates than anywhere else in Europe. I'm not sure what to attribute this to.

Here is the website from a moderate, mainstream Muslim group in Italy:

http://village.flashnet.it/users/fn034463/index.html

I checked the website with that link above, thank you Haidon:

Thanks but no thanks...

Its not my language... what I have seen in Italy is not 'moderate' either... just more of the same.

Ask Oriana Fallachi...

If I write how she feels about it I would probably be banned again from this website, so I better spare Robert the trouble...

ITALIA: Per Express da'll dar 'al Islam!!!!

"The victories of SISMI under the management of Nicolo Pollari in the fight against terrorism had encouraged us a lot as many Muslims whose fundamentalism scared the community were arrested and expelled," said Sbai.

Sbai in particular fears the arrest will damage progress made in Italian mosques where moderates prevail: "In this way all the people like Abu Omar will feel the urge to come to Italy."

"The imams who had been inciting fundamentalism will return to preach," she said. "After this arrest moderate Muslims are afraid. They know that for Islamic militants this is a great victory. Now many extremists who left Italy will be encouraged to return to their mosques. For people like us who fight against fundamentalism in our communities this is a great defeat."
-- from the article above

Sbai is correct that this act, which must reflect magistrates gone mad, possibly emboldened by the recent election results, will inhibit what should be encouraged. The pleas from such a "moderate" Muslims -- in this case her "moderation" is heartfelt, in the Magdi-Allam mode of "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim -- should be heeded, but will not be. The real, or full-fledged, or "immoderate" Muslims will have less to fear. She knows what that means for those trying to influence those, like him, trying to influence the attitudes of Muslims within Italy.
She is set back. Magdi Allam is set back. Sheik Palazzi is set back.

Who has won? The "popolo d'Italia"? No. Romano Prodi? Possibly. Bertinotti of Rifondazione and pro-PLO Caruso the Bove-esque "anti-globalizaton" agitator, the one who, like Jose Bove himself, is against the "homogenization" of European life through economic means, but fails completely to recognize the Great Homogenizator that Islam, wherever it goes, turns out to be? Of course. Stupidaggini.

Dear Mr. Robert Spencer:

Soud Sbai is a Moroccan feminist and secularist.

She is a friend of mine and she is president of an association of
Moroccan women who want to denounce the daily abuses committed by their
husbands, brothers and families.

Souad considers herself as a "secular muslim".

She is hated by the UCOII (Union of the Italian Islamic Communities)
because of her Hirsi Ali-style anti-Islamist activism.

She is against the Islamic schools and against multiculturalism.

She's friend of Magdi Allam.

She's an admirer of Fallaci and Hirsi Ali. She received lots of threatening emails from unknown symphatizers of UCOII. One time, at a Rai Uno talk show about Islam, she responded to a cleric demanding the teaching of Koran in the schools, by shouting: "Hands off our children!!! We'll never allow you to teach hatred to our children!!"

There should be more people like her in Italy.

Last time I spoke with her on phone, she told me she needs help to make the voices of the truly secular muslims well heard.

"These bastard bearded of the UCOII must NOT prevail. Please, help us! We are alone, nobody is on our side!"

Regarding multiculturalism, she's against it. As the president of an association of Moroccan women who fight against abuse and violence by their male relatives, she knows very well what multiculturalism, above all Islamic, means.

americaningermany,please try to inform yourself before attacking the Confederation.

Despite the name, the Confederation is made up of Moroccan women often victim of abuse and violence by their mae relatives.

There're moderates, and we must support them. Please, let's not put the quotes when speaking of true moderates like Souad.

Stefania I support the work of the group and applaud what she has done. I am also a secular Muslim.

It's so much easier to be an American. I can dabble in whatever theology I choose, pick apart whatever I want to pick apart, and best of all not face death for apostasy, heresy, blasphemy, Piglet coffee mugs, BK ice cream, or missing the O-dark-thirty prayer.

Stefania I support the work of the group and applaud what she has done. I am also a secular Muslim.

I have just looked up the word secular, and it says :- worldly temporal not spiritual. These are conditions which by no stretch of the imagination have any affinity to the teaching of Islam. In fact they are the complete opposite. Haidon could you please tell me how you can hold two completely opposing views at the same time. Sorry I forgot you were a Muslim.

Holsker

I don't hold two opposing views. When I said secular Muslim, I didn't have your definition in mind. I have a spiritual connection to Islam. That spiritual connection does not transend outside myself. I do not wollow "political Islam". I have no allegiance to the Ummah or any Islamic state. My loyalty resides with the legal and political systems of the US and NZ.

My faith is mine, and personal. I don't sport a beard or engage in Da'wa. My wife is not Muslim, and my children will not be either.

And the moral of the above for all of us is:

1) Beware of going on one of those Spiritual Searches.

2) But if you must take your spiritual well-being so very seriously, then before going off on that Spiritual Search that could possibly end up at the Gingerbread House with the nice niqabbed lady, whose face and form and function you do not understand until for you, little Hansel, or you, little Gretel, it will be too late, too late, do take a two-question self-monitored test, and please write on only one side of the Blue Book.

Question #1. Write a mental essay for yourself comparing and contrasting the following:

a) Man Is the Measure of All Things
b) What is Man That Thou Art Mindful of Him?

Question #2. Make a list of 500 famous painters, musicians, philosophers, writers, scientists in the history of Western world. Now put an "x" beside any of them who might have been produced within the world of Islam. Now add up those "x's."

3) Don't try to Find Yourself. You aren't all that interesting, and what you find will disappoint.

Haidon, please explain how one can have a spiritual connection to a "religion" which totally enslaves it's followers, preaches hate, murder, rape , slavery and the silly sayings that science has proven false?

I would think to be spiritually connected to a "religion" like this, one would have to be cold blooded and heartless also. The koran is cold blooded and heartless. And you know, you are to be killed if you leave this void.

Dear, Haidon you wrote

Holsker
I don't hold two opposing views. When I said secular Muslim, I didn't have your definition in mind. I have a spiritual connection to Islam. That spiritual connection does not transcend outside myself. I do not wallow "political Islam". I have no allegiance to the Ummah or any Islamic state. My loyalty resides with the legal and political systems of the US and NZ.
My faith is mine, and personal. I don't sport a beard or engage in Da'wa. My wife is not Muslim, and my children will not be either.

Could you please explain to me how how you can have a spiritual connection to Islam and yet that spiritual connection does not transcend outside of myself two contradicting ideas if ever I have seen any. You say you have no allegiance to Ummah I thought that that was demanded of Muslims so are you a Muslim or not? You say that my faith is mine, and personal, if it is a personal faith then it cannot belong to any of the faiths. So once again are you a Muslim or not? I think you are confused what I suggest you do is lie down and take a couple of aspirins, and when you have come round go and check out Ali Sina site http://www.faithfreedom.org/ and get your thought processes sorted out.

Holsker

Before you begin lecturing, you should understand that I have a comprehensive understanding of Islam, and am not "confused". I need not consult with Dr Sina. In fact, as a Muslim I operate my own support network for people who have left Islam.

I'm Muslim, take a couple aspirin yourself and get over it. I'm not sure why you can't understand. Faith, in part involves, ones personal relationship with God. I am not a political Muslim, need I reiterate, yet I am devout in salat, siyam, fasting and my belief in the oneness in God. I live in a Western country which rightfully demands my allegiance (which I freely and unconditionally give), not in a Muslim state. This does not mean that I do not pray, or engage with other Muslims, of course I do. However, my faith is personal to me.

I reiterate, I am a secular Muslim because I do not believe Islam should be involved in matters of the state.

Hugh this short piece from the gentleman named below says it all about Islamic science you don't have to make a list of the scientists

Dr. M. I. H. Farooqi, Gen. Secretary, Urdu Scientific Society,

Scientific achievement of the Muslim society cannot be considered to be of any
consequence. Out of the total of 2,60,000 articles published every year on scientific research, hardly
2,500 i.e. about 1% are published in Muslim countries. One can be reminded that during Middle
Ages the situation was entirely different. According to European authors of History of Science
almost ninety percent of scientific literature during Middle Ages was published (in Arabic) by
Muslims of Spain, Egypt, Iraq, Iran etc.
There are many other parameters, which show the backwardness of Muslim Societies in scientific
field. For instance, total number of Science Ph.D.’s produced by about 450 Universities of Muslim
Countries every year is less than 500, whereas in UK alone this number is 3000. According to one
estimate total strength of Engineers and Scientist in Muslim world (1.30billion) is less than the
scientists and engineers working in France alone (population 60million).

Here's an excerpt from one of the articles at that website which Thomas Haidon, above, linked as an example of "a moderate, mainstream Muslim group in Italy":

"The issue of the permissibility of listening to music is a matter of ikhtilaf al-fuqaha', i.e. a subject about which there is not unanimity among the autoritative Ulema. Scholars have differences on when listening to music is permissible and when it is not. Imam Ghazali permits it under certain conditions as he explains below"

The question of whether music is "permissible" or not should not even be discussed at all! Music is music, for God's sake, and should be up to the individual person. In the West, only tiny flaky cults like the Amish even bother with pronouncements about music and dancing. This is evidence of a deep sickness in Islamic culture, a sickness of the nature of an obsessive-compulsive disorder that wants to regulate all minutiae in life and sees the specter of potential blasphemy and impurity in every fucking nook and cranny of life. If this is "moderate" and mainstream, it just shows that when measuring moderation in Islam, one needs a special barometer that factors in insanity as sanity.

Haidon, you are a participant in a pathological culture and you don't even know it.

Haidon, you should knock that chip off your own shoulder. You have the gall to have an attitude every time people here rationally cannot fathom how you could base your lofty spirituality on a book like the Qur'an-- a text that is drenched in hatred, intolerance, and supremacist violence against all non-Muslims -- and upon a man like Mohammed -- whose monumental and sordid evils cancel out and utterly pollute any possible good that could be reconstucted by silly "tafsirs".

Haidon, unless you completely rid yourself of all attitude ("take a couple of aspirin" indeed!) and sincerely and without the slightest petulance or impatience answer questions that rationally come up among us, you will deserve to be mocked, denigrated and chewed up and spit out by reasonable people who know enough to tell the difference between when it's raining, and when someone is urinating on their heads.

A poster above (stefania) comments about Souad Sbai thusly: "As the president of an association of Moroccan women who fight against abuse and violence by their male relatives, she knows very well what multiculturalism, above all Islamic, means."

Here's an analogy that could shed some light on the peculiar, bizarre world of Islam and why Souad Sbai, assuming either that --

1) she is not an apostate who has utterly abandoned Islam, or that

2) she is not continuing to remain a Muslim simply and wholly out of fear of violence or murder at the hands of other Muslims (a reasonable fear)

-- is a peculiar, bizarre animal herself:

Imagine a woman who has been beaten and otherwise abused by a tyrannical, pathological husband for 20 years, and whose beatings continue into the present (last night, in fact, before her press conference, she was beaten for 90 minutes, and now must wear sunglasses to cover her black eyes and heavy makeup to mask the bruises on her cheeks and throat, and long sleeves to cover the bruises and cuts on her arms). Imagine this woman at some point finally gets the resolve to organize a campaign against wifebeating and begins to reach out to try to help other women who also suffer abuse from their husbands.

Now imagine the final twist to this peculiarity: imagine that when this woman is asked the reasonable question -- "Why don't you leave your husband and never look back?" -- she answers, "Well, I cannot leave my husband; there are many good qualities about him: I have special "tafsirs" by which I find certain good qualities about him, so I remain in the marriage, even though he beats the shit out of me every night."

No: while we Infidels appreciate the criticisms of Islam which Muslims like Souad Sbai make, and they can be useful in our anti-Jihadism, on another level, such bizarre critiques only serve to perpetuate the lie that anything good can be salvaged out of the system of Islam. Perhaps after Islam is destroyed, one could salvage some useful inert parts here and there for recycling; but only then -- and not as part of some elaborately gingerly methodology that would only serve to keep the monster alive.

Haidon, something for you:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21403_Death_for_Apostasy_Advocated_in_Lansing_Michigan&only

I am secular cannibal.

I believe that the God of eating humans, however, has no place in government.

And, by "eating humans", I do not mean literally consuming flesh, but only spiritually devouring their essence.

Pretzel logic, like the amphisbaena snake, biting its own twisty little heady tale.

Or, as the monk in the zen Mumonkan asked:

"The bull has leaped through the windowframe... but why can't its tail get through, too?"

(Answer: Because you won't let go of it.)

Embracing a spiritual cannibal cult may be a similar conundrum.

One you hug it, its like cosmic velcro.

You just can't let go.

Tom H. Just let go.

No: while we Infidels appreciate the criticisms of Islam which Muslims like Souad Sbai make, and they can be useful in our anti-Jihadism, on another level, such bizarre critiques only serve to perpetuate the lie that anything good can be salvaged out of the system of Islam.

Quite. It would be like resting one's hopes in "moderate Nazism" back in the 1930s. And, to be sure, many Germans, and even many party members, were doubtless reasonable people, but that is not the point.

As the proverb has it, You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

I think the CIA has to get a part of the blame as well. It isn't correct to arrest people in secret without, at least, letting your ally beware of it. It just isn't nice. And that is an understatement.

There are moderate muslims? I thought they were a myth, like the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy.

gorniak:

I'm sorry you're attacking the wrong person: evidently you don't know Souad, that's why you attack her.

Try to send an email to Magdi Allam. He'll explain you who she is, given that he's a close friend of her.

Demand the same to Sheikh Palazzi.

There is no moderate Islam, I agree. But there are moderate Muslims and they are those who faces constant intimidation by the Islamists and who are forced to live in hiding because of death fatwas.

Magdi himself is a secular and moderate Muslim.

Please, ask someone who knows a bit Magdi Allam and Souad Sbai and he/she will tell you better.

And yes, if you ask her if she is muslim, she answers: "I am Secular. I am also glad to say I can be an apostate".

Stefania-

An "apostate" is no longer a "Muslim". Secular or otherwise.

As a person who has had sexual relations is no longer a "virgin". ("I am a secular virgin" would be a laughable and irrational claim.)

These folks need to get their stories straight.

Are they in or are they out?

They can't have their pedophile and beat it, too.

Italy is unfortunately too politically divided. It's usually either too far to the left or too far to the right. Italians seldom are able to strike a balance between the two and that is liable to come back to bite them in the derriere as we see here.

Gorniak, you are aligning yourself to the Islamists of the UCOII. They too say that Souad should be expelled and condemned for apostasy.

Well, you don't know Souad: she has left Islam and is an agnostic, thanks for forcing me to tell this publicly.

I hope that at least Robert Spencer can do a research and then tell you that you're dead wrong, and you're putting your anger on the wrong people instead of the Islamists we must fight.

Souad is a sort of Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Wafa Sultan.

Please, do a research yourself.

stefania,

There are 3 types of Muslims (with approximately percentages of overall population of worldwide Muslims):

1) Muslims -- who are either passively, or actively, our enemies: 98%

2) Muslims -- who are criticizing Islam and are therefore useful for us, but who, by remaining Muslim, deserve to be ridiculed for being quixotic clowns: 1.9%

3) Apostates -- who have left Islam completely, (not "sort of"), and who deserve our unreserved praise and admiration: 0.1%