Some good news from Boston, via the Boston Globe, with thanks to Morgaan Sinclair:
NEWTON -- Al Qasemi College , which was founded in 1989 as the first institute of Islamic higher education in Israel, is trying to export revolutionary openness and liberalism to the wider Islamic world, leaders of the faculty told educators, Jewish leaders, and local Muslims during a four-day visit to the Boston area that ended yesterday.Speaking at campuses, mosques, and the homes of Muslims, the Al Qasemi faculty said that it is time for Muslims to quit blaming others and examine their own responsibility for the troubles of Islamic civilization; time for Arab Israelis to call themselves Israelis, not Palestinians; and, above all, time for women to have full equality with men in the Muslim world.
All these assertions are considered radical, even incendiary, in much of the Arab Muslim world. But Mohammad Essawi , the president of the college, said such changes in thinking are needed to transform an education system in the Islamic world ``that is still in the 12th century and does not have an open mind."
``There is a huge opportunity to teach openness and pluralism in these societies," Essawi said yesterday.
Read it all.
It's about time we started to hear this sort of thing. But this is only a tentative beginning. It still needs help from the West by way of laws that target Islamic resistance to assimilation in Western countries, an end to Islamic immigration to our lands and the exclusion of Muslims from employment in public office, the military and the police until the Islamic world's attitudes have changed demonstrably and unequivocally, the end of our dependence on mid-East oil, and the formation of alliance systems among ALL non-Muslim countries that will guarantee a devastating and fatal war against the Islamic world if these gentler methods don't succeed in ending Islamist terrorism worldwide.
Wow. You sure Al Qasemi are muslims? Have they not read the Koran or the hadith?
I mention the right of Israel's existence to muslims today and they say to me "Israel is a vampire"......and they also say "wipe them out".....
6 million Iraelies in Israel at the moment and if you still remember 6 million Jews where killed in the Hollocaust. Connections?
Unfortunately this faculty is a extreme minority.
Watch their heads fly soon.
It is so good to hear that not only Western Civilization has college professors subverting the system that pays their bills. Now even Islam is suffering by the prof.
* 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 *
Whoops. Forgot that the American taxpayer is paying for the Moderate Moslem professors in Israel, not the Moslems themselves.
I will believe they want to reform when they stop making their kids saw off the heads of animals and "praying" 5 times a day.
These are the true muslim extremists.
First of all I'd like to say that I appreciate the centiment here, but we'll see how much traction this has. I would really like to have my mind changed on all of this. I have several questions for the audience here.
1- Name one civilization that has over any, more that token period of time, been able to coexist peacefully where Islam is part of the plueralistic cultural mix.
2- To my knowledge the only historical model (outside of the Balkans and we all know how well that has gone.) we have is Spain. Why did Spain outlaw Islam?
I'd like to close with some dialogue many on here have some very harsh things to say about Muslims living in the west, and Spencer has taken a lot of flack in this regard. Most of us were not born with these opinions, in fact most of us have had our PC attitudes shattered by research, and observation. I say to the Muslim community change my mind not only with words, but with action, as your deeds will speak for you. In closing I'd like some of you to make fictitious persons on Muslim myspace (I did both as a supposed Muslim, and as a Christian). What I found only confirmed what I already knew. Most Muslims want to live in peace, but if you tally it up there are about say 15% that that do not want to live in a pluralistic society. They feel like we (the west) expect them to change, also there is a violent aspect to this notion. I had a long conversation about apostates, all agreed they should be killed, which is illegal in the west. The dichotomy is that if they do not believe this and kill apostates, they are apostates take that for what it is and implies.
The one place in the world you are likely to see Jews and Arabs fraternize and get along is in Israel. If you'll remember, the bombers a few years ago targeted several cafes where working class Arabs and Jews, truckdrivers etc. mingled together.
There was at one time a Zionist school of thought that saw the Jews as semitic brothers coming home who would be a bridge for western progress, agriculture etc. to the Mideast.
Even in the West Bank in the period before Palestinian 'self rule' there was a boom. Jewish settlements in particular greatly enriched the surrounding areas. Standard of living before the Palestinian Authority gangster terror state took over was TEN TIMES higher than at present.
"Dahlia Fadila , who teaches English literature at Al Qasemi, said in an interview yesterday that men and women on the faculty share a conviction, heightened by their exposure to Jewish Israeli society, that ``unless women are active and empowered, our society will not develop."
I think this is true. Men and women compliment each other generally with their differences. I believe God wills that as a gift.
From above: I believe God wills that as a gift.
However, I would add that on a personal level the Almighty seems more interested in procreation via nature than that men and women get along in marriage. That requires work. It's not all about compliments.
Reality, or taqiyya? I'm much more interested in what they're actually saying in Al Qasemi classrooms, and in their home mosques. What they say in Boston, for infidel consumption, is basically worthless.
Aynrandgirl's point is well taken. But assuming they are sincere in English and Arabic, I wonder if he got to speak at Harvard, too.