Muslim students pressing Northwestern's athletic department for prayer space

Religion is not a personal set of ethics and responsibilities. It is in large part a political agenda which requires believers to force others to accept, then adopt, the outward habits of muslims.

It's not about improving oneself - it's about coercing others.

Not in my country. Dont Tread on Me mo-foes.

It's very true that at most liberal arts universities, the student and administrative elite are bending over backwards to appease and satisfy Muslim students, no matter what there demands or now matter how "radical", in order to ensure "multiculturalism" (somewhat unaware that it is a value that is antithetical to Islam itself).

Not everything is all bad though. I am a student at UC Irvine, which Jihadwatch readers might remember as having a very loud and annoying Muslim Student Union. Among their "bridge-building" activities includes repeatedly inviting Amir Abdel Malik Ali http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004938.php to give hate speeches, annual anti-Zionist but also anti-Semitic events, http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2004/06/002154print.html including one last year entitled "Holocaust in the Holy Land" which the recent Iran Holocaust conference reminded me of, and many others. On the history faculty is Mark LeVine, http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004272.php a self-hating Jew named by David Horowitz as one of the 101 most dangerous American academics. Seems like the center of jihadist and leftist pro-jihadist activity, doesn't it? It's because of the Muslims that I've learned to take shortcuts to class by avoiding the main road. :)

There seem to be signs of improvements both here and on many other campuses, though, that are definately signs of progress and worth of encouraging. Jewish and conservative groups are increasingly becoming more active by showing jihadist films and literature such as "Obsession" and inviting anti-jihadist speakers such as Daniel Pipes, who is coming on January 31st (I hope to be there).

As a contrast to this story posted about Muslim students demanding prayer spaces, I have some good news to share about something going on right now on a university campus. I am currently taking a history class right now entitled "Jews and Muslims". I expected it to be filled with leftist propaganda about the "Golden Age" and the harmonious relations that were wrecked by the evil Zionists and Western imperialists and to ignore the roots of Jewish hatred and tension in Islam itself.

After only two weeks of the class, I have been happily surprised. Not only have we been assigned readings on the Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia, which put a historical perspective besides the Islamic propaganda, the fact that in a history class the Quran and Hadith are not treated as necessarily authoratative angers the only Muslim in the class (he caused some humor on the first day of class by, while saying that he teaches Arabic at an Islamic center, maintained that he had never heard of the word "dhimmi" and therefore it must not exist, to which the professor wrote the word on the board. He knew what jizya was though, stating that it's a tolerant policy where all you have to do is pay to be "protected", leaving out that the only reason one would need to be protected is that Muslims are the type of people to kill non-Muslim unless they pay extortion money).

This past week the entire story of the Jews of Medina and Muhammad as narrated in Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham were assigned as readings, so that students who had never even heard of the event read the gruesome details and inhuman acts committed by Muhammad (pork be upon him), detailed with pride by the Muslim narrators. An article by Karen Armstrong justifying the acts as relative to their time period and blaming all anti-Semitism on Christians and Zionists was ridiculed, and the professor, who specializes in the Jews of Morocco, laid out with great detail to the class numeroud anti-Semitic pronuncements in the Quran and Hadith.

Next week the subject is dhimmi status and the lack of Muslim claim to Jerusalem - which again appear that they will be discussed unapologetically and truthfully. Among the readings for next week include an article by Daniel Pipes debunking Islamic claims to Jerusalem, and variety of articles dismissing teh "Golden Age" myths within their dhimmi contexts, and two chapters by Bat Ye'or of Robert Spencer's book "The Myth of Islamic Intolerance" :) Not exactly the pro-Islamic leftist propaganda that I was pessimistically expecting.

So despite stories like the one posted, which obviously are of concern, the readers of Jihadwatch and Dhimmiwatch should know that not all of America's university community is playing dumb to the history of jihad and dhimmitude. All you need is professors who aren't afraid to tell the truth, students who aren't afraid to learn the truth, and Muslim who are too used to American life to threaten you. :)

No, I think CAIR should set higher goals for itself. It should ask the authorities to stop the game to allow Muslims to pray. This will help to educate Americans about Islam, help to build inter-faith understanding and the usual guff that appears on CAIR press releases.

I'm hearing more people express a disdain for the mind set of Muslims to presuppose all non-Muslims are narrow-mined bigots and racists , and that the Muslims Paranoia to assume everything is about them means that they actually believe they have the Right to indoctrine other as a form of tolerance.

Westerners got along fine for decades and improved Human Rights as Political maturity
advanced in the best interests of all the Citizens, but now Muslims don;t give a damn about my tenets or give a damn about whether I've led
a good life or not , they just assume I'm a slacked-jawed moron that has a closet Islamphobe
inside me and forcing me to read the Quran and learn how to not offend Islam will solve the problem.

Paranoia and denial seem to be rooted in the Quran and ergo get passed down to the followers
that will go as far as flying Planes into buildings and slaughtering 3000 of God's children for Allah's cause.

Matityahu613

That is very different from what I've heard lately, and great to hear. My youngest is now looking at colleges, and to be honest there are quite a few we have decided to leave off the list due to their liberal views on jihadism.

A student senator representing the Muslim constituency on campus, senior sophomore Hibah Yousuf, hopes to launch that dialogue with administrators next week.

Spencer comments: "Great. Let's have a dialogue. With full transparency and honesty."

That'll be the day.

Any dialogue that occurs will have 4 non-negotiable givens already on the table, agreed to by most of the non-Muslims as well, who have been infected by the PC virus:

1) Islam is a noble religion of peace.

2) Jihad is an "inner spiritual struggle".

3) Only a tiny minority of extremists are bad, and they are trying to "hijack" Islam.

4) The vast majority of Muslims must be presumed "moderate" until the moment they explode.

Northwestern dropped its Protestan Christian religious affiliation quite some time ago, if I recall the university's history correctly.

Haven't had a problem until now. Strange.

What were Amir Siddiqui and his friends doing in a football stadium full of unbelievers anyway?

Mohammad didn't have football, so that activity is at least worthless and possibly haraam. Ask the Islamic Courts of Somalia (if you can get them to slow down long enough to answer).

Cheers

The legal opinions proclaimed by Islamic scholars, known as fatwas, have proliferated in the Muslim world since the 1980s.
The growth in fatwas - some of them contradictory - has led to debate over who can legitimately issue them. As part of a government drive to eliminate frivolous fatwas, the Saudi newspaper Al Watan recently published one such edict setting out new rules for football.

In the name of God the merciful and benevolent:

1. International terminology that heretics use, suchas "foul," "penalty", "corner," "goal", "out" and others, should be abandoned and not said. Whoever says them should be punished and ejected from the game.

2. Do not call "foul" and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries.

3. Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Add to this number or decrease it.

4. Play in your regular clothes or your pyjamas or something like that, but not coloured shorts and numbered T-shirts, because shorts and T-shirts are not Muslim clothing. Rather, they are heretical and western clothing, so beware of imitating their fashion.

5. If you have fulfilled these conditions and intend to play soccer, play to strengthen the body in order better to struggle in the way of God on high and to prepare the body for when it is called to jihad. Soccer is not for passing time or the thrill of so-called victory.

6. Do not play in two halves. Rather, play in one half or three halves in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the corrupted and the disobedient.

7. If neither of you beats the other, or "wins", as it is called, and neither puts the leather between the posts, do not add extra time or penalties. Instead leave the field, because winning with extra time and penalty kicks is the pinnacle of imitating heretics and international rules.

8. Young crowds should not gather to watch when you play because if you are there for the sake of sports and strengthening your bodies as you claimed, why would people watch you? You should make them join your physical fitness and jihad preparation, or you should say: "Go proselytise and seek out morally reprehensible acts in the markets and the press and leave us to our physical fitness."

9. You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should punish him, for what is the relationship between celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are practising?

10. You should use two posts instead of three pieces of wood or steel that you erect in order to put the ball between them, meaning that you should remove the crossbar in order not to imitate the heretics and in order to be entirely distinct from the soccer system's despotic international rules.

11. Do not do what is called "substitution," that is, taking the place of someone who has fallen, because this is a practice of the heretics in America and elsewhere.

Bush Ellison Graham Martinez will insist on prayer rooms in missile silos, on B2 bombers, and in the air bases where they are stationed.

"There were some logistical issues involved, particularly in regards to people leaving the arena or Ryan Field while a game is in progress and then seeking re-entry, which is normally not allowed," Mack wrote. "But we understand that Northwestern is an institution that values diversity, so we're continuing to take a look at it to see if there is a way we can accommodate the needs of our Muslim students."...

Oh, good.. the moslems leave the game and sneak back in later with bombs. Great idea. I LOVE the dialogue.

Most groups prove the power of their religion by imposing it on themselves, no matter what. Orthodox Jews will not work on Saturday, Many Amish won`t drive cars, Buddhists won`t eat meat.

But Muslims prove the power of their religion by imposing it on everyone else.

Just as in any other religion a martyr is someone who has been murdered in its cause, whereas in Islam a "martyr" is someone who has killed for Allah.

Yes, by all means, give the Muslims at Northwestern their own prayer room at the stadium. Uh oh, there's still problem? Ramadan is coming and we will be to busy breaking our fast, so reschedule those evening games, will you? Uh oh, another problem? The crowd is too noisy during our prayers. You dhimmis are being disrespectful. Please make sure that you play your infidel games only in between prayers times or....something really loud will go off in the stadium that you help you remember that Islam rules everywhere, even at game time.

"But Muslims prove the power of their religion by imposing it on everyone else.

Just as in any other religion a martyr is someone who has been murdered in its cause, whereas in Islam a "martyr" is someone who has killed for Allah."

tokyobk

That is one of the most brilliant summations of Islam ever made.

Debate on Christian genocide in Turkey at bottom

"But Ruediger Seesemann, an associate professor of Islamic studies at Northwestern, said academic institutions have a responsibility to encourage spiritual formation.

These Muslim students want to integrate their Muslim identity with their identity as college students," he said. "Why not let them bring their prayer rugs, let them pray and let them enjoy the basketball game?"

"I personally think it can be settled in a very easy and uncomplicated way," Seesemann added. "The fact that it becomes a matter of debate is significant and points to the sensitivity of the issue."

That sensitivity, he said, stems from fear and a lack of knowledge about the Islamic faith--nothing a dialogue can't fix. A student senator representing the Muslim constituency on campus, senior sophomore Hibah Yousuf, hopes to launch that dialogue with administrators next week."
-- from the article above

Transparent apologetics by Ruediger Seesemann. And who decided to ask his opinion? Is he an expert of some kind on the subject of pedagogy, or on the favoring of religion, or of one religion, by the government, or by a univeristy. Perhaps Ruediger Seesemann is unacquainted with the Establishment Clause or the constitutional history of that clause; if so, he might learn a bit before making pronouncements about this country, its laws, its customs, and a good deal else. And he might come to understand that in institutions that are not clearly connected to a particular faith, such as a church-connected school, the very idea of favoring one religion, or of giving religion an unaccustomed role (and prayer rugs at a football stadium are certainly a most novel, and not in a good sense, idea).

And one wonders how it is that he is quoted at all. And the statement by him about how "academic institutions have a duty to encourage spiritual formation" is nonsense. They don't. Some, thosee specifically connected to this or that religion, may find it their duty. But others do not. Not if "spiritual formation" is defined as changing long-established rules in order to accomodate the rituals of this or that belief-system.

Does Ruediger Seesemann, and do the Muslims in question at Ohio State, really wish to have the tenets of Islam held up for public inspection and critical scrutiny? Do they really want a public of non-Muslims to take a good look at the Qur'an, and 5.82, and 9.29, and 9.5, and more than a hundred Jihad verses? Do they want that publiic to realize that it can go to www.quranbrowser.com, and insert a word into the Search box, and find out what the Qur'an has to say, in various translations (that the searcher can specify) that it would not be good for Infidels to find out too much about.

Does Ruediger Seesemann, does Amir Siddiqui, does Ahmed Rehab, really want Infidels to find out about Islam? Would they be pleased if everyone started to visit the websites where the "authentic" Hadith of Bukhari and Muslim can be read -- read with astonishment, read with increasing horror, by any sane Infidel? Do they want Infidels to find out about what Muhammad did, that model of deportment, uswa hasana, that Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil? Do they want Infidels, in order to have that "dialogue" with Muslims, to really find out about the mass decaptiation of the bound prisoners taken by Mohammad, about the attack on the farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, the murders of Abu Akaf and Asma bint Marwan, and about little Aisha, and so much more? Do they? Because that is what they will get. The period of total ignorance and wilful idiocy is over. It took a while, but it is over. There is too much observable behavior of Muslism, in Thailand and Pakistan, in Indonesia and the Sudan, in Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon and Nigeria and Somalia, and in France and England and Denmark and Belgium and Norway and Sweden and The Netherlands and Russia and everywhere that Muslims have shown that they do indeed divide the universe between Believer and Infidel, do indeed think that they have no need in the countries where Islam dominates to treat Infidels as equals but can deal with them as they see fit, discriminating against them, persecuting them, driving them out, even mass-murdering them. And at the same time, no matter where large numbers of Muslims have settled, they have made demands for changes in the legal and political institutions and social arrangments of the Infidels in whose lands they have been so carelessly allowed to settle -- and make those demands, each one more outrageous and incredible than the next, without the slightest hesitation, without the slightest shame, despite the clear record of Islam in its mistreatmen, ove 1350 years, of every non-Muslim people whose lands have been conqured, and they themselves offered the possibilty of death, conversion, or the status of dhimmi, which is to say a status of degradation, humiliation, and permanent physical insecurity.

Let them make an issue of this. And then starat educating others, or educating yourself, about the real contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and the real, not sanitized, history of Muslim Jihad-conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.

It will be a good Teaching Moment about the teachings, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, both in theory, and in practice, over the past 1350 years. And more than anything else, Teaching Moments are what are needed.

By all means, let Muslims call for that phony "dialogue." And let Infidels prepare, well in advance, by finding out something significant about Islam. And not, one suspects, by going to the likes of Ruediger Seessemann.

"But we understand that Northwestern is an institution that values diversity.."
-- from a statement by Asscoiate Athletic Director John Mack

No, stop valuing "diversity." As defined, it is not real diversity, diversity of minds, but only the stupidest and most obvious kind -- that of race and religion and ethnicity. "Diversity" is not a good. It is not a bad. It is nothing at all. Forget about "diversity."

Of course poor Mr. Mack really doesn't give a damn; he is merely parroting what his bosses and presumed betters say. He shouldn't. Nor should they prate about such things.

A little pedagogic dignity would be nice. A little belief that the purpose of a university is to educate. It is not to bring, to foster, to promote "diversity." That is not what universities, especially those full of students who have been on the receiving end of American education, with its collapsed standards, need at this point. They need remedial education, and they need it now.

I guess we should all be grateful that Islam doesn't (officially) call for human sacrifices-no doubt the peaceful ones would demand and most likely receive special rooms for that bloody task as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, just a special place for muslims only to conduct their activities...
To be followed by - seperate seating areas for women, men, "kuffir", etc. Then banning of hotdog -or at least pork hotdogs.
Worst of all - female cheerleaders in full burkha.
Yeah - diversity is good.

oh and - why not build a football stadium (US style) in Mecca - where muslims could have their game anyway they like - plus it may provide a more civilized alternative to male muslim proclivities to murder (of women, children, innoncents) and mayhem.

"Any spectator attending a sporting event recognizes that certain sacrifices must be made to attend a live event," wrote 2005 graduate Scott Barnett. "If attending a game interferes with one's religious rituals, I suggest they watch it at home or simply postpone the rituals until after the game."

I agree completely with Mr. Barnett. I also don't think state universities or any other government institutions should be in the business of creating "prayer space" any more than they should organize prayer in school. If Muslim students want to form a prayer club and reserve rooms just like the fencing club or glee club, fine. No one besides Muslims really needs prayer space. What's next? Broadcasting the call to prayer from university buildings? Forming a separate Muslim student government? Empowering a student committee for the prevention of vice and the protection of virtue to send out monitors to issue demerits to Muslim students who violate Islamic law?

The term "diversity" needs to be restricted to the affirmative action context it was born in. It's not really a moral value in and of itself.

Shiva, I'd love to see a link for that football fatwa. That is a riot (no pun intended)!

"Siddiqui, president of the Muslim cultural Student Association, said "I can leave the game early, come later, or pray somewhere in the stadium on dirty floors with lots of noise and lots of people around, which isn't a huge problem. But we'd love to have a small area.""

That's correct Siddiqui, it isn't a huge problem, so just do it, like everybody else who has a pressing religious (or non-religious for that matter) obligation to attend to at game time.

"Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations in Chicago, said the beauty of salaat is that it can be performed just about anywhere..."

If it can be performed "just about anywhere" Ahmed, why do you need a dedicated prayer room for it?

"Ruediger Seesemann, an associate professor of Islamic studies at Northwestern, said "Why not let them bring their prayer rugs, let them pray and let them enjoy the basketball game?"

Who is stopping them from doing so presently Ruediger?

That is how it begins. Little demands that are fulfilled will lead to bigger demands. And all the time they will be spawning so in a few years, no politician worth his salt could ignore this voting bloc. Then the mosques start coming up, and infidels living in the areas adjacent start leaving for muslim free areas, or at least areas where they won't have to put up with the 5 times wailing a day. The areas around the mosques start turning into ghettos : no-go zones for infidels. sharia becomes the rule of these ghettos. Next, police and city administration officials are discouraged from entering, and this area becomes a state within a state. The above process is repeated until there is infidel territory left. Of course, with the increasing number of ghettos, crime rates shoot up, and when the muslim population reaches a certain percentage, a "struggle for freedom" also begins. But this is how it all begins. Little demands.

When you take out Jesus Son of God out of the system you get a bit of freedom liberal views, then comes Satan in disguise and the system welcomes in everyway in open arms the anti-Christ system as it seems your enemy is my enemy 'Christ' makes good a good partnership. People have dug their own graves in this and it will only grow because we have substituted our own spiritual morals for the sake of this, so you either now put up with this or make your way back to the days when life was so much simple without asking a lot of faith.

Well, o.k. a prayer room for the fans. But what about the players? How can we ask them to continue to play during the holy hours or prayer? Surely, the answer is to declare an official time-out at the appropriate time. Then the believers could spread their rugs, wash their feet, and go bottoms-up a few times. Non-believers could go to the john, or get a hot-dog, or just make rude noises.
And what about the professional athletes, so many of whom have so noisily proclaimed their "conversion" to islam? Why are they continuing to play during the holy times of prayers? Do they think their multi-million dollar salaries from their kaffir employers excuse them from the demands of allah? What real moslem would let himelf be bribed into violating the rules of islam? What kind of moslem lets hinmself be degraded into a sort of trained-animal act by accepting kaffir money to perform a kaffir game in front of thusands of kaffir spectators? I think we need a few fatwads to straighten this bunch out.

There's a knowledge gap alright. It's just not the kind of knowledge gap these moronic finishing school professors imagine.

Northwestern University is a third rate college filled with test-taking mediocrities and backfilled with the requisite obligatory members of the various protected classes.

They will probably get the preferential treatment. I work for a huge corporation and they are already getting preferential treatment like this in addition to not having to work certain hours of the day for religious reasons.

Harvard, for example, began as a divinity school (in 1636, 16 years after the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachussetts) -- founded, staffed and attended by Christians, with Christian pedagogy the principal curriculum. By the 20th century, the curriculum had diversified and the Christian character of the institution had become profoundly diluted by secularist education.

By the 1970s (and increasing zealously with each passing decade), in the curriculum of the quaintly shrunken relic of its former heart, the Divinity School, students (whether undergraduates just sampling from the comparative religions cafeteria, or grad students choosing to get a Divinity School degree for various reasons) could easily find and take classes in Christianity (when they were not taking classes in the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism, or in the eroticism of Buddhist Tantra, or in the Phenomenology of the Raw and the Cooked among the Chachaubunkkakowok Indians of Colonial Massachessetts, or in the mysticism of Islamic poetry) that explored how Jesus was really a proto-Marxist revolutionary, or how the sayings of Jesus were like Zen Koans, or how Christian missionaries during Western Colonialism had "raped" the Noble Savage around the non-Western world, or how Roman Emperor Constantine and a cabal of corrupt priests & theologians had in effect manufactured Christian orthodoxy in order to create an oppressive and intolerant Christian Empire and to suppress "dissent", or how to hermeneutically deconstruct the New Testament so that Mary the Prostitute becomes "empowered", or how to do a creative midrash on the Gospel of John to out Jesus and John as gay partners; etc.

I wonder ,do they stand for the national anthem????

A university has no responsability whatever to aid in the spiratual development of its students.

They will stop standing for the national anthem when they are 50% of the population plus one, and then all Americans will have to live with sharia law!

They will stop standing for the national anthem when they are 50% of the population plus one, and then all Americans will have to live with sharia law!

I'm not sure what the rationale for Northwestern's rule is, but, in the town I live in, no one is permitted to leave and return without buying a ticket again.

It prevents going to one's car and loading up on alcohol and such. So, the regulation is a safety issue.

I can't think that the university can change the rules for one group of believers, without violating the law.

Thanks, Mother Ecclesiastica. I speak from experience, having begun a graduate study program at Harvard Divinity in the mid-80s (almost two decades into the dawning of the Age of Aquarius). Although I decided to leave after only three months, that was more than enough time to appreciate the "diversity" there. (They had their token representatives of the old guard, like Prof. Helmut Koester, who himself had been taught by the great Rudolf Bultmann; but these few had become marginalized by the sexier pantheon of "world religions" and their Joseph Campbellite acolytes.)

Malik and Northwestern

Maybe we have to look at this situation from the opposite position that the Pakistani commentator Malik would. The Muslims are the enemy. How do we weaken them? We get them to give up their culture for our culture. Maybe granting these prayer privileges will get them to watch basketball. At some point, some Muslims will get so into basketball that they will start ignoring the calls to prayer. This could cause them to start losing their faith. So maybe we have to look at all the possibilities here.

"These Muslim students want to integrate their Muslim identity with their identity as college students,"

....Fine, go to a University in Tehran or Cairo....

Trollope.

Mother Ecclesiastica

You poor thing.
Jesus, in any of his roles, is utterly irrelevant in regard to Islam or Islam's filthy little war.

Just cos you have a problem remaining rational, doesn't mean the rest of Planet Earth is going to burn in Gehenna.

Trollope.

I don't have to be irational to know if these irrational trends spread like fire whist everyone looks at the ground. All I am saying onething is being substitued for another, they make such a deal these days about vampire scaring crosses in schools being offensive you wander who if the movies were right all along. You have to look at things spiritually somtimes but it's not easy to look at things that way without background understanding, won't hold you to it 'Mother Ecclesiastica' for things you don't know.