Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek promotes pro-Sharia Ground Zero mosque imam as a "moderate"

Victory in the war on terror will be won when a moderate, mainstream version of Islam--one that is compatible with modernity--fully triumphs over the world view of Osama bin Laden.

How long did you say you can hold your breath?

A moderate mainstream version...I guess that means destroying 'the idea that corrupted a religion' (Gibbs)...
Now if we can only figure out what that is...

All it takes is a few fervent Jihadists to go in and take out a hundred of so of these so-called "Moderate Muslims" and the rest will cower, because that is what the rabid says they are doing, staying on the sideline, avoiding their duty and deserving of death. Prophet Muhammad instructed those loyal to the call of prayer to burn in their homes those that didn't. The fervent will make martyrs of the reluctant, they will help them along the way. It is really nice of the Jihadists, with this warning, that the moderates can chose their own form of death. As long as it is done in the name of Allah. Death cults aren't complicated. They are about as straight forward as you can get.

"Muslims who are genuinely peaceful, eschew Sharia, and are loyal American citizens"

No such creature exists, Sharia is the law of Allah SWT, and any Muslim must believe in and live under sharia, at least personally.

It is quite possible to be genuinely peaceful and loyal American citizens, but a Muslim who denies sharia is not possibly a Muslim.

The Attorney General of New York seems to have no problem with this Imam, however. Maybe you should ask him to investigate. He won't though.

Anyway it will be funny to see this AG of New York get elected to Governor. Isn't that often a person who becomes President?

This is why I say that all Muslims are liars and hypocrites. None of them could be ever trusted. It also shows that there are no "moderate" Muslims, they may pretend to be some kind of moderate but really deep down are radical Muslims first and then anything else.

So even Zakaria is not sensitive to the feelings of families of 9/11 victims. This guy is editor of Newsweek, educated, living in USA for more than a quarter century and yet he can't bear himself to oppose building of a mosque on GZ,then how would you expect any other Muslim to be a moderate. To hell with the feelings of Americans - "we conquered the 9/11 site and we are entitled to build a mosque to celebrate it", is the mantra that every Muslim in this country is reciting!!Alas our politicians and MSM can't see through the Muslim charade.

Wake up Americans

Fareed Zakaria likes to present Islam as a faith whose wild, woolly, Kalashnakov-carrying, henna-dyed, bearded zealots in the hills, are being marginalized by smooth, educated, besuited and urbane Muslim intellectuals who wouldn't dream of throwing a shoe at anyone, let alone fly an aircraft loaded with innocents into a building filled with busy workers.

The trick he hopes we will all fall for, is that we will suppose the wild, woolly variety of troglodytes are some kind of anachronism and that 'modernizers' like him will soften the hard edges of Islam so that it fits neatly and harmoniously with Western moral values and social mores.

The problem for the fareeds of this world is the damning evidence presented in stark and unambiguous terms in Al Qur'an and associated canonical texts of Islam's plans to replace civilization with the savage Shari'a code along with Islam. However, neither he nor the wild and woolly etcs.. would deny a single syllable of Al Qur'an.

That makes the besuited, smooth-talking, urbane fareeds as culpable the jihadists who murder in the name of their God every day.

I did not know who Zakaria was when I downloaded his book, "The Post American World" on audio. Apparently it was also on Obama's reading list, according to Geller / Spencer "The Post American Presidency;" I think that is where I read this. Anyway Wikipedia wrote the following about Mr. Zakaria's early life in part:

"Zakaria was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India to a Konkani Muslim family—though his religious upbringing was secular, including singing Christian hymns and the celebration of both Hindu and Muslim holidays.[2]"

Early on in Zakaria's book, he got down to business with respect to the global jihad. Around page 14 (going by "Search inside this book" at Amazon, as I don't have a hard copy), Zakaria wrote:

"A cottage industry of scaremongering has flourished in the West -- especially in the United States -- since 9/11. Experts extrapolate every trend they don't like, forging any serious study of the data. Many conservative commentators have written about the impending Islamization of Europe (Eurabia, they call it, to make you even more uncomfortable). Except that the best estimates, from U.S. intelligence agencies, indicated that Muslims constitute around 3 percent of Europe's population now and will rise to between 5 and 8 percent by 2025, after which they will probably plateau.

"The watchdogs note the musings of every crackpot Imam, search the archives for each reference to the end of days, and record and distribute the late-night TV musings of every nutcase who glorifies martyrdom. They erupt in fury when a Somali taxi driver somewhere refuses to load a case of liquor into his car, seeing it as the beginning of sharia in the West. But these episodes do not reflect the basic direction of the Muslim world. That world is also modernizing, though more slowly than the rest, and there are those who try to become leaders in rebellion against it. The reactionaries in the world of Islam are more numerous and extreme than those in other cultures -- that world does have its dysfunctions. But they remain a tiny minority of the world's billion-plus Muslims. And neglecting the complicated context in which some of these pseudo religious statements are made -- such as an internal Iranian power struggle among clerics and non clerics -- leads to hair-raising but absurd predictions, like Bernard Lewis's confident claim that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad planned to mark an auspicious date on the Islamic calendar (August 22, 2006) by "ending the world." (Yes he actually wrote that.)

"The ideological watchdogs have spent so much time with the documents of jihad that they have lost sight of the actual Muslim societies. Where they to step back, they would see a frustration with the fundamentalists, a desire for modernity (with some dignity and cultural pride for sure), and a search for practical solutions -- not a mass quest for immortality through death. When Muslims travel, they flock by the millions to see the razzle-dazzle of Dubai, not the seminaries of Iran. The minority that wants jihad is real, but it operates within societies where such activities are increasingly unpopular and irrelevant.

"In the West, the effects of terrorism have diminished with each additional attack.......Of course, things would be different if a major terrorist organization were to acquire significant weapons of mass destruction. A nuclear attack could result in mass panic and a broader breakdown. But such weapons are harder to get than many think......

I'm worn out transcribing from Zakaria's April 17, 2008 book.

I will only add that I read this yesterday evening:

Arab Majority Backs Nuclear Iran
Friday, 06 Aug 2010 07:56 AM

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Arab--Majority-Nuclear--Iran/2010/08/06/id/366783

"If there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam"
The answer of course is - Yes. Islam is sure to shit out another crew of heretics, madmen, or bullshitting well-wishers.
We would do better to learn everything we can about human/animal systems of impersonal and personal domination, control, master/slave, pain, fear, cruelty, joy, etc.

I would like a few things to be noticed about this article:

a. See the belligerence of the title: Build the Ground Zero Mosque ! In the title, he does not even say that it is not exactly on Ground Zero and seems OK with the idea if it was a mosque (and not a "cultural center", as touted by it's promoters) and it was bang on Ground Zero (and not a few blocks away)

b. He won't even admit the possibility that there may not exist a moderate version of Islam. He argues his view with the assumption, not questioned nor questionable, that there is a moderate Muslim community committed to American values and law, just as there is an extremist community.

Normally, if a like of Zakaria refused to acknowledge that there is a point of view that Islam per se is a problem, in a different context, it might be understandable. But in this case, the opposing view, that of those championing the opposition to a mosque on GZ, is that Islam itself is intolerant and terror of the 9/11 kind comes naturally to it.

Such being the case, an honest commentator would acknowledge this point of view and then try to rebut that point of view logically. It is characteristically dishonest of Muslim commentators not to acknowledge this point of view but expect all to assume existence of a "moderate" Islam and Muslim community, that also believes in Shariah.

c. Somewhere in the article, not quoted above, he says the following:

"Rauf often makes his arguments using interpretations of the Quran and other texts. Now, I am not a religious person, and this method strikes me as convoluted and Jesuitical. But for the vast majority of believing Muslims, only an argument that is compatible with their faith is going to sway them."

The last line bears repeating, I reproduce it in caps: BUT FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF BELIEVING MUSLIMS, ONLY AN ARGUMENT THAT IS COMPATIBLE WITH THEIR FAITH IS GOING TO SWAY THEM.

It is not at all clear to me why an argument ONLY compatible with their faith is going to sway Muslims, if they are modern and moderate as Zakaria insists majority of them are ?! Why won't arguments (in favor of modernity and moderation, equality of people irrespective of faith, equality of women, denunciation of terror etc.) not based on Islam but on sheer humanity and commonsense, "sway them" ? Why must every principle of life pass the test of Islam or Shariah before it is acceptable to "the vast majority of believing muslims"

Do we make such concessions to Hindus, or Buddhists or Jews or, in a christian majority country like America, to "believing" christians ? Why should we expect all others to accept modernity and universal human rights based on simple commonsense, whereas we concede to Muslims that they will ONLY accept some principle if it compatible with their faith (notice the use of the word "only" in Zakaria's article !)

Fareed Zakaria is a stealth jihadi. We have thousands like him in India. In fact, as far as I know he is of Indian origin too.

On this site, I don't think all this needs convincing to anyone, but it bears pinpointing how Zakarias are pushing their jihadi agenda into the mainstream of a modern, constitutional society like America.

Sanjay

Profess to believe, and apply, shari'ah yourself, Yusef YK--but only to yourself, as you are neither caliph, mufti, nor prophet.

Fareed Zakaria is the son of late Rafiq Zakaria

Rafiq Zakaria was a congress muslim leader, who opposed partition of India in 1947, since it would split muslims into 3 parts and prevent islamisation of India

Both Zakarias were smooth talking taqiyah artists

I agree with Mr. Spencer that all mosques should be scrutinized for jihadi activity.

But I also think that we should use every possible legal means to block the construction of mosques everywhere.

Finally, I think there should be a national effort to put to shame all people who attend mosques, especially those who promote them. This is easy to do: just force them to confront what is in their own so-called holy and canonical documents.

Neither Zakaria nor any other Muslim could tolerate such free speech efforts without losing face and showing his hypocrisy.

In an interview he graciously gave after the Muslim terrorist attack in Mumbai, in the course of explaining why Indian Muslims might join Pakistani Muslims in attacking Indian Hindus and foreign non-Muslims, Fareed Zakaria did not mention "because the Qur'an tells them to slay the Unbelievers" and they took that, and the example of Muhammad, to heart; he never mentions, in this interview, or indeed in any of his writings or his television appearances -- he's quite a thrusting careerist, akin to Christine Amanpour, and has parlayed his slight foreignness into a useful element in his appeal to those who do the hiring and promoting -- Fareed Zakaria said this:

"Muslim militants have been responsible for much of the violence that has plagued Mumbai in recent years. But these attacks seem to be of a different magnitude.
One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last ten years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted."

"The Muslim population has not shared in the boom"? Who owns Infosys? The Muslim population "has not shared in the boom"? How do Muslims do anywhere compared to non-Muslims, as in Malaysia, compared to Hindus and Chinese, or in Indonesia, compared to Chinese, or in Great Britain or France or Itally or Spain or Germany compared to any other non-Muslim immigrant group? Could it be the hatred of bid'a, or inshallah-fatalism, or the discouraging of free and skeptical inquiry in Islam, and the encouragment of an attitude of being an unquestioning "slave of Allah" who follows the rules as to What Is Commanded and What Is Prohibited, and is never to ask the reason, moral or intellectual, why?

No, for Fareed Zakaria, the fact that Muslims apparently -- now that they are no longer the overlords -=- in India cannot quite compete with Hindus, expalins the possible participation of Indian Muslims in atrocities against non-Muslims.

But, then, what explains the participation of Pakistani Muslims? Or for that matter of those rich Arabs who run Al Qaeda?

Until and unless the smiling, if the scarily skull-faced Fareed Zakaria, with that smile glued onto his face, starts speaking truthfully and helpfully about Islam, he will be of no value, will not help any of his listeners or readers to understand the very subject about which, no doubt, his naively impressed employers hired him, because of his "special insight" or "special knowledge" or something.

He is a perfectly ordinary thrusting fellow, who has gotten far, but is not particulary impressive on any subject outside of Islam or the subcontinent,and fairly misleading on that subject.

So why is he still there?

Inertia, I suspect. And the inability, once you have spent money at a magazine or network building up a Personality, to admit that the quality is not there, and you should give someone else, or a few someone elses, a chance to show what they can do.

"Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek promotes pro-Sharia Ground Zero mosque imam as a "moderate""

Why is anyone surprised?

A BIT OF BACKGROUND ON FAREED ZAKARIA. HIS FATHER WAS THE LATE RAFIQ ZAKARIA WHO WAS A CONGRESS PARTY BIG WIG IN BOMBAY INDIA. IT IS WIDELY KNOWN THAT HIS FATHER COLLECTED MONEY BY SHAKING DOWN OF INDUSTRIALISTS IN BOMBAY FOR ILLEGAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LATE MRS. INDIRA GANDHI, WHOSE PARTY WHICH WAS IN POWER AT THAT TIME

WHEN A GENUINE MUSLIM DR. ABDUL KALAM WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT OF INDIA AND KALAM WAS A PERSON WHO LIKED SOUTH INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC RAFI ZAKARIA WAS REPORTED TO HAVE SAID THAT DR. KALAM WAS NOT A MUSLIM

SO FAREED ZAKARIA'S ACTIONS DO NOT SURPRISE ME IN ANY WAY THIS IS TO BE EXPECTED
IN MANY WAYS LIKE FATHER LIKE SON

Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently stated down here in Australia, that the 'moderates' are as bad as the violent jihadis -- because they continue to shield and promote what she calls 'the fundamentally flawed ideology of Islam" I'd say the "catastrophically flawed ideology of Islam...

I awaited anxiously to watch Fareed on Sundays. He really had a good show but never again will I watch. He may say he is American but he does not get us. I gave him the benifit of the doublt before but he doesn't get our soul. Yes, you can push the great ideal of freedom of religion and the other great ideals that make us America but the crush of 911 has brought into light the fact that sometime other matters, such as the devastation of 911 is too deep to allow this insidious bombblasting of our goodness.
Yes we want freedom of religion but not a supremicy mosque to look down on islamic handywork.
No Fareed you are wrong to us. You need to get us.

When you watch Zakaria you are put in mind of John Webster, "who saw the skull beneath the skin."

Zakaria keeps skirting the issue of Islam. He doesn't think Islam itself is a problem -- apparently he hasn't read the Qur'an too closely, nor examined the figure of Muhammad, his words, his deeds, the details of his life, and what that means for the vast and primitive (and the primitive can be as rich as all get-out) Muslim masses. He talks, smoothy, about political and economic reform as the key to dampening down the threat from Islamic "extremists" ("fundamentalists" -- it's your choice). Were we to follow Zakaria, we would do exactly as we have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan -- squandering three trillion dollars to make Muslim states prosperous, unified, with people ready to compromise with one another, and endless amounts of American money, American training, American this and American that.

No, he can't face up to what Islam inculcates. Filial piety won't permit that. He will never ever come close, that is, to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Magdi Allam, or the others, much more intelligent and much more morally aware than he is. But he's a careerist. And he lives in a world of other thrusting careerists. That's how the people who people that world got where they are. There is no other way, under the current system. If someone good and intelligent manages somehow to get through, I call that piece a wonder now.

Here's something I wrote four months ago in a posting on Fareed Zakaria. It does not date:

"Fareed Zakaria, despite once having a wine column, cannot possibly be expected, as someone who continues to identify with Islam (perhaps his own private Islam, one that he wishes exists), to be able to make the ideology of Islam clear to viewers, and hence he cannot ever make clear what is going on in Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or in Bangladesh, or in Indonesia, or anywhere else. He cannot explain, for example, why it is that the "winning hearts and minds" strategy is impossible of attainment, cannot explain why after the Americans leave Iraq will relapse into a state of low-level (or perhaps high-level) hostilities between Sunni Arabs, who will never accept their loss of power and status, and the Shi'a Arabs, who have no intention of relaxing their hold on power. Some depict this as a matter of particular personages, so that were Al-Maliki, for example, removed that somehow the Shi'a would be more willing to share power, and the Sunnis to accept their new status. But the Shi'a Arabs constitute 65% of the population, and the Sunni Arabs 19%. Why should the former, who at no time in the history of modern Iraq been treated as equals by the Sunni Arabs, now behave magnanimously toward those Sunnis? Islam itself teaches that there are Victors and Vanquished, so why should Muslims consider, in the manner of non-Muslim advanced Westerners, the people who removed Saddam Hussein, the possibilities of permanent compromising? This goes against the grain of Islam, where one makes a treaty, or appears to yield, to one's opponents only to bide one's time, and increase one's power so as to make another attempt on that opponent, that enemy.

Can one imagine Farid Zakaria recognizing, much less imparting to others, any of this? Can one imagine him discussing all the ways that Islam explains the failures of Muslim polities and peoples -- economic, political, social, intellectual, moral? No, it's not possible. He remains, as he must, an apologist -- at a higher and less immediately obvious level -- for Islam. Perhaps, since he is also a keen careerist, over time, as he feels the rising tide of understanding beginning to threaten him, and his presentation of events, he will change. Slightly, slightly, just as much as he has to, to stay ahead of the game, and protect and further promote himself, which is, after all, quite clearly Farid Zakaria's main goal in life."

Fareed Zakaria has his crafted as the Moderate Muslim who is also a Foreign Policy Analyst. He can't cease to do this, and he can't come clean about Islam. If he could be put back in his box -- perhaps someone will see he has long outlived his usefulness at Newsweek, and wouldn't it be wonderful if he lost his television program too, and had to be picked up by Al Jazeera, as part of its "moderate" facade. That would be fitting.

You should hear what apostates from Islam have to say about Fareed Zakaria. No, you don't need to hear it. You can guess.

"No, for Fareed Zakaria, the fact that Muslims apparently -- now that they are no longer the overlords -=- in India cannot quite compete with Hindus, expalins the possible participation of Indian Muslims in atrocities against non-Muslims."
According to Jinnah the founder of Pakistan the Muslims of pre-partition India were apart from the Hindus by race,language and religion hence the need to partition India. Now having partitioned India and obtained Pakistan and Bangladesh for the Muslims what the heck are the remaining Muslims doing in India. They should pack up their bags and move to either Pakistan or Bangladesh enmasse. And good riddance to these vermin

Rx:
225 grains applied to the base of the skull. End of problem.

Fareed Zakaria is mainly a careerist. He's doing fine. And he would be surprised, shocked, that anyone might detect, between the lines, or even right on them, a defense-of-Islam that could be considered a tell-tale sign -- as it is -- of a wilful misrepresentation of both Islam and what moves Muslims to behave toward non-Muslims as so many of them, when given the chance, do.

Apostates have taken his measure. And so have we. But I don't think his colleagues, television or print, who are more likely to be impressed by his smiles and evident success, are likely to think deeply about the matter of how he presents, or misrepresents, Islam.

They are, after all, dans la même galère. So why rock the boat?