The General Manager of Al-Arabiya television, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, didn't get the memo about how he should be crying victimization and bigotry. "A House of Worship or a Symbol of Destruction?," by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid in Asharq Alawsat, August 16 (thanks to all who sent this in):
[...] I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. Is there a side that is committed to this mosque? The fact is that in the news reports there are names linked to this project that costs 100 million dollars!The sides enthusiastic for building the mosque might be building companies, architect houses, or politicized groups that want suitable investments?! I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation, or he is an investor who wants quick profits. This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a clever deed. The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery....
Well this is excellent news and underlines the point made by Pamela and Robert that Muslims of conscience do not support this project.
Looks like there are some honest Muslims in Arabia!!! Surprise, surprise....!!!
I don't know about Mr Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, but most Muslims of conscience pray five times a day. Two of those times are during the work-day. So oppose the mosque or no, it's disingenuous to claim that no one will use the mosque because few people live in the area.
From the article (with my emphases added):
"This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a *clever* deed.
"The last thing Muslims want *today* is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery....".
It's not that it is immoral; it is that, under present circumstances, with too many unsubdued and as-yet-unsubduable kafir growing angry and suspicious, it is not *clever*...because it is stirring up kafir resistance.
It's not that it would be wrong to do it, period; it is just that it is 'the last thing Muslims want *today*'...but TOMORROW, or the day after tomorrow, when the Ummah is more powerful, well, that would be another matter.
Nothing exceptional or of note here. Just a Muslim stumbling into the truth, which even Muslims can do from time to time. Now, back to the grind with Islam.
Relax, folks.
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid has just figured out that the Victory Mosque has awaken the American people from the PC fog that its leaders have generated. The project has gotten folks to realize that Islam is not peaceful, that it is not just another religion and that its goal is world domination.
Shhhh. Go back to sleep, infidels. We'll build the Victory Mosgue later.
The General Manager of Al-Arabiya television, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid knows his Islam....
You are exactly right. These "moderate" Muslims wait to see which way the wind is blowing. Where was Al-Rashid at the beginning of this controversy? Al-Rashid has Nancy Pelosi and Barack Hussein Obama on his side at any rate. There's a pretty good piece on YNet today on this very topic.
The "moderate" Muslim threat
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3939164,00.html
It's not about the truth. Is it? It's dissimulation.
Meanwhile Zanzibar Muslims, Officials Stop Church Building, Erect Mosque
Islamists demolish foundation; police withhold crime report from court.
http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/tanzania/23756/
From the article,
The General Manager is correct with this statement.
However, he hasn't clued us in on what approach muslims actually prefer these days.
Jihad is too overt, too messy, too bloody and the costs are well...costly.
Today's jihad is one of subterfuge, procreation and massive amounts of oil money.
Why be defiant and "in the face" of the infidel when the aforementioned tactics of modern jihad are working as planned?
The adherents have always been relentless, but are now adapting to an easier slide into supremacy and dominance.
You wrote: "Well this is excellent news and underlines the point made by Pamela and Robert that Muslims of conscience do not support this project."
Is Al-Rashid a Muslim of conscience? I am asking. I do not know.
"Muslims of conscience?" That's a hot one, Yuef! Add that to your islamic stand-up routine and you'll slay 'em! But not in the same way 3,000 people were slain here by your friends on 9/11/2001...
The truth part is right up front----the realization that pushing Islam down the throat of the kuffaar has to be done so in stages at times. Of course, many Muslims would like to control-freak everything at once (such Muslims tend to be called "radicals" or simply "terrorists"), but at least some Muslims retain a strategic sense and thus are more patient than some of their fellow deluded believers. Hence, an understanding of the truth of things from time to time----stumbling into the truth as I mentioned before.
As my golf-instructor says on those (rare) occasions when I hit a good shot in his presence: "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while..."
I don't think it pays to get too clever about this. There may be all sorts of reasons why some Muslims might come out against this. But the aim remains to stop this Mosque being built, which will be a great victory for the Stop Shariah movement, no two ways about it. So if Muslim voices can be represented as Muslims of conscience opposing the development, that will be a powerful weapon.
Fights like these are always going to be messy. The important thing is to win and stop the Ground Zero Mosque.
Pamela and Robert have chosen the battlefield well - the first job of any good generals. But it is only a battle in a much larger struggle.
or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery....
That's the best kind...
'So oppose the mosque or no, it's disingenuous to claim that no one will use the mosque because few people live in the area'.
You are right of course...Twice a day every Mahoundian employed within close distance will abandon their job, and all three of them will walk to the mosque...But the rest will arrive five times a day by plane, train, automobile, rickshaw, bicycle, and ox cart...
What a mess...Who's going to clean up after the ox?
You wrote: "But the aim remains to stop this Mosque being built, which will be a great victory for the Stop Shariah movement, no two ways about it....So if Muslim voices can be represented as Muslims of conscience opposing the development, that will be a powerful weapon....."
Notoshariah, Osama bin Laden and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf are good Muslims. These are devout Muslims. What you call Muslims of conscience must recognize this fact. If Muslims of conscience believe these are not good Muslims then I would suggest these Muslims of conscience look elsewhere for faith and strength; not to Islam or Allah.
In the future, mosques will be museums. Like the one at Auschwitz.
Dumbledore's Army wrote:
It's not that it is immoral; it is that, under present circumstances, with too many unsubdued and as-yet-unsubduable kafir growing angry and suspicious, it is not *clever*...because it is stirring up kafir resistance.
.............
Exactly—the proposed triumphal mosque—right at Ground Zero, to be dedicated on the *tenth anniversary of 9/11 itself*—is so outrageous that even Americans who have been silent for the past nine years are speaking out. This doesn't look good for Islam...
More, from Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid:
I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation...
.............
Having read Imam Rauf's appalling "What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America", and his comments about "Cordoba House", I have a pretty good idea.
If this *had been* any sort of serious attempt at "reconciliation", however, wouldn't any even vaguely decent person have backed down when he realized that his proposal, far from offering "reconciliation", was just stirring up pain and anger?
Of course, that's assuming that Imam Rauf is sincere, and that this is not, instead, meant as a symbol of Muslim supremacy—in which case, why would Rauf care how much pain his proposal caused?
But Al-Rashid is right—such a proposal is not "clever"—it is cluing in the Infidels like nothing since—well—9/11 itself.
The proposed "Cordoba House" is "a mosque too far"—and it is a catalyst for the resistance.
Forgive me for commenting on my own comment, but as I read it again I was struck in the face by The General Manager's use of the very Saudi term,
For those who don't know, the phrase The Others is used in Saudi journalism and spoken language to refer to infidels.
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid made his point that he's nothing more than a supremacist muslim who isn't worth reading or regarding.
This "moderate" Mohammedan learnt his lesson well. It's only counter-productive to pour oil into the flames. Mohammedans are never provocative, they understand the sensitivities of other people, that's the message to the infidels. But being non-believers we don't believe any crap we're told. I agree with Aiken Bryce, that bloke is just another supremacist megalomanian who thins he can fool us.
That's OK, Abdul doesn't have to be an "honest muslim" (oxymoron, anyone?). Amd he doesn't need the "right reasons," either. Muslims think of us kuffar as their "useful idiots," carrying their water. So, let's let them be OUR useful idiots and help carry OUR water for a change. We don't have to love the guy; just accept any advantage he wishes to confer toward eliminating this dastardly mosque...
How refreshing. A muslim who isn't whining about being offended or victimized for a change.
If this *had been* any sort of serious attempt at "reconciliation", however, wouldn't any even vaguely decent person have backed down when he realized that his proposal, far from offering "reconciliation", was just stirring up pain and anger?
1) If it were a decent Muslim, why would it stir up pain and anger? The putative existence of the category the "decent Muslim" implies a "decent Islam" he is worshipping. Whether it's a second Islam from the bad Islam of the 911 attackers, whether it's a decent "part" of Islam, whether he's a "reformer", etc. -- these are all subsidiary questions to the logical implication that a "decent Muslim" implies a "decent Islam".
This logic, of course, becomes stronger the more toward the PC MC end of the spectrum a person's position may be situated. Indeed, there is a whole spectrum of positions, and even many within the anti-Islam movement have various mushy positions hypothesizing the existence of innumerable "decent Muslims" -- though most of these people within the anti-Islam movement have to go through logical knots trying to harmonize this mushy position (mushy both sentimentally and intellectually) with their learned antipathy toward Islam; and so they come up with various explanations: all these innumerable Muslims who aren't really Islamic are "lax" Muslims, or "ignorant of their own faith", or "victims" ready to apostasize at the drop of a hat if only we could save them from their more full-blooded brethren; and so forth.
The more PC MC one is, the less one has to do pretzel logic, for one sincerely believes that Islam is decent, and so the bad apples are explained as a diseased or "hijacked" truncation. The only problem the PC MC person has is maintaining this theory in the face of a growing mountain of evidence (growing also on top of a historical mountain range of evidence) which massively indicates a far broader and deeper systemic extremism pertaining to Islam.
So if there is a decent Islam, or a decent part of Islam, then there are decent Muslims, and so a mosque of decent Muslims whose decency is reflected by their Islam cannot logically cause pain or anger to those who were attacked by the bad Muslims following bad Islam.
If there is no decent Islam, and there are no decent Muslims, then of course, any mosque should be rejected -- not only at Ground Zero, but anywhere in the free world.
2) It doesn't necessarily follow that a decent Imam would acquiesce to the opposition. He might try to present a sincere counter-argument based on #1 above. If the opposition kept pressing him and thus kept implying that he really wasn't decent and that the Islam that inspires him isn't decent, but that in fact it is directly related to the inspiration of the 911 attackers, the opposition would be irrational -- IF they believed he were really decent (and not just lying Islamically) and that there really is any decent Islam or decent part of Islam.
Yusef YK "it's disingenuous to claim that no one will use the mosque because few people live in the area."
I believe there is already a mosque near there where muslims pray.
That Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid is a pretty clever guy!
Wildjew says:
"Osama bin Laden and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf are good Muslims. These are devout Muslims. What you call Muslims of conscience must recognize this fact. If Muslims of conscience believe these are not good Muslims then I would suggest these Muslims of conscience look elsewhere for faith and strength; not to Islam or Allah."
It wasn't my phrase ("Muslims of conscience") it was the phrase used by Pamela and Robert, and which I used in deference to them.
I don't think it's for me (or you) to tell Muslims what to believe, anymore than it's for me to tell Jews not to follow the absurdities of the Tora or Roman Catholics to stop believing in Papal infallibility and crying statues.
But we can observe and respond to what they do believe in and how they act. The pressure for Muslims to change, such as it is, is really coming from within, under the impact of the modern world. If Muslims want to change they can in effect interpret the Koran and Hadith out of existence as some have already done.
If the Mosgue is eventually built and it becomes a center for terrorists, the US Government (Post Obama Admin of course) could cite them under the RICO Act and seize the Mosque. Kind of far out idea, but workable.
You're right.
They've see the way the wind is blowing and are now following what they perceive as 'the strong horse'.
This is classic hudna. Abandon the attack when the odds against you stack up, only to resume when the foe is weak.
Simple answer? Never give up. Keep up the relentless pressure. Demonise and defame by way of truth.
We're (both sides of the pond)at bloody last awakening and not one moment too soon.
If, God forbid, this monstrosity is built it should be the lighting rod for all who oppose shariah and creeping islamisation. We should demonstrate. We should demand equal reciprocation of churches and synagogues all over the ME including Saudi. Act as we should in defence of our values.
If it isn't built, and the signs are gaining in momentum, don't let up. Don't fall for the triumphalistic twist of 'see how moderate we are'.
The pause is just that. A moment for them to regroup in preparation for the next outrage.
Al-Rashed also stated: "the battle against the 9/11 terrorists...is a Muslim battle - one whose flames are still raging in more than 20 Muslim countries"
Back in July 2005 after the London bombing he asked (in Al Sharq Alawsat) "Why would Britain grant asylum to Arabs who have been convicted of political crimes, religious extremism or even sentenced to death?"
I believe his criticism of Britain's "blind generosity" or willful negligence is a valid one. I have also read many accounts of real Muslim refugees from places like Tunisia fleeing the radical Islamism back home to Paris only to find the same radical extremists in the same street of Paris, living as refugees, collecting welfare, establishing the sleeper cells.
there is only one way to win against stealth jihad - every other way will fail - just like it has been doing all these years that these cultural and RELIGIOUS savages have been making fools out of the entire western world: And that is to FOLLOW THE MONEY AND FIND OUT WHERE IT IS COMING FROM - NOTHING ELSE WORKS. MANY DO NOT BELIEVE ME, BUT OUR COUNTRY IS RUN BY OIL MONEY BRIBES RIGHT NOW BECAUSE PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW HOW INCREDIBLY EASY IT IS TO OPERATE AN ORGANIZED AND LAWYER CONTROLLED BRIBE SYSTEM - ESPECIALLY WHEN THE UNDER THE TABLE STUFF EXCEEDS ONE MILLION DOLLARS! The only thing that has a chance in hell of stopping it is by exposing when and where the money behind these crazy projects comes from. If the question of how the Victory Mosque was going to be financed had not been brought out by Pamela, you can be sure they would already have the 100,million U.S. bucks in hand, plus another 100 million in a secret bribe fund just sitting there waiting to buy off the majority of Democrats and a really impressive number of Republican who worship the invisible hand. Added to this badly overlooked FACT is the painful but obvious truth that people with big big vast fortunes are hugely more tempted toward sexual adventures with questionable people than any other group of people in the world, and so a great percentage of them are now being BLACK MAILED BY THE SAME BACKROOM JIHAD. THE MUSLIMS ALWAYS USE THIS CARROT AND STICK PROGRAM TO GET ANYTHING THEY WANT - IF WE DO NOT USE INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTIC TACTICS TO REVEAL THESE THINGS TO EVERYONE WHO IS CIVILIZED WE WILL BE DEFEATED FOR SURE BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT ANY FORMAL CATHOLIC CRUSADERS TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM THE MUSLIMS THIS TIME. EVERYONE NEEDS TO LEARN TO BE ONE OF THE "NEW CRUSADERS" OR REAL CIVILIZATION DIES AND THE SPOILS GO TO THE MURDERING SAVAGES - FOLLOW THE MONEY OR DIE!
What to do when your too arrogant to fess-up you screwed the pooch? Park51 should outsource their taqiyya to the pros at Al-Arabiya TV. Think of revenue stream they could generate for Da'wa if everyone hitched to their star? This new division, with a tagline to match-
Hellbent On Money Well Spent
. . . but of course, Sherlock, you've uncovered the key!! The panther bides his time, corralling the copious flow of his saliva until the choicest morsel happens by innocently and is snapped into oblivion in a trice.
I'll question one other little word - "just":
". . the last thing Muslims want today is to build JUST a religious center . . ."
I don't know if English was a 2nd language (making atypical usage an expected feature), but - they don't want to build JUST a religious center. Do they want to build SOMETHING ELSE? SOMETHING MORE? Well, this IS supposed to be a community center, pool, classrooms, performance space, etc. But- does this man mean something else? Is it CODE for something?
On the use of the word "clever":
In Muslim Bangladesh, the meaning of "clever" is very different from the meaning in the US. In that country, it means INTELLIGENT IN A SLY, CALCULATING, SELF-SERVING WAY. To be called "clever" is NOT ACTUALLY A COMPLIMENT there. Don't know about Arab countries, but . . . maybe it is an Islamic connotation. If so, consider how it would fit with what this man may be saying - ??????
Still-maybe this guy is ok. Maybe he means to say to Muslims:
"Muslims: TODAY we are in such deep s--t in the world's opinion that we can ill-afford to make yet another misstep and plunk a victory mosque down at Ground Zero. Why make the world hate us even more?! So just cool it and look at ourselves as the world sees us, as the barbarians we are with this proposal. It ain't worth it. Period."
Don't know the author of his history. All guesswork.