More tendentious, misleading and false information from yet another blinkered ideologue given a platform in a major "news" source. "Five myths about mosques in America," by Edward E. Curtis IV in the Washington Post, August 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):
In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.1. Mosques are new to this country.
Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn't be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon, a cattle driver, would regularly steal away to the woods there for his prayers -- in spite of a white boy who threw dirt on him as he made his prostrations....
See, folks? Curtis is here semaphoring that Muslims are a victim class, that they always have been, and that opposition to them is racially-based. As for Job Ben Solomon, I suspect that Curtis's source here is a Muslim one, designed to reinforce a sense that Muslims are victims rather than tell actual history. The story is curiously reminiscent of this one about Muhammad:
Narrated 'Abdullah bin Mas'ud:Once the Prophet was offering prayers at the Ka'ba. Abu Jahl was sitting with some of his companions. One of them said to the others, "Who amongst you will bring the abdominal contents (intestines, etc.) of a camel of Bani so and so and put it on the back of Muhammad, when he prostrates?" The most unfortunate of them got up and brought it. He waited till the Prophet prostrated and then placed it on his back between his shoulders. I was watching but could not do any thing. I wish I had some people with me to hold out against them. They started laughing and falling on one another. Allah's Apostle was in prostration and he did not lift his head up till Fatima (Prophet's daughter) came and threw that (camel's abdominal contents) away from his back. He raised his head and said thrice, "O Allah! Punish Quraish." So it was hard for Abu Jahl and his companions when the Prophet invoked Allah against them as they had a conviction that the prayers and invocations were accepted in this city (Mecca). The Prophet said, "O Allah! Punish Abu Jahl, 'Utba bin Rabi'a, Shaiba bin Rabi'a, Al-Walid bin 'Utba, Umaiya bin Khalaf, and 'Uqba bin Al Mu'it (and he mentioned the seventh whose name I cannot recall). By Allah in Whose Hands my life is, I saw the dead bodies of those persons who were counted by Allah's Apostle in the Qalib (one of the wells) of Badr.
Back to the WaPo. Their second "myth" is really a whopper:
2. Mosques try to spread sharia law in the United States.In Islam, sharia ("the Way" to God) theoretically governs every human act. But Muslims do not agree on what sharia says; there is no one sharia book of laws. Most mosques in America do not teach Islamic law for a simple reason: It's too complicated for the average believer and even for some imams.
The Saudi, Iranian and Sudanese authorities don't seem to have notable trouble sorting it out. In any case, the idea that Sharia is some complex and nebulous collection of arcana is a myth that is growing increasingly popular as Islamic supremacists try to advance Sharia in the U.S. In reality, "the four Sunni schools of Islamic law, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali, are identical in approximately 75 percent of their legal conclusions..." ('Umdat al-Salik, p. vii). Islamic law regarding the stoning of adulterers, the amputation of the hand for theft, the institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, is not hard to understand, and is not subject to notable disagreement.
Anyway, what do mosques in America teach? As long ago as January 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi leader Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani declared in a State Department Open Forum that Islamic supremacists controlled most mosques in America: "The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques," he said, "that has been sent upon these mosques around the United States - like churches they were established by different organizations and that is ok - but the problem with our communities is the extremist ideology. Because they are very active they took over the mosques; and we can say that they took over more than 80% of the mosques that have been established in the US. And there are more than 3000 mosques in the US. So it means that the methodology or ideology of extremism has been spread to 80% of the Muslim population, but not all of them agree with it."
Terrorism expert Yehudit Barsky affirmed the same thing in 2005, saying that 80% of the mosques in this country "have been radicalized by Saudi money and influence." The Center for Religious Freedom found in 2005 a massive distribution of hateful jihadist and Islamic supremacist material in mosques in this country. And in June 2008 federal investigators found that the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia, despite promises to stop teaching such material, was still using books that advocated that apostates from Islam be executed and that it was permissible for Muslims to kill and seize the property of "polytheists."
WaPo:
Islamic law includes not only the Koran and the Sunna (the traditions of the prophet Muhammad) but also great bodies of arcane legal rulings and pedantic scholarly interpretations. If mosques forced Islamic law upon their congregants, most Muslims would probably leave -- just as most Christians might walk out of the pews if preachers gave sermons exclusively on Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar. Instead, mosques study the Koran and the Sunna and how the principles and stories in those sacred texts apply to their everyday lives....
This is just silly. Christian preachers may convey the substance of what is contained in "Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar" in simplified form in their sermons if they choose to do so. So also may Muslim preachers convey in simplified form the content of Sharia if they so choose. In any case, "if anyone changes his religion, kill him" (a statement of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and a universal among the schools of Islamic law) is not really all that arcane.
4. Mosques are funded by groups and governments unfriendly to the United States.There certainly have been instances in which foreign funds, especially from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region, have been used to build mosques in the United States. The Saudi royal family, for example, reportedly gave $8 million for the building of the King Fahd Mosque, which was inaugurated in 1998 in Culver City, a Los Angeles suburb.
Apparently the WaPo is admitting here that the Saudi government is unfriendly to the United States.
But the vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves. Domestic funding reflects the desire of many U.S. Muslims to be independent of overseas influences. Long before Sept. 11, 2001, in the midst of a growing clash of interests between some Muslim-majority nations and the U.S. government -- during the Persian Gulf War, for instance -- Muslim American leaders decided that they must draw primarily from U.S. sources of funding for their projects.
In reality, it is estimated that as many as 80% of mosques in America are Saudi funded.
5. Mosques lead to homegrown terrorism.To the contrary, mosques have become typical American religious institutions. In addition to worship services, most U.S. mosques hold weekend classes for children, offer charity to the poor, provide counseling services and conduct interfaith programs.
No doubt, some mosques have encouraged radical extremism. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who inspired the World Trade Center's first attackers in 1993, operated out of the Al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, N.J. But after the 2001 attacks, such radicalism was largely pushed out of mosques and onto the Internet, mainly because of a renewed commitment among mosque leaders to confront extremism.
There is a danger that as anti-Muslim prejudice increases -- as it has recently in reaction to the proposed community center near Ground Zero -- alienated young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques. So far, that has not happened on a large scale.
Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.
sion.
All right, so some mosques promote "radical extremism," and some don't, and since some don't, mosques should not be "feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination," despite the fact that "alienated young Muslims" might "turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques" in their rage over "Islamophobia."
Funny how no amount of rage would ever lead me to blow myself up in a crowded restaurant. But that's just me.
Off topic, but I can't find another way to communicate to you. Is Islam 101 available in Spanish also? Thanks.
Some bacteria are good. Therefore, do nothing when bad bacteria infect you. Okay, I got it.
"Funny how no amount of rage would ever lead me to blow myself up in a crowded restaurant. But that's just me."
Our fearless leader is in good form today.
There's so much more to rebut in that article. It was propaganda to the core.
Mosque Blight - coming soon to a neighborhood near YOU!
"Unlike churches, mosques are not places of spirituality, peace and sanctuary. They are quasi-military citadels and centres of subversion, intimidation and aggression:
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister and ex-mayor of Istanbul, says that 'the mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the domes our helmets, and the believers our soldiers.... http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/mosque-blight.html
Mr Curtis has obviously been over indulging on "takiyya".He is deceived!
Curtis...Instead, mosques study the Koran and the Sunna and how the principles and stories in those sacred texts apply to their everyday lives....
How would talking to dead people, apply to a Mahoundians every day life?
Abu Jahl's name was mud...He was killed at Badr by two brothers who did not know him but knew Allah/Mahound wanted him dead...Abu Jahl and some other men involved in the camels intestine episode were also killed...Mahound ordered that these killed not be buried for three days...He visited the rotting corpses, along with Umar...Mahoundian had a fireside chat with the dead guys saying: "O Abu Jahl b. Hisham, O Umayya b. Khalaf, O Utba b. Rab'ila, O Shaiba b. Rabi'a, have you not found what your Lord had promised with you to be correct? As for me, I have found the promises of my Lord to be (perfectly) correct.
Umar was amazed that Mahound was talking to dead people, but Mahound assured him that they can hear, just not respond...Then Mahound ordered the bodies thrown in a pit/well...
Wake up and smell the takiyya.
One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon...
A single individual praying in the woods is not a mosque!
Ayuba Suleiman was a slave for a mere two years (though I'm sure that was enough of a nightmare) before being repatriated via England due to his family's wealth and high position. After returning to his native Senegal he became a slave trader himself.
'Zap a Mosque' video game enrages dhimmis in Austria http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,715278,00.html#ref=rss
The story about Job Ben Solomon (Ayuba Suleiman Diallo), even if we were to accept it at face value from the single source in which it occurs -- Thomas Bluett's History (and for all I know the whole story may have been made up, for there is no other confirming source), does not, as Edward Curtis IV seem to think, offer any proof of the existence of a mosque. No mosque is mentioned, or even hinted at. How then can Curtis adduce as evidence of a mosque a single passage, in a single book, when no mosque is mentioned? This is absurd.
The entire story is this: Job Ben Solomon lived in Maryland for only two years, and during that time he supposedly retired to the woods to pray. End of story. It may be true, it may be false. But whether false or true, it has nothing to do with the existence of a "mosque." The first mosque in this country for which there is the slightest evidence dates from the 20th century, and until recent decades, save for the Black Muslims who, under the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, were never regarded as real Muslims by real Muslims, and even today have certain practices and attitudes that are far from Muslim orthodoxy, there were not more than a half-dozen mosques in all of America, and those half-dozen quite small.
The mosque building that has taken place frenetically over the past few decades is everywhere the result of Saudi (and,, to a much lesser extent, other Arab) money, which has been spent at a rate, all over the Western world, ten times greater than the Soviet Union spent to spread propaganda on behalf of Soviet Communism.
The attempt at nunc-pro-tunc backdating of Islam in America goes on all the time among Muslims and their apologists. Remember when Muslims claimed that they had been on Columbus' crew, when there was not the slightest proof (though five Jews were in fact on Columbus' first trip to the New World, including the Torres borthers, a trip that itself was financed by Luis Santangel, a Spaniard of Jewish descent), and then this preposterous claim (Columbus was happy to claim the New World for Christendom) was echoed by some State Department wretch who then, when called on it, never uttered a word about it again.
This has gone on. This goes on. This will go on. It is part of a studied effort to make us believe that Islam has always been with us. Islam, and Muslims, not only had notning to do with the discovery, or founding, or development of this country, but had they actually been around, and had they played such a role, the political and legal institutions that make America America might never have been created, and certainly would not reflect the genius, and solicitude for freedom and for the rights of individuals, exhibited by the Framers.
http://www.moschee-baba.at/
Game link...
"Once the Prophet was offering prayers at the Ka'ba." ...
The Prophet? STOP! ...he isn't MY prophet. A pedophile? Yes! A prophet of doom? For sure! And a dirty old man? Ew, yeah! But "THE prophet"? NO! ...no Way!
The Washington Post writer says:
Islamic law is based on the Qur'an and Sunna (Sunna being what Muhammad did and said, permitted and forbade).
The WaPo writer says mosques study the Qur'an and Sunna to see how to apply them. How about this from the Sunna:
IN A CORE ISLAMIC TEXT, MUHAMMAD ORDERS PEOPLE BURNED UP IN THEIR HOUSES, FOR NOT COMING TO PRAYER:
In Sahih Bukhari, the most canonical hadith collection:
Volume 1, Book 11, Number 626:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "No prayer is harder for the hypocrites than the Fajr and the 'Isha' prayers and if they knew the reward for these prayers at their respective times, they would certainly present themselves (in the mosques) even if they had to crawl." The Prophet added, "Certainly I decided to order the Mu'adh-dhin (call-maker) to pronounce Iqama [second call to prayer] and order a man to lead the prayer and then take a fire flame to burn all those who had not left their houses so far for the prayer along with their houses."
Or how about this:
FROM ONE OF THE CORE ISLAMIC TEXTS, A HADITH IN WHICH MUHAMMAD SAID THERE IS TO BE NO PUNISHMENT FOR MURDERING SOMEONE WHO INSULTS MUHAMMAD:
Here, from Sunan Abu-Dawud, a hadith collection considered canonical by mainstream Muslim scholars, is a hadith that shows Muhammad supporting the murder of a woman by her husband, merely because she used to speak to her husband insultingly about Muhammad:
Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 38, Number 4348:
There are various examples in the core Islamic texts of Muhammad having those who insult Islam killed.
IN THE EARLIEST MUSLIM BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD, on page 672 (992 in the Arabic) HE SAYS
"Fight everyone in the way of Allah, and kill those who disbelieve in Allah."
Or this:
QUR'AN SAYS FIGHT AND BE HARSH:
Qur'an Chapter 9, Verse 123:
Or this:
IN A CORE TEXT, MUHAMMAD SAYS HE HAS BEEN MADE VICTORIOUS WITH TERROR AND ALL THE TREASURES OF THE WORLD ARE FOR ISLAM
In Sahih Bukhari, the most canonical hadith collection:
:Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220
Allah's Apostle [Muhammad] said, "I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand." Abu Huraira added: Allah's Apostle has left the world and now you, people, are bringing out those treasures (i.e. the Prophet did not benefit by them).
And so on. For the Washington Post writer to try to reassure us that stories of the Sunna, not Islamic law, are taught in the mosques, is no reassurance at all. What is the Washington Post thinking?
IN THE EARLIEST MUSLIM BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD, pages 511-517 (758-766 in the Arabic) WE LEARN HOW IN KHAYBAR MUHAMMAD ORDERED THE TORTURE AND BEHEADING OF A MAN IN ORDER TO GET HOLD OF A TREASURE, AND HOW A FEW DAYS LATER MUHAMMAD TOOK INTO HIS PRIVATE TENT FOR CONSUMMATION OF "MARRIAGE" THE TORTURED MAN'S WIFE, WHOSE FATHER AND OTHER MALE RELATIVES MUHAMMAD HAD ALSO RECENTLY KILLED:
1. "...Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat,... it needn't be a building."
By that logic, Saudi Arabia has hundreds of churches; any time a Christian there prays in the privacy of his home, he's in a "church". Riiiight!
4. "But the vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves."
Very likely true. But the point is, how much of the funding is coming from sources like the Saudi royals? A mosque can have several hundred local Moslem families supporting it, but all their contributions may total less than one Saudi grant. Local Moslems can be the vast majority of supporters, without providing the majority of support.
The really frightening part of this article in the WaPo is that so many dhimmi readers will suck up all the propaganda therein.
Some history about Muslims in America that we can be reasonably sure of: from John Roy Carlson, 'Cairo to Damascus'.
When Carlson, in Egypt, in the late 1940s, visited the Muslim Brotherhood - he even scored an interview with Hassan El-Banna, and took a photograph of him, which is in the book - he had the following exchange with a student (and Brotherhood member) named Gamal, during which the names of two Americans came up, one from the East Coast, one from the West. One possibly a convert, one definitely a convert to Islam.
Carlson's account begins on p. 81 of 'Cairo to Damascus'. I will reproduce it in full, for the benefit of those who have not yet read the book:
"We know another American. He has written us", one of the Arabs said.
"Maybe I know him", I remarked. 'What's his name?'
'The student produced a letter addressed to "Shawa Pasha" of the Moslem Brotherhood, and signed by William T. Frary of Boston. Beginning 'In the name of Allah, the Merciful', Frary went on to offer his public-relations services to the Ikhwan."
- Carlson then provides a long footnote as follows, about Frary:
"William T Frary, 42, was adopted by a woman twice his age, the Baroness Adelheid Maria von Blomberg, 'daughter of Baron Hugo von Blomberg, poet and painter of renown' - according to Frary. Frary von Blomberg achieved some notoriety in 1942 while addressing the Hempstead, Long Island, Rotary Club, when he asserted that 'Nazi troops are well disciplined and are incapable of committing atrocities'. This and other remarks were construed as pro-Nazi and aroused Rotary members to protest his talk as 'German propaganda'.
"In a publicity release prepared by himself, the former Boston press agent touted himself as a 'business executive' and 'international relations counsel'. He claimed to have been public-relations counsel to the National Restaurant Association, the National Fisheries Association, and the Armenian National Committee, a defunct adjunct of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.
"He stated that he had been 'sent on a special mission to the Vatican, Germany, and London; accompanied Balkan Investigation Committee in Greece', visited 'Arabia as guest of the Saudi Arabian Government and Aramco...appointed spokesman for twelve million German expellees, honorary member Polish Home Army, US delegate for Society for Defense of Christianity. ' He claimed to have 'conferred' with the Duke of Windsor, General Franco, General de Gaulle, Chancellor Figl of Austria, and Marshal Mannerheim of Finland". END FOOTNOTE.
Carlson then continues, on p. 82.
"He [i.e. Frary] was here; he knows the Arab subject very well", the Arab said. {Note: that suggests that the part of Frary's self-composed puff-piece mentioning Saudi Arabia and Aramco, may contain a kernel of truth - dda}.
'I was ruminating on what a small world this was after all, when I was asked if I knew 'Sheikh Lutz'. The name was strangely familiar.
'"I once met an American in California who became a Moslem", I said. "Could it be...?"
"The very same. His name was Lutz. We gave him a Moslem name - Sheikh Abdur Rahman Lutz. He is a Moslem Brother". {Carlson then adds, in a footnote - 'It must not be assumed that Lutz necessarily shared the political views or condoned the terrorist practices of the Ikhwan' - but I, dda, would not be so sure of that!}.
'I had met Edward Abdur Rahman Lutz in San Francisco. He was a burly man with an innocent face, a former Sunday-school teacher in a Congregational church.
'**He had become impressed with 'the compassion, the charity of the true Moslem' while working with an oil company in Saudi Arabia** {my emphasis - dda: to which statement about 'compassion' and 'charity', I can only respond...????!!!!} and became a convert to Mohammedanism.
'He [Lutz] hoped to found a mosque in Sacramento. {I wonder whether he did? Does anyone know? - dda}.
'In the name of "God, the Merciful, the Compassionate", he was also out to collect ten million dollars to establish an Islamic university; he told me he also made suggestions to various Arab embassies to improve their public relations". END PASSAGE FROM CARLSON.
So there it is: William T Frary/ von Blomberg, from Boston, PR consultant (and, from the sound of it, con-man and Nazi sympathiser, and quite possibly a convert to Islam) offering his services to the Muslim Brotherhood, circa 1947/48; and Edward 'Sheikh Abdur Rahman' Lutz, of California, member of the Ikhwan, aiming to found a mosque in Sacramento.
It is people like Frary and Lutz who represent the first significant foothold gained by Islam in the USA in the twentieth century. And both had had direct contact with the original Ikhwan, while Hassan El-Banna was still alive and plotting.
I wonder what any sceptical beady-eyed non-Muslim investigators might find, if they chose to try to find out what Lutz and Frary got up to, from 1950 onward, until their decease?
Google produced some fascinating preliminary results re William T Frary/ Baron Von Blomberg.
Everything about him screams 'phony'!
Here is a puff piece from 1952 (one year after Carlson's book was published; the 'information' in the puff piece matches what is in Carlson's footnote on him, but adds a lot of piquant detail)
http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/biog/baronvonblomberg.htm
and here is another piece, from 1966:
http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/biog/baronyankee19661066.htm
Both pieces, for some reason, given Frary's contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, thoroughly give me the creeps.
Edward Abdur Rahman Lutz seems to have less of an internet 'footprint'.