Questions for a HuffPo writer. "Park 51: The Ground Zero Mosque Is Not a Mosque," by Anushay Hossain at the Huffington Post, August 19 (thanks to Liz):
...This Community Center plans to house a culinary school, an auditorium, a swimming pool, a basketball court, and yes, space for prayer. But it is not a mosque, so we all need to stop calling it that....
Question for Anushay Hossain: those big Protestant megachurches that feature day care centers, gyms, and various other modern accoutrements -- are they no longer churches because they feature all sorts of extra besides the "space for prayer"?
...We need to stipulate that those men who brought down the Twin Towers were not Muslims. People who park their cars packed with explosives and abandon them in Times Square in the name of Islam are not Muslim. They are terrorists and they terrorize Muslims just as much as anyone else. They are not us and we are not them. And there is no better time for moderate Muslims to reclaim their faith from the terrorists than now, during Ramadan....
How great. The only problem with it is this: Anushay Hossain is saying that the men who brought down the Twin Towers and the Times Square bomber were not Muslims, but they said they were, and not only that: they also justified and explained their violent acts with reference to Islamic texts and teachings.
So in what sense were they not Muslims? Anushay Hossain (and so many others who say the same thing) is essentially saying that they were not Muslims because they did something she considers un-Islamic, but which they consider quintessentially Islamic. Before they committed these acts, they considered themselves Muslim, and everyone around them did as well.
And so another question for Anushay Hossain: at what point did these men become non-Muslim? Was it at the point that they committed their mass murder, or attempted mass murder, in the name of Islam? If so, was there any reliable way to distinguish them from peaceful Muslims before they committed their acts? What steps is your mosque taking to make sure that other Muslims don't suddenly become non-Muslim in this way, under the mistaken belief that they're performing quintessentially Muslim acts?
If no such steps are being taken, and if there is no way to tell whether a Muslim is actually a non-Muslim before he commits an act of violence in the name of Islam, would not law enforcement authorities be entirely justified to subject mosques and Islamic centers to special scrutiny?
"...they also justified and explained their violent acts with reference to Islamic texts and teachings. "
as I recall the 9/11 Islamic terrorists success was gleefully celebrated in many Mulim villages, cities, and countries...by Muslims...
Presumably, a Muslim isn't a Muslim when it is convenient for another Muslim to say that they're not a Muslim in order to further the advance of Islam. This is something, for example, that Tony Blair finds difficult to grasp. He seems to think that a Muslim is just a Christian with an extra prophet who happens to like bushy beards (although whether or not they like them on their womenfolk I don't venture to speculate as they prefer their faces to be hidden). However, this week Blair revealed that maybe there are some bad Muslims after all, and they're called 'radical Muslims'.
However, for all of the eulogising with respect to his recent remarks one shouldn't get too excited, as I think that he has only semi-awakened to the Islamist threat; hence his use of the term ‘radical Islam’ instead of the factually correct ‘applied Islam’ or ‘doctrinaire Islam’. He, after all, was responsible for implementing policies that have helped to fuel the Islamisation of the UK and to gag critics of this process. He has failed to come to grips with the ideological essence of Islam, and thus is unable to recommend the domestic policies which are required to successfully tackle Islamist terror. To fight wars overseas whilst encouraging Islam to spread unchecked at home is a recipe for disaster: http://durotrigan.blogspot.com/2010/09/has-tony-blair-woken-up-to-reality-of.html
The commenters on HuffPo are either stupid or have their preset Christian denunciations on speed dial...
Gah!
What worries me is that many Americans will come to believe that damned lie.
...We need to stipulate that those men who brought down the Twin Towers were not Muslims. People who park their cars packed with explosives and abandon them in Times Square in the name of Islam are not Muslim. They are terrorists and they terrorize Muslims just as much as anyone else. They are not us and we are not them. And there is no better time for moderate Muslims to reclaim their faith from the terrorists than now, during Ramadan....
Those Moslem terrorists, (including Mohammed, who was made victorious through terror) would not consider the author of this statement a Moslem. They would consider the author a apostate/heritic/kaffr/infidel, and behead them.
I don't think the answer will be forthcoming.
Does Islam even have something resembling excommunication (I mean, other than crazed lunatics yelling something bloodthirsty sounding and killing the newly fabricated unbeliever)? What does Muhammad say, anyway - does Anushay and her "we" or Muslims in general have authority to declare Osama a kafir? :)
I watched Tony Blair on the BBC and it seems to me that the man has finally stumbled over the truth about Islam and the truth, instead of making him free, made him very uncomfortable. If he had realized the truth about the evil of islam he must had recognized the terrible damage his immigration policy caused the Great Britain. I don’t think I am wrong saying that he made an impression of a man wrestling with his guilt. He can not admit the guilt because the enormity of the damage is such that there is no way he can expiate for it, save for hara-kiri, so he needs to talk it away through evoking the notions of radical versus moderate islam. At the same time he knows that talking of radical versus moderate islam is very much like talking of radical v. moderate syphilis and that syphilis, however moderate, can not be a good thing.
I think every leader of a country aspires to leave a positive legacy and Tony Blair has realized he will be better off forgotten than remembered.
If no such steps are being taken, and if there is no way to tell whether a Muslim is actually a non-Muslim before he commits an act of violence in the name of Islam, would not law enforcement authorities be entirely justified to subject mosques and Islamic centers to special scrutiny?
At the very least.
"Does Islam even have something resembling excommunication..."
Yes: it's called takfir. Significantly, no ulema (official body of clerics who establish Islamic law) has pronounced takfir upon Osama bin Laden -- even though they pronounce takfir routinely on other Muslims deemed to have, through their words and/or deeds, forfeited their right to be called a "Muslim".
Taqiyya noted.
Its worse than you think:
Religion of Pedophilia
Dallas Pastor: Islam is a religion that promotes pedophilia!
Steve Blow, a shrieking moonbat from the Dallas Morning News can’t believe it and hastens to the rescue (of Muslim pedophiles):
http://sheikyermami.com/2010/09/06/religion-of-pedophilia/
Its worse than you think:
Religion of Pedophilia
Dallas Pastor: Islam is a religion that promotes pedophilia!
Steve Blow, a shrieking moonbat from the Dallas Morning News can’t believe it and hastens to the rescue (of Muslim pedophiles):
http://sheikyermami.com/2010/09/06/religion-of-pedophilia/
"...We need to stipulate that those men who brought down the Twin Towers were not Muslims."
Oh? And where does Ms. Hossain get the authority to say who is Moslem and who isn't? The 19 murderers of 9-11 all said they were Moslems, and since they were men, we must take their testimony at full value. Ms. Hossain says they were not, and since she's a woman, we must take her tetimony at 1/2 value.
So, we have 19 votes for "yes, they were Moslems"
and 1/2 vote for "no, they weren't."
I think we have a winner!
I think we need to focus on a basic question that is being ignored. New York Times would not even reply to my letter on it.
Who gets to decide who is a Muslim? As a Jew I am fed up with people both in non-religious Jewish circles and those who are not Jewish presuming to answer this question totally outside of Jewish law which does answer it. Besides those who convert, a person is Jewish if his mother is, regardless of whether she observes Jewish law. In Islam, it is passed on through the father.
Was President Obama's Kenyan father a Muslim? Yes? End of discussion.
I do not judge him by the circumstances of his birth, but by his words and actions, and these should cause any loyal American cause for concern.
Are members of the Muslim Brotherhood Muslims? They call themselves Muslims yet they are a death cult dedicated to committing genocide in Israel and to subjugating all peoples of the world under the holy banner of Islam. May Allah have mercy on our Muslim souls.
They are not us and we are not them. And there is no better time for moderate Muslims to reclaim their faith from the terrorists than now, during Ramadan....
But 'they' can justify their violent Jihad using the koran and the example of Muhammed. It is not enough to state that 'they' are not Muslims, for 'they' can prove from Islamic canon that the 'not they' are not real Muslims.
OTH, we understand that fooling the Infidel is part and part of Jihad, so 'moderate' Muslims and 'they' are the same.
"...We need to stipulate that those men who brought down the Twin Towers were not Muslims."
It would be infinitesimally easier for those 'men' to prove that they were Muslims than it would for Anushay Hossain to prove they were not. Where is her evidence?
Anushay Hossain:
"...We need to stipulate that those men who brought down the Twin Towers were not Muslims. People who park their cars packed with explosives and abandon them in Times Square in the name of Islam are not Muslim. They are terrorists and they terrorize Muslims just as much as anyone else. They are not us and we are not them. And there is no better time for moderate Muslims to reclaim their faith from the terrorists than now, during Ramadan...."
As this stands now, it's nonsense in my opinion. Muslims are happy to accept a person born in an Islamic family or converted into it, saying the Shahada, as a Muslim. Nothing else is reguired. And they fuss much more about persons who themselves might to want to get out.
Muslims face all sorts of problems, beginning with their most important guiding texts; quran and hadiths. Which they are not allowed to change. Which they do not follow up by a decent explanation of them. Which they should follow up by declaring that to be a real Muslim, candidates will have to adhere to this decent, regularly updated, clear explanation. They attempt nothing of the sort.
So: Because of current infidels big expertise in Quran and Hadith, they no longer have the possibility to say with authority what Islam is and what Islam is not. But the name Muslim, yeah, that may still be used by any shahada-speaker.
Muslims though still continue to berate infidels about the true MEANING of Quran and Hadith, but the meaning of Quran and Hadith doesn't matter so much anyway, because of the many different interpretations, UNDERSTANDINGS by the myriads of Muslims. And some interpretations are very detrimental to followers of other faiths and the secular Democratic system en Islam profits from it, whereas its competitor religions suffer, and so Muslims like Anushay Hossain profit from it too.
And to make her words sincere and meaningful, Muslims like her should openly separate from the other Muslims, and join the Democratic worldwide community and declare so and behave accordingly. If that is at all possible.
Otherwise Muslims like her must admit they really are Theocratic and anti-Democratic. At present I don't see any position in between, except maybe being Anarchistic.