Aslan: Repackaging Islamic supremacism for WaPo readers
Reza Aslan is a case study in the poverty and ideological bias of the mainstream media these days; his adolescent gutter mentality and abject intellectual vacuity do not stop mainstream media outlets from giving him a platform, for his trivial platitudes and patently deceptive nostrums fit in with their Leftist, anti-American ideology.
The mainstream outlets that feature Aslan apparently do not mind that he is a Board member of the National Iranian American Council, a group that genuine Iranian pro-democracy forces regard as an apologetic vehicle for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nor do they care that he has tried to pass off Iran's genocidally-minded Thug-In-Chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a liberal reformer. They are unconcerned that Aslan has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad himself, as well as with Hamas -- that is, with some of the most barbaric and murderous adherents of Sharia. He has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as "the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon," recalling the useful idiots and fellow travelers who used to praise Stalinist Russia and even Hitler's Germany for their social services apparatuses.
Now, unsurprisingly, this Fritz Kuhn for our age has found another Jew-hating, women-hating, kuffar-hating Islamic supremacist group to love: the Muslim Brotherhood. (This should come as no surprise: Aslan has previously spoken at events sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, a Brotherhood group.) And he is spreading that love in the Washington Post.
"Do Egyptians want both democracy and a role for religion in their government?," by Reza Aslan in the Washington Post, January 30:
[...] But make no mistake, however the current uprising in Egypt turns out, there can be no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood will have a significant role to play in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that is good thing.Despite the wide array of political and religious views on display on the streets of Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, and Suez, the one thing about which the overwhelming majority of Egyptians agree - 95 percent according to a 2010 Pew Research Center poll - is that Islam should play a role in the country's politics. At the same time, a similar Pew poll taken in 2006 found that while the majority of the Western public thought democracy was "a Western way of doing things that would not work in most Muslim countries," pluralities or majorities in every single Muslim-majority country surveyed flatly rejected that argument and called for democracy to be immediately established, without conditions, in their own societies.
For Huckabee and Santorum, as well as for a large segment of the American public, these two polls present a contradiction. How could Egyptians want both a democracy and a role for religion in their government? After all, in the United States it is axiomatic that Islam is inherently opposed to democracy and that Muslims are incapable of reconciling democratic and Islamic values. Never mind that the same people who scoff at the notion that religion could play no role in the emerging democracies in the Middle East are the same people who demand that religion must play a role in America's democracy. Ironically, one of the most vocal proponent of religious activism in politics is Mike Huckabee himself, who has repeatedly called Americans to "take this nation back for Christ" and who, while running for president, proudly declared that "what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards."...
Yeah, the Brotherhood is just like Mike Huckabee. Wasn't it Huckabee who said that his followers "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions"? Was that Huckabee or Santorum, Reza?
Oh, wait -- that quote is actually from "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America" -- a captured internal Muslim Brotherhood document detailing the group's goals for the United States. This is the group about which Aslan says that it would be a "good thing" if it were a participant in the Egyptian government.
So is the Washington Post clueless, or complicit?
So 95% of Egyptians want Islam to play a role in the country's politics -- in a country where 10% of the population is Christian. I smell a rat.
It's another taquiyya sunrise
Crescent moon slowly cross the sky
Said goodbye
He was just Reza Aslan
Working on the Master Plan
Working on the jihad he planned
To try
Kuffar goodbye
Every night the moon goes down
He's just another jihadi in town
And the brothers are out running around
It wasn't just another misunderstanding
Left Reza with no intellectual standin'
He's always wrong
And it's just a hollow feeling
When it comes to dealing
With SpencerMan
Every night the moon goes down
He's just an apologist in town
And SpencerMan makes him look like a clown
Take another aya of courage
Don't you be so discouraged
You're just dumb
It's another tequiyya sunrise, this old world
Stays the same
Its always jews to blame
It makes you numb
In fact, when it comes to the role of religion in society, Americans and Egyptians are pretty well in agreement. An August 2010 Pew poll found that 43 percent of Americans believe that churches should express political views and play an active role in politics, while 61 percent agreed that "it is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs."
Clever trick here by Aslan, to conflate what public and private persons think of religion and the Islamic call to enforce religion in the public sphere. The two are NOT equivalent, same as what Americans think of "religion" is in no way equivalent to what Egyptians think of as (Islamic) religion. In the West, religion is a private affair; in Islam, religion totally dominates all aspects of life, from how you eat to how you defecate. The two are not equivalent, not by a long shot. Perhaps Aslan should take a refresher class on our Constitutional Bill of Rights, First Amendment? Anything like that in the Muslim Brotherhood's (Sharia) articles of religious/democratic conduct? Buffoon!
My vote is for clueless. They know that many Americans want to hear that "Islam is just like Christianity, but bigots in this country will tell you different." And like many Americans, they the WaPo believes it. Or wants to so badly that they never investigate to find otherwise.
They just plug their ears, close their eyes, and chant "Islam is peaceful, Islam is peaceful...," and leave the dangerous truth-telling business to JihadWatch.
"So is the Washington Post clueless, or complicit?"
A distinction without a practical difference if they are not required to defend it. If they were forced to defend their position from the docket and found guilty of either, the first would lead to disgrace and disbarment from taking part in any further political discourse, and the second to jail time.
oh the MB are desperate, to make gains on the chaos alright,
they know, the more assistance, egypt gets from outside, the worse it is for them.
as for azlan....think he s borrowed ramadans snake oil :-)get this diminutive & petulant airhead, to the debate robert.
he ll be more slippery than the last dissection,(M.Zayed)
but hey...i just love watching em squirm :-)
How Reza Aslan whitewashes Muhammad's caravan raids
First, notice how Aslan, on pages 82 and 83 of his book No god but God, makes Muhammad's caravan raids look bloodless:
Why does Reza Aslan make no mention of what core Islamic texts say about those raids, for example, what is said on page 287 (425 in the Arabic) of the earliest Muslim biography of Muhammad:-------------------------------------------------------------------------
How Reza Aslan misleads about Muhammad's marriage to 9-year-old Aisha
Notice how Aslan, on pages 64 and 65 of his book No god but God claims that Muhammad did not consummate his marriage to Aisha when she was 9:
Why doesn't Aslan mention what the core Islamic texts tell us?
From Sahih al-Bukhari, the most canonical hadith collection:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 65:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 236:
-------------------------------------
Many other core Islamic texts could be quoted in a similar vein.
It should be noted that Aisha was nine lunar years old. Since a lunar year is about 355 days, Aisha may actually have been eight.
Reza Aslan is untrustworthy, at best.
The American Bill of Rights, for rights of individuals against government, is a template that was drafted in response to the truism that all manner of governments inherently have a tendency to grow to become tyrannical. It should remain in the forefront of any American offer of advice to citizens of Egypt. We could, without embarrassment, use it as an overlay for analysis of any person or group that wishes to take part in any government or governmental organization, in any time period and under any circumstance.
Any member state in the OIC already fails the test of acceptability, due to Islam. Is this the unequivocal message that any "Muslim" Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) can even possibly carry from the Americans to Islamic pro-slavery thugs dictators and haters? (He is instead a special envoy from the OIC, unless the US is now a sponsor of Islamization.)
According to the US Department of State:
How could the majority of the population even become aware of elementary human rights? (. . . routinely denied by the world's tyrants.)
The Saudi Gazette reports that "Abdullah, Obama discuss Egypt", including this:
The King favors the forward march of both racism and religious tyranny. Is that diplomatic speak for a demand that the US embrace the Muslim Brotherhood?
The Obama response should be to announce ahead of time that the US will refuse to support any government that does not advance the recognition of individual rights, and reinforce the truth that Islam and the "Muslim Brotherhood" are incompatible with the advancement of individual liberty (notwithstanding any of the King's concerns regarding the nebulous concept of "stability and security"). Any such formulaic wording of this nature would inescapably and simultaneously denounce the current Saudi Arabian government with as much or more forcefulness to the Mubarak government. We cannot offer much criticism of Mubarak without also criticizing King Abdullah. They are both lost causes, just as are all the tyrant members of the OIC anti-freedom alliance itself. Demand -- always -- that Islam be decoupled from governmental power, as a predicate issue to adoption of any durable democracy, anywhere anytime.
What would a Venn Diagram look like representing the overlap between Defamation of Islam and Defamation of Tyranny? Compare such overlap with any other ideology or political road map.
If Governor Huckabee stands on the principles he has enunciated thus far on the Middle East, Islam, etc., I will probably vote for him in the 2012 Florida primary. If he wavers, I might have to give it more thought. When in Israel, Huckabee deliberately visits Jewish communities (in Jeruslalem, Hebron, etc.) that Mr. Obama insists are illegal; communities in which, according to Sec. Clinton and Obama, Jews have no right to build or live - only Muslims. Huckabee is deliberately provoking the Obama administration and his immoral / racist policies. I'm not sure I've seen any other candidate for national office do what Huckabee has done in Israel.
Reza Aslan will soon be shilling for the jihad at VMI, of all places:
Virginia Military Institute Sells Out To The Jihad
What a disgrace.