"VCU professor will instruct via video"

Wow. Maybe if we live freely against any islamic 7th century dark age legal code of behaviour we will all have to go into hiding. I didn't think unfettered multicuturalism could get so good. Think of all the things we can do in our secluded fenced-off derelict abandoned log cabins miles from nowhere in the wilderness. Counting one cobweb, two cobweb, three...."

Posted by: obl r us at April 2, 2005 8:32 AM

This should be repeatedly reported in every community and remain on the front page of every newspaper until Americans get the message: Islam is a danger to us all and criticism of Islam will get you death threats or, as in the case of Theo Van Gogh and others, death.

Posted by: epg at April 2, 2005 9:20 AM

While Ward "Chief Sh*tting Bull" Churchill continues to speak his slanders across the country, to the adoring glee of the liberal "Free Speech" crowd, Professor Wadud is forced to go into hiding and videoconference her classes to continue her job of teaching. Where's the hue and cry of Freedom of Speech in her case? Oh, right, I forgot, she's just a woman who somehow threatened one of the liberal "Free Speech" crowd's pet groups. The way we are going, we might as well set up a new branch of the Witness Protection Program for all those who will now be intimdated into silence and hiding at peril of their lives by islam and its admiring liberal PC hordes.

Posted by: Rick at April 2, 2005 9:25 AM

Dr.Wadud has studied and argued over surahs in the Quran that do speak to allowing women to conduct prayers to both genders at the same time.

I guess she thought she could successfully put it to the test as she wanted to demonstrate that it could be an acceptable practice. Apparently the ummah is not fully in accord with her studies.

When the first article came out regarding her conducting those both gender prayers on March 18. Many of us commented that she would get death threats for that. And indeed she did. I think the good professor should continue to make her case and not rollover however.

Posted by: Mackie at April 2, 2005 9:54 AM

Has this has gone beyond the point of no return?

Apparently the U.S. Constitution is actually a suicide pact after all. A college professor is hiding from the ummah instead of the ummah hiding from the police and federal government, all becuse the professor chose to exercise her First Amendment right concerning religion.

What is wrong with this picture?

Posted by: Beagle at April 2, 2005 10:10 AM

And I thought this was just a late April Fool's joke, at first!

Those wacky Muslims!

But...

If the Muslim lady can't take the Islamic heat, she should have stayed out of the Sharia kitchen.

One can only hope that al-Jazeera plays the video of her tele-classes on its channel, for the sake of 'balance'.

And, as Rick noted, the silence from the anti-Israel, pro-death of American academic community is deafening.

Where's Bill Maher with his outraged t.v. interview highlighting this (slightly-more-harassed-than-Ward "little eichmanns" Churchill) professor?

Clearly Maher is a coward-

unlike those "courageous" 9/11 hijackers he so admires* for "bravely" surprising unarmed flight attendants, "valiently" cutting their throats to terrify a bunch of unarmed passengers, then "gloriously" bursting into the unlocked cockpits and "militantly" slitting the throats of unarmed "taught-to-just-go-along-with-the-hijackers' demands" pilots, -and finally "righteously" crashing the civilian airliners into undefended civilian buildings, killing thousands. [And the (oddly) undefended Pentagon, as well.]

Where are the Women's Rights groups standing up for their threatened sister?

I hear white noise from all news broadcasts and "progressive" groups on this topic, of course, since it would slander the 'religon of peace' to show them behaving in a way that doesn't fit in with the approved picture promulgated by the p.c. protectors of the planet.

Maybe the professor can play the old Gershwin tune "Someone to Watch Over Me" as the theme music for her video classes. (Its public domain, prof!)

*I guess Maher also considers religiously-driven pedophiles who kidnap, rape and kill children equally 'brave' for 'outwitting' the kids with 'cunning subterfuges', and then being 'stoically willing to die' in the gas chamber if caught. Defining psychopathic suicidal/homicidal maniacs as "brave" was a perfect sign of the bankrupt intellectual level of the "new left". Especially since they themselves would be the first to die under the reign of a Restored Caliphate. As unclean pigs and apes, however enabling of and acquiescent to the new rulers they had been.

Posted by: BigSleep at April 2, 2005 10:58 AM

Do any of these Islamic professors in university's ect, actually teach the truth of Islam? Why is there such a position in these institutions anyway. I want a cushy job like that...Professor of Swamiatic Studies...where do I sign up...?

Posted by: duh_swami at April 2, 2005 11:26 AM

This would not happen if the professor was engaged in critical discourse of any other ideology on the planet. None are so blind as those who choose not to see.

Posted by: Hulegu Khan at April 2, 2005 11:54 AM

And yet, if one posts a link here to others in the Leftist Academia who are pro-PA, pro-Terrorist, anti-West, they are smeared by those (few) who believe it is an attack on those teacher's freedom of speech. Not to mention those same teachers are also helping steer hundreds of thousands of students down the road to... well, one wonders when we begin seeing stories of murders on campus, oddly enough of 'conservative' or pro-Israel students....

Posted by: Gary at April 2, 2005 12:06 PM

BigSleep,

Bill Maher really said that? What an idiot.

Back to the topic: so this is the tolerant face of islam.

You know, as 'misogynistic' as the Catholic church is proposed to be, I can't imagine them issuing fatwas against a woman who led a Catholic mass. It seems we as a culture always hold ourselves to a higher standard than everyone else.

Geoff

Posted by: Geoff at April 2, 2005 12:59 PM

While Ward "Chief Sh*tting Bull" Churchill continues to speak his slanders across the country, to the adoring glee of the liberal "Free Speech" crowd,Posted by Rick

And yet, if one posts a link here to others in the Leftist Academia who are pro-PA, pro-Terrorist, anti-West, they are smeared by those (few) who believe it is an attack on those teacher's freedom of speech Posted by Gary

Come on guys have you taken whining lessons from the Islamoids?

Ward Churchill is a POS, any person who sides with or supports the Islamoids is a POS, and that includes your "right wing" and "christian" heros, leaders and friends, like Grover Abdullah Norquist, Robert Muhammad Mueller, Karl Ali Rove and there puppet George (I ain't curious) Bush.

This is much more than a "left" v "right" thing, you might have a clue if you bothered to read Paul Sperry's, Infiltration

But Gary you demean yourself with your self pitying, self righteous whines.

Big sleep and Geoff I watch Bill Maher and I saw his interview with Churchill, he took him to task for his statement that the WTC was full of Eichmann's, and he had as a counterpoise to Churchill a family member of a WTC victim.

All Churchill did was prove himself an ass, and an ignorant ideologue.

No Geoff Bill Maher did not say what Big Sleep says he said, putting words in a persons mouth is cheap and dishonest.

In fact if you were paying real attention, instead of looking for offense Big Sleep (and oh how the name fits) you might notice that Maher is taking an anti Jihad stance, and doing a number of Islamoids.

But that doesn't fit within your ideological perspective does it?

In that same show he actually complemented George Bush and gave him credit for the "outbreak of democracy in the mid east".

Perhaps you took offense to Maher's statement that Religion is a neurological disorder.

Well it is. If he said Islam is a neuroligical disorder you would applaud and agree, but religion encompasses the ideology from which you obtain your identification and self justification, and thus you take offense. LMAO.

Posted by: Giaour at April 2, 2005 3:15 PM

Giaour-

Hate to break the news to you, but maybe you weren't aware of exactly why Maher lost his job on ABC a while back. It was over just those comments about what cowards our soldiers were for "lobbing missiles from the safety of aircraft carriers at the terrorists", while those bold and innovative and brave 19 fellows of 9/11 were doing the job personally, which really showed guts.

Unfortunately, we were never shown the guts of the flight attendants scooped up at Ground Zero thanks to the p.c. news broadcasts that censored such stuff as "too much" for the average Ameican to "stand".

I could care less about Maher's views on religion, being an agnostic myself, but when he praises the valor of homocidal 'religious' maniacs for just being crazy enough to be willing to die and slaughter a lot of poor slobs with them- who were just going to visit their relatives in L.A. or on a business trip, then I find ALL of his further insights somewhat compromised. 'The treason of the intellectuals' is what they called it in the 1930's, when no one stood up to Hitler or Stalin.

Now, we get the "why do they hate us" crowd trying to excuse the mass-murder of innocent poeple as a valient piece of religious theater.

Churchill got softballs and marshmallows from Maher. You can read the transcript through Maher's own website.

But be sure to Google "Maher terrorists brave and american soldiers cowards" and get the straight story.

I used to like his humor before he showed himself to be so catastrophically naive. (As if working on the deck of an aircraft carrier- which two of my brothers did- doesn't require balls in itself ... since the planes can crash, you can get sucked into their exhaust ports as you wave them off, and the ships have been known to experience deadly accidents when refueling, loading bombs, etc.... Maher clearly doesn't have a clue of the dangers involved in any military procedures, peacetime or wartime.)

Posted by: BigSleep at April 2, 2005 4:04 PM

What a difficult task we Americans have, we must fight Islam and at the same time fight this imbecilic anti-America leftist ideology. The fight with Islam will be easy, when compared to the egocentric leftists that find it cool to be anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Christian. The egocentric ideology that emulates from the left, finds all religions except Christianity acceptable. The MSM plays this out everyday on TV. Removal of the ten commandments that have been in place for over 50 years, and only now are the egocentric lefties appalled. Los Angeles and San Diego have removed the “cross” from their city symbols that have also been there since their inception, but only now are the egocentric lefties appalled that any Christian symbol is anywhere in their sight. This is why egocentric leftism will never really separate itself Islam, their ideologies are the same, they both hate Jews and Christians.

Posted by: Bar at April 2, 2005 4:48 PM

What is the most important action we can take in understanding the threat of Jihad?
We must stop trying to understand Jihad in western secular. political or materialistic terms.
WE MUST UNDERSTAND IT IN THE TERMS OF iSLAM.

To do this it is imperative to study the history of Islam and its texts. But in our hedonistic world History takes an ever decreasing role in our education.

So when "analysing" Islamic terrorism, the MSM who are largely ignorant of this complex field of study, resort to answers that take the form of the ICONIC cliches of low national self esteem. poverty, lack of MATERIAL wealth. Yet we know that there are MILLIONS of such NON islamic faith people in the third world who very seldom ever resort to terrorism to expose their causes.
The roots of terror cannot be translates into Western materialistic answers.
It is as if the media believe the general public are too stupid to be told the the truth - that is it at the core of all Islamic belief.
This MEDIA Dhimmitied, expounded by so much of the western press is a symtom of the direct Jihad that is being continnually exerted on the West.
NOt perhaps the result of Violent jihad in the land of dar al Harb, but the nine tenths of the Iceberg, so well concealed from public view.
The Jihad of propaganda, subversion and lies to the infidel which has been hugely successful in the west.
A lebanese maronite replied, when i asked him how he felt living as a dhimmy in Lebanon. " Better to have the dubious gurantee of safety for myself and my family , than to live with the constant threat of despoilation and slaughter".
Are the feared losses in revenue from lucrative Arab markets enough to instill dhimitued in our MSM?
Are the feared losses in revenue from lucrative ME university chairs enough ?
Those renumerated Western apologists who continually refer to jihad as a form of Islamic self improvement, purposefully ignore the realities of Islamic supremacist idelogy, in much the same manner that their forefathers tried ti sanitize nazi idealogy.
I believe that 99% of Jihad is Psychological warfare that most of us are blind to.
How have we become blind, when our ancestors were able to plainly see the perils?
Because we have adopted without CAUTION, the noble aspects of peaceful coexistence. tolerance, democracy, human rights and substituted the moral and spiritual principles of religion , with "enlightened" secular materialism.
Islam has been quick to take advantage of what it considers to be the new weaknesses of western society.

Posted by: chevalier de st george at April 2, 2005 8:53 PM

Muslims disagree on what jihad is supposed to mean. Many modernists in the West deny that it has anything to do with violence. CAIR asserts that jihad "does not mean 'holy war.'" Instead, jihad is "a central and broad Islamic concept that includes the struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense . . . or fighting against tyranny or oppression." CAIR even denies that Islam includes any concept of a "holy war."

In the Qur'an, however, and even in later Muslim usage, the term jihad is usually followed by the expression fi sabil Illah, which means "in the path of God." The description of violence against the enemies of the Muslim community as jihad fi sabil Illah gave a sacred meaning to what was otherwise just tribal warfare.

In Hadith collections, jihad almost always refers to armed action. As an example, there are nearly 200 references to jihad in hadiths of al-Bukhari, and all assume that jihad means warfare. It's not surprising, then, that the majority of theologians, and traditionalists understand jihad in a military sense.

There is a political goal to bring as much of the world under the control of Islam as possible. This then allows for the fulfillment of two other goals: promoting Islam among non-Muslims and establishing a just political and social order (only possible under Islam).

Ibn Taymiya (1268-1328) took an even more active view of j'ihad. He argued that a ruler who fails to enforce the Shari'a (Islamic law) in all aspects forfeits his right to rule - thus, jihad against this ruler becomes acceptable, if not mandatory. One of the aspects of Shari'a which a Muslim ruler must enforce is, in fact, jihad itself - but against the enemies of Islam, especially those who threaten it form the outside. Taymiya's thoughts have heavily influenced Muslim extremists in the twentieth century, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden.

More liberal Muslims still see jihad as a necessary and fundamental component of their religion, but they are trying to understand it in a nonviolent way which allows for peaceful coexistence with other religions.

But not all Muslims today believe that jihad should be peaceful - some, in fact,recommend violence and war. arguments that jihad includes the overthrow of governments that fail to enforce the Shari'a, but then added that this jihad must occur first, before any jihad against external enemies can take place.

Many clerics and sheikhs argue not simply that armed, violent jihad is a cornerstone of Islam, but also that it is something which has been woefully negelected by Muslims in recent decades. This neglect is the direct cause of the current position of Islam in the world. To rectify this situation, force is required. Most current leaders of Muslim nations are defined as apostates - and since Islam traditionally prohibits warfare among Muslims, the assertion that these leaders are not "really" Muslims allows for violent action against them. This may explain why there is so much violence perpetrated by Leaders like saddam

These ideas of a violent jihad are not the ravings of a few fringe lunatics. On the contrary, they are ideas which have influenced Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic political movements throughtout the Middle East.

They give legitimacy to the reason why an extremists like Osama bin Laden can say to someone: I know that you are living in stifiling poverty while other Muslims are living the good life, and I know why this is so. It is because our so-called Muslim leaders are really apostates who have sold out to the godless infidels of the West, corrupting our society and our religion. But if we fight back, restore the Shari'a, and drive off the disbelievers, then everything will be fine because a new, just social order just as Allah desires will be established.And he then won't be laughed at or driven off as someone who is polluting the pure, peaceful nature of Islam.

Even leading Muslim clerics send mixed messages regarding how peaceful Islam is. Two days before the September 11th attacks, Hamza Yusuf was outside the White House giving a speech in which he said that the U.S. "stands condemned," and that "this country has a great, great tribulation coming to it." On September 20th, he was meeting with the president, having joined with other religious leaders in a show of unity. There, he said that Islam had been hijacked, and now he says he regrets his earlier statements. This may be why the President has used the term: "A great religion has bee hijacked"

So if groups like CAIR wish to argue that jihad should not include violence, they are welcome to do so. However, they should not pretend that jihad has not historically included violence, and that a Muslim cannot believe in a violent jihad while also being theologically and fundamentally consistent.

Posted by: Mackie at April 2, 2005 10:15 PM

I came accross this from BAT YE'OR posted a couple of days ago on the emperor's new clothes.
She expands on the long neglected subject of the history of the persecution and dhimification of the Serbs under Islam and the cycle of repeated errors of Western politicians.

Modern politicians, sophisticated writers -- using phones, planes, computers and all the modern techniques -- seemed to be returning several centuries back, with wigs or stiff collars, using exactly the same corrupting arguments, the same tortuous short-term politics that had previously contributed to the gradual Islamization of numerous non-Muslim peoples. I had to shake myself in an effort to distinguish the past from the present.

So, is the past always prologue? Are we doomed to remain always prisoners of the same errors? Certainly, if we do not know the past. And this past -- the long and agonizing process of Christian annihilation by the laws of Jihad and dhimmitude -- is a taboo history, not only in Islamic lands, but above all in the West. It has been buried beneath a myth, fabricated by Western politicians and religious leaders, in order to promote their own national strategic and economic interests.

Curiously, this myth started in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 19th century. It alleges that Turkish rule over Christians in its European provinces was just and lawful. That the Ottoman regime, being Islamic, was naturally "tolerant" and well disposed toward its Christian subjects; that its justice was fair, and that safety for life and goods was guaranteed to Christians by Islamic laws. Ottoman rule was brandished as the most suitable regime to rule Christians of the Balkans.

This theory was advanced by European politicians in order to safeguard the balance of power in Europe, and in order to block the Russian advance towards the Mediterranean. To justify the.....

http://emperors-clothes.com/bosnia/bat.htm#I

Posted by: chevalier de st george at April 2, 2005 11:40 PM

Half of islam`s work in the West is being done by their friends ,the left wing radicals.
What the left doesn`t know thogh,is that the very muslims they are helping and defending,can hardly wait to behead all liberals.

Posted by: adela at April 3, 2005 12:51 AM

Amina Wadud gets little sympathy from me--unless some of the people making threatening phone calls get identified and she presses charges. BigSleep is ansolutely right about how she should've stayed out of the kitchen if she couldn't take the heat.

Even more disturbing, when I was last back in the USA, a woman of 100% Kafir background who identified herself as a pacifist feminist radical said that giving up certain liberties might have to be the price paid to accommodate Islamic radicals.

I've always been one to reasonably accommodate Muslims who are willing to keep peace with me; but this incident reveals pretty clearly that the far left is a tiger against anyone who is halfway decent to them, but utterly servile to the truly cruel, harsh, and destructive. I've never been an admirer of Karl Popper, but he was right on target when he said that those who bite the hands that feed them end up kissing the boot that kicks them.

Posted by: Kepha at April 3, 2005 3:20 AM

Amina Wadud gets little sympathy from me--unless some of the people making threatening phone calls get identified and she presses charges. BigSleep is ansolutely right about how she should've stayed out of the kitchen if she couldn't take the heat.

Even more disturbing, when I was last back in the USA, a woman of 100% Kafir background who identified herself as a pacifist feminist radical said that giving up certain liberties might have to be the price paid to accommodate Islamic radicals--and it was a price she was willing to pay.

I've never been an admirer of Karl Popper, but he was right on target when he said that those who bite the hands that feed them end up kissing the boot that kicks them.

Posted by: Kepha at April 3, 2005 3:22 AM

Kepha-

Nice quote- "bite hands...lick boots..."!

I'll have to remember to bring that up when I meet someone so understanding "of those who hate us" at a gathering of "intelligent and well-educated people"- who spout the old excuses for murderous Islam that "...well, didn't they preserve the classical manuscripts from ancient Greece when Europe was wallowing in the illiterate Dark Ages?".

Even if this were true -and it IS only to the extent that it allowed the Islamic thinkers of 900 A.D. to distort Aristotle to fit Mohammad- what is has to do with the current threat to us always eludes me.

So they were 'civilized' a thousand years ago... that makes me feel better about their savagery now?

Those in the West who hate the West ('the arrogant exploitation of the New World', et al), can OF COURSE find a BILLION things wrong with it. No being or nation is anything but flawed.

But, it's the only place that has been built on an 'inalienable Bill of Rights'.

So, I'll defend a flawed diamond (the Constitution) over a warm pile of poisonous horse manure (cultural relativism) any day.

As Winston (and not Ward) Churchill said:

'Democracy is the worst form of government... except for all the rest.'

Posted by: BigSleep at April 3, 2005 12:47 PM

Regardless of what we think of Ms. Wadud, she should not have to go into hiding on account of this prayer service. We do not kill people for these actions in the United States, and THAT is the point that has to be made here. While I find this intra-Muslim squabble fascinating, the fact remains that it is illegal in this country to threaten or assault Ms. Wadud on account of this prayer service - the Shari'a is not the law of this land. If she is receiving threats, this has to be dealt with severely.

Posted by: Mike at April 4, 2005 9:23 AM

We can certainly question what a black woman was thinking when she decided to convert to Islam, given the history of Arabs trading in black slaves, but perhaps we do owe her a small debt of gratitude, although it was not her purpose to evoke the hostile reaction it has served to expose to the light of day the true xenophobic and myscogenistic nature of Islam.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 4, 2005 9:53 AM