only one third say they are any degree of knowledgable about islam. 36% say islam is likely to inspire violence. my interpretation of the poll would be that ANYONE who knows ANYTHING about islam thinks its dangerous.

Posted by: t-ham at July 27, 2005 9:55 AM

I heard some of these Pew Report people on NPR. One talked fulsomely of Islam as a "great religion," while another, possibly Andrew Kohut himself, spoke of the fact that those who "knew something" about Islam were more favorably disposed.

Really? What does "know something" about Islam mean today? It undoubtedly means having gone to the local bookstore, where Armstrong is prominently on offer, and Spencer, Ibn Warraq, and Bat Ye'or nowhere to be found. It undoubtedly means attending some "Muslim-Christian Dialogue" (where hints about the Jews who would cause trouble are carefully sown) or some "Muslim-Jewish Dialogue" (where hints about how Muslims never ever did anything bad to the Jews, unlike Christians, who did terrible things to both Jews and Muslims during the Crusades), or those Open Houses at Mosques where the smiling Imam greets his naive guests, with that carefully-selected and carefully-trained group of "typical Muslims" also waits to meet-and-greet, and a good time, with chicken, pita, and honeyed sweets is had by all, and it is obvious that these Muslims are fine fellows, fit right in, and all those who say otherwise are simply vicious, meretricious, warmongering types, trying to create discord where none really exists. And no one bothers to find out for himself what is in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and the handful of passages that, either misunderstood or misinterpreted -- these always include "there shall be no compulsion in religion" and usually that "weak" Hadith (not included in Bukhari or Muslim) about the "lesser Jihad" of battle and the "greater Jihad" within -- the same Hadith that, to listen to Karen Armstrong, is not only not a "weak" Hadith but just about the most influential one in circulation -- oh, people are lazy, people are easily pleased, people do not want to be upset, people do not want to have to worry about the future if it is more than a few weeks or few months down the road (look at what the Western Europeans have done to themselves, to their own growing chagrin, and shame, and sorrow, and pain, and dismay, and fear).

One would like to see exactly how the questions were worded, and exactly what the methodology was? For example, what constitutes "learning about" or "knowing about" Islam -- if you read Karen Armstrong, do you know more about Islam than you did before you read her, or less? If you "learn about Islam" from the apologists, or from Michael Sells' "Approaching the Qur'an" and similar works, do you know more, or less, about Islam, than you did before? If you have never read what is easily available on-line, never looked at "Why I Am Not a Muslim," never read what is at www.dhimmitude.org, or www.faithfreedom.org, never talked to a non-Muslim from a Muslim country -- a Christian from Pakistan, or a Hindu from Bangladesh, or a Hindu or Chinese from Malaysia or Indonesia -- then you know very little.

What the Pew Report should have asked is a series of questions to show some knowledge of Isalm.

To wit: only those who at least know of the existence of the Hadith and Sira, and can define them, as well as of the Qur'an, can be said to "know" the absolute minimum necessary about Islam. And only those who know what the word "dhimmi" means, or what the word "Jihad" means, or what "dar al-Islam" and "dar al-Harb" mean, can conceivably be said to know anything at all worth knowing about Islam.

If by "knowing about Islam" the Pew Report thinks that prating on about the "three abrahamic faiths" or that "Islam is a monotheism, just like Christinaity and Judaism" or "in Islam we revere Moses and Jesus" (without explaining how Islam appropriated, and distorted, both the Jewish Moses and the Christian Jesus), then we understand what is going on?

Oh, one last question. This is for Andrew Kohut, and that unbiased, untendentious Pew Report. Tell us, please, who commissioned, and who paid for, the study? That's something we'd like to know. Because, after all, someone was interested in having such an expensive poll taken, someone had to ask that it be undertaken, and that certai questions be asked in a certain way.

Well, who was it? Tell us. Youth wants to know.

Posted by: Hugh at July 27, 2005 10:09 AM

Sounds like another PC poll to me. How about a poll with questions like: 1.) Write in the percentage of muslims you think support violence against America or our allies_______
2.) Would you go on vacation to a muslim country?____ yes ____ no ____ not sure
3.) Write in the percentage of muslims you think would report suspicious activity to the police___
4.)Do you believe there are muslims in America that are advocating violence in mosques using the Arabic language yet giving messages to the Public in English that oppose terrorism? ____yes____no
5.) What percentage of muslims do you think actually are willing to engage in violence against the US or our allies ? ______

My responses to a non-PC poll?
1. 60%
2. no
3. 05%
4. yes
5. 30%

Posted by: goesh at July 27, 2005 10:21 AM

Just one thing. Not all muslims are terrorists, but so far all the terrorist are muslims!

Posted by: just one soldier at July 27, 2005 10:31 AM

I wouldn't go so far as to say all terrorists are nuslim. Certainly most of it though.

Posted by: TooBad at July 27, 2005 10:47 AM

There are lies, damn lies & statistics - particularly when they are in the hands of the appeasors. I was shaken from my sleep on 7/7 - & rapidly started to question the offical line of "the vast majority of UK Muslims are peaceful...yadda, yadda..". Bullshit polls like this are not fooling anyone. My American friends will be aghast when I point them at this....I hope they can hold back their laughter long enough to read it all. Maybe thats the new idea, get us all to laugh ourselves to death.

Posted by: albion at July 27, 2005 11:16 AM

Like I always say, Muslims are thugs and idiots, but most of the American people, especially the more educated, are bigger buffoons than the Muslims. What the h***! I do not doubt this poll one bit judging by all infuriating nincompoops that I routinely discuss this subject with, and I do travel in highly educated circles.

I remember as an undergrad, I discussed the subject of the militant nature of Islam with the then Chair of the History department at a renowned school; the man was completely clueless.

Posted by: have_mercy at July 27, 2005 11:47 AM

The percentage of Americans who believe Islam is more likely than other religions to inspire violence has declined in the past two years, according to a poll taken after the London bombings. ****Should read****
The percentage of Americans who are STUPID has increased in the past two years, according to common sense and the instinct for self preservation.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at July 27, 2005 11:56 AM

The problem is far deeper and amorphous than one of propaganda, as Hugh indefatigably implies. The problem is not that Islam is being whitewashed; the problem is that Islam has been washed white for decades now, as one part of a larger process of drastic and radical reorientation of Western self-consciousness.

A professor of mine, a brilliant researcher of comparative religions, could write the following, two months after 911:

"Islam, too, has had and still has its own more careful thinkers, and many of these have been trying to find ways of relating Islam positively to the challenges of modern scientific thought and rational inquiry and the possibilities of pluralism. Ahmed Khan (died 1898), Jamal al Afghani (d.1897), and Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) are just a few of the better-known names of the past two centuries.

"Islam contains rich resources for such development. The Quran itself advocates a religious pluralism that was practiced for centuries in Muslim lands in what was known as the "millet system," the freedom of different religious groups to practice their own faith and govern themselves according to their own traditional laws...

"In its early centuries, when the Islamic territory expanded to encompass much of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern world, including major centers of classical learning, Muslim scholars, such as Avicenna (d. 1037), Averroes (d. 1198), and Ghazali (d. 1111), to name only a few, assimilated this learning and advanced it with major scientific discoveries and new philosophical conceptions. In this respect, the Muslim world in those years was much more "modern" and open than was the contemporary Christian West."

These views do not represent any change in this professor's views about Islam -- he has felt this way for DECADES, probably since the 1960s. This professor did not have to carefully pick and choose the pro-Islamic sources and avoid the anti-Islamic sources. Nor was this professor the victim of some conscious project of propaganda, as Hugh keeps implying. NO: All this professor had to do as he went along with his scholarly career studying literature, philosophy and comparative religions was to BREATHE -- breathe in the new Western Zeitgeist that developed after WWII.

Posted by: metaxy at July 27, 2005 12:10 PM

just_one_soldier and TooBad:

You might be interested to note that it was a Muslim journalist who famously wrote that, after Beslan, and reported via MEMRI.org. I just can't remember if it was the former editor of London's progressive Arab language newspaper, Al-Sharq Awasat or a journalist in one of the oil states.

Not really OT, but not really off, either, from another writer in Al-Sharq in response to the London bombings and Islam's role:

After London, Tough Questions for Muslims

By Mona Eltahawy
Washington Post
Sunday, July 24, 2005; Page B07

The July 7 London bombings did it for me. Perhaps it was because my parents moved us from Cairo to the British capital when I was 7 years old, and so London was my childhood "home." Or maybe it was because our route to work and school every morning crisscrossed those same Underground stations that were targeted.

I'm sure it was also those dog-eared statements that our clerics and religious leaders read out telling us that Islam means peace -- it actually means submission -- and asking us to please forget everything they had ever said before July 6, because as of July 7 they truly believe violence is bad. Their backpedaling is so furious you can smell the skid marks.

Some are not even bothering to put their feet on the pedals, such as the 22 imams and scholars who met at London's largest mosque to condemn the bombings but who would not criticize all suicide attacks.

Sayed Mohammed Musawi, the head of the World Islamic League in London, insisted "there should be a clear distinction between the suicide bombing of those who are trying to defend themselves from occupiers, which is something different from those who kill civilians, which is a big crime."

In a classic example of laying blame everywhere but at our own door, Musawi actually criticized the Western media (for supposedly confusing frustrated young Muslims) rather than those scholars who had blessed suicide bombings as long as they targeted Israelis.

Suicide bombings are the Muslim weapon of choice not only in London and Israel but in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They are killing Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and yet our imams and scholars cannot condemn them.

As I said, the London bombings did it for me. Or maybe it's the knowledge that the more these faceless cowards strike, the more Muslim men in the West like my brother are pushed onto the stage of suspicion. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ehab -- who spends virtually all of his time caring for his cardiology patients or fulfilling his role as husband and father -- was one of the 5,000 Muslim men questioned by the FBI; two years later he was among the thousands more who had to submit to being fingerprinted and photographed as part of a special registration.

But most of all, the London bombings rid me of all patience with the excuse that "George Bush [or Tony Blair or take your pick of Western leaders] made me do it." We don't know who was behind Thursday's explosions, but an Arab analyst told a satellite channel that if Blair hadn't learned the mistake of the Iraq war, these new attacks were a firm reminder.

I never bought the explanation that U.S. foreign policy had "brought on" the Sept. 11 attacks, and I certainly don't buy the idea that the Iraq war is behind the attacks in London. Many people across the world have opposed U.S. and British foreign policy, but that doesn't mean they are rushing to fly planes into buildings or to blow up buses and Underground trains in London.

I was against the invasion of Iraq and would not have voted for George Bush if I were a U.S. citizen, but I'm done with the "George Bush made me do it" excuse. We must accept responsibility for this mess if we are ever to find a way out.

And for those non-Muslims who accept the George Bush excuse, I have a question: Do you think Muslims are incapable of accepting responsibility? It is at least in some way bigoted to think that Muslims can only react violently.

We all must ask a host of difficult questions. How about beginning by acknowledging once and for all that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a Muslim issue? It is a dispute over land that too many clerics and religious leaders, radical or otherwise, use to flesh out the victimized-Muslim scenario.

Yes, Palestinians deserve a state, and, yes, Israel must end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

But rather than dwelling endlessly on these issues, we would do well to spend time encouraging our young people to become more active members of their communities and to not live caught between two worlds: a Muslim one at home and in the mosque, an "infidel" one outside.

And what about assimilation? It is not bigoted to ask Muslims if they are integrating into the societies they are living in. Just as the British government has responsibilities toward its citizens, immigrants included, so too do those immigrants. Muslims ask for time off work for prayer, for example, and they often get it. But are they truly living in Britain or are they perpetuating an existence that even their relatives "back home" long ago left behind? Domestic policy is too often ignored by many Muslims who are more concerned with Palestine, Iraq or any other place where Muslims are believed to have suffered injustice.

I raise these questions because London might have done it for me, but I'm not done with Islam. The clerics and the terrorists will not take it away from me. God belongs to me, too.

Mona Eltahawy is a New York-based columnist for the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.http://

Posted by: waterdragon52 at July 27, 2005 12:48 PM

This poll is a soft shoe shuffle...

Posted by: jsla at July 27, 2005 1:02 PM

Why did 7/7 "do it for" Mona? Why not the 25,000 terrorist attacks on Israel? Why not 9/11? Why not the murders of children in Beslan? Why not the subway in Madrid? Why not the killing of Theo van Gogh? Why only when it came to London, and suddenly there was a distinct change in the atmosphere, and it was clear to Mona that the old excuses and nonsense and lies simply would not do, and Muslims such as herself were likely to suffer as well, so that it was important to quickly distance herself not necessarily out of a sudden impulse born of a moral sense that could no longer stand it, but out of a practical sense that things were going to go badly for all Muslims, including perfect-English-speaking and most-presentable Mona herself, if she didn't take this minimal step?

Nonetheless, she is no Ayaan Hirsi Ali, no Ali Sina, no Taslim Nasreen, no Azam Kamguian, no ibn Warraq -- no, she's stickiing with Islam. It gives her life meaning. It would be too much to abandon it (not to mention just a bit dangerous). Well, one wishes to ask the Monas of this world, even as they approach -- if they do approach in fact -- the status of "Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims, what parts of the Qur'an they like, and what parts they reject? Which of the Hadith do they like, and which do they reject? And what is it in the life of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, that they think are NOT exactly worthy of emulation or respect or praise -- can they name a dozen such things, or one?

Why do such people still cling to defending the indefensible, so that they can have some kind of prefaricated "identity" to wear. Though she arrived in England at 7, no doubt Mona Eltahawy has kept up with Egypt, and knows about the treatment of the Copts. Well then, why didn't that ever bother her, ever cause her to call Islam into question? And she has lived through the Arab Muslim murders of non-Arab Muslims -- the Kurds, and the blacks in Darfur. Is she on record with a syllable of protest? And what about the 20 years of genocide by the Muslim north against the Christian and animist black Africans in the south of the Sudan -- has Mona Eltahawy ever protested, ever written about it?

No? Why not?

And one more thing. Notice carefully what she slips in toward the end. Mona Eltahawy, and all those Muslims, and especially Muslim (and many islamochristian) Arabs, does not want the Western world to understand that the war against Israel is in fact a war of Muslims who oppose an Infidel sovereign-state. Because if that true understanding of the conflict were to spread, it would undoubtedly affect certain hard-won sympathies, sympathies achieved by hiding the Jhad against Israel, a Jihad that is NOT about land, but about Infidels refusing to behave as dhimmis, refusing to accept their status under the Shari'a, and daring to create a state that is run by Infidels, not by Muslims -- a state which, like Spain and much of southeastern Europe, was once clearly part of dar al-Islam and so takes priority, in the Muslim view, in the list of lands to be conquered by Islam, for Muslims.

Of course Mona Eltahawy does not want anyone to realize that this is a classic Jihad against non-Muslims. Of course she wants to reiterate all the ahistorical nonsense about Israel's so-called "occupation" (the loaded word so favored by the BBC and Al Jazeera, and so many others) of lands which were expressly set aside, under the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, for the "Jewish National Home" and to which Israel has legal, moral, and historic claims far superior to all others -- we could begin only with the claim that is identical to that which gave Italy the Sudtirol -- now the Alto Adige -- after World War I, or the Czechs, Poles, French, and others after World War II.

As the Mona Eltahawys of this world try, so transparently, to quickly establish their credentials as Brave Young Outspoken Muslims Unafraid to Break Ranks And Tell the (Very Partial) Truth, they will also try to keep away any careful reappraisal of what Israel actually faces, and will do what they can to keep reiterating that the Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel is "not about religion -- i.e., Islam -- but about land." [This theme, by the way, is a common one among the outwardly "moderate" Muslims, such as the wife of Faisal Istrabadi, the smooth American-trained health-care lawyer who for a while was one of those favored "good Iraqis" and who has gone from Indiana to the big-time as Iraq's Deputy Ambassador at the U.N.; his wife, who taught the obvious subjects back in Indiana, was careful to insist that Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel had "nothing to do with religion" but was about land (which of course means Israel need only give up more land, and that will be that).

If you think the war against Israel is only about "land" and has "nothing to do with religion," then you might want to first explain that to Mohamad Mahathir, former head of Malaysia, who in his famous address to the Organization of Islamic Countries, which was so warmly received by one and all (the full text can be found easily on-line), appears to think that the defeat of "the Jews" is a primary task of all Muslims.

And I could fill up this page with a list of those non-members of the recently-invented "Palestinian people" who, as Muslims, apparently agree with him, and with me -- not with Mona Eltahawy, however plausible she may think she has been.

Not here she hasn't. She must peddle those Brave- Young-Muslim-Who-Is-Fed-Up-With-the-Extremists stuff elsewhere, especially as she does so only to smuggle in the new Party Line intent on keeping Infidels in the dark about the motivation of the Arab Muslim assault, which has no end, on Israel.

Well, it won't work at this website. And it won't work in more and more places, alas. Mona, just as the Saudi propaganda machine is discovering, it's too late. The attacks came too soon. Should have waited another decade or two. Timing is everything. The members of the Friars Club could have told you that.

Posted by: Hugh at July 27, 2005 1:20 PM

Hugh:

I think even the Israelis and their supporters consider their presence in Gaza and the West Bank an occupation, but a legal one following a series of acts of war, not an illegal one as it has been so widely and falsely portrayed.

It's presumptuous of me to suggest it, but as for the significance to Mona of 7/7, I'd suspect it was more the employment of journalistic effect rather than a lack of revulsion for all those other murderous acts you listed.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at July 27, 2005 1:46 PM

The details of this "survey" are available here: http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=89

One interesting tidbit has to do with the pollsters' definition of respondents who are "more knowldegeable about Islam." For the purposes of this "survey," a person who is "knowledgeable about Islam" is one who is "able to identify the Koran as the Islamic equivalent of the Bible" and "correctly identified Allah as the name Muslims use to refer to God."

This explains a lot...

Posted by: lobo91 at July 27, 2005 1:52 PM

This poll shows the PCites and Islamists are winning and we are losing the battle to inform the American public.

Posted by: helox at July 27, 2005 2:25 PM

"I think even the Israelis and their supporters consider their presence in Gaza and the West Bank an occupation"
--- from a posting above

There are all sorts of Israelis. Some know about Islam. Many do not. Some actually know the history of the area, including the facts of 19th century demography, and the pattern of land-ownership under the Ottoman Empire. Many do not. Some know about who arrived, from Egypt and Algeria, from the Ottoman domains in Europe, and from Mespotamia, from roughly 1840 to 1935. Many do not. And it is the same with those you call "supporters of Israel." Some people bother to learn the facts, others think that having their heart in the right place exempts their mind from having to do any work. No.

And then there is the problem of hopeless stupidity, refusal or incapacity to think, to link, to comprehend. That is a general problem all over the world, about everything. It just seems to be a greater problem today than in the past because more people, with mass pseudo-education, are superficially literate -- and so many claim to be "painters" or "writers" or "scholars" or "experts" on this or that, that one can hardly wade through the dreck to get to the genuine article

The word "occupation" evokes the Nazis goose-steeping in Paris. It instantly implies that those doing the occupying have no legitimate claim to the place they are occupying. That is why the word, which you attempt to defend, is so dangerous and why, whatever "Israelis and their supporters" may do (and many of them are silly and inattentive to words), I'll be damned if I will call the Israeli possession of territories which were assigned to the Mandate for Palestine, and which were seized by the Jordanians and the Egyptians and recaptured by the Israelis in the Six-Day War, can be called "occupied." No they can't. Not in any sense that matters. And by using that word, you essentially perform an act of Arab propaganda. Many Israelis do so too. They are lazy. They use phrases such as the "Palestinian people" or "the Palestinians." But I don't. I take great care not to participate in the farce, and I no reason to join in the farce of the words "occupied" as in "occupied Arab lands" or the word "occupation." They don't apply.

Early on Rumsfeld spoke of the "so-called occupation." Rumsfeld was right. Would that others followed his verbal lead.

Posted by: Hugh at July 27, 2005 2:27 PM

Ever notice if you ask regular people and i do at work every day they will tell you that Islam is dangerous and will killus all.

But in the main stream media Muslims are just misunderstood.

Even though the muslims have Publicly stated the fact that they are behind terrorism and islam supports it and demands death to all who are non muslim. People are still buying this BS.

Check out this transcript from memri tv.
http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=778
The muslims to this day are still stating that
9/11
4/11
7/7
the bombings the be-headings the genocide, mass rapes, torture sheesh the list is endless are all a zionist plot to discredit Islam..

Going further they believe that americans and the jews have all commited these acts to make Islam look bad.

If this wasnt so serious i would think the clerics are all doing drugs..

Posted by: jingoist at July 27, 2005 2:51 PM

Hugh:

I would agree that very few people, Jewish, Israeli or otherwise, understand that the animus they are subjected to by Muslims is based on tenets of the faith and not the displacement of any legitimate claimants to residency within Israel's border. That's at least part of the reason why there are no Christian suicide bombers whereas are Muslims from all over the globe claiming to be ready to blow themselves up if it means taking out some Jews or Israelis, but not a one of them would do anything of the sort in protest of the incredible inhumanity perpetrated against, say, black African Muslims in Darfur who are suffering far more greatly -- at the hands of other Muslims.

Certainly, most Christian Arabs are pretty hostile to Jews and Israelis, but that has to do with the Jews' dogged refusal to convert to Christianity, and, of course, the [oldest] blood libel. But other than Sirhan Sirhan, we might be hard pressed to find Christian Arabs who perpetrate acts of violence, except the Christian Phalangists of Lebanon during the Civil War who were fighting Arafat's thugs.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at July 27, 2005 2:51 PM

http://www.cairfl.org/images/jaxchurch1.JPG

Posted by: DCWatson at July 27, 2005 3:44 PM

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- The sign in front of the First Conservative Baptist Church in Mandarin has an eye-catching -- and some say inflammatory --message.

"Islam is evil and believes in murder," it reads. "Jesus teaches peace."

Pastor Gene Youngblood, the author of that message, declined our request for an interview. Instead he directed us to a passage in the Qu'ran, the Muslim holy book - Surah 9-29.

But "fight against those who believe not in Allah" is part of a passage that is too easily taken out of context, says Parvez Ahmed, Chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Ahmed says the line refers to an ancient war between Muslims and non-Muslims and that Islamic scholars do not interpret it literally.

"People of all religions have taken passages out of context, whether they be Jew, Christian, or Muslim, and used them to justify the unjustifiable," Ahmed said.

"The person who put that up probably wasn't thinking," said Lee Garrett, who walked by the church and saw the sign.

"They're using the wrong word. Maybe it should be 'Islamic fundamentalism' is evil,'" he said.

Since being named chairman of CAIR, Ahmed has been publicly condemning terrorism at every opportunity, especially in the wake of the London bombings blamed on those with ties to the Al-Qaeda network.

Critics charge that CAIR is soft on terrorism and does not speak for the entire Muslim community, but Ahmed says his mission is simple: to promote awareness that mainstream followers of Islam believe in peace and tolerance.

Posted by: DCWatson at July 27, 2005 3:45 PM

Jingoist:

Do you know that at the end of his life, Hitler blamed World War 2 on the Jews?

Evil people always blame the victims for what they themselves do.

Posted by: Voltaire at July 27, 2005 4:27 PM

This reminds me of many studies where only the "executive summary" is reported, but then when people look at the raw data, the data suggests just the opposite of what the executive summary said. In other words, the poll takers had a social or multicultural agenda.

If they had been doctors and they falsified a drug study like they probably falsified this poll on Islam, they would be disbarred and would be going to jail right now for malpractice.

The best construction one could put on it is the poll takers/analyzers assumed that if you had a negative view of Islam, you were an Islamophobe who didn't know about Islam. Thus, based on this assumption, they could say when the poll was over that those who knew more about Islam responded that it was no more violent than other religions. It's poll-taker bias or prejudice influencing the results, or the interpretation.

Posted by: markjames at July 27, 2005 5:20 PM

I raise these questions because London might have done it for me, but I'm not done with Islam. The clerics and the terrorists will not take it away from me. God belongs to me, too.

This is the Irshad Manji type of excuse for islam. The dawa part is that islam is a good religion but has been corrupted by the fanatics. This is just parroting Bush and Blair's mantra, and admitting what is already well known.

I have posted a warning to this effect, it is now happening. Taqqiya and Kitman is really starting.

It was to be expected, as we now hear calls for the deportation of clerics and any who espouses hate, or supports such hate. This is the anti-terrorism policy that they fear the most. It was predictable and I did so a week ago.

Islamic terrorism will grow in direct relation to the size of the ummah. With each terrorist attack, the moderates will come forth, with this and that demand for muslims. They operate in concert, the Jihadis and the moderates, each to advance islam in a manner that is best suited. No formal understanding is required - it is understood, that as the Jihadis have made the ultimate sacrifice, the living "moderates" must make full use of that sacrifice.

Now the real battle starts, when Taqqiya and Kitman will really come to play. This will even go as far, depending on the Western nation, to abrogating certain verses in the koran (English or German versions but not the Arabic one), to suit the sensibility of that particular Western audience. The LLL will applaud and say that islam is reforming. Pres. Bush and PM Blair will claim that they have been instrumental in the Reformation of Islam, but the real task has to be done genuine moderate muslims etc etc.

The global Jihad has made a huge investment in the West ie the ummah, its main instrument for the subjugation of non-muslim lands and societies. It will go to any lengths to safeguard it.

Posted by: DP111 at July 27, 2005 7:04 PM

a person who is "knowledgeable about Islam" is one who is "able to identify the Koran as the Islamic equivalent of the Bible"

Actually, the accurate parallel is not between the Koran and the Bible. The more accurate parallel is between the Koran and the Incarnate God Jesus: the Koran is Allah Incarnate and is therefore perfect, unearthly, divine.

Posted by: metaxy at July 27, 2005 7:27 PM

http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=89
thats not what the pew poll said it is clear that people who know nothing about Islam find no fault with it

Posted by: KAOSKTRL at July 27, 2005 11:58 PM

Everybody I know, who know anything about Islam, consider it to be the breeding ground for irrational and unself-controlled lunatics who tend toward the tyrannical and megalomaniacal, using murderous extremism, and who also practice veiled or open contempt for all non-Muslims.

(Or do I just hang around people who took the challenge of 9/11 seriously, and actually read the Koran?)

None of these poll takers ever call me. (But then I have better things to do than answer unscreened calls from 'push'-pollsters*).
__________________________________________________

*Those who answer such polls have pre-screened themselves for gullibility. (A fact never noted by the otherwise mordantly cynical polling companies.)

Posted by: BigSleep at July 28, 2005 12:52 AM

That's it, where the balian in our modern age who must fight this ideology not with swords,but of wisdom and love for humanity

Posted by: confucius at July 28, 2005 7:48 AM

Is this what is meant by the "dumbing down of America?"

Wake up! Don't smell the roses ~ no time!
Count the numbers of toes and fingers you have.
10 of each? Ok, then today is a good day.

Proceed. But do not be fooled into a false sense of security or white-washed ideology. Feed that pablum to someone else.

Posted by: JW gal at July 28, 2005 8:23 AM