Taqiyyah. Or Kitman. Or both.

Posted by: Bohemond_1069 at September 18, 2005 9:28 PM

: “Believers, know that the idolaters are certainly impure. So, let them not come near to the Sacred Mosque after this year is ended.” (9: 28)"
Yep, the islamists believe that we are filth... just like animal poo. How can we resist their wonderful religion?
/sarcasm

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 18, 2005 11:40 PM

"Culture and Information Minister Iyad Madani said Makkah has been the center of culture and civilization since time immemorial."
-- from the article above

If Mecca (Makkah) "has been the center of culture and civilization since time immemorial," then what was it before Muhammad arrived on the scnee to see justice done, and both he (in the Hadith) and the Qur'an itself, testify that the pagan Meccans were living in a time of Ignorance, the so-called Jahiliyah, and it was only when Muhammad received the message of Islam and transmitted it to them that Mecca, and the Meccans, emerged from their darkness.

And that is the Muslim view. The view of certain Western scholars, most famously Patricia Crone, is that there is no evidence for the existence of Mecca during the time of Muhammad, or of the story of Muhammad (early 7th century).

Either Mecca did not exist at all, and consequently could never have been "the center of culture and civilization since time immemorial," or it existed, but until Muhammad conquered it, was mired in the hopeless black ignorance of the pagan Arabs.

Take your pick.

And since 630 A.D., if the idea that Mecca has been "the center of culture and civilization since time immemorial" then please list all of the cultural achievements, other than of course Islam, that have been attributed to denizens of Mecca -- works of art, works of science, anything you can think of.

List them at a posting below, and we will be glad to give that list prominent display elsewhere.

Posted by: Hugh at September 19, 2005 12:45 AM

Islamic sense of humor...

Posted by: US_infidel at September 19, 2005 1:21 AM

Islamic sense of humor...

Posted by: US_infidel at September 19, 2005 1:22 AM

When they talk about educating people they mean educating them in the ways of Islam. It's not about rocket science. Unless rocket science can further the cause of Islam. Rockets, for example, can help bring about the end of the Jewish state. In that case, they do want you to acquire knowledge on how to operate rockets. Hiring someone who knows how to fly rockets into Israel is also permitted. As long as it gets the job done.

Allah knows best.

Posted by: Leveller at September 19, 2005 1:45 AM

By the way, the mosque of Mecca is officially named "Haram". You know, "haram", that word Muslims ordinarily use to refer to impure things that are "forbidden".

I once asked a group of Muslims (safely shielded from me by the magic of the Infidel Internet) why the mosque of Mecca was called "Haram". Of course, I had a good suspicion why -- that the name reflected its raison d'etre of forbidding contact with the Infidel Other. Predictably, the group of Muslims, to a man (if there is a man in the sense of an individual in Islam), danced around the issue with light patterings of al-taqyah and at one point even tried to tell me that the "Haram" of the mosque's name has nothing to do with "haram" in Sharia distinctions between forbidden and accepted.
None of the Muslims could be candid enough to tell me that that mosque is and always has been Strictly Forbidden to All Infidels simply because they are not Muslims, because that would sound... intolerant.

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at September 19, 2005 2:20 AM

"It is a religious matter legislated by God. It is He who says: “Believers, know that the idolaters are certainly impure. So, let them not come near to the Sacred Mosque after this year is ended.” (9: 28)"

WHAT A BUNCH OF BULL!!- WHEN DID GOD LEGISLATE? HOW STUPID AND ASININE, WE LIVE IN THE 21ST CENTURY. THESE MORONIC PEOPLE HAVE A PRIMITIVE MIND SET - STILL IN THE 7TH CENTURY. NONE OF THE MODERN CONCEPTS HAVE TOUCHED ANY OF THEM; IF THEIR THOUGHT PATTERNS ARE JUDGED BY THE ABOVE STATEMENT

Posted by: faqi at September 19, 2005 2:23 AM

" Makkah has been the center of culture and civilization since time immemorial. "

Yes Mecca Bingo is a favoured meeting place for many women (and some men) of all ages and backgrounds throughout Great Britain. Where else could students, young mums and grannies meet in a secure clean safe environment to have fun, something to eat and possibly win a few bob?
Eyes down for a full house.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at September 19, 2005 3:04 AM

Granny, bingo!!!

An extreme level of wishfullthinkingness, ho hum....

DP111, I think we should try to get in contact, you think the same way as I do. Gates of Vienna post.

Did you send your details to Interested?

Interested, please could you send my private email to DP111 if he contacted you.

Posted by: Daffersd at September 19, 2005 3:41 AM

Mecca has been "the center of culture and civilization since time immemorial"

Oh really. But he is still in recovery and scared shit. His teeth are going to fall out soon, and his nose grow longer: 3 days after the anniversay of 9/11:

JEDDAH/MAKKAH, 14 September 2005 — The earthquake that shook Makkah’s Al-Otaibiyyah neighborhood, about two kilometers from the Grand Mosque, at 2 a.m. on Monday has engendered a sense of shock and vulnerability in the citizens of Makkah.
http://arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=70040&d=14&m=9&y=2005

Posted by: leavingtheleft at September 19, 2005 3:51 AM

What a joke:

"That Islam is tolerant is beyond doubt. ... It's just God who says: “Believers, know that the idolaters are certainly impure..." (9: 28)"

Regular JW readers of course also know what God says next, in 9: 29.

What they are basically saying is "we Muslims are oh so tolerant, we just can't help it that God himself established that Infidels are impure, and that they should not be let anywhere near our holy places, and that we must fight them until they convert, die or submit to dhimmitude; we can't quarrel with God's own words, can we?"

In other words, Islam is tolerant, but Islam's God is not - can anyone make sense of that?

Posted by: rahel at September 19, 2005 4:13 AM

I was just speaking to a friend and he knows a primary school teacher who has a class full of Muslim children in the UK.

When it comes to the religious education part of the course they all stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to listen to anything other than Islam.

Posted by: Daffersd at September 19, 2005 4:53 AM

Lets face it they won't even tolerate each other.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4259050.stm

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at September 19, 2005 5:04 AM

The Myth of Mecca

Mecca is located in the Hejaz region of what is today Saudi Arabia. It is portrayed by traditional belief as a wealthy trading center, full of merchants trading goods by caravan from Yemen in the south and Syria and the Byzantium empire in the north. Crone shows that Mecca was in fact way off the incense route from Yemen to Syria, which bypassed where Mecca is today by over 100 miles. Further, there is no mention whatever of Mecca in contemporary non-Moslem sources:

It is obvious that if the Meccans had been middlemen in a long-distance trade of the kind described in (traditional Islamic) literature, there ought to have been some mention of it in the writings of their customers … who wrote extensively about the south Arabians who supplied them with aromatics. (Despite) the considerable attention paid to Arabian affairs there is no mention at all of Quraysh (the tribe of Mohammed) and their trading center (Mecca), be it in the Greek, Latin, Syraic, Aramaic, Coptic, or other literature composed outside Arabia . (p. 134)
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/9/24/152943.shtml

Only a Jack Straw would beleive something otherwise.

Posted by: leavingtheleft at September 19, 2005 5:04 AM

Talking of mecca this must have shaken the pillars of islam (i don`t think muslims know of this, but who cares now):
Mecca: `Whereupon, it is said, the Kaaba (temple) turned around`
http://allaboutsikhs.com/gurus/gurunanak7.htm#9

and Bagdad (seat of the caliphate): `When he repeated the twenty-second pauri (stanza) of Japji, the Pir got wonder-stuck hearing something contrary to the authority of the holy Quran`

Posted by: leavingtheleft at September 19, 2005 5:12 AM

How is this possible when the Arab Human Development Report, written by Arabs, admits that the Arab world lags behind Latin American and Southeast Asia?

Easy... just as for some people, every bad thing that befalls America is blamed on the eeeevil lib'ruls, every bad thing that befalls Arabs is blamed on the Zionists. So the "brutal, apartheid, racist, colonial, empire-buliding, expanding" nation of Israel is THE reason that all Arabs--from Morroco to Oman--are suffering. I would bet that the "Arab Human Developement Report" makes this very clear.

Of course it isn't just Arabs that lag behind the world.... look at the poverty of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Niger, Sudan, Somalia... what do they all have in common? (No, I don't mean that they are all oppressed by the Joooz.)

Anytime you have people dependent on their religion for happiness (and everything else of course), if that religion is one that seeks to make people as miserable as possible--as Islam certainly is--the people will be unhappy. This way, they are more likely to focus their attention on the "afterlife"... thus we have the ridiculous, childishly hedonistic visions of heaven: all the candy and sweetmeat you can eat, a rive of wine, 72 virgin whores attendant to your every whim, and lots of pale-white little boys to somdomize. The original "assassins" got all hopped up on hash to make themselves even MORE religiously, psycopathically insane.

AND! Just consider how far the Muslims in general and Arabs in particular would lag behind civilization if they didn't have oil! Saudi has received thirty-TRILLION dollars from us in thirty years...remember that while you're filling up you SUV [sidebar: I just bought one of those new VW Beetles. I filled the twelve-gallon tank for the first time last week. I've gone 100 miles and used about 1/4 tank. If I had been driving a Hummer, I would have already used the entire 12 gallons (of course, a Hummer has a much bigger gas tank, but it still only gets 8 miles per gallon of gas.)]

I drive a fuel-efficient car... oh, I feel so ashamed, so un-American, so un-masculine. Guess the libs got me. But at least I'm doing my best to not help fund terror.

Posted by: kj at September 19, 2005 6:16 AM

I mean "Morocco." And "your" SUV.

Posted by: kj at September 19, 2005 6:21 AM

KJ, In the Technology Quarterly in this weeks Economist there is an articles on building a better battery.

http://www.altairnano.com/documents/Alternative%20Energy.pdf

Now perhaps your next car could be even more fuel efficient, if only our leaders in government and industry can push it along a bit.

Most electric cars run between 30 to 50 miles, so if they get 3 times the power so assume 100 miles (some power used for faster speed), then with a 10 minute stop to recharge, it becomes feasable, your petrol station becomes a recharging station.

Then the Jihadists will lose their free funding...

Posted by: Daffersd at September 19, 2005 6:57 AM

How many non-muslims do you think are, banging on Meccas door, trying to get in? Mohammad may have had a small problem with polytheists trying to sneak in and contaminate the Ka'aba, but I doubt thats going on now. If they threw the doors open to non-muslims today, how many do you think would show up? Better get there early if you want a good seat and place to park.
The Prince follows the familliar Islamic pattern of 'big-bag of windism'. A whole lot to do about nothing...I wonder how much it costs to fly to Mecca, or do you still have to go by camel?

Posted by: duh_swami at September 19, 2005 6:59 AM

Sir Richard Burton`s account of his travel into mecca, there were dogs there then.
Still are.

Posted by: leavingtheleft at September 19, 2005 7:27 AM

Off Topic

At Ahmadinejad's press conference, an Israeli reporter asked him about Iran's declared intentions to wipe Israel off the map.
To which Ahmadinejad's reaction was: "Next question".
Following this, other reporters continued posing their own questions as if nothing had happened.
None of them took Ahmadinejad to task over his refusal to answer, nor did any of them repeat the Isreali's question.

I was stunned, as I am also stunned that I have not seen this incident reported on in the press or in any weblog. So much for Dhimmi Watch!

'Bad things happen when good people do nothing'.

Posted by: Kim Hartveld at September 19, 2005 7:42 AM

Mecca: Tolerance: Massive oxymoron.

Posted by: albion at September 19, 2005 7:44 AM

http://www.cair-net.org/

Didn't CAIR say something about the crescent having no significance in Islam?

Posted by: DCWatson at September 19, 2005 10:05 AM

Kim...I agree that Amadinijad's brushing off the question was significant, but what do you mean "so much for Dhimmi Watch'? The JW/DW staff cant monitor everything all the time. And they cant report everything that is said and done by everyone who says or does anything. There are millions of sayings and doings that happen everyday that escape the attention of JW/DW.
And of the many sayings and doings that do come to their attention, some kind of value judgement must be excercised, due to time and space constraints. What we get are the cream of the crop of what the staffers gleen based on their learned and experienced opinions. I dont see how JW/DW can do any better than that...

Posted by: duh_swami at September 19, 2005 10:36 AM

The Victorian Richard Burton, and before him Burckhardt, and after him Snouck Hurgronje, and at least one well-known American commentator on Islam was, a while back, letting people know that he had visited Mecca disguised as a Muslim -- none of them have reported on the great cultural center that Mecca is held to be. Aside from the occasional crushing of dozens or hundreds of pilgrims, running hither and yon, deasil and widdershins, and over and under each other, there seems to be only the brand new buildings put up by the Bin Laden Construction Company, and all the old buidlings, including a venerable Ottoman fort and many other buildings torn down by the no-worship-of-sites-outside-the-minimum-decreed-by-Islam fanatical Saudis (or as they might present themselves, those thoughtful urban-improvement Saudis). What a place.

Posted by: Hugh at September 19, 2005 12:23 PM

Here is Sami Angawi al-Jeddahi (just having fun), telling us all about what the Saudis are doing to Mecca:

Dr. Sami Angawi on Wahhabi Desecration of Makkah:
Developers and Purists Erase Mecca's History

By Laith Abou-Ragheb
MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Some of Islam's historic sites in Mecca, possibly including a home of the Prophet Mohammad, are under threat from Saudi real estate developers and Wahhabi Muslims who view them as promoting idolatry.

Sami Angawi, an expert on the region's Islamic architecture, said 1,400-year-old buildings from the early Islamic period risk being demolished to make way for high rise towers for Muslims flocking to perform the annual pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city.

"We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Mecca," Angawi told Reuters. "Its layers of history are being bulldozed for a parking lot," he added.

Angawi estimated that over the past 50 years at least 300 historical buildings had been leveled in Mecca and Medina, another Muslim holy city containing the prophet's tomb.

Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's dominant doctrine which promotes a strict narrow interpretation of Islam, was largely to blame, he said.

"They (Wahhabis) have not allowed preservation of old buildings, especially those related to the prophet. They fear other Muslims will come to see these buildings as blessed and this could lead to polytheism and idolatry."

The Washington-based Saudi Institute, an independent news gathering group, says most Islamic landmarks have been destroyed since Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932. It cited a 1994 edict by the kingdom's senior council of religious scholars which ruled that preserving historical buildings might lead to polytheism.

Angawi, who founded the Haj Research Center in 1975 to study and preserve Mecca and Medina's rich history, claims to have identified a home of the Prophet Mohammad. But he is reluctant to publicize its location fearing it would be demolished like DAR al Arqam -- the first school in Islam where the prophet taught.

Angawi's views were echoed elsewhere.

In London, Geoffrey King, Islamic art and archeology specialist at the School of Oriental and African and Studies, said the fate of Islamic historic sites in Saudi Arabia was "depressing."

"The religious authorities have failed to appreciate the significance of these buildings to Muslims and scholars worldwide," said King, who taught for several years in the kingdom and stressed many young Saudis agreed with him.

REAL ESTATE DEMAND

Followers of Wahhabism say Muslims should focus on Mecca's Grand Mosque, which contains the Kaaba -- an ancient structure that more than 4 million Muslims visit each year as part of haj and umra pilgrimages.

Real estate firms see massive demand for new accommodation to house up to 20 million pilgrims expected to visit Islam's holiest city annually over the coming years as authorities relax entry restrictions for pilgrims.

"The infrastructure at the moment cannot cope. New hotels, apartments and services are badly needed," the director of a leading real estate company said, estimating that developers are spending around 50 billion riyals ($13 billion) on projects in the city.

Dominating these is the 10 billion riyal Jabal Omar scheme. Covering a 230,000 square yard area adjacent to the Grand Mosque, the seven-year project consists of several towers containing hotels, apartments, shops and restaurants.

Angawi said these developments will dwarf Mecca's Grand Mosque and are a sign of crass commercialization.

"Mecca is being treated like a bad copy of any city when it is a sanctuary. The house of God is being commercialized and these developments are disrespectful and totally out of proportion."

But the Jabal Omar Development Company, the firm behind the project, said it was changing Mecca for the better, not least in demolishing more than 1,000 poorly built homes that clung precariously to the hillsides around the Grand Mosque.

The firm said around 70,000 residents from 29 different nationalities used to live on the Jabal Omar site before selling up and moving into better quality housing elsewhere.

The residents of a similar neighborhood close by seemed to be equally eager to attract developers.

Ali Hussein, a 38-year-old originally from Myanmar, lives in a cramped house deep within a network of unpaved, rubbish-strewn alleyways. "The people that moved away now live in nice homes," he said as a stray cat skipped over a puddle of sewage nearby.

"This is a very poor area. We hope another investor will come," said Amin Rafie, a local community ombudsman, adding that residents would likely be offered a handsome price for their disheveled homes in Saudi Arabia's oil-driven real estate boom.

But Angawi wasn't convinced of the developers' motives.

"We have to accommodate these new pilgrims, but do we have to do it in towers and skyscrapers? Making money seems to be the bottom line here," he said.

"We are destroying physical links to our past and turning our religion and history into a legend," he said. ($1=3.750 riyals)

Source: REUTERS

And you thought developers in this country were bad.

Posted by: Hugh at September 19, 2005 12:26 PM

This isn't rocket science. THEY know they aren't tolerant, but by repeating they same lie over and over, they know that the credulous will come to believe.

Tolerance in Islam has the same meaning as peace: Peace means the absence of enemies. Achieving this goal is done through conversion or annihilation. Intolerance is one tactic to achieve this goal; taqiyya and kitman is another. Dissembling is allowed as long as it furthers the goals of Islam.

Posted by: epg at September 19, 2005 2:16 PM

Tolerance? this word doesn´t exist in islam.

Posted by: Franze at September 19, 2005 4:41 PM

Hugh re your posts above:

I have misplaced my copy of Sir Richard Burton`s account but if memory serves right, the mecca then was hardly flattering with dogs running all over and a filthy cloth covering the stone which mulims pray to.
I`ll try to renew the search for my copy. There`s not much written on the mecca thing simply cos there wasn`t anything going on.
What culture? They don`t even have agriculture.

Posted by: leavingtheleft at September 20, 2005 5:04 AM