Recently in Moderate Muslims Category

From modern, moderate Morocco comes yet another example of why we don't see more sincere Muslim reformers. Ahmed Assid said: "To call [upon people] to follow Islam by the use of violence and constraint is an act of terrorism." For that, he has been condemned, declared a non-Muslim, and threatened with death.

Now wait a minute. We're constantly told that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemn violence and terror and abhor the violence done in Islam's name. So why isn't Ahmed Assid celebrated as a hero, instead of fearing for his life?

Tiny Minority of Extremists Update: Morocco: Comments About Islam Spark Firestorm," by Mohamed Saadouni for Magharebia, May 7 (thanks to Twostellas):

Casablanca — Moroccan activist Ahmed Assid has unleashed a torrent of criticism, including a takfir fatwa from a leading salafist preacher, for making controversial comments about Islam.

During a three-day seminar at the 10th national congress of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH) in Rabat, which ended on April 21st, Assid suggested that religious school textbooks lured youths to violence.

To call [upon people] to follow Islam by the use of violence and constraint is an act of terrorism," he said.

Assid should be sued for insulting the prophet and ridiculing Islam, salafist preacher Sheikh Mohammed Fizazi said during a lecture at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra.

Yet the strongest reaction came from Sheikh Hassan Kettani, who accused Assid of kufr. In describing him as a "criminal" and "enemy of God", Kettani issued a call for "silencing his voice".

In a statement posted on Facebook, Kettani said that Assid had "crossed all lines in provoking Moroccans in particular and the ummah of Islam in general by deliberately insulting and desecrating each and every one of their sanctities".

"In his impudence, he [Assid] went as far as to claim that the Quran contains no eloquence, ridiculing and underestimating the language of Quran," Kettani's statement went on.

By this Kettani apparently means that the Qur'an teaches violence, and so Assid is ridiculing the Qur'an by rejecting violence.

Assid later defended his comments.

"The thing that attracts attention is the violent, uncivilised nature of this campaign that lacks the simplest values of dialogue and right to different opinions, and thus seeks to consolidate a culture that we don't need here in Morocco, that is the culture of confiscation, of trial, incitement and threats, et cetera," Assid told Magharebia.

"These are very negative matters that we as viable forces believing in democracy have to fight," he said. "There will always be differences, but we nevertheless must continue to engage in dialogue, debates and rapprochement,"

He said his words at the AMDH seminar were distorted and taken out of context.

"The words of anyone may not be construed so as to destroy him and incite others against him in such a serious manner," Assid said. " We have to refute arguments with arguments, which is the best option for the Moroccan experience."...

Refute arguments with arguments? I have never known an Islamic supremacist to do that. From Reza Aslan to Omid Safi to Haroon Moghul to Caner K. Dagli and all the rest of them, Islamic supremacists content themselves with smearing and insulting those whom they fear and hate. They never deal with pro-freedom advocates' arguments.

From the Associated Press:

A leader of a Boston mosque disavowed the Marathon bombing during an interfaith service on Thursday. Anwar Kazmi acknowledged that the bombing suspects had prayed at the mosque, but called the attack 'a grotesque perversion of our faith.'

Then why didn't he turn in the Tsarnaev brothers when the FBI released their pictures? The whole world was watching. They must have known that the pictures were released, and they must have known who the bombers were. Yet they did nothing.

Why is this even a news story? It is something that ought to be so commonplace, if the mainstream media narrative about Islam and jihad were true, that it wouldn't be noteworthy at all. Instead, it is so unusual that whenever it does happen, it gets widespread attention. What we see much more of is this. "Tip from imam led police to ‘first known al-Qaeda plan of attack that we’ve experienced,’" by Colin Freeze and Patrick White for The Globe and Mail, April 22:

A tip from a Toronto imam sparked an investigation that culminated in the arrests of two men who allegedly plotted to derail a Via passenger train.

The imam alerted authorities more than a year ago about a person he regarded as an extremist who was corrupting youth in his community.

That single tip led to what the RCMP on Monday called the first-ever Canadian bust of an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist plot.

The RCMP believes that two men, Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, were planning to derail a Via passenger train on the Canadian leg of its Toronto-New York route. The actual imam who phoned in the initial tip to authorities remains anonymous. But community sources confirm his involvement.

“More than a year ago, a client of mine, an imam in the Toronto Muslim community, became concerned after noticing the activities of one of the individuals now under arrest,” Toronto lawyer Naseer Syed told The Globe and Mail, referring to notes he had taken last year.

The men were taken into custody Monday in Montreal and Toronto. They face several criminal charges, including plotting murder, terrorist recruitment and terrorism.

Detectives, who spent months on the case, claimed the duo relied on “direction and guidance” from al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in Iran as they plotted carnage in Canada. One Canadian detective called the train scheme “the first known al-Qaeda plan of attack that we’ve experienced.”

The nation’s top counterterrorism police officials briefed reporters about the arrest Monday, but not before they made a point of summoning about 20 leaders of Toronto’s Islamic community to a meeting.

The message from authorities to the Muslim community? Thank you for a helping hand.

“The first comment they made, and they encouraged us to make it a talking point, is that, but for the Muslim community’s intervention, we may not have had the success we’ve had,” said Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who was invited to the pre-briefing.

Because the Toronto suspect was allegedly seen trying to spread extremist propaganda to youth, the imam felt obliged to alert the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and RCMP to these activities.

Alarmed by Mr. Jaser’s “attempts to approach young Muslims,” the imam “took the initiative to notify the authorities.” Mr. Syed said....

Well, this is a relief! Saudi Muslim students handed out flowers in Times Square to prove that Muhammad's message was one of peace, mercy and love! So all that you have read about Muhammad calling for warfare against non-Muslims, ordering the assassination of his enemies, predicating the coming of the End Times on Muslims killing Jews, and the rest of it, you can forget about it all: Muslims were handing out flowers!

What would happen to a group of Christian students who went to Riyadh and started handing out flowers to explain the message of Christianity? They would be arrested, imprisoned, and possibly killed. And why would that happen to them? Because of the message of the Muhammad on whose behalf these Muslims were handing out roses, for the same Muhammad whose message was one of mercy, peace and love said: "I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim." (Sahih Muslim 19.4366)

Also: if there were such a group of Christian students handing out roses anywhere to promote the message of Jesus, would CNN care? And why is this report so riddled with grammatical errors? Was CNN so avid to get it online that they couldn't even pause long enough to make sure it was written in proper English?

The whole campaign has a The-lady-doth-protest-too-much-methinks air about it. Christians and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists don't go around handing out flowers to prove that their religions are peaceful. They don't have to, because there aren't armed groups of believers justifying violence worldwide by reference to their scriptures. And no effusion of bouquets will erase the fact that there are Muslims all over the world who are doing just that.

"Voice of Muslim Students," by Sunsetlady for CNN iReport, March 26 (thanks to Blaine):

CNN PRODUCER NOTE Saudi Muslim students in American colleges and universities launched a nation-wide campaign in February called "Mohammed is a Prophet of Mercy: Sharing the language of peace and love". The aim of the campaign is to emphasize the similarities between Muslim and other religions through simple statements of love, said Waleed Ali Aljohani, a medical student who coordinated the New York event. Muslim students carried out the campaign in Times Square on Sunday, March 24. iReporter Sunsetlady says she happened to be in Times Square and shot these photos. - dsashin, CNN iReport producer

Muslim students in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and England formed a campaign to explain Prophet Muhammad’s message of peace by giving away roses.

On March 24, a group of students from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemman, led by Dr. Waleed Ali Aljohani and Ghazi Ali Al-Hassan, carried out the campaign in Times Square.

According to Dr. Aljohani, “After 9/11, a lot of people linked between Islam and violence.

Yeah, especially guys like bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

We decided as Muslim students to introduce our true religion and show how Islam is a religion of love, mercy and peace by distributing flower with cards stating about love, respect and mercy. We are not asking people to be Muslim but at least we can show what the similarities between Islam and other religions. The similarities between Muslim and other religion, nations and culture are more than different; No reason for Islamophobia. Muslim could be anyone – family, friend, or neighbor. So you can look to what we are sharing together – love, peace and mercy.”

Here is part 6 of my series on Jazz and Islam at PJ Lifestyle: The Tragedy of Tarik Shah.

Tarik Shah is a formidable jazz bassist who has recorded with a number of luminaries, including Pharoah Sanders and Abbey Lincoln. He is also prisoner number 53145-054 at the medium security Federal Correction Institution in Petersburg, Virginia, where he is serving a fifteen-year sentence for plotting to provide combat training to al-Qaeda jihadists. His sad and tragic case points up again lingering questions about Islamic moderation that have never been answered.

In 2004, Shah made the acquaintance of a man he thought was an al-Qaeda member, but who was actually an FBI informant. Shah, a martial arts expert as well as a jazzman, offered to help train jihadis. He made no mistake of his intentions, asking the informant:

“You really want to learn how to rip somebody’s throat out? I’m talking about damage to the inside so they drown on their own blood. You give them internal bleeding. It fills their lungs with blood.”

Nor did Shah make any secret of his allegiance. Tapes that the FBI informant made of his conversations with Shah show the bassist full of complaints. He disliked having to pay “taxes to infidels.” He was angry with the United States for toppling the Taliban, the “only Islamic government of Afghanistan.” He claimed that non-Muslim Westerners “have been killing Muslims on a consistent basis for almost 200 years. They have been at war with us, which means we are at war with them.”

He even boasted that he could use his bass’s end pin to kill: “All I’ve got to do is, pop, flick it like, boom, move out the way. Flip, pop, pop, right in the middle of your head.” And, chillingly: “I could be joking and cutting their throats in the next second. It’s a strategy.” Shah swore an oath to al-Qaeda:

“God’s pledge is upon me and so is his covenant to commit myself to the orders of the guardians of the agreement, for the misfortune and for the prosperity. And to be a loyalist to the path of jihad, and to my brothers, until God’s word is exalted. And to be protective of the secrecy of the oath and to the directives of Al Qaeda.”

When he was arrested, many of his friends and supporters in the jazz world assumed his innocence and the guilt of law enforcement officials in framing or entrapping him – which is not surprising. But then Shah pleaded guilty of conspiring to aid al-Qaeda.

It’s doubtful that anyone in his professional circle saw this coming. They either assumed that Shah was a “moderate” or, given the stultifying and reflexive cultural Leftism that blankets all fields of the arts these days, shared his anti-Americanism. These kinds of assumptions are extremely common in post-9/11 America. Not long after 9/11, none other than Anwar al-Awlaki was hailed in the New York Times as one of “a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West.” In 2002 he even led Muslim prayers on Capitol Hill, with those noted “civil rights activists,” Nihad Awad and Ibrahim Hooper of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, in the crowd.

Then there was Maher “Mike” Hawash of Portland, Oregon. A well-regarded Intel executive who made $360,000 a year began around the year 2000 to become more religious, growing his beard long, rejecting the nickname “Mike,” and attending the supremacist Islamic Center of Portland. Ultimately he served a seven-year prison term for conspiring to aid the Taliban.

The most prominent example of this phenomenon in America is Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, who was the nation’s most prominent and influential Muslim (and a close friend of Grover Norquist) in the 1990s. Alamoudi, who met with Presidents Clinton and Bush, is now in prison for acting as a financial courier for al-Qaeda.

All these men were universally regarded as moderate Muslims before their actions proved otherwise. Does this mean that every Muslim who is simply living life, working a job, and taking care of the family is secretly a jihadist? Of course not. The problem, however, is that there is no way to determine the dispositions of anyone else’s heart. Many Muslims may become more religious in times of personal crisis, and in an effort to cleanse their souls and please Allah, begin to pay attention they never paid before to the texts and teachings of Islam that mandate warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers. Some may have been jihad-minded all along, but waited for the right time to act.

There is more.

Here yet again we see why there isn't a large number of genuine Muslim reformers. "Liberal Iraqi Shi'ite Scholar Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji Calls For Reason In Islamic Discourse and Jurisprudence," by Yotam Feldner for MEMRI, February 21:

Introduction

On February 18, 2013, the Iraqi media reported that the liberal Iraqi Shi'ite scholar Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji had been arrested the previous day in Qom,[1] Iran, while visiting family.[2]

Sayyed Al-Qabbanji's revolutionary ideas, especially his focus in the last few years on the need to rationalize Islamic religious discourse and jurisprudence, have made him the bane of the powerful Shi'ite clergy in Iraq, and have sparked accusations of heresy against him there – particularly in the months prior to his arrest in Iran.

The news of the arrest was received with mixed reactions by the Iraqi intelligentsia. While his supporters and fellow liberal scholars and politicians have called for his immediate release,[3] some among the Shi'ite clergy have demanded that Iran prosecute him for "his violations of the sanctity of his [Shi'ite] denomination."[4]

Following the arrest, Iranian intelligence services deputy director Mohammad Mosajadi was quoted as telling Tehran Radio that Al-Qabbanji was spying for Israel and transmitting "coded information" to it. If found guilty of this, he said, Iran would cooperate with the Iraqi government in carrying out the death penalty.[5]

Meanwhile, in the five days since Al-Qabbanji's arrest, the Iraqi authorities have refrained from commenting on the matter.

The following is a review of the philosophy of Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji.

Who Is Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji?

Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji is perhaps the most innovative of modern Islamic scholars. His defiance of conventional Islamic beliefs has made him persona non grata in Iraqi television studios. Eventually, Al-Qabbanji turned to the Internet, launching a series of weekly public lectures, which were filmed and posted on a dedicated YouTube channel.[6]

Born in Najaf, Iraq in 1958, Al-Qabbanji studied Islamic jurisprudence at the Shi'ite Hawza of his hometown in the 1970s. In 1979, when Saddam Hussein became president, he left Iraq for Syria and Lebanon, and eventually settled in the holy city of Qom, Iran, where he continued his religious education. After returning to post-Saddam Iraq in 2008, he founded and headed the Liberal Islamic Movement in Iraq.[7] He translated into Arabic several books by the renowned Iranian scholar Abdolkarim Soroush, and authored many of his own books presenting his views.

According to some accounts, Al-Qabbanji fought for Iran in the Iran-Iraq war when he was a believer in the Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and lost the use of his right arm during that time.[8]

Since returning to Iraq, Al-Qabbanji has been provoking Islamist ire, challenging the basic precepts of Islam, and demanding that they be modified in accordance with modern-day reason. In October 2012, he clashed with his elder brother, Sadr Al-Din Al-Qabbanji, who is the Friday prayer imam of Najaf and a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. The latter issued a fatwa declaring that "the ideas promoted by Sayyed Ahmad Al-Qabbanji are distorted and un-Islamic... these ideas are part of the war waged by the enemies of Islam, in order to cast doubt on the Islamic religion and its principles."[9]

Soon after the fatwa was made public, Al-Qabbanji responded, saying: "My honorable [brother] was right. I have deviated from his religion, every bit of which I reject. Let them say that I am an apostate and a heretic. It is true. I am an apostate from their religion, which stirs nothing but hatred of the other – a religion devoid of beauty, devoid of love, devoid of humanity... You have made people hate Allah and Islam. You have turned yourselves into Allah's police, proclaiming who is a deviant and who is an apostate…"[10]...

Can Islam be reformed? If so, it would have to jettison huge elements of its self-understanding, particularly the idea of consensus (ijma) among the Islamic schools of jurisprudence establishing a matter as beyond question, and Muhammad's related assertion that "my community will not agree on an error." No one knows the future, but there is no large-scale movement for such a reevaluation on the horizon at this point.

Here is my debate with Zuhdi Jasser on this issue.

"Can Islam Be Reformed? Moroccan Exile Says No — But Not All Agree," by Tiffany Gabbay for The Blaze, March 12 (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

After turning away from Islam and becoming an atheist, young blogger Kassim al-Ghasali became a target in his native Morocco. Following a string of death threats, he sought political asylum in Switzerland, where he now lives and continues to embrace ideals of freedom and tolerance.

Ever-outspoken in his beliefs, al-Ghasali presented a speech at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy in February. Speaking to the German-language news outlet Die Welt following the event, the young Moroccan shared his views (a translation of the full interview can be found in the Gates of Geneva blog), on the Arab Spring, why he believes Islam cannot be reformed in the same way that Christianity was, and why moderate Muslims should admit that “terror and violence” — or more pointedly, “unmitigated horror” — is part of the Koran.

Al-Ghasali also poignantly added that the Koran is a “politically and historically-determined book and not the word of Allah” and that Islam cannot be reformed as its tenets are anathema to Western enlightenment, which helped to reform Christianity...

“In my opinion, there can be no reformation or enlightenment in Sunni or Shiite Islam, because there is no church to be reformed,” al-Ghasali explained to Die Welt.

“In Islam, we are subject to the power of a sacred book and the instructions it gives. Identity and understanding of self come from the Quran. If Muslims could use their reason without the instructions of a book which is recognized as the Word of God, then we could talk about enlightenment. But today most Muslims are against the ideas of the Western Enlightenment.”

He went on to note that, historically, “there were several attempts at reform in Islam, but they were not welcomed.”

“Any moderate Muslim who would like to reform Islam should admit to himself that terror and violence are in the Quran. The unmitigated horror. But no Muslim could admit that the Quran is a politically — and historically-determined book — and not the word of Allah.”

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, author of “Battle for the Soul of Islam” and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) disagrees with al-Ghasali’s premise, however, and told TheBlaze that the blogger “is mixing a number of different concepts” thereby “passing judgement on all Muslims.”

"Passing judgement on all Muslims"? Jasser sounds like the spokesmen for Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists, who constantly claim, in defiance of reason and logic, that any criticism of Islamic jihad terrorism and analysis of how jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism is somehow an indictment of "all Muslims." Ignorant dhimmis fall for this hook, line and sinker, as we saw in San Francisco yesterday. (Please help keep our jihad truth ads running in the face of this pressure: contribute here.)

“He is free to believe what he wants,” Jasser qualified, before saying that it is “wrongheaded” to credit Western Enlightenment with having reformed Christianity because reformation of the faith was brought on more by individuals rather than an entire movement.

“I agree that reform cannot come from the top-down, that is not going to happen, but so many Muslims have written about separation of mosque and state,” Jasser said before explaining that the entirety of Islam should not be stereotyped based on politically-motivated clerics and the goals of Islamism, or, political Islam.

“He [al-Ghasali] does not give any solutions. So do all Muslims need to leave their faith?” Jasser asked.

I don't know, but I do know that pretending the problem does not exist is not a solution, either.

The author and doctor also said that he “could not disagree more” that the Koran harbors “unmitigated horrors” and explained that, just as in passages from the Old Testament and scriptures, there are texts that contain hellfire. “Islam is not a pacifist religion, and there are historical contexts at the time in which God told Muslims it was OK to fight and defend themselves.”

“We elevate [the words] of theocrats that use verses for their own empowerment rather than take into account the context of a battle that happened in 6th century AD,” Jasser said.

Not the 6th century, but the 7th century: Muhammad's prophetic career, according to Islamic tradition, took place between 610 and 632 AD. In any case, invoking "context," as we have seen so many times, is the last refuge of a cornered Islamic supremacist. Of course, Jasser rejects Islamic supremacism, we're told, so I hope he will enlighten us as to why so many "theocrats" worldwide today somehow miss the all-important context of the Qur'an's martial verses and think they're applicable to today. I hope he will explain why Islamic scholars going back to Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad's first biographer, and including Ibn Qayyam, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Taymiyya and many others, have argued just the opposite of what Jasser argues here, and have held that the Qur'anic verses mandating warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers are not just valid for the 7th century, but for all time.

...[Al-Ghasali] said that it makes “no sense” to “call for respect for human rights while, on the other hand, religious texts call for the killing of infidels, bullying women and oppressing minorities.”

On this point, another outspoken voice for human rights in Muslim countries, Nonie Darwish, agrees. The director for Arabs for Israel and author of the book “Now They Call Me Infidel,” left Islam for reasons similar to al-Ghasali.

She told TheBlaze that for her personally, Islam and being at peace with the world and those in it are “irreconcilable.”

“I personally cannot be a Muslim and be at peace with the world,” she said. “I could not make peace with Islam and the rest of the world at the same time. The problem with Islam is that it is very rigid in how it looks at others. I could not reconcile that with how to love the rest of the world.”

Darwish said that for her to have remained a Muslim, she would have had to “kid herself” or “try to create an Islam that does not exist.”

“Islamic ideology is obsessed with rejecting non-Muslims. The bulk of the scriptures are focused on condemning non-Muslims. I think it is hypocritical for people to call themselves Muslims and then say they can love the rest of the world because if they read their scriptures its always about cursing non-Muslims. It is hypocritical to reconcile Islam with peace.”

Darwish also shared her belief that being a Muslim “is a contract with the state, not a relationship with God.”

“If you leave the Islamic world — that state — or any Muslim — can kill you,” she said....

Why we don't see more genuine Muslim reformers, part 7432. An update on this story. "Suspected terrorist pleads guilty to threatening Dearborn attorney," by Niraj Warikoo for the Detroit Free Press, February 28 (thanks to Kenneth):

A suspected terrorist in Ireland pleaded guilty Wednesday to threatening a Dearborn attorney over the phone because he held an anti-terrorism rally in Detroit. And he's now to be extradited to the U.S. to face separate terrorism charges.

Ali Charaf Damache, a native of Algeria who lived in Ireland for several years, admitted to calling Dearborn attorney Majed Moughni in January 2010 after Moughni held an anti-terrorism rally outside the federal courthouse in Detroit during a hearing for the underwear bomber. Moughni, who is Muslim, wanted to send a message that Islam is against terrorism.

"I would put a bullet in your head ... when I catch you, you will pay," Damache told Moughni over the phone, according to a recording of the call. Moughni had testified via video conference from Detroit earlier in the trial, and was glad to hear of the guilty plea.

"I'm pretty relieved," Moughni said. "We shouldn't be afraid of those who try to silence people who stand up for freedom."...

Ain't that the truth.

Apparently no one checked to make sure they were "moderates." To have done so would have been "Islamophobic." In any case, they would probably have been able to fool any such investigators easily.

"Algeria hostage crisis: al Qaeda had help from inside claim security sources," by Abdelatif Belkayem and Henry Samuel in the Telegraph, January 20 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Up to five of the al Qaeda-linked Islamists who carried out the most spectacular and bloody hostage in recent years were employees of the gas plant, security sources have revealed.

One of those involved in the "inside job" was of French nationality, the sources told the Daily Telegraph, in what appears to be a blow to those in charge of safety at the highly strategic In Amenas plant, which accounts for 12 per cent of Algeria's gas production.

The unnamed French accomplice is said to have changed sides once his comrades in arms had broken into the desert site in southeastern Algeria after attacking bus at a false checkpoint. He then took part in the kidnapping operation before being killed during the Algerian army assault on the site.

Some terrorists are reported to have known internal procedures at the plant as well as the room numbers of expatriates.

Gendarmes are understood to have opened an investigation into four other workers who survived the attack on suspicion of helping the kidnappers enter the tightly-guarded facility, the sources said, without providing further details....

Last night, bomb squads were still combing the area for explosive devices, with the army saying the kidnappers had placed mines beneath the sand around the factory to hinder the army's advance, but also inside the plant.

Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company running the Ain Amenas site along with BP and Norway's Statoil, confirmed the entire refinery had been mined.

"They had decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," said communications minister Mohamed Said.

The revelation though of the possibility of an 'inside job" follows expressions of surprise by security experts at the apparent ease with which the terrorists loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed Islamist who formed his own brigade, the "Signatories in Blood", penetrated the plant. It was the first successful terrorist attack against a petrol or gas plant in Algeria.

"These installations are highly protected. The operation must have been prepared over quite some time. Either there was a slip up or it was internal complicity," said Louis Caprioli, adviser at GEOs, the risk management group and a former domestic intelligence agent.

A spokesman for BP refused to be drawn on the possible security beach: "We wouldn't comment on this," he said.

Last night it was confirmed that the apparent leader of the militants, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, was ready at any time to blow up the hostages. Another of the kidnappers was identified as Abdallahi Ould Hmida....

Deception and denial are not reform, and yet Muslim spokesmen in the West constantly confuse these things with one another, and expect non-Muslims not to notice.

The Change This campaign is an initiative of a Muslim women's charity in Scotland that claims that Muslim men who think that the Koran allows them to beat their wives are "manipulating" the real teachings of Islam, which they think forbids wife-beating.

I am all for a campaign to persuade Muslim men not to beat their wives. But here we come up to the perennial problem: denying that the texts of the Koran and Hadith regarding wife-beating say what they clearly say is not reform; it is just deception. It may be self-deception, but it is deception nonetheless. It may play well with non-Muslims who don't know what those texts say, but it won't convince any wife-beating Muslim husband to stop beating his wife: he knows, in the words of one Muslim wife-beater, that "the Koran says it's okay."

The Koran’s infamous wife-beating verse goes like this:

Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God's guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; God is All-high, All-great. (Koran 4:34)

This is, of course, an extremely controversial verse, so it is worth noting how several translators render the key part of this verse, وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ, waidriboohunna.

Pickthall: “and scourge them”
Yusuf Ali: “(And last) beat them (lightly)”
Al-Hilali/Khan: “(and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful)”
Shakir: “and beat them”
Sher Ali: “and chastise them”
Khalifa: “then you may (as a last alternative) beat them”
Arberry: “and beat them”
Rodwell: “and scourge them”
Sale: “and chastise them”
Daryabadi: "and beat them"
Asad: “then beat them”
Dawood: "and beat them"

Laleh Bakhtiar, in a recent translation that has received wide publicity, translates it as “go away from them.” In light of this unanimity among the translators, both Muslim and non-Muslim, this seems difficult to sustain – all of these authorities got the passage wrong until Bakhtiar? But her impulse is understandable, as many Muslims today regard this verse with acute embarrassment. Muhammad Asad adduces numerous traditions in which Muhammad “forbade the beating of any woman,” concluding that wife-beating is “barely permissible, and should preferably be avoided.”

Unfortunately, however, this is not a unanimous view. The Koran commentary Ruhul Ma’ani reflects mainstream Muslim understandings of this verse when it gives four reasons that a man may beat his wife: “if she refuses to beautify herself for him,” if she refuses sex when he asks for it, if she refuses to pray or perform ritual ablutions, and “if she goes out of the house without a valid excuse.”

Also, Muhammad’s example is normative for Muslims, since he is an “excellent example of conduct” (Koran 33:21) – and according to a canonical hadith, Muhammad’s favorite wife, his child bride Aisha, reports that Muhammad struck her. Once he went out at night after he thought she was asleep, and she followed him surreptitiously. Muhammad saw her, and, as Aisha recounts: “He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?” (Sahih Muslim 2127) Aisha herself said it: “I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women.” (Sahih Bukhari 7.72.715)

If the organizers of the Change This campaign expect Muslim men who beat their wives not to be familiar with this material, they are naïve. If they have no such expectation but simply wish to give non-Muslims in Scotland and elsewhere in the West the impression that core Islamic texts do not sanction the beating of women, their focus is not actually on helping women at all, but on burnishing the ever-tarnished image of Islam.

Either way, one group is certain to lose out: Muslim women who are brutalized by their husbands. And that abundantly illustrates the cost of the all too common practice among liberal Muslims, of pretending that problems within Islam do not exist, rather than confronting them head-on and working for genuine reform.

Why we don't see more genuine Muslim reformers, part 6,381,291: "Algeria: Imam Escapes Assassination," from Magharebia, December 31 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

An Algerian imam who publicly denounced extremism escaped an assassination attempt on Sunday (December 30th), Tout sur l'Algerie reported. An unknown assailant reportedly stabbed the imam of the mosque in Mellakou, southwest of Tiaret.

In his Friday sermon, the victim reportedly condemned "salafist obscurantists". Sources said he later received a threatening phone call....

Over at Gatestone Institute (via RaymondIbrahim.com) I discuss why it is that secular, moderate, or liberal Muslims—so long as they define themselves as Muslims—are destined to lose the debate with their more radical brethren, in the context of ongoing events in Egypt:

In the ongoing conflict between those Egyptians who strongly oppose a Sharia-based constitution—moderates, secularists, non-Muslim minorities—and those who are strongly pushing for it, Islamists are currently evoking the one argument that has always, from the very beginnings of Islam, empowered Islamists over moderates in the Muslim world.

Examples are many. According to a December 1 report from El Fagr, Gamal Sabr, former campaign coordinator for the anti-freedom Salafi presidential candidate Abu Ismail, made the division clear during an Al Jazeera interview, where he said that “whoever disagrees with him, disagrees with Islam itself,” and that many Egyptians “are fighting Islam in the picture of President Muhammad Morsi and in the picture of the Islamists,” clearly implying that the latter are one with Islam, and to fight them is to fight Islam.

The logic is simple: Sabr, as well as those millions of Egyptians who want Sharia, only want what Allah wants—that Egypt be governed according to Sharia law. According to this position, any and all Muslims who disagree, who do not want to be governed by Sharia, whatever their arguments and rationale, are ultimately showing that they are at odds with Islam itself.

Sabr is hardly the only Egyptian Muslim making use of this age-old argument. A Dostor report, also appearing on December 1, quotes Tarek Zomar making the same point. A leader of the infamous Gam’a Islamiyya (Islamic Group), who was formerly imprisoned for his role in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, released with the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, and is now a member of the Shura Council of Egypt’s Parliament, Zomor asserts that whoever votes against the Sharia-based constitution that Morsi is trying to enforce “is an infidel”—an apostate enemy to be slain in the cause of Allah.

Others like Sheikh Abdullah Badr—who earlier said that anyone who opposes or rejects the Sharia will have their tongues cut out—after describing protesters as “mischief makers” said they would be “hung on trees,” a distinct allusion to Islamic crucifixion, as proclaimed in Quran 5:33: “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this: that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off…”

In 2002, PBS produced a documentary on the life of Muhammad, Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet. I wrote in a National Review article at the time that the documentary presented an "attractively packaged, sanitized version of Islam." It features Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong; Daisy Khan, the deeply deceitful "moderate" who shot to national prominence in the Ground Zero mosque controversy, and others of that ilk.

But now Jihad Watch reader Carolynn has alerted me to the fact that it is also noteworthy for capturing the slain jihad terror mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki, who was in contact with Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas underwear jihadist; and others, leading Muslim prayers on Capitol Hill. Screenshots above show the minute mark where you can see him in the video.

Of course, the New York Times hailed al-Awlaki on October 19, 2001 as one of "a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West," and so he was widely reputed to be a "moderate" at the time, but that's just the point. One of the supposed "gotcha" quotes that Leftists and Islamic supremacists like to use against me is one in which I said that there is "no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists." This video, however, shows that to be absolutely true: no one was getting up and walking out on al-Awlaki, or saying he shouldn't be preaching or leading the prayers. Many argue that al-Awlaki really was "moderate" then and became "radicalized" later, but even then, there is no record of his former friends and associates repudiating his new "radical" views.

What we do not see is Muslims in the U.S. pronouncing takfir on those who believe in the Islam of al-Awlaki -- that is, declaring them non-Muslim and excluding them from Muslim communities. The reality is that one who holds to the idea that jihad (violent and non-violent) must be waged against Americans in order to impose Sharia upon them is not put out of American mosques, and those who by their actions earn the media title of "extremist" move freely among Muslims in the U.S. until they commit their act of "extremism."

More evidence comes from the same PBS documentary. For also present for al-Awlaki's sermon was Hamas-linked CAIR's Nihad Awad, and I believe that the gentleman to Awad's left is his henchman Ibrahim "Honest Ibe" Hooper:

Awad and Hooper, of course, are routinely cited in the mainstream media as if they were "civil rights leaders." And also present was another man who had been an employee of Hamas-linked CAIR: Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer, who is now serving a 20-year sentence for jihad terror plotting. In this screenshot he is on the right:

So if there is a distinction in the Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists, it certainly wasn't evident at this Capitol Hill prayer meeting, where a jihad mass murder mastermind preached the khutba for a group containing a jihad terror plotter, two leading "moderate" Muslim spokesmen, and a congressman's chief of staff.

Full video:

Aminat Kurbanova's conversion to Islam was fatal for her and seven others. The official dogma in the West is that those who do violence in the name of Islam misunderstand its peaceful teachings. Yet no Muslim organization anywhere in the West has any program to teach against the understanding of Islam that led Aminat Kurbanova to commit mass murder. What's more, she probably chose to murder Sheikh Said Atsayev and those with him because he preached against violent Islam -- which fact is not an encouragement for Muslim reformers.

"Russian Islamic convert kissed her daughter goodbye and blew herself up at cleric's home," by Mark Duell for the Daily Mail, November 19:

Brought up as an Orthodox Christian by her mother, Aminat Kurbanova looked a picture of happiness at her wedding nine years ago - marrying the man with whom she had fallen in love at drama school.

But she converted to Islam in 2007 and three months ago walked into the house of a Muslim cleric in Dagestan, Russia, wearing a 3lb bomb, and blew herself up - killing eight people including her.

Once a stage actress, the 29-year-old mother had transformed into a Muslim suicide bomber. The blast shocked Russia but her mother Vera Saprighina insists she was ‘a kind person, not a monster’.

Of course.

Kurbanova was brought up in Makhachkala, Dagestan, and gained top marks at the city’s arts and drama college - where she met her future husband Marat Kurbanov, reported the Sunday Times.

The couple married in 2003 and she gave birth to a daughter, Malika, two years later. In 2006 the couple were introduced to Islam by Marat’s brother Rustam - and Kurbanov converted a year later.

‘She said she had finally found the right religion for her,’ her mother Vera Saprighina told the Sunday Times. ‘Before long, both left the theatre because dancing and acting are considered un-Islamic.’

But Rustam was killed in a police house raid on suspected militants in 2008. It shocked the couple. Marat left home, never to come back, and is thought to have joined militants to avenge the death.

However 12 months later, Marat also died when police opened fire on a car that did not stop at a checkpoint - and Kurbanova ‘often said she wished she had died with him’, Ms Saprighina stated....

Kurbanova started to earn money as an Islamic dress seamstress and became more religious. She began to be watched by security services, who allegedly searched her flat and questioned her after the death of her husband....

Kurbanova walked into the home of Sheikh Said Atsayev, 74, after kissing her daughter goodbye and blew herself up with a steel-bolt bomb, killing seven others - including the cleric himself and a 12-year-old boy who was there with his father....

At least 12 religious leaders have been killed over the last two years in Dagestan - allegedly by militants angry that they are too friendly with the authorities. Atsayev could have been targeted because he spoke against violent Islam....

In this revealing video clip, interview Cameron Kash presses noted "moderate" Muslim Reza Aslan on why there is no visible and organized movement of moderate Muslims working against the jihadist understanding of Islam. Aslan, arrogant as ever, first trots out the tired line that those who think that peaceful Muslims aren't speaking out against jihadists and Islamic supremacists just aren't paying attention, dismissing those who think otherwise as "stupid." Kash, however, to his credit, won't be placated by nonsense, and presses him further.

Late in the clip Aslan clearly starts folding under a line of questioning that was far harder than the usual fawning he gets from interviewers, even though Kash is unflaggingly respectful and supportive. He says that because there is no central authority in Islam, no one can say that Osama bin Laden's version of the religion is invalid, or that he is not a Muslim. This is actually true as far as it goes: there is no central authority in Islam. But in reality, the practice of takfir, or declaring that some individual or group has so deviated from the faith that it can no longer be called Muslim, is a time-honored principle of Islamic theology; that Aslan will not employ it against those Muslims who believe the way bin Laden did is revealing.

Also, Aslan makes no mention of the fact that jihadists make recruits among peaceful Muslims and justify their actions by reference to Islamic texts and teachings, and consistently portray themselves as the exponents of authentic Islam. It is perfectly reasonable for Cameron Kash to ask Aslan and his fellow "moderates" to fight that claim. Instead, Aslan makes fey gestures, bloviates and obfuscates.

Another interesting feature of this interview is the point where Aslan names some of those he contends are leading moderate Muslim spokesmen: Eboo Patel, Amina Wadud, Faisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan.

Eboo Patel dissembles about Muhammad's behavior and Islamic teaching; Amina Wadud, the only possibly genuine reformer in this group, aroused Muslim anger by having the temerity to lead prayers as a woman; Rauf has refused to denounce Hamas; lied about his commitment to religious dialogue; lied about whether the Islamic center planned for the Ground Zero site will contain a mosque or not; lied about whether or not the project is getting foreign funding; and was involved with a group that helped fund the jihad flotilla against Israel. Daisy Khan has likewise engaged in lies about and defamation of freedom fighters.

That Aslan would try to pass off such an unsavory gang as "moderates" is not suprising, since he himself has recently been unmasked as a Board member of a front group for Iran's bloody Islamic regime. Aslan is also a Left-fascist who has called for obstruction of our freedom of speech by means of vandalism of our pro-freedom ads. He has tried to pass off Iran's genocidally-minded President Ahmadinejad as a liberal reformer. He has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad himself, as well as with Hamas -- that is, with two of the most barbaric and murderous adherents of Sharia. Aslan has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as "the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon," as well as the Jew-hating, women-hating, kuffar-hating Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within." Aslan wrote: "The Muslim Brotherhood will have a significant role to play in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that is good thing." We see now just how "good" things are becoming for non-Muslims and women in Egypt under Brotherhood rule.

But what do you expect from an "expert" who claims, in the video below, that Turkey is the second most populous Muslim country, and that Pakistan is third? He is only about 100 million people off. Though lionized by a corrupt and compromised mainstream media, Reza Aslan is -- to use one of his own most favorite words -- quite simply and obviously stupid.

Why we don't see more genuine Muslim reformers -- not that Kalimulla Ibragimov seems to have been much of one, anyway: "Russia Caucasus: Imam shot dead in Derbent, Dagestan," from the BBC, October 30 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Attackers have shot dead an imam and two of his male relations, as they drove to a mosque in the Russian North Caucasus region of Dagestan.

They were shot on their way to morning prayers, close to the imam's home in the Caspian Sea town of Derbent, law enforcement sources told reporters.

The cleric was named as Kalimulla Ibragimov, 49, who is said to have delivered sermons calling for peace.

Islamists have been blamed for attacks on moderate Muslims in the region.

Dagestan, a mainly Muslim region, has been gripped by an Islamist insurgency since 1999, when militants backed by fighters from neighbouring Chechnya launched an offensive against Russian control.

Three imams have been shot dead in the region since March, the Russian news website utro.ru reports.

Mr Ibragimov is said by Russian media to have been a "Salafist", a term used for Islamic radicals. Nonetheless, according to utro.ru, he "often gave sermons and made appeals for peace and Muslim unity"....

You mean fascist savage "liberal Muslim" Mona Eltahawy spray-painted our AFDI pro-freedom ad for nothing? She still doesn't get back into the good graces of the Islamic supremacists? Maybe she will have to strap on a bomb vest.

"Liberal, secular 'infidels' must be prosecuted, says Brotherhood preacher," from Egypt Independent, September 30 (thanks to Benedict):

Liberals, modernists and secularists are infidels and must be brought to trial for abandoning Islam, according to an ultra-conservative preacher in the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a video posted on the YouTube channel of the privately owned newspaper Al-Shorouk newspaper on Sunday, preacher Wagdy Ghoneim said: “If they do not repent, the judge must apply the penalty for apostasy.

“If anyone tells you that he is liberal, tell him directly that he is infidel.”

Earlier this month, Ghoneim caused controversy after issuing a fatwa — an Islamic religious edict — that said joining the Constitution Party, led by Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, is forbidden by Islam. Calling it an “infidel” party, Ghoneim said he refused to recognize secular, liberal or leftist political movements....

Where are British moderate Muslims?
by Enza Ferreri

If there are moderate Muslims in the UK, this is the moment for them to make their voices heard.

Pakistan’s Railways Minister has offered $100,000 for the murder of the filmmaker of The Innocence of Muslims.

In any civilized country, he would be not only fired from his cabinet position but also arrested for the crime of incitement to murder. Instead, Pakistan’s Prime Minister has excused him, and people in his country have demonstrated in his support.

Pakistan is a member of the British Commonwealth. Its High Commissioner to the UK, the equivalent of ambassador for Commonwealth countries, has defended the Railways Minister in an interview with Sky News.

Various British Muslims have also been interviewed, and they invariably expressed the opinion that, if freedom of speech should be protected, then the Pakistani minister is within his rights to say what he wants, and after all, he only hurt one person, not many like the controversial filmmaker. This is Muslim logic for you.

All this is reminiscent of what happened at the time of the Salman Rushdie affair, when opinion polls among British Muslims were showing the majority in favour of the fatwa against the writer.

Let’s not forget that many UK Muslims have come here from Pakistan, so much so that the derogatory term for Asians in Britain is “Paki”.

When we consider Pakistan, the country’s blasphemy law and its use to persecute Christian minorities in the most shameful way and the support that this law enjoys among the Pakistani population, and then we look at this latest episode of a government minister publicly inciting to murder with impunity and people taking to the streets defending him, we have to draw the conclusion that, if there are moderate Muslims in Pakistan, they must be very few or very silent or both.

Is the same true of British Muslims, many of whom are of Pakistani extraction?

Interestingly, Muslim figures prominent in the UK, always displayed for public consumption as representatives of moderate Islam, have turned out, under greater scrutiny, not to be so moderate after all.

Member of the House of Lords Lord Ahmed “savagely attacked Tony Blair for giving Salman Rushdie a knighthood, ...threatened to mobilise 10000 Muslims to prevent democratically elected Dutch MP Geert Wilders from speaking in Parliament, this is despite his own invite of the anti-semitic Israel Shamir who has been accused of denying the holocaust”.

The Pakistani-born peer also said: “Even if I have to beg I am willing to raise and offer £10 million so that George W Bush and Tony Blair can be brought to the International Court of Justice on war crimes charges”.

Former Deputy Leader of the Labour Group, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Sadiq Khan “is the lifelong friend of Babar Ahmad, a man indicted in the US on charges of ‘conspiracy to provide material to support terrorists, namely the Taliban and the Chechen Mujahideen; providing material to support terrorists; and conspiracy to kill in a foreign country’. Ahmad ran a website recruiting jihadi militants to go and fight the Russian in Chechnya and Coalition troops in Afghanistan. When arrested, he had in his possession plans for an American carrier battle group with written notations on it like ‘vulnerable to RPG’”.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan, former senior political editor of The New Statesman, on separate occasions called non-Muslims people of no intelligence and compared them to animals and cattle (in so doing revealing, on top of everything else, his speciesism).

And former co-chairman of the Conservative Party Baroness Warsi, unelected, appointed to the House of Lords, amidst public expenses frauds scandals, breachings of both the Ministerial Code and rules on financial declarations, found time to run a business her partner in which, Abid Hussain, has been a leading member of Hizb ut Tahrir, a radical Islamic group the Conservatives promised to ban when they were in opposition.

Disliked by Tories, called by one of them “the worst party chairman” we've ever had, Warsi, who is of Pakistani origin and maintains strong ties with that country, has now more power than ever, with two crucial cabinet posts and a seat at the National Security Council.

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based author and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L'Espresso, La Repubblica.

How many hundreds, thousands, of articles have we seen since 9/11, calling upon the peaceful, moderate Muslims to stand up and show themselves and act decisively and effectively against the jihadis? And how many peaceful, moderate Muslims have stood up and shown themselves and acted decisively and effectively against the jihadis?

"Islam's answer to the killing of US envoys in Libya," an unsigned editorial in the Christian Science Monitor, September 12:

The killing of US diplomats in Libya is seen as zealous revenge for the blasphemy of a film against Islam. Muslims must assert their faith's teachings of peace and mercy as the answer to such hate.

Protesters demonstrate against the demolition of a Sufi mosque by ultra-conservative Salafis in Tripoli, Libya, August 26. Attackers bulldozed a mosque containing Sufi Muslim graves in Tripoli in what appeared to be Libya's most blatant sectarian attack since the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi. The placard reads: "Islam respects the nonMuslim's grave, so how about the Muslim's?"

The people who killed US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomats in Libya on Tuesday may have believed that violent revenge for blasphemy is a useful way to promote Islam.

It isn’t. And most Muslims who see Islam as a religion of peace know that.

The storming of the US Consulate in Benghazi appeared to have been triggered by news of a film made in the United States that criticizes the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Protesters also breached the US Embassy in Cairo. The diplomats were simply a convenient target for impatient Muslims eager to defend Islam, perhaps even keen to quickly restore a caliphate in the Middle East.

While Muslims worldwide may be angered by acts of religious bigotry, most know that killing in the name of Islam is hardly favorable to Islam. Most faiths are based on love, not hate, in order that humanity can honor godly commands to love one another in a spirit of individual freedom. If there is to be a global contest of beliefs, it is beliefs, not people, that can be disputed.

Yet Muslim fears of blasphemy remain strong. They first erupted on the world scene in 1989 with Iran’s death sentence against author Salman Rushdie. They were behind 9/11 and the many senseless attacks that often follow slights on Islam.

Each violent response should compel Muslims to assert Islam’s teaching of tolerance. They have a good reason. Most of those targeted for blasphemy by Muslims are actually of Muslim background, such as Shiites accusing Sunnis, say scholars of Islam. And, according to the State Department, nearly half of the world’s governments abuse religious minorities. Opposing bigotry nonviolently is a global challenge.

Many Christians, for example, see Islam as an enemy, although few resort to acts of violence on innocent Muslims. (The recent killings of Sikhs in Wisconsin may have been an attack on people who the killer misguidedly thought were Muslims.) Polls show a third of Americans are “not favorable” to Islam.

Muslim-led governments that want strict antiblasphemy laws – both in their own country and enshrined in international law – see freedom of speech as a threat to social disorder and a license to insult Islam. Until enough peace-minded Muslims stand up for an interpretation of Islam that sees freedom as necessary for the flourishing of faith, these governments will continue their campaigns of intolerance or wink approval at mobs of zealots....

Indeed. Until!

Yet again showing the absurd avidity of so many non-Muslims in West to find and feature "moderate Muslims," and the corners they paint themselves into when they accept at face value the self-descriptions of all too many "moderates."

"Minister cancels appearance at anti-radicalism conference," by Peter Stanners in the Copenhagen Post, September 6 (thanks to David):

The minister for integration and social affairs, Karen Hækkerup (Socialdemokraterne), has pulled out of a conference on religious radicalism next week after she discovered that one of the speakers helped fashion Pakistan’s highly controversial anti-blasphemy laws.

The conference’s organisers, the Danish Ethnic Youth Council, had invited the scholar Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, leader of the Muslim organisation Minhaj-ul-Quran, to speak on tackling religious radicalisation. The head of the domestic intelligence agency PET, Jakob Scharf, was also invited.

While ul-Qadri is best known for declaring a fatwa, or religious ruling, against terrorism, he also worked as a legal adviser to the Pakistani government in the shaping of anti-blasphemy laws that were recently used to arrest a mentally-challenged girl for allegedly burning the Koran.

This morning, Hækkerup announced that had she would not have agreed to speak at the Conference for Political and Religious Radicalism, which is being held at Copenhagen Business School on September 11, if she had known that ul-Qadri was also planning on attending.

“I am very angry at being connected with something that is so contrary to my views,” Hækkerup told Ritzau. “Politically, I see no reason to take part in the debate. I think it is deplorable that he is coming.”

On the conference's event page, the Danish Ethnic Youth Council confirmed that Hækkerup had cancelled.

Jaleh Tavakoli, a blogger for Jyllands-Posten newspaper and member of City Council, wrote on Sunday that the only reason that ul-Qadri would be a partner in the fight against religious radicalism, is his 2010 fatwa against terrorism.

“The leader of Minhaj-ul-Quran, who is expected to speak at the conference in Copenhagen, is a proponent of, and has actively participated in, the process of Islamisation that lead to the type of legislation that the girl is being charged under,” Tavakoli wrote. “Simply put, he has been a legal adviser in connection with [Pakistan's] establishing of Sharia law and blasphemy laws which could mean death for many Christians, atheists and Muslims.”

Ul-Qadri is on a six-day tour of Denmark that includes speaking at the European Peace Conference at Tivoli Congress Center on Sunday. He was nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize and has taken a prominent stance against the use of the Koran to justify terrorism.