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Muslims condemn candidate’s comments

Sep 28, 2004 10:25 am By Robert Spencer

Truth-telling and shoring-up of the Big Lie in Chicago. From the Daily Herald, with thanks to Twostellas:

The Republican challenger to three-term Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky said Monday he’s distrusted Islam “for years” and supports the federal government planting human monitors in mosques to track the activity of those practicing the religion there.

Kurt Eckhardt’s comments brought swift criticism from Schakowsky and Muslim groups, who described his remarks as inaccurate and dangerous.

“This feeds the cycle of misunderstanding, feeds the cycle of prejudice, feeds the cycle of hate crimes,” said Yaser Tabbara, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Tabbara’s organization, North America’s largest Islamic civil rights group, is working to promote the mainstream Muslim voice, which does not condone violence.

No mention, of course, of the fact that “Tabbara’s organization” was so busy promoting the mainstream Muslim voice that it failed to notice that three of its officials were involved in terrorist-related activities: Bassem Khafagi, Ismail Royer, and Ghassan Elashi.

“We are unequivocally opposed to terrorism,” he said. “Our religion does not condone it in any way.”

Great. What are you doing to inform Osama bin Laden, Abu Hamza, Shamil Basayev, and other people who say things like this of this much-overlooked fact about your misunderstood religion?

In an interview with the Daily Herald editorial board, Eckhardt, of Chicago, called the threat of fundamentalist Islamic expansion “profound” and said secular democracies around the world need to become proactive and in some cases pre-emptive against the spread of the groups worldwide.

“No other issue matters if we’re dead,” Eckhardt said….

Eckhardt said terrorist acts were not “aberrational behavior” by a few extreme Muslims but possibly part of a broader culture.

“Where is the voice of reason in the Islamic community?” Eckhardt said. “There is none, except in nations we control.”

Schakowsky, an Evanston Democrat, said terrorism or calls to violence were “not at all” inherent in Islam.

“Going in with the suspicion that every mosque is somehow a breeding ground for terrorism defies all the information,” she said.

Does it really? Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi Muslim, testified before a State Department Open Forum in 1999 that 80% of American mosques were under the control of extremists. That claim has never been investigated. What “information” does Schakowsky that makes it certain that it’s not true?

Kareem Irfan, chair of the Lombard-based Council of Islamic Organizations, noted that 35,000 Muslims congregated peacefully at an Islamic Society of North America convention in Rosemont over Labor Day weekend. Irfan said Islam has 1.25 billion peaceful believers worldwide.

“They have nothing to do with violence and terror,” he said.

I am certain that many, if not most, do not. But to make such a blanket assertion about all 1.25 billion Muslims worldwide is to fly in the face of reality. Unless, I suppose, Irfan is assuming that the Muslims who are waging jihad today in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Chechnya, Bosnia, Nigeria and elsewhere are all really CIA and Mossad operatives, trying to smear Islam.

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