This is the kind of article that the mainstream media churns out by the pound after every jihad attack, and there is nothing striking or unusual about this one — which is precisely why I am posting it. Mark Hall of WHTM in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania doesn’t alert his readers to the fact that he is interviewing not mainstream Sunni Muslims, but Ahmadiyya, who preach peace and are despised and persecuted as heretics by Sunnis in Pakistan and Indonesia. In Pakistan, they’re even forbidden by law to identify themselves as Muslims. Thus their views, however soothing to American Infidels, are hardly mainstream in Islam, and Hall, wittingly or unwittingly, is misleading his readers into a dangerous complacency.
Note also that the Chattanooga jihadist, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, was quite explicitly and self-consciously devout in his Islam. When therefore someone says, as here below, “unfortunately, there are a few extremists that have given Islam a bad name, but those people have no connection with the religion,” this doesn’t clear up anything. It only raises the question, left unpursued by Mark Hall, as to why and how people who so clearly wish to be devout and scrupulous in their observance of Islam, such as Abdulazeez, get their religion so wrong as to do something in its name that actually has no connection to the religion at all. This is the key question, and in the mainstream media it’s always left unanswered, and unasked.
“Local Muslims on Tennessee shootings: Islam does not teach hate,” by Mark Hall, WHTM, July 17, 2015:
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – Members of the Hadee Mosgue took part in a prayer service on the last day of the holy month of Ramadan. Many of those in attendance have been fasting to remember those who are less fortunate.
A lot of those in attendance said they always feel the pain of innocent people killed at the hands of Islamic extremists.
Aquil Sharif was born in York County and has been a Muslim since birth. He says violence is not the answer among the true followers of Islam, but he says it happens all the time.
“Unfortunately, there are a few extremists that have given Islam a bad name,” Sharif said, “but those people have no connection with the religion.”
Sharif says as soon as he heard about the shootings in Chattanooga, he expected an attack on Islam by those who call Islam a religion of hate.
Dr. Zarar Bajwa says true followers of Islam love all people, and those who were responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001 also hijacked the religion.
“Islam does not teach hate,” Bajwa said. “There may be some radicals, but that does not make the religion bad.”