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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Hugh Fitzgerald: Those “Inclusive” Mosques, Or, All Hat and No Camel

Sep 16, 2017 10:17 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

From a BBC News item:

At Berlin’s newest mosque, men and women pray together, women are allowed to lead Friday prayers, and gay, lesbian and transgender people are welcome.

“Our mosque is open for everybody,” says mosque founder Seyran Ates, a German Turkish-born lawyer and women’s rights activist.

“And we mean that really seriously: everybody, every lifestyle. We are not God. We don’t decide who’s a good or a bad Muslim. Anybody can come through this door – whether you are heterosexual or homosexual, we don’t care, it’s not our right to ask.”

The BBC notes that “one of the first inclusive mosques was set up in Paris in 2012 by Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, a gay imam from Algeria who now lives in France with his male civil partner. He is working with Ms Ates to help set up inclusive mosques elsewhere, including in Britain.”

Zahed attributes the ability to set up these “inclusive mosques” to the freedoms available in Europe, the very freedoms that are absent in all the lands where Islam rules: “Europe is the place where we can work on, what we consider to be, the reform of Islam,” he tells the BBC reporter.  “Because we have freedom of speech and democracy and education and welfare.”

It doesn’t occur to Zahed to wonder if there might be something about Islam itself that explains why, all over the Muslim lands, those very freedoms are nonexistent, while they can be found everywhere in Europe. For that would require a questioning of Islam itself. If Islam can only be “reformed” in the West, that is, only in those countries where Muslims themselves do not dominate, isn’t it likely that whatever “reforms” of Islam — however small — are achieved here and there in the West, they cannot possibly be accepted in Muslim lands? And why don’t the Muslim lands “have freedom of speech and democracy and education and welfare”? What does that tell us about Islam?

About Zahed’s “inclusive” mosque in Paris, though five years have gone by since it opened as a single prayer room, apparently no second “inclusive” mosque has appeared either in France, or anywhere else in Europe, until this Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque opened this past summer in Berlin. That tells us something about the supposed “wave” of reform — two mosques in all of Europe, in five years. The reporter mentions that there have been some “inclusive” meetings (i.e., including homosexuals) of Muslims for prayers in private homes, or in venues that need to be continuously shifted, obviously out of fear of attack. Can these really be described as “mosques” at all, since in their secrecy and constant movement they appear to be more akin to the cells of an outlawed political party in a totalitarian state?

When  Zahed was asked by the BBC reporter “what he would say to Muslims who believe that homosexuality is a sin,” he replied:

“To those who are Muslim and believe you can’t be gay or an emancipated woman at the same time as being Muslim, I would say: you can’t be homophobic, misogynistic, Judeophobic and pretend to be Muslim.”

Really? You can’t be “homophobic” and still be a Muslim? This will come as quite a surprise, not just to ISIS, but to the Islamic Republic in Iran, run by ayatollahs well-versed in the Qur’an and Hadith, and to the governments of many other Muslim states,  where homosexuals are cruelly persecuted, or even executed. And sometimes the punishment is carried out not by the state, but by Muslim vigilantes.

Where does this “homophobia” in Muslim states come from? From the immutable Qur’an, and from the Hadith.

The Qur’an contains unambiguous  condemnations of homosexual activity:  “And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, ‘Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds? Indeed, you approach men with desire, instead of women. Rather, you are a transgressing people.’…And We rained upon them a rain [of stones]. Then see how was the end of the criminals.” (Qur’an 7:80-84)

Muhammad specifies the punishment for homosexual behavior in a hadith: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, ‘Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Lot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.’” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4462); “It was narrated that Jabir: “The Prophet said: ‘There is nothing I fear for my followers more than the deed of the people of Lot.’”— Al-Tirmidhi: 1457, Ibn Maajah: 2563

And Muslims worldwide apparently agree. In Saudi Arabia, men can be beheaded for committing homosexual acts. In Iran, they are hung from cranes. ISIS prefers to throw them  from tall buildings to their death. And even in Muslim countries where the death penalty is not inflicted, the treatment of homosexuals can be unusually cruel. In Egypt, for example, the police troll for homosexuals online, using personal ads, then arrest them. Some have been given five-year prison sentences, others have been, according to Human Rights Watch, “whipped, bound and suspended in painful positions, splashed with cold water, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity to the limbs, genitals or tongue.”

Muslim clerics from Morocco to Qatar to Indonesia have denounced homosexual behavior. In 2016, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association listed the 12 countries where same-sex sexual acts are punishable by death: Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Mauritania, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, UAE, and Iraq. 11 of the 12 are Muslim states, and Nigeria is more than half Muslim. In another dozen states, all of them Muslim, homosexual acts are severely punished, though with prison and flogging, rather than capital punishment. If the Parisian “reformist” imam Zahed believes that Islam is not “homophobic,” then perhaps he should explain this to all these Muslim officials who mete out these sentences of jail, flogging, and death, to homosexuals, and should point out where they have so badly misunderstood their own faith, and explain as well  to mainstream Believers who seem to think that homosexuality is Islamically unacceptable. And their belief stems directly from the words both of Allah in the Qur’an (7:80-84) and of Muhammad in a hadith (Al-Tirmidhi: 1457). What texts can Zahed offer in support of his claim that Islam is not homophobic? He knows as well as anyone how mainstream Muslims treat homosexuals like himself.

Then there is Zahed’s claim that Islam is not “misogynistic.” Perhaps he can explain then, why, according to the Sharia, Muslim women inherit only half as much as men (Qur’an 4:11); their testimony is worth half that of a man (2:282); polygamy is licit (Muhammad, the Perfect Man, allowed himself –there is some disagreement as to the exact number — perhaps as many as fourteen wives), and so are female sex slaves, “those whom your right hand possesses”; a Muslim man is allowed to beat his disobedient wife, though “lightly”; a Muslim man need only pronounce the triple-talaq to divorce his wife; and women are described in the Qur’an as inferior to men, for “the men are a degree above them” (2:228); and in the Sahih Bukhari (6:301) “[Muhammad] said, ‘Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man? They replied in the affirmative. He said, ‘This [is because of] the deficiency in her intelligence.” There is much more, in the Hadith, about the inferior status of women, but these cited texts should be enough to give any fair-minded person pause — and Imam Zahed may wish to reconsider his amazing claim that misogyny has no place in Islam.

“Judeophobia’ — hatred of Jews — is, like “misogyny” and “homophobia,” impossible for a true Muslim, claims Imam Zahed. And once again the Qur’an begs to differ, for on the subject of Jews it is very — and unpleasantly — clear.

Here is how Robert Spencer sums up what the Qur’an teaches about Jews:

The Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the wellbeing of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); as fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); claiming that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); loving to listen to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah and never observing his commands (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more.

The classic Qur’anic commentators do not mitigate the Qur’an’s words against Jews, but only add fuel to the fire. Ibn Kathir explained Qur’an 2:61 (“They were covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah”) this way: “This Ayah [verse] indicates that the Children of Israel were plagued with humiliation, and that this will continue, meaning that it will never cease. They will continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of all who interact with them, along with the disgrace that they feel inwardly.” Another Middle Ages commentator of lingering influence, Abdallah ibn Umar al-Baidawi, explains the same verse this way: ‘The Jews are mostly humiliated and wretched either of their own accord, or out of coercion of the fear of having their jizya [punitive tax] doubled.’”

Ibn Kathir notes Islamic traditions that predict that at the end of the world, “the Jews will support the Dajjal (False Messiah), and the Muslims, along with ‘Isa [Jesus], son of Mary, will kill the Jews.” The idea in Islam that the end times will be marked by Muslims killing Jews comes from the prophet Muhammad himself, who said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’ This is, not unexpectedly, a favorite motif among contemporary jihadists.”

Not just contemporary jihadists, but modern-day mainstream Islamic authorities take these passages seriously. The former Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who was the most respected cleric in the world among Sunni Muslims, called Jews “the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.” The late Saudi sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, imam of the principal mosque in the holiest city in Islam, Mecca, said in a sermon that Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.”

Another Saudi sheikh, Ba’d bin Abdallah al-Ajameh al-Ghamidi, made the connection explicit: “The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, violation of agreements, and defiling of holy places … is connected with the deeds of their forefathers during the early period of Islam–which proves the great similarity between all the Jews living today and the Jews who lived at the dawn of Islam.”

That’s quite a lot — helpfully put together by Robert Spencer —  for Imam Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed to have overlooked, in the Quran, in the classic commentators such as Ibn Kathir, in the remarks of present-day clerics. Does he think that he can somehow “reform” Islam by misstating what needs to be “reformed”? It is perfectly acceptable, and most welcome, for Imam Zahed to denounce “homophobia” and “misogyny” and “Judeophobia.” It is completely unacceptable, however, for him to claim that in Islam — the “true” Islam to which Imam Zahed believes himself to be privy — these do not exist, and that it is not possible to be a Muslim and at the same time be homophobic, or misogynistic, or judeophobic. For the textual evidence that it is not only possible, but necessary, for mainstream Muslims who follow the Qur’an, to be all three, see above.

Let’s not get too excited about Imam Zahed’s “inclusive” — i.e., for homosexuals too — Paris mosque (like the Berlin mosque, it’s a single prayer room). Neither the Paris nor the Berlin mosque represent, as some assume, the kind of step forward in the “reform” of Islam that is most needed. Zahed, like Ates, may be more “inclusive” in who can attend — that is, LGBT members — his mosque. But if he cannot admit to, and instead denies, some of the worst features of the ideology of Islam, including homophobia, misogyny, and judeophobia (antisemitism), then he cannot conceivably be a genuine reformer. Refusing to recognize that there is a problem is of no help in trying to solve it. He could, after all, have said that “we must recognize that in Islam there is a problem with homophobia, misogyny, and Judeophobia that needs to be discussed.” He could have, but didn’t.

There is no way to “reform” Islam if even the seemingly most liberal-minded of its clerics can’t allow themselves to recognize what Islam inculcates. And “reform” of Islam’s content will take much more than allowing in, to much excited acclaim by non-Muslims, men and women to pray side by side, or LGBTQ worshippers, or Sunnis, Shi’a, and Alevis, all welcome to  pray at the same mosque. Very few Muslims seem to be as impressed with the Berlin mosque as are the Western media:  “‘They’re creating a new religion, that’s not Islamic,’ commented one DeutscheWelle user. ‘These people are not following the religion of our prophet. They have no conception of the religion. What idiocy,’ commented another.” Fatwas of condemnation have been issued in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.

And the impact of these “inclusive” mosques has been greatly exaggerated. As we have seen, to date in Europe there has been one “inclusive” (LGBT) mosque in France, a second one now, in Germany, and a third is planned for Great Britain. They are not, in other words, busting out all over. And why should they? Seyran Ates has been receiving 300 letters of support but also “3,000 emails full of hate,including death threats” every day. She is now under permanent 24-hour guard. That does not suggest  a popular movement, nor is her example one that others are rushing to emulate. It has been five years since  Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed opened the first “inclusive” mosque in Europe. Can two such mosques in five years really be hailed as significant “progress” when those who have opened them require such protection, and just as important, when there has been no change in the texts or teachings of Islam, only in who is allowed to attend or officiate?

In making so much of the mosque in Berlin, the Western media reveals its eagerness — and naive hopefulness — about the possibility of “reform” in Islam. Such “reform” should mean not so much changing the rules on the attendance at, and functioning of, the mosque, but, rather, reform of the contents of the faith, and most of all, it should include changes to what Muslims are taught about non-Muslims. That is the essence of the problem the non-Muslims of the world have with Islam, and while “inclusivity” for both worshippers and imams at mosques is to be welcomed, this does nothing to change what Islam teaches about infidels.

Isn’t this Berlin mosque a case, if we may move from Texas to Arabia, of all hat, and no camel?

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Filed Under: Featured, France, homosexuals, Hugh Fitzgerald, Islamic reform Tagged With: Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, Seyran Ates


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Comments

  1. Kepha says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 10:24 am

    Well, well, well.

    It seems that these liberal Muslims are taking a leaf from the established churches of Germany, which are perhaps the most theologically liberal anywhere, excepting, perhaps, American Unitarian Universalists.

    Yet it was that same theological liberalism that gave us the higher criticism of the Bible, Harnack’s folly that only Marcion understood Paul, and ein großer Haufen Scheiße of other anti-Christian evil and folly.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 10:15 pm

      Kepha, it is far worse than that. These “inclusive” Mosques are serving as a fig leaf in the West, lulling Infidels into a false sense that Islam is not as savage as it is.

    • Robeaver says

      Sep 17, 2017 at 4:48 pm

      How can fiction criticizism be a real thing?? Morons are on oxy.

  2. John A. Marre says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 10:55 am

    It’s as if the Nazis had a building in which Jews were welcome. Doesn’t change the fact that they are Nazis, which officially hates Jews and kills them.
    The only way I would believe this kind of “inclusive” “mosque” is real, is if it repudiates Islam 100%.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 10:19 pm

      The parallel would be Theresienstadt–the “model” concentration camp. Nazis showed this camp off to hopeful Westerners who did not want to believe that the Holocaust was happening. But most of the inmates of this camp were later sent to death camps.

      • Jack Diamond says

        Sep 16, 2017 at 11:25 pm

        Or the Soviet gulag Eleanor Roosevelt got to tour and report enthusiastically about. Basically, a Hollywood-style fabrication.

        • gravenimage says

          Sep 16, 2017 at 11:36 pm

          Exactly, Jack.

  3. RCCA says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 12:53 pm

    This is more of the same old, same old approach to the problem. The big picture is that Muslims number about one third of the human population. The fact is that the world population is increasing exponentially in that part of the world.

    So we can choose to either encourage and support those brave souls within the Muslim community who want to do something about reforming Islam in order to live in peace with the Western world, or we only will have Muslims who want to kill or subjugate or convert us. Hugh Fitzgerald only wants to reinforce Muslims who want to kill us, etc., for reasons I don’t fully understand. Of course it’s not “us” I am talking about, it’s future generations.

    • Shmooviyet says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 1:56 pm

      Hugh Fitzgerald and others might “choose to either encourage or support those brave souls within the Muslim community”– if they were truly brave, and addressed honestly those “worst features” of islam. How is the imam doing so, just by welcoming all to his prayer room? This imam would never find a place for it in islamic countries; only in the West does he have the freedom to claim inclusivity at his mosque. THAT is the problem.

      “While “inclusivity” for both worshippers and imams at mosques is to be welcomed, this does nothing to change what ISLAM teaches about infidels.”
      This imam may appear brave to some, but he is not truthful about his religion.

    • Jack Diamond says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 2:29 pm

      It’s called facing the truth. The article explains why anyone would be skeptical about this new BBC find.
      After five years there is virtually no following among Muslims. For the same reasons Mohamed Zahed would probably come to a bad end preaching his apostasy in any majority Muslim country.

      Believe it or not, what Hugh or any infidel believes about “reforming Islam” makes no difference whatsoever as to what the world’s Muslims believe about Islam or whether they think Islam needs reforming at all, or whether they are going to live in peace with the Western world (or the non-Muslim non-Western world).

      It isn’t a matter of Western infidels preferring to promote a Zudhi Jasser as the voice of Islam. The reality is that a Zudhi Jasser has no following among MUSLIMS. He can’t even find a mosque to belong to. Only infidels listen to him and promote him because they want to believe. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite that while we think millions of Muslims should follow the likes of Zuhdi Jasser, they don’t at all.

      That is irrational and dangerous to future generations. Like putting on an Ahmadiyya spokesman on television every time there is yet another violent incident involving Muslims. The fact the Ahmadiyya is considered an apostate by orthodox Muslims and his sect is tiny you won’t be told this. He is on television as the “voice” of peaceful and tolerant Islam, to make-believe he speaks for Islam and not violent jihadis. That is not journalism, it is propaganda. He is there to help whitewash Islam and keep infidels from understand the dire threat it represents to their society, to their freedoms, to their life and limbs. To their future generations. Yours is the same old, same old. Tell people what they want to hear not what they should hear. Don’t make the Muslims angry, walk on eggshells around Islam, don’t examine the actual teachings Muslims receive. If you close your eyes it will make it all go away.

      The notion that speaking truth (“reinforcing Muslims who want to kill us, etc”) will drive peaceful Muslims into becoming Muslims “who want to kill us etc” gives a lot of power to the opinions of non-Muslims about Islam. It is also an odd assumption, if Muslims are truly peaceful and if Islam were truly peaceful and tolerant why would anything make them Muslims who want to kill us etc?

      The truth is Allah and Muhammad in the Qur’an and Sunnah, in the mainstream schools of Islamic law, in the consensus of Muslim scholars for centuries, create Muslims who want to kill us etc. You act as if all these nice Muslims who just want to get along with us have never heard of Allah’s commands about jihad, or about the obligation to hold hatred and enmity in their hearts towards disbelievers, that they know nothing about Allah’s laws, which rule every aspect of Muslim life and are not negotiable.

      No, it is just Hugh breaking the news to them. Or seeming to side with this understanding of Islam by stating what Muslims actually believe. No, we are to embrace the idea that lax Muslims and heretical Muslims represent the reform of Islam, put our faith in it, and let future generations deal with the results. Let’s help whitewash the blood and war and hate and tyranny out of Islam, all to promote a fiction that none of that really exists. A fiction no significant number of Muslims believe in.

      Islam has not been reformed in 1400 years. For good reason. Hugh is telling you some of them, best listen.

      • Bud Earley says

        Sep 16, 2017 at 7:39 pm

        Well said, ‘Hue & Cry’…I mean, ‘Jack’…Hugh & Jack.

      • gravenimage says

        Sep 16, 2017 at 10:45 pm

        Spot on, Jack.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 10:39 pm

      RCCA wrote:

      This is more of the same old, same old approach to the problem. The big picture is that Muslims number about one third of the human population. The fact is that the world population is increasing exponentially in that part of the world.

      So we can choose to either encourage and support those brave souls within the Muslim community who want to do something about reforming Islam in order to live in peace with the Western world, or we only will have Muslims who want to kill or subjugate or convert us. Hugh Fitzgerald only wants to reinforce Muslims who want to kill us, etc., for reasons I don’t fully understand. Of course it’s not “us” I am talking about, it’s future generations.
      ……………………………..

      The idea that the reason Islam is so savage is because of “Islamophobes” like Hugh Fitzgerald who won’t pretend that Islam is really hunky-dory is just ludicrous.

      For instance, it is not Hugh Fitzgerald threatening lax Mohammedans like Seyran Ates. She is now in hiding in Germany and is no longer working on behalf of Muslim women after being attacked by an orthodox Mohammedan.

      There is a Fatwa against her Mosque–and any future “inclusive” Mosques–from the highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning, Al Azhar. She regularly receives death threats, not from “Islamophobes”, but from more pious Muslims.

      It is the “filthy Infidels” who are providing her with 24-hour police protection. The idea that protecting her is not enough, but that they have to pretend that what she posits–despite all evidence to the contrary–is orthodox Islam is suicidal.

    • Cold Warrior says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 11:31 pm

      There is a better way.

      It’s the same grand strategy the United States employed against the attempted spread of Communism. Two main doctrines: containment and peaceful coexistence.

      Contain the Moslems to the 57 existing countries in which they control the “government.” Attempt to coexist peacefully with those 57 countries. So not allow the people who live inside those countries to emigrate to the West.

      What are the Moslems doing? The opposite. They are at war with us and they invading us and making war, now, within the borders of the Western countries. Including the U.S.

      Thank you.

    • Kepha says

      Sep 17, 2017 at 8:30 pm

      As far as I’m concerned, the only Reformation of Islam that I’d find worthwhile is the widespread conversion of Muslims to the Messiah of the Old and New Testaments. Period.

  4. Benedict says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    Islam will never be palatable no matter how it is presented or who does the presentation. An ideology conceived by a deluded, self inflated narcissist is not rectifiable by any philia, phobia or reformation.

  5. pat mott says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    They, the reformists need a NEW religion! Forget Islam!

    • RCCA says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 3:42 pm

      They’ll call it Reformed Islam or some version of that in Arabic, and be accused of not being real Muslims. But they will sort it out where they feel they are keeping something of value from the past (the Meccan period) and making “Islam” compatible with contemporary Western values. Will that require a rejection of the violent and political agenda of the Medina war lord? Yes. I can see that Muhammad will need to be reevaluated as both a prophet and a flawed man, and the demand that he be emulated as the perfect man be derided as idol worship, which is what it is.

      Does anyone really think that the versions of Judaism practiced today have much resemblance to the practices of Judaism of three thousand years ago, or even a thousand years ago, except for the most fundamental belief in one God? There’s no Moses, there’s no Temple, there are no prophets, Jews don’t live in ghettos directed by head Rabbis, etc. In a lighter note, in the ancient Land of Israel the people used to live in Sukkoth, the temporary dwellings built during the harvest. Now they are just ceremonial structures and we have inflatable sukkoth. see: https://youtu.be/dGf_kSPysV0

      I find Martin Luther’s revelation very interesting, but since I am not a Christian I will that up to Christians to discuss.

      • gravenimage says

        Sep 16, 2017 at 10:50 pm

        RCCA, you will forgive some of us if we do not hold our breath waiting for these alleged upcoming reforms–which have not, of course, happened for 1400 years now.

      • Joe says

        Sep 17, 2017 at 5:52 am

        There are various ways to convert Muslims, but “inclusivity” is not one of them.

        For some Muslims, history might make them ask questions. History is under constant revision. But the books clearly show, that this version of Islam is not from Mohammed. There is overwhelming proof of that in historical record, because Islam was the dominant empire at the time of these events. Those types of empires often leave indelible records. For example, Mecca wasn’t around when Mohammed was alive. Or better, 700,000 Korans were destroyed about 200 years after Mohammed died so that the true Koran which contained the hated ideology of Islam, could be propagated. Mohammed lived in Petra. They moved the rock from Petra to Medina. When Mecca was founded, they moved it there.

        Constantine and Charlemagne used Catholicism to assimilate their empires into something that was more homogeneous and less rebellious. The Arab conquerors were attempting the same by changing the different versions of the Koran (that date back before Christ) into a single edition which is why the 700,000 were gathered and destroyed. Not all of them were destroyed. The Arabs who wrote the Koran, got too carried away with their warlord tactics when writing the Koran. It doesn’t even resemble a religion. If this history becomes known, the Islam has a lot of egg on its face. History works best on young Muslims.

        All people know right from wrong. We are programmed that way. In their hearts, all Muslims know that Islam is a sin. They may be able to sin enough to sear their conscience. That is why the most pious Muslims are the most evil. This works better on females.

        While the left tries to ally with Islam, it is really awkward. The opposing attitudes between the left and Islam can be used to ridicule both of them. People are not that stupid. This works best in driving a wedge between the left technocrats and traditional Muslims.

        The best way to convert Muslims into something more reasonable is to appeal to their compassion. For example, “Do you think it is right that I make you my slave, if you don’t agree with me? If not, then why do you want me to be your slave? Do you wish to be a slave?” If they say Islam is not about slavery, you should accuse them of being ignorant of their religion.

        Then you can cite the slavery verses. Their are many. They might try to get a clear verse to have a different intention. In a holy book, that is an evil lie. Because it makes novices evil.

        People are converted by decisions, and those decisions will be emotional. The “inclusivity” will not gradually convert them as you suppose. It is more likely to attract a leftist, who then drifts towards Islam which is the opposite of your intent.

        • Robeaver says

          Sep 17, 2017 at 4:53 pm

          Conversion by radio. Activity noted on ham sets. Move period two places, but to the right, never to the left, as leftists are bad. Just move. Period.

  6. jewdog says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 2:49 pm

    The main threat of this Disneyesque version of Islam is its role as a vehicle for enticing naïve infidels to convert. These mosques are somewhat analogous to the Nation of Islam in America, a racist heretical version which enticed alienated and bitter African-Americans as a first step to ultimately becoming traditional Muslims. The European version is a sort of love-and-peace heretical version which would attract dumb, starry-eyed moonbats as a first step to the later adherence to the real thing. Caveat ex emptor.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 10:55 pm

      True–and also just lulling Infidels into believing that Islam is not really a threat.

  7. Krazy Kafir says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 2:58 pm

    I fear these “reformers” will ultimately end up being “carriers” of the viral ideology, unless they are truthful about what Islams is, and I haven’t seen that yet. . The only Muslims I’ve seen so far who are 100 percent truthful about Islam are the apostates.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 10:57 pm

      Agreed, Krazy Kafir.

  8. Dennis says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 3:00 pm

    congratulations to these thought provoking and liberal minded Muslims who are setting up open mosques. i believe that there is one in California also, but not sure. we must support these brave souls who are denounced by the feudalistic, politically minded shias and Sunnis. in the past there were Sufi masters who taught women and non_believers. When i lived in Egypt (I am not a Muslim) i attended the Thursday gatherings of the Egyptian Sufis. it was held in a large ancient mosque. Men and women danced and prayed together. the Pir (spiritual guide) told me that the Sunnis and Shias had rewritten the Koran according to their political needs and promote a dark Islam. I certainly agree and some of the Sufis are caught up in this too. the uneducated people follow most religions like sheep!

    • Jack Diamond says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 4:18 pm

      No, it is not we who must support these brave souls, it is Muslims who must support them. They do not.

      Sufis have a long “dark” history of involvement in jihad, from countless massacres in India during the Mughal periods to the Ottoman genocide to the Beslan massacre of schoolchildren. I don’t mean the uneducated Sufis, either.

      Al-Ghazali was a Sufi orthodox Muslim and one of the most renowned jurists in Islamic history.
      He wrote (courtesy of Andrew Bostom in “Sufi Jihad”):

      “[O]ne must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year…one may use a catapult against them [non—Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them…If a person of the Ahl al—Kitab [People of The Book — primarily Jews and Christians] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked…One may cut down their trees…One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide…they may steal as much food as they need…

      [T]he dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle…Jews, Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non—Muslims]…on offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]… They are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells…their houses may not be higher than the Muslim’s, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddle [—work] is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the [public] baths…[dhimmis] must hold their tongue…”

      Maybe Al Ghazali didn’t dance enough to know Sufism was not part of the “dark” Islam?

      “Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564—1624) was an eminent Sufi mystic, connected with several Sufi orders (including the Naqshbandi order), who contributed greatly toward the revival of orthodox Islam, following the heterodox experiments of Akbar’s reign (1556—1605).

      “Shariat can be fostered through the sword….Kufr and Islam are opposed to each other. The progress of one is possible only at the expense of the other and co—existence between these two contradictory faiths is unthinkable….The honor of Islam lies in insulting kufr and kafirs. One who respects kafirs, dishonors the Muslims. To respect them does not merely mean honoring them and assigning them a seat of honor in any assembly, but it also implies keeping company with them or showing considerations to them. They should be kept at an arm’s length like dogs.”

      Another “uneducated” Sufi who didn’t dance enough or get into enough mystical trances?
      Like Sufi Naqshbandi leader, Shamil Basayev, who engineered Beslan?

      “The Seljuk and Ottoman jihad campaigns which ravaged neighboring Asia Minor from the 11th through 15th centuries, were spearheaded by ‘Ghazi’ (from the word ghazwa or ‘razzia’) movements, ‘Warriors of the Faith’, brought together under the banner of Islam to fight infidels, and obtain booty. Incited by pious Muslim theologians—most prominently, Sufi dervishes—these ghazis were at the vanguard of both the Seljuk and Ottoman jihad conquests.”

      Is it surprising the Sufi Naqshbandi joined the ranks of ISIS? Why should it be?
      Sufism is not some new kind of Islam.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 11:08 pm

      Dennis, your belief that Sufi Muslims are civilized is, as Jack notes, quite mistaken.

      Just because some Muslims are considered heretical by their more orthodox coreligionists does *not* mean that they reject violent Jihad, or that they are not a threat to Infidels.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 16, 2017 at 11:17 pm

      And here’s more about that women’s Mosque in Berkeley:

      http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Empowering-women-Female-run-mosque-to-open-in-11072445.php

      “There’s nothing wrong with the mosque or the religion,” Keeble said, sitting in her Oakland home…“There’s something really wrong with the patriarchy and the arrogance that falls out of it that prevents women being treated with respect and being taken seriously and somehow included in what’s going on.”

      In other words, she is lying to people about what Islam says about women.

      By the way, this Mosque is not sponsored by Muslims–instead, it is in a Unitarian school. The Infidels desperately hope that this is what Islam is really like; Muslims know that it is not.

      At the end of the article, she reveals her real agenda:

      “Given the atmosphere we live in right now — the Muslim ban, our president whipping up a fervor or hatred against Muslims because they’ve been framed as terrorists — maybe we can reframe (Islam) a little bit through a women’s mosque, (as) a gentle, more accepting, inclusive religion,” Keeble said.

      In other words, this Mosque is intended to lie to the Infidels by making Islam appear more civilized than it actually is.

  9. mortimer says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 5:33 pm

    Hugh Fitzgerald is 100% correct that Imam Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed is misstating the positions of canonical Islam. Moreover, imho, he is doing so intentionally because he knows exactly what those positions are.

    Fitzgerald writes: “Does he think that he can somehow “reform” Islam by misstating what needs to be “reformed”? It is perfectly acceptable, and most welcome, for Imam Zahed to denounce “homophobia” and “misogyny” and “Judeophobia.” It is completely unacceptable, however, for him to claim that in Islam — the “true” Islam to which Imam Zahed believes himself to be privy — these do not exist, and that it is not possible to be a Muslim and at the same time be homophobic, or misogynistic, or judeophobic.”

    WHAT? Have 1300 years of Islamic authorities ALL been wrong? And has it taken this long for Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed to arrive on the scene to correct them? It is totally dishonest of him to pretend to speak for the CONSENSUS OF ISLAM. He speaks for the smallest minority of Muslims, in fact.

  10. ed says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    They live under a daily death wish .

  11. Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    “Europe is the place where we can work on, what we consider to be, the reform of Islam,” [Mohamed Zahed] tells the BBC reporter. “Because we have freedom of speech and democracy and education and welfare.”
    – – – – – – – – – –
    Dear Mr. Zahed, How is your work furthered “Because we have … welfare”?

  12. thesailor says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 6:31 pm

    Perhaps the BBC should encourage the Government to “reform” cancer, then we can all live in inclusive happiness with our cancer cells. Destroying the disease seems so ‘right-wing’ somehow, and we can’t have that.

  13. Mockingjay says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    I can recommend an excellent book to Mr. Zahed – and not just to him for that matter, but to so many, many people who prefer self-deception – which almost always also means deceiving others as a consequence – over facing the cold, hard truth:

    “Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception”, by Daniel Goleman.

  14. manat bint allaha says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 9:56 pm

    heating up the ocean with a portable immersion heater..

  15. Lydia says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 9:58 pm

    Diverse sinners make strange bedfellows.

  16. gravenimage says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 10:09 pm

    Hugh Fitzgerald: Those “Inclusive” Mosques, Or, All Hat and No Camel
    ……………………

    Just window dressing.

  17. Flavius Claudius Iulianus says

    Sep 16, 2017 at 11:52 pm

    If they survive the hardliners then they will become nothing more than just another sect … and maybe, eventually a new religion.

  18. underbed cat says

    Sep 17, 2017 at 2:07 pm

    I think that is a dangerous, situation….unless every muslim who walks by knows it is a little deception for western consumption to ease the minds of liberals. But it could be a gathering of the victims who don’t follow fit with sharia since fitna is worse than murder for the devout. So the imam would not quite be an expert on the subject, although a more humane one…there might be other alternatives.

  19. underbed cat says

    Sep 17, 2017 at 2:12 pm

    correction: should read, don’t fit

  20. I wonder about leftists says

    Sep 17, 2017 at 5:00 pm

    Joe, I agree with you, I think the real Mohammed, the Prophet , did not write the Qur’an. Like the Bible.
    A lot of people saw their chance to write all kind of things to make the people afraid and for money and power, etc. and made up the verses for they own purposes.
    I believe that there has been a prophet Mohammed, but that he did not write the Qur’an, but muslims want to believe it, otherwise their whole world would stand upside down, all religions have such big secrets, not for nothing, and they can’t come out with it, otherwise they would loose al the people they have a hold on now,but it always was like that but now there comes the time that everything will slowly unfold and we will be stupefied and angry that they believed such charlatans for such a long time. At a certain time we will know it and about Mohammed too.

  21. Max says

    Sep 18, 2017 at 1:55 am

    Actually, this woman doesn’t deny at all the violence in Islam and has like Imam Tawidi or Tariq Fatah her rationalisation, why not to follow violence (which is psychotic-mindbending, but most religions ‘need’ irrationality as a ‘spiritual’ ingredients like 1+1+1=1 etc.- which is irrational but not inhuman), Other examples are: Tawidi proposes to burn the Bukhari and link cruel commands to 7th century only).Common have these three, that their reform doesn’t ignore the antihuman passages and that they are all under a death-fatwa.

  22. Dacritic says

    Sep 18, 2017 at 3:18 am

    Islam already had its reformation. Ibn Tamiyya in the 14th century said to be a good Muslim, follow the Quran and follow Muhammad. And what did the Quran say?

    Quran 33:36 – “It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly strayed into clear error.”

    How the heck did these fellas get to become “imams” I’ll never know.

  23. SAM says

    Sep 18, 2017 at 4:22 am

    This is total ignorance or Takiya. Either case it is total enabling of Islam, a total evil ideology.

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