Well, Salman Rushdie has been knighted by the Queen! And should we be surprised that this has been met by condemnations from Iran and Pakistan and other Muslims around the world?
May I point out some quotes that show the acute victimhood that (I propose) Muslims are addicted to today?
Effigies of Rushdie and the Queen were burnt in Pakistan, where presidential elections at the end of the year have destablised an already volatile political climate. Hundreds of protesters in Multan, Karachi and Lahore set fire to British flags and chanted “Death to Britain, death to Rushdie” and Islamist leaders called for nationwide protests after Friday prayers.
Ijaz-ul-Haq, the Religious Affairs Minister, told the assembly in Islamabad that the award of the knighthood excused suicide bombing. “If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet then it is justified,” he said.
He later retracted his statement, explaining that he had intended to say that knighting Rushdie will foster extremism. “If someone blows himself up, he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West? We demand an apology by the British government. Their action has hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims."
Pakistan’s national assembly earlier unanimously passed a resolution condemning Rushdie’s knighthood, which it said would encourage “contempt” for the Prophet Muhammad.
From Here
So the fault belongs to the UK (and others) for all the nasty terrorism that is going on? Notice that there is a refusal to take responsibility among the Muslim community here. I mean, the violence and willingness to plan suicide attacks is not actually rooted in Islam or the life of Muhammad, but in provocative acts by foreign governments. This is akin to the idea that a man is not guilty of a crime if he sees a woman who is not covered correctly. He cannot help himself, it is that simple. He is not guilty.
Salman Rushdie wrote a book called the Satanic Verses years ago. I have posted some material on the Satanic Verses, which refer to an instance from Muhammad's life where he received verses from God, that later turned out to be (by his own admission) from Satan.
Check it all out Here
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query satanic. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query satanic. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Satanic Verses
Muhammad admitted that a few of the verses which he thought he had received from Gabriel were in fact from Satan. They would be in the surah The Star (al najm) had they not later been renounced.
Great story and it brings to mind some difficult questions regarding the validity of the rest of the Quran. Here is a section from one site and a few links for people who find this topic interesting. This quote is from a Muslim scholar. I try to quote Muslims more than non-Muslims on Islam:
Satanic_Verses
Great story and it brings to mind some difficult questions regarding the validity of the rest of the Quran. Here is a section from one site and a few links for people who find this topic interesting. This quote is from a Muslim scholar. I try to quote Muslims more than non-Muslims on Islam:
One of the greatest Islamic scholars who wrote a Tafsir was Zamakhshari. He commented on this event as well.Here is his writings, quoted from "The Quran and its Exegesis, by Helmut Gatje, pages 53 - 55, published by Oneworld, Oxford, England [10].
"The faithful rendering of the revelation Zamakhshari on Sura 22:52/51
We have never sent any messenger of prophet before thee, but that Satan cast into his fancy, when he was fancying; but God annuls what Satan casts, then God confirms His signs - surely God is All-knowing, All-wise. .. The occasion of the sending down of the present verse is the following: As the members of the tribe of the messenger of God turned away from him and took their stand against him and his relatives also opposed him and refused to be guided by what he brought to them, then, as a result of the extreme exasperation concerning their estrangement and as a result of the eager desire and longing that they be converted to Islam, the messenger of God sheltered the wish that nothing would come down to him that could make them shy away. Perhaps he should have been able to use that for the purpose of converting them and causing them to be dissuaded from their error and obstinacy. Now this wish continued in him until the sura called "The Star" (that is, Sura 53) came down. At that time he found himself with this wish in his heart regarding the members of his tribe. Then he began to recite, and when he came to God's words "and Manat, the third, the other" (Sura 53:20), Satan substituted something in accordance with the wish which the messenger of God had sheltered, that is, he whispered something to him which would enable the messenger to announce his wish. In an inadvertent and misleading manner, his tongue hurried on ahead of him, so that he said: "These (goddesses are the) exalted cranes. Their intercession (with God) is to be hoped for."...Yet, the messenger of God was not clear at this point until the protection of God "isma" reached him and he then became attentive again.
Some say that Gabriel drew his attention to it, or that Satan himself spoke those words and brought them to the people's hearing. As soon as the messenger of God prostrated (for prayer) as the end of the sura, all who were present did it with him and felt pleased (that is, the unbelievers felt pleased that their goddesses had been accepted as intercessors with God).
Satanic_Verses
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
"Organised crusade...to demonize Islam"
Notice how there is no evidence that Muslims or Islam or the Quran might actually be responsible for the increasingly negative perceptions of Islam in the West. Rather we have an organized crusade! I only wish we had the organizational proqess that Dr. Khan attributes to us. Notice also how we lumps BXVI's baptism of Magdi Cristiano Allam in there as part of a smear campaign against Islam:
Countering Western anti-Islam media spin
Dr Adalat Khan
It is sad to note that now a days in the Western Media Islam bashing has become fashionable and oft and on we see provocative articles, cartoons, videos and other propaganda items against Islam and the Muslims. A latest slur is the fifteen minutes video by the racist anti-immigration right wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders called fitna. This film features violent imagery of terrorist attacks in New York and Madrid set against passages from the Holy Quran that are distorted and taken out of context. Under the guise of freedom of speech irresponsible politicians such as Wilder are stirring hatred against Muslims not only in their own country but throughout the world. Wilder is not alone in this malicious spin, but it would seem that an organized crusade by the vested interests in the West has been unleashed to demonise Islam and Muslims.
It is reported that a theatre in Germany is staging a play based on the infamous book Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdi, while a few weeks ago Pope Benedict was seen baptizing the conversion of a Muslim journalist from Egypt during Easter. It was the same Pope who last year delivered a lecture in which he gave hateful interpretation to the Prophet Muhammad’s mission.
In year 2006, a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Prophet (PBUH) linking him to bombs and terror. [...] It is in fact an organized and systematic Western campaign to malign Islam and impose their hegemony over the Muslim world. [...]
Countering Western anti-Islam media spin
Dr Adalat Khan
It is sad to note that now a days in the Western Media Islam bashing has become fashionable and oft and on we see provocative articles, cartoons, videos and other propaganda items against Islam and the Muslims. A latest slur is the fifteen minutes video by the racist anti-immigration right wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders called fitna. This film features violent imagery of terrorist attacks in New York and Madrid set against passages from the Holy Quran that are distorted and taken out of context. Under the guise of freedom of speech irresponsible politicians such as Wilder are stirring hatred against Muslims not only in their own country but throughout the world. Wilder is not alone in this malicious spin, but it would seem that an organized crusade by the vested interests in the West has been unleashed to demonise Islam and Muslims.
It is reported that a theatre in Germany is staging a play based on the infamous book Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdi, while a few weeks ago Pope Benedict was seen baptizing the conversion of a Muslim journalist from Egypt during Easter. It was the same Pope who last year delivered a lecture in which he gave hateful interpretation to the Prophet Muhammad’s mission.
In year 2006, a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Prophet (PBUH) linking him to bombs and terror. [...] It is in fact an organized and systematic Western campaign to malign Islam and impose their hegemony over the Muslim world. [...]
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Q&A: Can a jinn possess a human?
In Islam the jinn (traditionally translated into English 'genie') are beings made of fire. Some are good and some are evil. They are not, however, the same as angels (malaa'ik) or demons (shayatiin). Here is great question from a reader of Islam Question and Answer (islamqa.com):
Question:
Is there any real contact between humans and jinn? Is it true that a jinni can possess a person and speak on his lips, or not?.
Answer:
Praise be to Allaah.
[...]
To sum up: it is proven that the jinn can harm humans by possessing them, and this is indicated by the Qur’aan and by visible experience that no one can deny but one who is ignorant.
The best means of dealing with that is reciting Qur’aan over the one who is affected, and treating him with ruqyah that contains du’aa’s narrated from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), and what he is suffering will disappear, in sha Allaah.
As for what some charlatans and liars do nowadays, such as prescribing some du’aa’s and drinks, claiming that this will bring the jinni out of the body of the person, the basic principle is that this is haraam and it is not permissible to treat such cases except with du’aa’s from Qur’aan and Sunnah. End quote.
(Abu Daoud says: This is of course related to the infamous instance of the Satanic Verses when Muhammad says that Satan [who is not a jinn] placed certain words upon his lips, though at the time he had thought the words were from Gabriel.)
Question:
Is there any real contact between humans and jinn? Is it true that a jinni can possess a person and speak on his lips, or not?.
Answer:
Praise be to Allaah.
[...]
To sum up: it is proven that the jinn can harm humans by possessing them, and this is indicated by the Qur’aan and by visible experience that no one can deny but one who is ignorant.
The best means of dealing with that is reciting Qur’aan over the one who is affected, and treating him with ruqyah that contains du’aa’s narrated from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), and what he is suffering will disappear, in sha Allaah.
As for what some charlatans and liars do nowadays, such as prescribing some du’aa’s and drinks, claiming that this will bring the jinni out of the body of the person, the basic principle is that this is haraam and it is not permissible to treat such cases except with du’aa’s from Qur’aan and Sunnah. End quote.
(Abu Daoud says: This is of course related to the infamous instance of the Satanic Verses when Muhammad says that Satan [who is not a jinn] placed certain words upon his lips, though at the time he had thought the words were from Gabriel.)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
EN §53: Respect other religions, but evangelize anyway
And you thought I had forgotten about blogging evangelii nuntiandi! Ha! The last entry is HERE.
EN §53 is one of the longer sections of evangelii nuntiandi, and we find a wealth of points about Christianity in relation to other religions, including animistic ones.
First we find that they merit respect, along with Rahner Paul VI finds that there is much that is praiseworthy in those religions. This is quite different than much of the Patristic witness which found, say Greek polytheism, to be Satanic in nature and equated those gods with demons (and I am thinking of Augustine here particularly). But Paul VI has nary a bad thing to say about non-Christian religions, for they express the longing in the human soul for the true God, that is, they are teleologically oriented but imperfect.
Because they are imperfect and do not disclose the fullness of God's truth, the Church is continually under the obligation to preach the Gospel to them: Even in the face of natural religious expressions most worthy of esteem, the Church finds support in the fact that the religion of Jesus, which she proclaims through evangelization, objectively places man in relation with the plan of God, with His living presence and with His action; she thus causes an encounter with the mystery of divine paternity that bends over towards humanity.
One longs for more specific treatment of Islam! Given that Islam was, unlike Buddhism, Hinduism, or the manifold expressions of animism set up in contradistinction to Christianity and indeed the heart of the Christian faith--the Trinity and Incarnation--how shall we treat it? Can we say that it, like the other religions is "a preparation for the Gospel"? Can one say that about Islam?
If not, then a very substantially different approach is required for this religion. But there is not word on Islam in EN, not once does the word Islam or Muslim appear in the letter. In which case we are only left with the medieval condemnations of Muhammadanism as "the mother of all heresies" and with the Catechism's rosy statement which some have accused of syncretism. That having been said, actions speak louder than words, which is why I have been a supporter of BXVI's decision to baptize brother Magdi Cristiano Alam in Rome on the eve of Easter. At least we know how he approaches these various texts :-)
EN §53 is one of the longer sections of evangelii nuntiandi, and we find a wealth of points about Christianity in relation to other religions, including animistic ones.
First we find that they merit respect, along with Rahner Paul VI finds that there is much that is praiseworthy in those religions. This is quite different than much of the Patristic witness which found, say Greek polytheism, to be Satanic in nature and equated those gods with demons (and I am thinking of Augustine here particularly). But Paul VI has nary a bad thing to say about non-Christian religions, for they express the longing in the human soul for the true God, that is, they are teleologically oriented but imperfect.
Because they are imperfect and do not disclose the fullness of God's truth, the Church is continually under the obligation to preach the Gospel to them: Even in the face of natural religious expressions most worthy of esteem, the Church finds support in the fact that the religion of Jesus, which she proclaims through evangelization, objectively places man in relation with the plan of God, with His living presence and with His action; she thus causes an encounter with the mystery of divine paternity that bends over towards humanity.
One longs for more specific treatment of Islam! Given that Islam was, unlike Buddhism, Hinduism, or the manifold expressions of animism set up in contradistinction to Christianity and indeed the heart of the Christian faith--the Trinity and Incarnation--how shall we treat it? Can we say that it, like the other religions is "a preparation for the Gospel"? Can one say that about Islam?
If not, then a very substantially different approach is required for this religion. But there is not word on Islam in EN, not once does the word Islam or Muslim appear in the letter. In which case we are only left with the medieval condemnations of Muhammadanism as "the mother of all heresies" and with the Catechism's rosy statement which some have accused of syncretism. That having been said, actions speak louder than words, which is why I have been a supporter of BXVI's decision to baptize brother Magdi Cristiano Alam in Rome on the eve of Easter. At least we know how he approaches these various texts :-)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Daring Leaps of Faith
(Abu Daoud: This is a really wonderful article, so I am posting the whole thing, which I rarely do.)
Daring Leaps of Faith
By Julia Duin
Courtesy The Washington Times
Having just come out of church, they were at an indoor cafe, conversing about former Muslims they knew who were now Christians. Some married into the faith. Some of the converts no longer believed in the Koran. Others said they had had visions or dreams of Jesus Christ. And others felt the Christian message of God becoming a man was more compelling than their faith. These converts face all kinds of dangers for having left Islam: ostracism from family members and friends, kidnappings and even death threats.
"Most of the people who come here start to question the Koran," one of the Egyptians said. "They can read sources not available in our countries, especially sources in Arabic." The government of Saudi Arabia, for example, blocks thousands of Web sites through its Internet Services Unit in Riyadh, including anything criticizing Islam. A Harvard University study conducted in May showed that out of 2,038 sites banned by the Saudis, 250 were religious.
In the West, seekers who've never heard a serious debate on Islam can click on Exmuslim.com, Islamreview.com and Arabicbible.com. Then there's Paltalk.com, a chat site featuring discussions in various languages on a wide range of topics. Some former Muslims enter these chat rooms with the intent to convert Arabic speakers to Christianity, including "Sam Ash," a New Jersey hairdresser.
"I ask them to prove to me that Islam is the way to God," he said. "Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life. If you can show I have eternal life through Muhammad, I'll become a Muslim this moment."
There is no lack of people who wish to challenge him, which is why he will not divulge his real name.
"I've been hacked" into, he said, "and you should see the viruses people send me."
Most of these converts keep their new affiliation secret, as Islam considers those who leave the faith to be apostates. According to Islamic law as practiced in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and in northern regions of Nigeria, the penalty for changing one's religion is execution.
The U.S. State Department has documented numerous instances of religious persecution overseas against Muslim converts to Christianity. What is not so well known are the threats against such converts in the United States.
Some have simply been shunned by their families. Others have been kidnapped by family members and friends, and put on a plane back home. All are reluctant to ask for protection from U.S. law enforcement, especially those converts with Arabic surnames who are leery of getting their names on a U.S. police report. However, there are no known instances of converts from Islam to Christianity who have been killed in the United States for their decision to leave their faith.
Most established Christian denominations are unaware of the situation, as converts attend Bible study groups in their own language or small hidden churches that appear on no denominational radar. No academic research has been done on such converts. The closest figures are those by David Barrett, co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, who estimates that within U.S. borders, 50,000 Christians per year turn to Islam while 20,000 Muslims adopt Christianity.
Befriending the latter, the men say, is a dicey proposition.
"It's written in their books," one said. "You cannot be a friend with unbelievers."
'Christ in the Koran'
The Rev. Esper Ajaj, the Syrian-born pastor of Washington Arabic Baptist Church at 4605 Massachusetts Ave. NW in the District, concedes that there are dangers to working with Muslims. Situated within walking distance of American University, he gets a fair amount of seekers at his door.
"They want to ask questions," he said. "Sometimes they come to pray here. Then they have a cup of coffee, and I talk to them. Then I discuss the greatness of Christ in the Koran.
"We've seen more Muslims in [the 1990s] become Christians more than any time in history. If they are open-minded, it is easy. If they are closed-minded, it is not."
He is writing a book tentatively titled, "Difficult Questions a Muslim Asks" but confesses that "I don't know if I'll put my name on it."
"Look at Salman Rushdie," he said, referring to the Muslim author from India whose 1988 book "The Satanic Verses" earned him a death warrant from Persian mullahs.
"One guy called my wife and said, 'Let Esper die.' They could give a person $1,000 and shoot me, and no one would know."
Mr. Ajaj said Christianity is not logical to a Muslim mind that cannot fathom worshipping someone who was ridiculed, then killed. Muslims are divided on whether Jesus even died, and the Koran said Jesus was snatched up to heaven by God before the Crucifixion. Some Muslim commentators think Judas Iscariot or Simon of Cyrene died in His place, and none believe He rose from the dead.
The Rev. Hisham Kamel, pastor of the Arabic Evangelical Church in Temple City, Calif., said the certainty of heaven is what draws Muslims to risk losing family and friends when they accept Christ.
"In Islam, the only way they know they'll get to heaven is if they take part in jihad," he said.
But there is a downside of working with converts, said the Rev. Charles Farag of Trinity Arabic Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. Two years ago, he gave one convert, who showed up at his door with a hard-luck story, one of his favorite cars, a 1994 black Chrysler New Yorker.
The convert totaled the car the next day, then showed up back at the church, saying someone had tried to run him off the road.
"Sometimes people lie so they can apply for religious asylum," Mr. Farag said. "Then, after they receive help from you, you never hear from them again." The Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to provide details on religious asylum requests.
Sometimes even offering sympathy to a convert brings opposition. One Washington area pastor asked not to be named because of a nearby mosque that has been scrutinizing him.
"I have seven Muslims who have converted," he said. "I do not want any trouble."
Ann Buwalda, an immigration lawyer for Just Law International in Fairfax, said she's been approached by Pakistani converts who are refugees. One man, "Masih," was working at a retail store in Northern Virginia, she said, when a Muslim co-worker from Pakistan noticed he was wearing a cross. The man asked Masih why he was wearing it.
"I am Christian," said Masih. The Muslim co-worker became angry, called him derogatory names in their native language, shoved him in a hallway and thereafter tried to get him fired and threatened him after work one night.
"He told the security guards at the retail store, so the employer has separated the two," Ms. Buwalda said.
"I worry about these people. I have given him a cell phone so he can call 911 if these guys stalk him. He has informally told police about it but filed no report" because, she adds, most refugees view American law enforcement in the same light as police from their own countries: people to be avoided at all costs.
She tells of another young female convert who wears a cross and who was stalked by a Muslim Pakistani taxi driver in the retail store where she works. Yet another Pakistani woman who converted to Christianity was threatened with death by Pakistani neighbors. "That kind of stuff, it's frightening when it happens," Ms. Buwalda said.
Victor Gill, a Pakistani immigrant who lives in Philadelphia and who leads a ministry called Christian Voice of Pakistan, said converts are regularly harassed in the United States.
"The threat is real," he said. "They think they are doing something to earn credit with God when they kill Christians. When John Walker Lindh converted to Islam, his family supported him. But not so for the converts here. The Koran said people who leave Islam must be killed."
Killing converts
Actually, that instruction is in the Hadith, a collection of the sayings of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. It has been enforced in varying ways. Female converts are usually imprisoned in a room — for months or years — as a sort of psychological torture until they recant. As for the men, all the traditional schools of Shariah (Islamic) law stipulate that "apostates" — those who leave their faith — must die. But before they die, they lose all civil liberties. Their children are taken away, their marriage is dissolved, they lose their family inheritance and they cannot be buried in a Muslim graveyard.
One dissident to this traditional interpretation of the Hadith is Taha Jabir Alawani, president of the Graduate School for Islamic Social Sciences in Leesburg, Va. He said the apostate rule was formed in the early seventh century, when leaving one's religion was seen as a traitorous act.
"Mine is a minority opinion," he said. "There's a certain hadith [verse] that said if anyone changes his or her religion, he deserves to be killed. In my research, I found that was linked to some people who were trying to penetrate the Muslim community at the time in Medina. They came from Jewish or pagan communities, and announced they had become Muslims. Then after a few days, they announced they had found this religion to be very bad and they had decided to go back to their religions: Judaism, paganism, whatever.
"The Prophet was trying to stop that kind of conspiracy so he said that if anyone changes from the religion he has adopted, we will kill him. Islamic jurists [ scholars] have not paid attention to [the exceptional nature] of that event. They have generalized that hadith to say if anyone practices apostasy, we should kill him."
Not only has the Hadith been misunderstood, Mr. Alawani said, but the famous Koranic command that there is "no compulsion" in the choice of one's religion has been ignored.
"Everyone has the full right to choose his or her religion," he said. "No one should interfere with that." He is writing a book on the topic but jokes that it should never be released in countries where Islamic law is in full force.
"I should stay away from Pakistan and other places, or I would lose my neck," he said. "Some people living in America even, they don't like those kind of opinions. They will say: 'Don't listen to him. He is trying to Americanize Islam.'"
Some Muslims who convert to Christianity in this country are ordered home immediately, said Samy Tanagho, an Egyptian evangelist associated with Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, Calif.
"Last year we had one of the princesses from the Saudi royal family who came with her mother who was seeking medical treatment," he said. "I led her to Christ. It was a huge problem with her family.
"Her faith was genuine. We tried to help her and even contacted Congress to try to protect her. All of a sudden, her family sent a limousine to where she was living and they took her away. She didn't have much support here from Christians, and her family had cut off all financial support."
A California lawyer, who asked to remain unnamed for safety reasons, confirmed this account, adding that a security firm hired by the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles nabbed the woman under the pretext of protecting the royal family.
"Religion and conversion and the royal family; those are the hottest buttons you can push," he said. A call by this newspaper to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles asking for comment was not returned.
"Another convert I know here who is Lebanese, his family threatened to kill him," Mr. Tanagho said. Hence, he added, when he baptized a Persian woman a few years ago, she asked that her baptism be kept secret.
"Egyptians and Iranians show some of the greatest interest" in Christianity, he said. "They've seen the ugly side of Islam."
Iranians 'feel free'
Unlike the aforementioned Pakistanis, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians and Syrians, Iranian converts reported the fewest repercussions for their faith.
"I've seen some people who've come from Iran to the United States to persecute, if not kill, in order to bring back their relatives to Islam," said Kris Tedford, a Farsi-speaking American who pastors the Iranian Church of Eternal Life in Oakton. "That's not the general rule, though. More people tend to feel freer here."
"Of all the Muslim nations, Iranians are the most receptive to the Gospel of Jesus Christ," said Abe Ghaffari of Iranian Christians International in Colorado Springs, Colo. "They've been so well exposed to the Islamic republican government in Iran and they have a lot of disillusionment with life there and the economy."
He guesses that 7,000 evangelical Christian Iranians live in this country, mostly in California.
"There was one case of an Iranian who became a Christian in New York," he said. "His wife, a Muslim, reported this to their families in Iran. The next thing, the father put pressure on him to return to Islam and even had an imam in New York call him and try to pressure and intimidate him.
"He has applied for asylum here because he knows he can't return to Iran and be safe there. Under the Islamic law, he'd be severely punished and if he persisted in his Christian faith, he'd probably die.
"People here are in danger, including from family members in the United States, who shun them, disown them and deprive them of any inheritance. And their family members still back in Iran get used as hostages."
Mina Nevisa, an Iranian convert who lives in the Los Angeles area, has not seen her family since she and her husband fled the country in 1984. She had just started attending an underground church in Tehran with her 28-year-old female cousin when a police raid on the home of the pastor revealed a directory with a listing of names of secret converts to Christianity.
The cousin was arrested on charges of apostasy and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where she was raped, tortured and then killed by a firing squad. The pastor was also killed. Mrs. Nevisa and her husband fled first to Turkey, then to Spain and then Sweden. While in Sweden, she said, she got threatening letters from the Iranian government. She said she also received threatening phone calls.
The couple fled here in 1998, settling in Northern Virginia and setting up an evangelistic ministry geared toward Muslims. In 1999, she published a book: "Don't Keep Me Silent: One Woman's Escape from the Chains of Islam."
The threatening calls started up again. This past January, Mrs. Nevisa said she was alone at home when a caller informed her he knew her husband was out of town.
"Don't you know we know your schedule?" the caller asked. The couple decided to re-establish their ministry in Southern California, but their www.touchofchrist.net Web site leaves only e-mail addresses and post office box numbers with which to find them.
"We got a letter this past Christmas saying 'die' in English," she said. "It's not only the Iranian government that wants to hurt you; it's fanatic individuals."
Muslim Background Believers
At Millersville University, a small college in the gentle hills just southwest of Lancaster, Pa., several hundred Arabic-speaking Christians were having their annual conference.
Several called themselves MBBs: Muslim Background Believers. MBBs are former Muslims who become Christians.
One Jordanian who refused to have his photo taken — "Someone published my picture before and there was trouble" — went by the assumed name of Maxwell Mohammed.
"I go out of my way to find MBBs across the country," he said. "They have no one to talk to. Last week I got a call from New York, an Iranian couple. His family had cast him off because he had become a Christian."
Mr. Mohammed, 53, who said his family has disowned him as well, said Muslim groups meet all over northern New Jersey but in numbers of 10 to 20 to escape detection.
"These MBBs have unique problems," he said. "They become family-less and jobless. I help these people with money, jobs and visa problems. It's hard for these people to find mates as well. Even other Christians wonder if they'll go back to Islam.
"They need a family. It's like they carry a cross their whole life. My own mother said to me: 'Your father is dead and you, too.' If you convert, you are given three days to come back. If you do not, blood is shed."
He added: "It is not easy to minister to Muslims. They are good people who love and revere God. I was one of them, and if it weren't for a faithful Christian who loved me for three years, I wouldn't have seen the light of salvation through Jesus Christ."
Zechariah Ananni, a Lebanese who converted to Christianity in 1975 after hearing an American missionary preach on the streets of Beirut, was also at the conference. Convinced that his life was in danger, he emigrated first to Detroit, then to Windsor, Canada, where he spends his time trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. His wife is so afraid for their lives, she has fled back to Beirut, leaving him with two young daughters.
A Moroccan at the conference said his married daughters were threatened by their Muslim husbands with divorce if they so much as talked to him about his conversion to Christianity. A Palestinian woman told of how her father tore her New Testament in half when he learned she had converted.
"Noor," a woman from Algeria who was converted through an Arabic-language service at Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, said her husband divorced her soon afterward. A court in Algiers awarded him custody of their two sons. She retains custody of a daughter. "He still bothers her a lot," Noor said. "He tells my daughter I am an unbeliever, and I am going to hell."
Daring Leaps of Faith
By Julia Duin
Courtesy The Washington Times
Having just come out of church, they were at an indoor cafe, conversing about former Muslims they knew who were now Christians. Some married into the faith. Some of the converts no longer believed in the Koran. Others said they had had visions or dreams of Jesus Christ. And others felt the Christian message of God becoming a man was more compelling than their faith. These converts face all kinds of dangers for having left Islam: ostracism from family members and friends, kidnappings and even death threats.
"Most of the people who come here start to question the Koran," one of the Egyptians said. "They can read sources not available in our countries, especially sources in Arabic." The government of Saudi Arabia, for example, blocks thousands of Web sites through its Internet Services Unit in Riyadh, including anything criticizing Islam. A Harvard University study conducted in May showed that out of 2,038 sites banned by the Saudis, 250 were religious.
In the West, seekers who've never heard a serious debate on Islam can click on Exmuslim.com, Islamreview.com and Arabicbible.com. Then there's Paltalk.com, a chat site featuring discussions in various languages on a wide range of topics. Some former Muslims enter these chat rooms with the intent to convert Arabic speakers to Christianity, including "Sam Ash," a New Jersey hairdresser.
"I ask them to prove to me that Islam is the way to God," he said. "Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life. If you can show I have eternal life through Muhammad, I'll become a Muslim this moment."
There is no lack of people who wish to challenge him, which is why he will not divulge his real name.
"I've been hacked" into, he said, "and you should see the viruses people send me."
Most of these converts keep their new affiliation secret, as Islam considers those who leave the faith to be apostates. According to Islamic law as practiced in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and in northern regions of Nigeria, the penalty for changing one's religion is execution.
The U.S. State Department has documented numerous instances of religious persecution overseas against Muslim converts to Christianity. What is not so well known are the threats against such converts in the United States.
Some have simply been shunned by their families. Others have been kidnapped by family members and friends, and put on a plane back home. All are reluctant to ask for protection from U.S. law enforcement, especially those converts with Arabic surnames who are leery of getting their names on a U.S. police report. However, there are no known instances of converts from Islam to Christianity who have been killed in the United States for their decision to leave their faith.
Most established Christian denominations are unaware of the situation, as converts attend Bible study groups in their own language or small hidden churches that appear on no denominational radar. No academic research has been done on such converts. The closest figures are those by David Barrett, co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, who estimates that within U.S. borders, 50,000 Christians per year turn to Islam while 20,000 Muslims adopt Christianity.
Befriending the latter, the men say, is a dicey proposition.
"It's written in their books," one said. "You cannot be a friend with unbelievers."
'Christ in the Koran'
The Rev. Esper Ajaj, the Syrian-born pastor of Washington Arabic Baptist Church at 4605 Massachusetts Ave. NW in the District, concedes that there are dangers to working with Muslims. Situated within walking distance of American University, he gets a fair amount of seekers at his door.
"They want to ask questions," he said. "Sometimes they come to pray here. Then they have a cup of coffee, and I talk to them. Then I discuss the greatness of Christ in the Koran.
"We've seen more Muslims in [the 1990s] become Christians more than any time in history. If they are open-minded, it is easy. If they are closed-minded, it is not."
He is writing a book tentatively titled, "Difficult Questions a Muslim Asks" but confesses that "I don't know if I'll put my name on it."
"Look at Salman Rushdie," he said, referring to the Muslim author from India whose 1988 book "The Satanic Verses" earned him a death warrant from Persian mullahs.
"One guy called my wife and said, 'Let Esper die.' They could give a person $1,000 and shoot me, and no one would know."
Mr. Ajaj said Christianity is not logical to a Muslim mind that cannot fathom worshipping someone who was ridiculed, then killed. Muslims are divided on whether Jesus even died, and the Koran said Jesus was snatched up to heaven by God before the Crucifixion. Some Muslim commentators think Judas Iscariot or Simon of Cyrene died in His place, and none believe He rose from the dead.
The Rev. Hisham Kamel, pastor of the Arabic Evangelical Church in Temple City, Calif., said the certainty of heaven is what draws Muslims to risk losing family and friends when they accept Christ.
"In Islam, the only way they know they'll get to heaven is if they take part in jihad," he said.
But there is a downside of working with converts, said the Rev. Charles Farag of Trinity Arabic Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. Two years ago, he gave one convert, who showed up at his door with a hard-luck story, one of his favorite cars, a 1994 black Chrysler New Yorker.
The convert totaled the car the next day, then showed up back at the church, saying someone had tried to run him off the road.
"Sometimes people lie so they can apply for religious asylum," Mr. Farag said. "Then, after they receive help from you, you never hear from them again." The Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to provide details on religious asylum requests.
Sometimes even offering sympathy to a convert brings opposition. One Washington area pastor asked not to be named because of a nearby mosque that has been scrutinizing him.
"I have seven Muslims who have converted," he said. "I do not want any trouble."
Ann Buwalda, an immigration lawyer for Just Law International in Fairfax, said she's been approached by Pakistani converts who are refugees. One man, "Masih," was working at a retail store in Northern Virginia, she said, when a Muslim co-worker from Pakistan noticed he was wearing a cross. The man asked Masih why he was wearing it.
"I am Christian," said Masih. The Muslim co-worker became angry, called him derogatory names in their native language, shoved him in a hallway and thereafter tried to get him fired and threatened him after work one night.
"He told the security guards at the retail store, so the employer has separated the two," Ms. Buwalda said.
"I worry about these people. I have given him a cell phone so he can call 911 if these guys stalk him. He has informally told police about it but filed no report" because, she adds, most refugees view American law enforcement in the same light as police from their own countries: people to be avoided at all costs.
She tells of another young female convert who wears a cross and who was stalked by a Muslim Pakistani taxi driver in the retail store where she works. Yet another Pakistani woman who converted to Christianity was threatened with death by Pakistani neighbors. "That kind of stuff, it's frightening when it happens," Ms. Buwalda said.
Victor Gill, a Pakistani immigrant who lives in Philadelphia and who leads a ministry called Christian Voice of Pakistan, said converts are regularly harassed in the United States.
"The threat is real," he said. "They think they are doing something to earn credit with God when they kill Christians. When John Walker Lindh converted to Islam, his family supported him. But not so for the converts here. The Koran said people who leave Islam must be killed."
Killing converts
Actually, that instruction is in the Hadith, a collection of the sayings of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. It has been enforced in varying ways. Female converts are usually imprisoned in a room — for months or years — as a sort of psychological torture until they recant. As for the men, all the traditional schools of Shariah (Islamic) law stipulate that "apostates" — those who leave their faith — must die. But before they die, they lose all civil liberties. Their children are taken away, their marriage is dissolved, they lose their family inheritance and they cannot be buried in a Muslim graveyard.
One dissident to this traditional interpretation of the Hadith is Taha Jabir Alawani, president of the Graduate School for Islamic Social Sciences in Leesburg, Va. He said the apostate rule was formed in the early seventh century, when leaving one's religion was seen as a traitorous act.
"Mine is a minority opinion," he said. "There's a certain hadith [verse] that said if anyone changes his or her religion, he deserves to be killed. In my research, I found that was linked to some people who were trying to penetrate the Muslim community at the time in Medina. They came from Jewish or pagan communities, and announced they had become Muslims. Then after a few days, they announced they had found this religion to be very bad and they had decided to go back to their religions: Judaism, paganism, whatever.
"The Prophet was trying to stop that kind of conspiracy so he said that if anyone changes from the religion he has adopted, we will kill him. Islamic jurists [ scholars] have not paid attention to [the exceptional nature] of that event. They have generalized that hadith to say if anyone practices apostasy, we should kill him."
Not only has the Hadith been misunderstood, Mr. Alawani said, but the famous Koranic command that there is "no compulsion" in the choice of one's religion has been ignored.
"Everyone has the full right to choose his or her religion," he said. "No one should interfere with that." He is writing a book on the topic but jokes that it should never be released in countries where Islamic law is in full force.
"I should stay away from Pakistan and other places, or I would lose my neck," he said. "Some people living in America even, they don't like those kind of opinions. They will say: 'Don't listen to him. He is trying to Americanize Islam.'"
Some Muslims who convert to Christianity in this country are ordered home immediately, said Samy Tanagho, an Egyptian evangelist associated with Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, Calif.
"Last year we had one of the princesses from the Saudi royal family who came with her mother who was seeking medical treatment," he said. "I led her to Christ. It was a huge problem with her family.
"Her faith was genuine. We tried to help her and even contacted Congress to try to protect her. All of a sudden, her family sent a limousine to where she was living and they took her away. She didn't have much support here from Christians, and her family had cut off all financial support."
A California lawyer, who asked to remain unnamed for safety reasons, confirmed this account, adding that a security firm hired by the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles nabbed the woman under the pretext of protecting the royal family.
"Religion and conversion and the royal family; those are the hottest buttons you can push," he said. A call by this newspaper to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles asking for comment was not returned.
"Another convert I know here who is Lebanese, his family threatened to kill him," Mr. Tanagho said. Hence, he added, when he baptized a Persian woman a few years ago, she asked that her baptism be kept secret.
"Egyptians and Iranians show some of the greatest interest" in Christianity, he said. "They've seen the ugly side of Islam."
Iranians 'feel free'
Unlike the aforementioned Pakistanis, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians and Syrians, Iranian converts reported the fewest repercussions for their faith.
"I've seen some people who've come from Iran to the United States to persecute, if not kill, in order to bring back their relatives to Islam," said Kris Tedford, a Farsi-speaking American who pastors the Iranian Church of Eternal Life in Oakton. "That's not the general rule, though. More people tend to feel freer here."
"Of all the Muslim nations, Iranians are the most receptive to the Gospel of Jesus Christ," said Abe Ghaffari of Iranian Christians International in Colorado Springs, Colo. "They've been so well exposed to the Islamic republican government in Iran and they have a lot of disillusionment with life there and the economy."
He guesses that 7,000 evangelical Christian Iranians live in this country, mostly in California.
"There was one case of an Iranian who became a Christian in New York," he said. "His wife, a Muslim, reported this to their families in Iran. The next thing, the father put pressure on him to return to Islam and even had an imam in New York call him and try to pressure and intimidate him.
"He has applied for asylum here because he knows he can't return to Iran and be safe there. Under the Islamic law, he'd be severely punished and if he persisted in his Christian faith, he'd probably die.
"People here are in danger, including from family members in the United States, who shun them, disown them and deprive them of any inheritance. And their family members still back in Iran get used as hostages."
Mina Nevisa, an Iranian convert who lives in the Los Angeles area, has not seen her family since she and her husband fled the country in 1984. She had just started attending an underground church in Tehran with her 28-year-old female cousin when a police raid on the home of the pastor revealed a directory with a listing of names of secret converts to Christianity.
The cousin was arrested on charges of apostasy and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where she was raped, tortured and then killed by a firing squad. The pastor was also killed. Mrs. Nevisa and her husband fled first to Turkey, then to Spain and then Sweden. While in Sweden, she said, she got threatening letters from the Iranian government. She said she also received threatening phone calls.
The couple fled here in 1998, settling in Northern Virginia and setting up an evangelistic ministry geared toward Muslims. In 1999, she published a book: "Don't Keep Me Silent: One Woman's Escape from the Chains of Islam."
The threatening calls started up again. This past January, Mrs. Nevisa said she was alone at home when a caller informed her he knew her husband was out of town.
"Don't you know we know your schedule?" the caller asked. The couple decided to re-establish their ministry in Southern California, but their www.touchofchrist.net Web site leaves only e-mail addresses and post office box numbers with which to find them.
"We got a letter this past Christmas saying 'die' in English," she said. "It's not only the Iranian government that wants to hurt you; it's fanatic individuals."
Muslim Background Believers
At Millersville University, a small college in the gentle hills just southwest of Lancaster, Pa., several hundred Arabic-speaking Christians were having their annual conference.
Several called themselves MBBs: Muslim Background Believers. MBBs are former Muslims who become Christians.
One Jordanian who refused to have his photo taken — "Someone published my picture before and there was trouble" — went by the assumed name of Maxwell Mohammed.
"I go out of my way to find MBBs across the country," he said. "They have no one to talk to. Last week I got a call from New York, an Iranian couple. His family had cast him off because he had become a Christian."
Mr. Mohammed, 53, who said his family has disowned him as well, said Muslim groups meet all over northern New Jersey but in numbers of 10 to 20 to escape detection.
"These MBBs have unique problems," he said. "They become family-less and jobless. I help these people with money, jobs and visa problems. It's hard for these people to find mates as well. Even other Christians wonder if they'll go back to Islam.
"They need a family. It's like they carry a cross their whole life. My own mother said to me: 'Your father is dead and you, too.' If you convert, you are given three days to come back. If you do not, blood is shed."
He added: "It is not easy to minister to Muslims. They are good people who love and revere God. I was one of them, and if it weren't for a faithful Christian who loved me for three years, I wouldn't have seen the light of salvation through Jesus Christ."
Zechariah Ananni, a Lebanese who converted to Christianity in 1975 after hearing an American missionary preach on the streets of Beirut, was also at the conference. Convinced that his life was in danger, he emigrated first to Detroit, then to Windsor, Canada, where he spends his time trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. His wife is so afraid for their lives, she has fled back to Beirut, leaving him with two young daughters.
A Moroccan at the conference said his married daughters were threatened by their Muslim husbands with divorce if they so much as talked to him about his conversion to Christianity. A Palestinian woman told of how her father tore her New Testament in half when he learned she had converted.
"Noor," a woman from Algeria who was converted through an Arabic-language service at Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, said her husband divorced her soon afterward. A court in Algiers awarded him custody of their two sons. She retains custody of a daughter. "He still bothers her a lot," Noor said. "He tells my daughter I am an unbeliever, and I am going to hell."
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Europe in the House of War
(This article is so excellent that I am posting it in its entirety. Please read it all.--Abu Daoud)
Europe in the House of War
by Spengler
Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.
Not since World War II has British opinion been provoked to the present level of outrage. Writing in the Times of London, the editor of the London Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona, quoted former British Conservative parliamentarian Enoch Powell's warning that concessions to alien cultures would cause "rivers of blood" to flow in the streets of England. Times columnist Minette Marin accuses the archbishop of treason.
Coercion in the Muslim communities of Europe is so commonplace that duly-constituted governments there no longer wield a monopoly of violence. Behind the law there stands the right of the state to inflict violence, and the legitimacy of states rests on what German political economist and sociologist Max Weber once called "the monopoly of violence". Once this right is conceded to private groups, the legitimacy of government crumbles. No one appreciates this more than the British, whose tradition of protecting individual rights under law is the oldest and strongest in the West, excepting the United States, which inherited English Common Law.
By proposing to concede a permanent role to extralegal violence in the political life of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury pushed his phlegmatic countrymen over the edge. No one is better than the British at pretending that problems really aren't there, but once their spiritual leader admits to an alien source of coercion and proposes to legitimize it, they understand that a limit has been reached.
Williams' exercise in what might be termed the Higher Hypocrisy shows how deeply Europe has descended into the Dar al-Harb, or the "House of War" in the Muslim terms for all that lies outside the "house of submission", or Dar al-Islam. Europe's governments refuse to rule, that is, refuse to enforce their own laws because they fear violence on the part of Muslim immigrant communities who refuse to accept these laws. "No-go" zones proliferate that non-Muslims dare not enter. In the United Kingdom, according to evidence presented by respected journalists and public-interest organizations, Muslim community organizations, Muslim police officers and medical personnel collaborate to stop women from escaping domestic violence.
The erring spiritual leader of the Church of England persuades me that Europe's Man of Destiny is the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who for two years has lived in hiding under constant police protection for the crime of criticizing Islam. It is a measure of the degradation of Europe's body politic that is only one means to expose the motives of Williams and his ilk, namely to draw fire from Muslims who overtly threaten violence against any public figure who questions the authority of Islam.
Contrary to his critics, Wilders is not provoking violence. The violence is already there, a matter of workaday fact in Muslim enclaves throughout Europe. In an act of great personal courage, Wilders is enticing violent elements out of the tall grass in order to expose them to public opprobrium.
It is triply hypocritical when Williams, the spiritual leader of the Church of England, speaks of sharia law as if it were a private matter of conscience between consenting parties, rather like the use of rabbinical courts by Orthodox Jews. First, he admits outright that Muslim communities combine to coerce women but pretends that this is not relevant to sharia. Secondly, he offers concessions to sharia in the first place to appease the threat of social violence on the part of Muslims. As a final insult to conscience, he cites as his authority on sharia Professor Tariq Ramadan, who notoriously refuses to condemn the stoning of women for adultery, precisely because Muslim legal rulings specifically endorse such violence.
There is overwhelming documentation that Muslim entities in Britain wield the threat and fact of violence against dissenters, particularly the most vulnerable, namely young women. The fact is so scandalous that in his February 7 address, Williams felt compelled to address it directly, in order to insist that the subject fell entirely outside the issue of law - a conclusion he must know to be false.
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, warned on January 7 of the spread of "no-go" zones in England that non-Muslims dare not enter. As a result, Nazir-Ali has received death threats against himself and his family and requires protection.
The British authorities will take measures to protect bishops from the threat of violence, but they leave to their own devices thousands of Muslim women. According to a February 2008 report by the Center for Social Cohesion, Islamist groups and individuals frequently link ideas of honor with the welfare of the Muslim world. By using words such as Ird and Namus in a political context, they imply that by protecting the chastity of Muslim women, the security and collective honor of Islam and Muslim states and individuals can also be defended. This politicization of women's bodies helps create an environment where the abuse and control of women is tolerated.
Muslim communities, the report documents, terrorize women who refuse arranged marriages or otherwise break with social norms:
Almost all refuges dealing with Asian women report on the existence of informal networks which exist to track down and punish - with death if necessary - women who are perceived as bringing shame on their family and community. In many cases, women fleeing domestic violence or forced marriages have been deliberately returned to their homes or betrayed to their families by policemen, councilors and civil servants of immigrant origin.
Muslim coercion against women extends to psychiatric hospitals, the Times of London's religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill reported on February 7 (cited in Rod Dreher's indispensable Crunchy Con blog, .) Glenhill quoted a women's rights advocate as follows:
The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing Western clothes. There can be many reasons. The women are sent for assessment to a hospital. The GP [general practitioner] referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned (committed to a psychiatric ward). She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?
That brings us back to the archbishop of Canterbury, who acknowledged the fact of coercion of women in his February 7 address, but insisted that because it belonged to "custom" rather than "religious law", he preferred to change the subject:
Recognition of "supplementary jurisdiction" in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women. The "forced marriage" question is the one most often referred to here, and it is at the moment undoubtedly a very serious and scandalous one; but precisely because it has to do with custom and culture rather than directly binding enactments by religious authority, I shall refer to another issue.
That makes a lurid lie out of Williams' bland assertion that adherence to sharia "assumes the voluntary consent or submission of the believer":
Sharia depends for its legitimacy not on any human decision, not on votes or preferences, but on the conviction that it represents the mind of God ... while such universal claims are not open for re-negotiation, they also assume the voluntary consent or submission of the believer, the free decision to be and to continue a member of the umma.
Williams was lying. His authority in matters of sharia is Ramadan, whom the Department of Homeland Security prevented from accepting an American university appointment. Ramadan set off a scandal In 2003 when he refused to condemn violence against women (calling instead for a "moratorium," that is, a temporary cessation) precisely because Islamic law sanctions such violence. The Westernized Ramadan will twist himself into a pretzel rather than disagree with Islamic jurisprudence.
Six million Frenchmen watched Ramadan defend the stoning of women for the crime of adultery in a televised debate with the present President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Interior Minister. As quoted by Paul Berman in The New Republic of June 4, 2007, the transcript reads as follows, Ramadan refuses outright to say that he is against stoning adulteresses:
Sarkozy: A moratorium ... Mr Ramadan, are you serious?
Ramadan: Wait, let me finish.
Sarkozy: A moratorium, that is to say, we should, for a while, hold back from stoning women?
Ramadan: No, no, wait ... What does a moratorium mean? A moratorium would mean that we absolutely end the application of all of those penalties, in order to have a true debate. And my position is that if we arrive at a consensus among Muslims, it will necessarily end. But you cannot, you know, when you are in a community ... Today on television, I can please the French people who are watching by saying, "Me, my own position." But my own position doesn't count. What matters is to bring about an evolution in Muslim mentalities, Mr Sarkozy. It's necessary that you understand ...
Sarkozy: But, Mr Ramadan ...
Ramadan: Let me finish.
Sarkozy: Just one point. I understand you, but Muslims are human beings who live in 2003 in France, since we are speaking about the French community, and you have just said something particularly incredible, which is that the stoning of women, yes, the stoning is a bit shocking, but we should simply declare a moratorium, and then we are going to think about it in order to decide if it is good ... But that's monstrous - to stone a woman because she is an adulterer! It's necessary to condemn it!
Ramadan: Mr Sarkozy, listen well to what I am saying. What I say, my own position, is that the law is not applicable - that's clear. But today, I speak to Muslims around the world and I take part, even in the United States, in the Muslim world ... You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things. You can decide all by yourself to be a progressive in the communities. That's too easy. Today my position is, that is to say, "We should stop."
Sarkozy: Mr Ramadan, if it is regressive not to want to stone women, I avow that I am a regressive.
"You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things" such as stoning women, Ramadan insisted, which is to say that were he to condemn violence against women outright, he would be unable to speak to Muslim communities.
That is Williams' source. Coming from the leader of a major Christian denomination, this depth of hypocrisy is satanic, if that word has any meaning at all.
Unlike his Church of England colleague, Bishop Nazir-Ali, Williams does not require a security detail. But it appears that every European journalist and politician who attacks Islam requires personal protection, starting with the stout-hearted Dutchman Wilders. In the cited New Republic report on Tariq Ramadan, Paul Berman reported:
When I met Hirsi Ali at a conference in Sweden last year, she was protected by no less than five bodyguards. Even in the United States she is protected by bodyguards. But this is no longer unusual. Buruma himself mentions in Murder in Amsterdam that the Dutch Social Democratic politician Ahmed Aboutaleb requires full-time bodyguards. At that same Swedish conference I happened to meet the British writer of immigrant background who has been obliged to adopt the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, out of fear that, in his case because of his Bertrand Russell-influenced philosophical convictions, he might be singled out for assassination.
I happened to attend a different conference in Italy a few days earlier and met the very brave Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who writes scathing criticisms of the new totalitarian wave in Il Corriere della Sera - and I discovered that Allam, too, was traveling with a full complement of five bodyguards. The Italian journalist Fiamma Nierenstein, because of her well-known sympathies for Israel, was accompanied by her own bodyguards. Caroline Fourest, the author of the most important extended criticism of Ramadan, had to go under police protection for a while. The French philosophy professor Robert Redeker has had to go into hiding ...
So Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class, a subset of the European intelligentsia - its Muslim wing especially - who survive only because of their bodyguards and their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe during the last 60 years.
Postscript: I had not intended to mention James J Sheehan's silly book on Europe's postwar conversion to pacifism, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, the object of many glowing reviews by soft-headed liberals, most recently by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the February 8 New York Times. Sheehan admires modern Europe for abandoning war; it does not occur to him that Europe also has abandoned being European. Abysmal non-immigrant fertility rates condemn most of Europe's peoples to effective extinction during the next century or two. It deserves a one-word review by Homer Simpson, namely, "Doh." If there are to be no future generations, what soldier will lay down his life for them? The word "demographics" does not appear once in Sheehan's plodding account, which liberal reviewers praised as if it were a roadmap to the millennium.
Sheehan is woefully misguided. Europe may not have war, but it already has violence: its political authorities cringe and scurry and evade and lie in the face of actual or threatened violence by its Muslim communities. If its duly-constituted governments abandon their monopoly of violence to self-appointed religious leaders, the likelihood is that a river of blood will flow, just as Powell warned in 1968.
END
Europe in the House of War
by Spengler
Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.
Not since World War II has British opinion been provoked to the present level of outrage. Writing in the Times of London, the editor of the London Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona, quoted former British Conservative parliamentarian Enoch Powell's warning that concessions to alien cultures would cause "rivers of blood" to flow in the streets of England. Times columnist Minette Marin accuses the archbishop of treason.
Coercion in the Muslim communities of Europe is so commonplace that duly-constituted governments there no longer wield a monopoly of violence. Behind the law there stands the right of the state to inflict violence, and the legitimacy of states rests on what German political economist and sociologist Max Weber once called "the monopoly of violence". Once this right is conceded to private groups, the legitimacy of government crumbles. No one appreciates this more than the British, whose tradition of protecting individual rights under law is the oldest and strongest in the West, excepting the United States, which inherited English Common Law.
By proposing to concede a permanent role to extralegal violence in the political life of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury pushed his phlegmatic countrymen over the edge. No one is better than the British at pretending that problems really aren't there, but once their spiritual leader admits to an alien source of coercion and proposes to legitimize it, they understand that a limit has been reached.
Williams' exercise in what might be termed the Higher Hypocrisy shows how deeply Europe has descended into the Dar al-Harb, or the "House of War" in the Muslim terms for all that lies outside the "house of submission", or Dar al-Islam. Europe's governments refuse to rule, that is, refuse to enforce their own laws because they fear violence on the part of Muslim immigrant communities who refuse to accept these laws. "No-go" zones proliferate that non-Muslims dare not enter. In the United Kingdom, according to evidence presented by respected journalists and public-interest organizations, Muslim community organizations, Muslim police officers and medical personnel collaborate to stop women from escaping domestic violence.
The erring spiritual leader of the Church of England persuades me that Europe's Man of Destiny is the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who for two years has lived in hiding under constant police protection for the crime of criticizing Islam. It is a measure of the degradation of Europe's body politic that is only one means to expose the motives of Williams and his ilk, namely to draw fire from Muslims who overtly threaten violence against any public figure who questions the authority of Islam.
Contrary to his critics, Wilders is not provoking violence. The violence is already there, a matter of workaday fact in Muslim enclaves throughout Europe. In an act of great personal courage, Wilders is enticing violent elements out of the tall grass in order to expose them to public opprobrium.
It is triply hypocritical when Williams, the spiritual leader of the Church of England, speaks of sharia law as if it were a private matter of conscience between consenting parties, rather like the use of rabbinical courts by Orthodox Jews. First, he admits outright that Muslim communities combine to coerce women but pretends that this is not relevant to sharia. Secondly, he offers concessions to sharia in the first place to appease the threat of social violence on the part of Muslims. As a final insult to conscience, he cites as his authority on sharia Professor Tariq Ramadan, who notoriously refuses to condemn the stoning of women for adultery, precisely because Muslim legal rulings specifically endorse such violence.
There is overwhelming documentation that Muslim entities in Britain wield the threat and fact of violence against dissenters, particularly the most vulnerable, namely young women. The fact is so scandalous that in his February 7 address, Williams felt compelled to address it directly, in order to insist that the subject fell entirely outside the issue of law - a conclusion he must know to be false.
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, warned on January 7 of the spread of "no-go" zones in England that non-Muslims dare not enter. As a result, Nazir-Ali has received death threats against himself and his family and requires protection.
The British authorities will take measures to protect bishops from the threat of violence, but they leave to their own devices thousands of Muslim women. According to a February 2008 report by the Center for Social Cohesion, Islamist groups and individuals frequently link ideas of honor with the welfare of the Muslim world. By using words such as Ird and Namus in a political context, they imply that by protecting the chastity of Muslim women, the security and collective honor of Islam and Muslim states and individuals can also be defended. This politicization of women's bodies helps create an environment where the abuse and control of women is tolerated.
Muslim communities, the report documents, terrorize women who refuse arranged marriages or otherwise break with social norms:
Almost all refuges dealing with Asian women report on the existence of informal networks which exist to track down and punish - with death if necessary - women who are perceived as bringing shame on their family and community. In many cases, women fleeing domestic violence or forced marriages have been deliberately returned to their homes or betrayed to their families by policemen, councilors and civil servants of immigrant origin.
Muslim coercion against women extends to psychiatric hospitals, the Times of London's religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill reported on February 7 (cited in Rod Dreher's indispensable Crunchy Con blog, .) Glenhill quoted a women's rights advocate as follows:
The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing Western clothes. There can be many reasons. The women are sent for assessment to a hospital. The GP [general practitioner] referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned (committed to a psychiatric ward). She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?
That brings us back to the archbishop of Canterbury, who acknowledged the fact of coercion of women in his February 7 address, but insisted that because it belonged to "custom" rather than "religious law", he preferred to change the subject:
Recognition of "supplementary jurisdiction" in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women. The "forced marriage" question is the one most often referred to here, and it is at the moment undoubtedly a very serious and scandalous one; but precisely because it has to do with custom and culture rather than directly binding enactments by religious authority, I shall refer to another issue.
That makes a lurid lie out of Williams' bland assertion that adherence to sharia "assumes the voluntary consent or submission of the believer":
Sharia depends for its legitimacy not on any human decision, not on votes or preferences, but on the conviction that it represents the mind of God ... while such universal claims are not open for re-negotiation, they also assume the voluntary consent or submission of the believer, the free decision to be and to continue a member of the umma.
Williams was lying. His authority in matters of sharia is Ramadan, whom the Department of Homeland Security prevented from accepting an American university appointment. Ramadan set off a scandal In 2003 when he refused to condemn violence against women (calling instead for a "moratorium," that is, a temporary cessation) precisely because Islamic law sanctions such violence. The Westernized Ramadan will twist himself into a pretzel rather than disagree with Islamic jurisprudence.
Six million Frenchmen watched Ramadan defend the stoning of women for the crime of adultery in a televised debate with the present President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Interior Minister. As quoted by Paul Berman in The New Republic of June 4, 2007, the transcript reads as follows, Ramadan refuses outright to say that he is against stoning adulteresses:
Sarkozy: A moratorium ... Mr Ramadan, are you serious?
Ramadan: Wait, let me finish.
Sarkozy: A moratorium, that is to say, we should, for a while, hold back from stoning women?
Ramadan: No, no, wait ... What does a moratorium mean? A moratorium would mean that we absolutely end the application of all of those penalties, in order to have a true debate. And my position is that if we arrive at a consensus among Muslims, it will necessarily end. But you cannot, you know, when you are in a community ... Today on television, I can please the French people who are watching by saying, "Me, my own position." But my own position doesn't count. What matters is to bring about an evolution in Muslim mentalities, Mr Sarkozy. It's necessary that you understand ...
Sarkozy: But, Mr Ramadan ...
Ramadan: Let me finish.
Sarkozy: Just one point. I understand you, but Muslims are human beings who live in 2003 in France, since we are speaking about the French community, and you have just said something particularly incredible, which is that the stoning of women, yes, the stoning is a bit shocking, but we should simply declare a moratorium, and then we are going to think about it in order to decide if it is good ... But that's monstrous - to stone a woman because she is an adulterer! It's necessary to condemn it!
Ramadan: Mr Sarkozy, listen well to what I am saying. What I say, my own position, is that the law is not applicable - that's clear. But today, I speak to Muslims around the world and I take part, even in the United States, in the Muslim world ... You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things. You can decide all by yourself to be a progressive in the communities. That's too easy. Today my position is, that is to say, "We should stop."
Sarkozy: Mr Ramadan, if it is regressive not to want to stone women, I avow that I am a regressive.
"You should have a pedagogical posture that makes people discuss things" such as stoning women, Ramadan insisted, which is to say that were he to condemn violence against women outright, he would be unable to speak to Muslim communities.
That is Williams' source. Coming from the leader of a major Christian denomination, this depth of hypocrisy is satanic, if that word has any meaning at all.
Unlike his Church of England colleague, Bishop Nazir-Ali, Williams does not require a security detail. But it appears that every European journalist and politician who attacks Islam requires personal protection, starting with the stout-hearted Dutchman Wilders. In the cited New Republic report on Tariq Ramadan, Paul Berman reported:
When I met Hirsi Ali at a conference in Sweden last year, she was protected by no less than five bodyguards. Even in the United States she is protected by bodyguards. But this is no longer unusual. Buruma himself mentions in Murder in Amsterdam that the Dutch Social Democratic politician Ahmed Aboutaleb requires full-time bodyguards. At that same Swedish conference I happened to meet the British writer of immigrant background who has been obliged to adopt the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, out of fear that, in his case because of his Bertrand Russell-influenced philosophical convictions, he might be singled out for assassination.
I happened to attend a different conference in Italy a few days earlier and met the very brave Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who writes scathing criticisms of the new totalitarian wave in Il Corriere della Sera - and I discovered that Allam, too, was traveling with a full complement of five bodyguards. The Italian journalist Fiamma Nierenstein, because of her well-known sympathies for Israel, was accompanied by her own bodyguards. Caroline Fourest, the author of the most important extended criticism of Ramadan, had to go under police protection for a while. The French philosophy professor Robert Redeker has had to go into hiding ...
So Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class, a subset of the European intelligentsia - its Muslim wing especially - who survive only because of their bodyguards and their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe during the last 60 years.
Postscript: I had not intended to mention James J Sheehan's silly book on Europe's postwar conversion to pacifism, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, the object of many glowing reviews by soft-headed liberals, most recently by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the February 8 New York Times. Sheehan admires modern Europe for abandoning war; it does not occur to him that Europe also has abandoned being European. Abysmal non-immigrant fertility rates condemn most of Europe's peoples to effective extinction during the next century or two. It deserves a one-word review by Homer Simpson, namely, "Doh." If there are to be no future generations, what soldier will lay down his life for them? The word "demographics" does not appear once in Sheehan's plodding account, which liberal reviewers praised as if it were a roadmap to the millennium.
Sheehan is woefully misguided. Europe may not have war, but it already has violence: its political authorities cringe and scurry and evade and lie in the face of actual or threatened violence by its Muslim communities. If its duly-constituted governments abandon their monopoly of violence to self-appointed religious leaders, the likelihood is that a river of blood will flow, just as Powell warned in 1968.
END
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